tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/whitewashing-16452/articles
Whitewashing – The Conversation
2024-01-23T13:27:15Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/216255
2024-01-23T13:27:15Z
2024-01-23T13:27:15Z
Back in the USSR: New high school textbooks in Russia whitewash Stalin’s terror as Putin wages war on historical memory
<p>Hey, kids, meet Josef Stalin.</p>
<p>New Russian high school textbooks – <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/08/13/russia-history-textbook-revision-ukraine/">introduced in August 2023</a> on the instruction of President Vladimir Putin – attempt to whitewash Stalinist crimes and rehabilitate the Soviet Union’s legacy. While schools and teachers previously could pick educational materials from a variety of choices, these newly created textbooks are mandatory reading for 10th and 11th graders in Russia and occupied territories. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://search.asu.edu/profile/4666086">scholar of Russian and Soviet history</a>, I see the new books as just another example of state-sponsored efforts to use history and scholarship to serve Putin’s agenda and goals. </p>
<p>Other recent attempts along these lines include the establishment in November 2023 of the <a href="https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/6319763">National Center of Historical Memory</a>, tasked with preserving “traditional Russian spiritual and moral values, culture and historical memory”; the creation of a sprawling network of historical parks called “<a href="https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/the-romanovs-revisited-the-reimagining-of-the-romanovs-within-russia-my-history-history-parks/">Russia: My History</a>,” with new branches in <a href="https://myhistorypark.ru/for-visitors/events/v-luganske-otkryilsya-istoricheskij-park-%C2%ABrossiya-%E2%80%93-moya-istoriya/">occupied Ukrainian cities Luhansk and Melitopol</a>; and the <a href="https://statearchive.ru/1668">2023 publication</a> of a collection of archival documents called “On Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” </p>
<p>These projects not only demonstrate Putin’s desire to control the historical narrative but to serve the goal of promoting <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/12/06/blood-and-iron-how-nationalist-imperialism-became-russia-s-state-ideology-pub-91181">Russian cultural and educational imperialism</a>.</p>
<p>Putin’s efforts to redeem the Soviet past may help explain why Stalin is up in the polls, with 63% of Russians asked in June 2023 <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67408650">expressing a positive attitude</a> toward the Soviet dictator <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/intn.html">behind widespread</a> purges, mass executions, <a href="https://gulag.online/articles/mapa-taborovych-sprav-gulagu-a-pribehu-ze-stredni-evropy?locale=en">forced labor camps</a> and policies leading to the deaths of millions of his own compatriots. </p>
<p>But Stalin’s place in history remains divisive within the nations he once ruled over, especially where Russia retains significant political and cultural influence.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Russian President Vladimir Putin walks statue of Soviet leader Josef Stalin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=860&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570547/original/file-20240122-27-iu1we0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1081&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin walks by the grave of Soviet leader Josef Stalin on June 25, 2015, in Moscow.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/russian-president-vladimir-putin-walks-by-the-grave-of-news-photo/478523040?adppopup=true">Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In January 2024, a newly installed icon honoring Stalin in his homeland of Georgia was defaced – an act <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/defacing-stalin-icon-exposes-deep-divisions-his-home-country-georgia-2024-01-10/">exposing deep divisions</a>.</p>
<p>The number of privately funded monuments to the dictator <a href="https://www.svoboda.org/a/v-rossii-ustanovleny-110-pamyatnikov-stalinu-ih-chislo-rastyot/32619483.html">is increasing</a>, while the memorials to victims of political repression in Russia <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67408650">are disappearing</a>. Yet, activists are still fighting to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/activists-struggle-commemorate-victims-soviet-repression-2023-11-02/">commemorate</a> those who perished.</p>
<h2>Whitewashing history</h2>
<p>Putin, <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/putins-crimea-mythmaking">famously obsessed with history</a>, has been talking about the creation of national history textbooks since 2013. In August 2023, Putin’s wish was finally granted when one of his closest associates, former Minister of Culture <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/19/opinion/putin-russia-medinsky.html">Vladimir Medinsky</a>, presented new textbooks for 10th and 11th grade students: two in Russian history and two in World history. Medinsky co-authored all four. </p>
<p>The 10th grade textbooks cover the period from 1914 to 1945. The 11th grade textbooks cover history from 1945 to the present day and include sections on the current Russian-Ukrainian war, called in Russia a “Special Military Operation” as an official euphemism.</p>
<h2>Warping historical narratives</h2>
<p>The new school textbooks maintain some nuance in their coverage of Stalinism, yet that nuance can be described as “yes, but,” which makes it even more effective in warping the historical narrative. </p>
<p>The 10th grade Russian history textbook, for example, briefly mentions the dramatic consequences of collectivization of Soviet agriculture, including the 1932-33 man-made famines in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Holodomor">Ukraine</a>, <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/A_Tragedy_Kazakhstan_Must_Never_Forget/1357455.html">Kazakhstan</a>, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/nationalities-papers/article/regional-19321933-famine-losses-a-comparative-analysis-of-ukraine-and-russia/F5C798BC03F12BB0D08CB24DE3D13F00">North Caucasus and other regions</a>. Yet it puts the blame exclusively on the poor harvests and mistakes of the local leadership rather than the Stalinist policies that caused and exacerbated the famines. Ukraine’s great famine, or Holodomor, in particular is considered by many historians and international <a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20221209IPR64427/holodomor-parliament-recognises-soviet-starvation-of-ukrainians-as-genocide">organizations</a> to be a genocide.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Coffee mugs with images of Josef Stalin and Vladimir Putin." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570549/original/file-20240122-17-fuxj13.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Mugs decorated with images of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Soviet leader Josef Stalin are seen on sale among other items at a gift shop in Moscow on March 11, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mugs-decorated-with-images-of-russian-president-vladimir-news-photo/1206547055?adppopup=true">Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Additionally, in the section on World War II, the students learn that the “collective feat of the peasantry” during the war would have been “impossible in the case of the domination of the private landholdings” – in other words, it was only possible under the Soviet system.</p>
<p>The Russian history textbook briefly mentions the “Great Terror” of 1937-38, in which millions were arrested and <a href="https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf">an estimated 700,000 to 1.2 million</a> were executed. Mention is also made of the personal role of Stalin, while also emphasizing the role of private denunciations and authorities of various Soviet republics and regions. But the creator of the Soviet secret police and an architect of the post-revolutionary “Red Terror,” <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/iron-felix-rises-again-over-russias-spy-service-moscow-2023-09-11/">Felix Dzerzhinsky</a>, is praised for his role in “combating counter-revolution,” “creation of the professional educational system” and “restoration of the railroads.”</p>
<p>All national histories are inherently biased, even <a href="https://soeonline.american.edu/blog/bias-in-history-textbooks/">in democratic societies</a>. Medinsky’s textbooks are, however, a distortion of history. The authors lose any attempt at objectivity while discussing Soviet foreign policy as always defensive and serving to protect everyone whom the USSR occupies and annexes. </p>
<p>The whitewashing of Stalin and his crimes is, I believe, crucial for understanding Putin’s creep toward ever more imperialist ideology and goals. In 2017, Putin <a href="http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/55948">participated in the opening ceremony</a> for the memorial to the victims of political repressions in Moscow, during which he acknowledged <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1D15DH/">the violence of Stalin’s terror</a> and argued that it cannot be “justified by anything.” Yet his obsession with World War II led him to just that. </p>
<p>Putin and ideologists in the Russian leader circle have increasingly asserted that Stalin’s foreign policy and his leadership in World War II supersede his crimes against his own people. In his 2020 <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/feature/vladimir-putin-real-lessons-75th-anniversary-world-war-ii-162982?page=0%2C1">article in the U.S. journal National Interest</a>, Putin praised Stalin for his great “understanding of the nature of external threats” and actions that he undertook to “strengthen the country’s defenses.”</p>
<h2>The war on historical memory</h2>
<p>The more aggressive Russia’s politics are, the more protective the state is over the Soviet historical legacy. Since 2020, Moscow authorities <a href="https://apnews.com/article/memorial-soviet-repression-crackdown-russia-moscow-dissent-8aa8ca0e4e405445b6310d74c7853960">have not allowed demonstrations</a> traditionally held in Moscow on Oct. 29 to commemorate victims of the Great Terror of the 1930s. </p>
<p>In December 2021, <a href="https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2022-03-03/liquidation-memorial">Russian authorities ordered the “liquidation” of the human rights group Memorial </a>, fully unleashing the war on historical memory. The organization, which was among the three recipients of <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2022/summary/">the Nobel Peace Prize</a> in 2022, was blamed by the Russian Supreme Court for “distorting memory about the War,” “rehabilitating Nazis” and “creating a false image of the USSR and Russia as terrorist states.” It is not a coincidence that an attack on the organization that for decades documented the Soviet terror came in the midst of the anti-Western and anti-Ukrainian hysteria and right before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.</p>
<p>Memorial, however, <a href="https://www.codastory.com/rewriting-history/memorial-human-rights-group-russia-crackdown/">still stands</a>, despite immense pressure from the authorities, attesting to the great power of resistance.</p>
<p>In the newly written Putinist narrative of history, the state and its expansion is always at the center, just as it was during Stalinism. The people are treated according to a proverb favored by Stalin, which sums up his attitude toward the ruthless and brutal measures he imposed: “When the wood is cut down, the chips are flying.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216255/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anya Free does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The whitewashing of former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and his crimes is crucial for understanding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperialist ideology and goals.
Anya Free, Faculty Associate in History, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/172577
2022-04-04T14:16:03Z
2022-04-04T14:16:03Z
Rosalía: raising reggaetón’s ‘global cachet’ or robbing it of its roots?
<p>Spanish singer Rosalía’s new album, <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/6jbtHi5R0jMXoliU2OS0lo">Motomami</a>, has received a lot of media attention for its melding of “<a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/rosalia-album-motomami-review-1321923/">every sound at her disposal</a>”. Grounded in her flamenco background, the album sways from pop to jazz, is inflected with hip-hop and reggaetón beats and even features elements of bachata and salsa. </p>
<p>Rosalía rose to mainstream visibility in 2018 when her studio album El mal querer (The Bad Loving) <a href="https://www.lavanguardia.com/muyfan/20200924/483643951012/rosalia-rolling-stone-vista-lista-500-mejores-discos.html">landed in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time</a>. But the recent comparison by academics of Rosalía’s rise to fame with the “<a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/fashioning-spain-9781350169265/">evolution of reggaetón from its Afro-Caribbean roots to a genre with global cachet</a>” speaks to the silencing of the music’s rich socio-cultural history. </p>
<p>Rosalía is not alone, however. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, there’s been a slew of popular songs by white and European Spanish artists that borrow heavily from aLatin and Caribbean music while erasing its Black roots.</p>
<h2>Reggaetón and the ‘Despacito effect’</h2>
<p>Reggaetón is an Afro-Caribbean music genre with a complex history of musical encounters between Panama, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and New York. Influenced by and built upon styles as diverse as dancehall, hip-hop, merengue, reggae and rap, reggaetón’s roots are in the African rhythms that were carried over during the colonisation of the Americas.</p>
<p>In the 1990s in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, reggaetón became a vehicle for Black resistance against <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300170/policing-life-and-death">strict racial hierarchies, oppressive social structures and police brutality</a>. But as the global popularity of the music has risen, reggaetón has become increasingly “<a href="https://www.insider.com/reggaeton-artists-are-boycotting-the-latin-grammys-for-whitewashing-2019-10">white-washed</a>.</p>
<p>An obvious example of this was when Canadian artist Justin Bieber featured in a remix of Puerto Rican artists’ Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s reggaetón hit <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/3Gq2Dme9nesdgoqNNlcN8O">Despacito</a> in 2017. Despite the original version’s enormous popularity, Bieber has often been <a href="https://www.complex.com/music/2017/06/the-politics-of-despacito-and-justin-bieber">credited with its mainstream success</a>.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dr_GAJZviR0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Despacito ft. Justin Bieber official music video, YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This so-called ”<a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/7897123/latin-music-takeover-despacito-mi-gente-charts">Despacito effect</a>“ echoes broader patterns of appropriation and consumption of Caribbean music genres by Euro-American markets – and the resulting exclusion and marginalisation of their founding figures.</p>
<p>One of the most famous examples of this in Latin music is Enrique Iglesias’s collaboration with Cuban duo Gente de Zona and singer/producer Descemer Bueno in the 2014 remix of <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/6IUWEebcIc0hs0CkOXemt4?highlight=spotify:track:637bsehtpL2oJruOEL6lZ7">Bailando</a>. The track is the <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/latin/enrique-iglesias-bailando-song-history-7541044/">Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart’s longest-running number one</a>. As American Studies scholar Petra Rivera-Rideau has <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41276-019-00210-1">argued</a>, Bailando allowed Enrique Iglesias to reinvent himself as a hip Latin urban singer by relying on Afro-Latino cultural markers – in this case, reggaetón – while simultaneously embodying Latino whiteness”. </p>
<h2>El mal querer: robbing reggaetón’s roots</h2>
<p>The creative and commercial construction of a white Latino image by European artists who produce reggaetón is more than simply whitewashing. The shared language might impart a sense of authority and authenticity to these Spaniards. But we must remember that this language is shared precisely because of Spanish colonisation.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NUsoVlDFqZg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Bailando official music video, YouTube.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Rosalía’s success in the “Latin” music market as a Spaniard has been met with accusations of cultural appropriation – a term used to describe the thoughtless adoption of elements of a culture or cultural identity by someone who does not belong to it. Such accusations were particularly loud after the release of the distinctively reggaetón track <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7bfOZek9t4">Con Altura</a> in 2019. The song was also made in collaboration with Colombian singer J Balvin –- a white artist who recently unabashedly accepted an award for “<a href="https://remezcla.com/music/j-balvin-afro-latino-artist-of-the-year-award-backlash-aeausa/">best Afro-Latino artist of the year</a>”. The issue deepened after her subsequent appearance on the cover of <a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/rosalia-fans-calling-out-media-outlets-referring-to-her-as-latinx">Vogue Mexico</a> as a “Latina artist” (Latino/a refers to someone of Latin American heritage living in the US). The criticism gave rise to important debates about race, class and privilege in Latin and Spanish music.</p>
<p>Talking about Rosalía’s hit Malamente, the Spanish rapper C. Tangana <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624797/decoding-despacito-by-leila-cobo/">said</a>: “[Reggaetón is] very valuable to urban culture and Spanish culture. It’s helped people think different, look for a different sound”. Thanks to Rosalía’s whiteness and Europeanness she has received credit for bestowing Latin culture with an “originality” and “value”. However, that comes from harnessing and combining music rooted in cultural and ethnic backgrounds to which she does not belong.</p>
<p>These colonial legacies of inequality and white privilege can be seen very clearly in Rosalía’s collaboration with Dominican rapper <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/2p4aN0Uxkk3iT3HK0cJ2cJ">Tokischa</a> on the hit song <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/6rFyXU9FiGytyYqfbwYO09?highlight=spotify:track:1ahCrpeTt94LL7y1aXw0Y8">Linda</a>. Here, explicit references to Rosalía’s Spanish heritage are made in an Afro-Dominican space upon which she can capitalise and over which, as the lyrics go, she is “ruling”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CmmTz3W-JO0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption"><strong>Linda</strong> official music video, YouTube.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rosalía’s 2020 Grammys win in the “best Latin rock, urban, or alternative album” category adds more fuel to the fire. </p>
<p>Rosalía is not Latina. Also, the since-renamed “urban” award is a racially marked category into which Black artists – be it of reggaetón or other genres – have been pigeonholed. Competition in the Latin Grammys’ “Big Four” (album, record and song of the Year and best new artist), on the other hand, has been <a href="https://www.popdust.com/grammys-progressive-rb-category-regressive-2646200424.html">dominated by white artists</a>, who have also been able to win in “urban” categories. Practices of exploitation and discrimination embedded in the music industry are irrefutable. White artists have beaten Black artists on an incredibly uneven playing field. </p>
<p>When we recognise reggaetón’s rich and complex cultural history, it becomes obvious that Rosalía is not raising its “global cachet”. And as reggaetón continues to gain visibility on the global stage without its history, we cannot overlook the injustices that have been imposed upon its creators throughout its international boom.</p>
<p>Reggaetón historian <a href="http://katelinatv.com/en/home/">Katelina Eccleston</a> (aka <a href="https://twitter.com/ReggaetonXGata">La Gata</a>) is one important figure who deserves our attention. As Eccleston makes clear in her recent article on J Balvin’s participation in the reggaetón scene, “<a href="https://www.papermag.com/j-balvin-jose-2655280932.html?rebelltitem=22#rebelltitem22">this social responsibility doesn’t fall on one person</a>”. It is down to musicians and industries, scholars and audiences alike to elevate, celebrate, and preserve its roots. So, when we’re performing, analysing, or dancing along to the next hottest reggaetón hit, let us remember where it came from and be critical of who is performing it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172577/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Rebecca Bishell's PhD research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) </span></em></p>
Spanish musicians are increasingly producing reggaetón music while ignoring the colonial history of Spain and South America and also erasing its Black roots in the process
Ellen Rebecca Bishell, PhD Researcher in Modern Languages, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/136087
2020-04-15T11:37:03Z
2020-04-15T11:37:03Z
BBC’s adaptation of Malory Towers reveals more about the period and its diversity than Blyton’s book
<p>While UK schools are closed for the majority of children, Malory Towers has opened its doors in a new adaptation on BBC iPlayer. Its source text, Enid Blyton’s First Term at Malory Towers (1946), was the first in a series of six, and very much a product of its time. </p>
<p>The clifftop setting was inspired by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47785820">Benenden School</a>, which Blyton’s daughters attended, and which <a href="https://www.benenden.school/our-school/our-history">temporarily relocated</a> from Kent to a hotel in Cornwall during the Blitz. This idyllic landscape sets the mood for the novel, which is steeped in ginger beer and post-war optimism. Now, in a time of national emergency, the series promises both nostalgia and escapism, a welcome distraction from the pandemic. </p>
<p>The title sequence fulfils these promises: bathed in the rose-tinted glow of retrospect, it features a world of pillow-fights, lacrosse matches, and friendship. Yet this saccharine opening belies the series’ revisionist impulse, which is as concerned with diversity, neurodiversity and gender equality as it is with hoodwinking Matron for extra tuck. </p>
<p>It’s widely accepted that adaptations reveal as much about their <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=C3CdqCZp8KQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=a+theory+of+adaptation&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjyvdLE5ufoAhU-XRUIHW3JAKYQ6AEIKDAA#v=snippet&q=context&f=false">contemporary contexts</a> as their literary sources, but this is more than a simple updating. Rather, the BBC’s Malory Towers reveals aspects of the historical context that were glossed over in Blyton’s novel, finding its inspiration in the gaps and silences of the original. </p>
<h2>Diversifying the cast</h2>
<p>The first change is evident in the girls themselves. The first form is a mix of white and BAME (black and minority ethnic) girls. There is also body diversity, with girls of all sizes and one with facial disfigurement. This upholds the standard set by <a href="https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/review-wise-children-presents-malory-3141857">Emma Rice’s 2019 stage adaptation</a>, which cast a non-binary trans actor and one with restricted growth, as well as two women of colour. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327642/original/file-20200414-117553-4xtmdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/327642/original/file-20200414-117553-4xtmdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327642/original/file-20200414-117553-4xtmdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327642/original/file-20200414-117553-4xtmdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=962&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327642/original/file-20200414-117553-4xtmdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1209&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327642/original/file-20200414-117553-4xtmdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1209&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/327642/original/file-20200414-117553-4xtmdw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1209&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first edition of the novel, illustrated by Stanley Lloyd.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Term_at_Malory_Towers#/media/File:FirstTermAtMaloryTowers.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/05/malory-towers-why-enid-blytons-series-is-made-for-modern-times">The same year</a>, a four-novel reboot, New Class at Malory Towers, introduced black, Asian, introverted and working-class characters to the school. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20190330">illustrations to the first edition</a> of Blyton’s novel, conversely, paint a blandly homogeneous picture. Given that <a href="https://inews.co.uk/culture/malory-towers-emma-rice-new-class-book-499781">children from the Commonwealth</a> were often sent to English boarding schools, this seems like straightforward whitewashing. </p>
<p>The series puts that right, reflecting how, in the words of adaptor <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/20/downton-for-kids-bbc-brings-forward-malory-towers-adaptation">Sasha Hailes</a>, 1940s “Britain [was] more diverse than it’s often accounted for”. </p>
<h2>Learning differences</h2>
<p>The book’s homogeneity also extends to learning differences, of which there are none: only girls who don’t try, and “stupid ones”. “If you are brainless and near the bottom, we shan’t blame you, of course,” says housemistress Miss Potts, in a pep talk bordering on disciplinary offence. “But if you’ve got good brains and are down at the bottom, I shall have a lot to say.” </p>
<p>Two girls fall into the latter category: governess-reared Gwendoline, who phones it in for half the term before discovering the existence of school reports, and heroine Darrell Rivers. Darrell is able but struggles with arithmetic. Being distracted by the class clown causes her to fall in the class order before she hoists her socks with military enthusiasm and finishes fifth from the top. </p>
<p>In the series, however, Darrell has a genuine struggle with spelling and presentation, rising hours before the others to make clean copies of her jumbled prep. Devastated when her class position fails to reflect her hard work, she volunteers to be put in the “dreaded remedial” class. There, tutor and head-girl Pamela diagnoses “word-blindness”, or modern-day dyslexia. As a representative of the countless children with learning differences throughout history, Darrell is a role model for neurodiverse viewers. Her coping strategies, and a renewed commitment to becoming a doctor, also model an admirable growth mindset. </p>
<h2>Choice above all</h2>
<p>Darrell’s interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects, and her belief that “girls [can] do everything boys can do”, shows how the series amplifies <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jul/06/why-we-still-adore-malory-towers-enid-blyton">the feminism of the book</a>. This is largely a product of its single-sex environment, which offers a safe space for the girls to develop, free from the need to conform. The book’s feminism is, however, offset by Blyton’s tendency to downplay academic achievement. </p>
<p>For Miss Potts, the most successful old girls are not “those who have won scholarships and passed exams” but those who have become, more nebulously, “good, sound women the world can lean on”. This bodes ill for “clever Irene”, who is “a marvel at maths. and music, usually top of the form – but oh, how stupid in the ordinary things of life”. Darrell, by contrast, is said to have “the makings of a first-rate person”, combining academics with games prowess and lashings of common sense. </p>
<p>The series inserts several narratives that champion academic achievement, the pursuit of a career and above all a girl’s right to choose her own path. Sally is sent to Malory Towers, not so her mother can focus on her delicate sister, as in the book, but to prevent her from becoming an unpaid carer and wasting her academic potential. Emily, whom Blyton describes as “a quiet studious girl”, has her education funded in the series by her mother’s work in the school’s sanatorium. Meanwhile Pamela chooses in a new storyline to debut in society, instead of pursuing a teaching career, in the hopes of safeguarding her family’s estate. “Maybe [teaching] isn’t my dream,” she tells an incredulous Darrell, “we can’t all be pioneers”. The message is confirmed by Miss Potts when Gwen suggests that she, too, would prefer society to college: “You’re lucky to have a choice”. </p>
<p>For fans of the adaptation, the series has now been novelised by Narinder Dhami as <a href="https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/narinder-dhami/malory-towers-darrell-and-friends/9781444957860/">Malory Towers: Darrell and Friends</a>. It is available to purchase alongside <a href="https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book-details.php?id=253">Blyton’s originals</a>, <a href="https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book-details.php?id=2209&title=New+Term+at+Malory+Towers">Pamela Cox’s sequels</a>, and <a href="https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/enid-blyton-2/malory-towers-new-class-at-malory-towers/9781444951004/">New Class at Malory Towers</a>, giving young girls, and boys, that most valuable of things: a choice.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/136087/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bethany Layne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It might seem like nostalgic escapism, but the show has a revisionist impulse at its heart.
Bethany Layne, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, De Montfort University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/116051
2019-05-02T21:53:56Z
2019-05-02T21:53:56Z
Ancestry ad gets it wrong: Canada was never slave-free
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272009/original/file-20190501-113855-1psx2lh.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1903%2C786&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ancestry ad depicts a white man in 19th-century clothing standing in front of a Black woman holding a ring telling her they can leave and be together in Canada. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ancestry</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In April, Ancestry ran an ad that attracted a lot of negative attention as it aimed to target both white and Black consumers. The short video, called <a href="https://vimeo.com/330074498">“Inseparable,”</a> featured an interracial couple dressed in mid-19th-century clothing. “Abigail, we can escape to the North,” the white man asks, holding a ring between his fingers. “There’s a place we can be together, across the border. Will you leave with me?” </p>
<p>Abigail did not speak. As the ad faded, a note from Ancestry nudges audiences to uncover the lost chapters of their family history to find out the rest of the story. </p>
<p>U.S. audiences <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/a-genealogy-sites-racist-ad-tumbles-into-a-cultural-minefield/">expressed outrage</a> at the ad through their <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ancestry?lang=en">social media</a> accounts. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/ancestry-com-ad-pulled-criticized-sugarcoating-slavery-n996771">Mainstream U.S. media reported on the controversy and provided an analysis of the company’s sugarcoating of slavery.</a> </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1118976230022352916"}"></div></p>
<p>The issue, of course, is that the genealogy company not only romanticized slavery, but it also whitewashed <a href="https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/slavery/experience/gender/history2.html">the history of forced, sexual relations between white masters and Black women during slavery</a>. Ancestry subsequently pulled the ad and issued an apology.</p>
<p>What many viewers may not know is that the ad was produced in Canada by <a href="https://adage.com/creativity/work/ancestry-lost-chapters/2162806">Anomaly advertising agency’s Toronto office</a>, which is why it aired on Canadian television first and then hit the U.S. market.</p>
<p>Canadian audiences did not object to Ancestry’s romanticizing of Canada as “promised land,” but they should have. </p>
<h2>Romanticized vignettes of Canada</h2>
<p>Black people were enslaved in Canada for 200 years, but Canadian institutions have consistently <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/canada-s-slavery-secret-the-whitewashing-of-200-years-of-enslavement-1.4726313">erased our history of slavery</a>. Media have also depicted “good white people” as saviours of African American freedom seekers, a narrative that has become part of <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/the-canadian-narrative-about-slavery-is-wrong/">Canada’s national identity as a racially tolerant, multicultural sanctuary</a>. And it is not the first time this vignette of Canada has appeared on television. </p>
<p>In 1991, a <em>Heritage Minutes</em> commercial called, <a href="https://www.historicacanada.ca/content/heritage-minutes/underground-railroad">“The Underground Railroad,”</a> featured a Black woman named Eliza standing worriedly in front of a window. Accompanied by a white woman, she waits for her (and her brother’s) father to arrive in Canada. When Eliza’s impatience forces her onto the street, the white woman, her saviour, gives chase until they both discover that the father had made it safely to freedom. Eliza’s Pa says, “We’re free!” </p>
<p>Eliza answers, “Yes Pa, we’re in Canada!”</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DZStWWVqkh0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Heritage Minutes has also whitewashed Canada’s history of slavery.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When I taught a Black Canadian Studies course at the University of Toronto, I used this commercial as an example of how media culture remaps our memory about historical facts. A real Eliza might have lived in Canada during the mid-19th century, but the characterization of her in the <em>Heritage Minutes</em> was fictional. </p>
<h2>Freedom fighters</h2>
<p>African American freedom seekers like <a href="http://www.harriettubmancanada.com/index.html">Harriet Tubman</a>, <a href="http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/henson_josiah_11E.html">Josiah Henson</a>, <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/mary-ann-shadd">Mary Ann Shadd Cary</a>, <a href="http://ontarioplaques.com/Plaques/Plaque_Essex41.html">Mary and Henry Bibb</a> and so many more, made their way to Canada through unimaginable terrain, pervasive anti-Black racism and outright hatred.</p>
<p>There were sympathetic whites to the anti-slavery cause, like George Brown publisher of <em>The Globe</em>, who founded <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/anti-slavery-society-of-canada">the Anti-Slavery Society of Canada in 1851</a> which promoted the abolition of slavery and provided relief to African American refugees seeking freedom in Canada. But popular renderings of slavery overemphasize white involvement in Black freedom. This renders Black agency, strength and determination invisible. </p>
<p>After freeing her family from slavery, Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Ross), guided enslaved African Americans from the South to Canada along the Underground Railroad. <a href="https://face2faceafrica.com/article/harriet-tubman1">Some accounts say she made 19 such trips and freed around 300 people</a>. While she undoubtedly was helped along the way, we must never credit a white person for her freedom. She engendered that on her own. </p>
<p>Historically, <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6415/690">consumer DNA kits have been more popular among white people</a>. In addition to Ancestry, sites like 23andMe, and FamilyTreeDNA have been trying to expand their database of Black people for years, but there are historical reasons why many remain wary of DNA databases. </p>
<h2>One drop of blood</h2>
<p>Throughout the Americas, blood was used to police the boundaries of not only race but space and social class. In the United States, <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/12/one-drop-rule-persists/">the one-drop racial classification</a> asserted that any person with one ancestor of sub-Saharan African ancestry was considered Black. Racial hierarchy was maintained through the development of a rigid colour line. </p>
<p>As Nadine Ehlers explains in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gh861"><em>Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles Against Subjection</em></a>, racial distinctions based on supposed truths of skin colour and blood were made in slavery such that Blackness became synonymous with servitude and whiteness with freedom. </p>
<p>Cultural discourse on the “purity” of white blood, especially by the 1850s, was further authenticated by <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/a-brief-history-of-the-enduring-phony-science-that-perpetuates-white-supremacy/2019/04/29/20e6aef0-5aeb-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html">scientific racism</a> where pseudo-theories of Black inferiority spread through fields such as phrenology and physiognomy were invested in trying to prove that Black blood was inferior to white blood.</p>
<p>Thus, ads like “Inseparable” and others that frame history as neutral territory serve to rewrite history and erase structural racisms. In 2015, Ancestry’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ZiYcSkcks">“Twins”</a> ad featured Idries and Jamil Wyatt, two African American men who could not stop smiling as they longed to get into a time machine and go back 100 years to meet their ancestors. </p>
<p>When one of the twins says, “Being on Ancestry just made me feel like I belong somewhere,” Black viewers were asked to put aside the realities of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/weta/reconstruction/">Reconstruction era racism</a> such as, lynching, Jim Crow segregation, redlining and convict leasing, in order to locate their “freedom” in a past that we are asked to believe no longer exists. </p>
<p>In the 2017 ad, <a href="https://www.ispot.tv/ad/wK8r/ancestrydna-lyn-discovers-her-ethnicity-discoveries">“Lyn Discovers her Ethnicity Discoveries”</a> when Lyn learns she is 26 percent Nigerian, her new-found African culture includes putting on the <a href="https://bellatory.com/fashion-accessories/Nigerian-Women-and-Their-Gele"><em>gele</em></a>, a traditional African head-wrap worn across various regions. Her “new” identity does not include actual Nigerian ethnicities, such as <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/africa-jan-june07-ethnic_04-05">Yoruba and Igbo</a>, but instead <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/place/nigeria">is identified to be Nigerian </a>, a nation-state formed through British colonialism beginning in the 19th century. </p>
<h2>Slavery’s DNA</h2>
<p>If we put all of this into context, it means that structural racism, like <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/02/segregation-invented/517158/">segregation</a> not only disenfranchised Black people, it also distanced white people from any Black ancestry, and from slavery itself. Many white people are still invested in hiding their connection to Black enslavement. </p>
<p>On season three of the genealogy show <em>Finding Your Roots</em>, for example, after discovering information about his slave-owning ancestors, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/04/22/401427275/ben-affleck-kinda-apologizes-for-asking-pbs-program-to-hide-slave-owning-ancesto">Ben Affleck</a> didn’t want the episode to air because he said he was embarrassed by his roots. Where whites can absolve themselves from taking responsibility for the brutalities of slavery, Black people must <em>own</em> being descendants of slaves. </p>
<p>With demands for <a href="http://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/reparations-for-slavery-reading.html">reparations</a> for slavery spreading across the U.S., Britain, Caribbean and Africa, <a href="https://ricochet.media/en/2554/whats-wrong-with-a-cheque-a-call-for-slavery-reparations-in-canada">Canada’s silence has been deafening</a>. When media romanticize the brutalities of slavery, it becomes harder to heal from its horrors because blood is ultimately at the roots of slavery’s DNA.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cheryl Thompson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Canadian audiences did not object to Ancestry’s ad which romanticized Canada as “Promised land,” but they should have.
Cheryl Thompson, Assistant Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/94134
2018-03-29T08:55:50Z
2018-03-29T08:55:50Z
Mary Magdalene is yet another example of Hollywood whitewashing
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212588/original/file-20180329-189827-1xwav9n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Rooney Mara as the titular Mary.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>Rooney Mara, the star of this Easter’s biblical epic <a href="http://www.transmissionfilms.com.au/films/mary-magdalene">Mary Magdalene</a>, complained bitterly in 2015 about her role in the Hollywood whitewashing controversy surrounding <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/25/joe-wright-rooney-mara-tiger-lily-peter-pan">Joe Wright’s</a> film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3332064/">Pan</a>. </p>
<p>In Pan, Mara – who is white – played Native American character Tiger Lily, a casting decision which drew sharp criticism and over 96,000 signatures in a petition protesting the whitewashing of the film. In an interview with <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/film/carol/rooney-mara-interview/">The Telegraph</a>, Mara lamented: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I really hate, hate, hate that I am on that side of the whitewashing conversation. I really do. I don’t ever want to be on that side of it again. I can understand why people were upset and frustrated.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Bi46nLoIo6E?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>And yet here we are. Mary Magdalene is the latest in a long line of Hollywood-produced biblical films to whitewash its cast. The classic biblical epic <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049833/">The Ten Commandments</a> <a href="http://theweek.com/articles/441860/why-does-hollywood-keep-barring-minorities-from-biblical-blockbusters">kicked off the trend</a> in the 1950s. More recently, Ridley Scott’s biblical blockbuster <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1528100/">Exodus</a> attracted <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2014/12/15/why-exodus-didnt-need-to-be-whitewashed/#2f63d247648f">widespread criticism</a> and a <a href="https://medium.com/@DavidDWrites/ridley-scotts-explanation-for-whitewashing-his-exodus-movie-is-infuriating-8d36bd555ada">social media boycott campaign</a> for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/09/christian-bale-defends-ridley-scott-exodus-whitewashing">having a white cast</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"546285174162329601"}"></div></p>
<p>While Mary Magdalene’s director, Garth Davis, avoids being as boorish <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11261784/I-cant-cast-Mohammad-so-and-so-from-such-and-such-says-Ridley-Scott.html">as Scott</a>, who infamously told Exodus boycotters to “<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/movies/ridley-scott-exodus-boycotters-life-article-1.2037626">get a life</a>” in his response to whitewashing allegations, he still managed to <a href="http://www.radiotimes.com/news/film/2018-03-16/mary-magdalene-director-garth-davis-responds-to-whitewashing-criticisms/">sidestep the issue</a>, saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>For me, the most critical, important thing was that I made the most emotionally compelling Mary and Rooney just has such a unique quality. She has an otherworldliness, and in her silences – there’s no other actress like her – she just creates these universes. And all of that was just so critical in bringing to life Mary’s character, so I felt that I had to choose that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nevertheless, the Mary Magdalene film is troubling for its lack of diversity. While its portrayal of Judas, played by Tahar Rahim – who is of French Algerian descent – might seem to be a positive development from <a href="http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/233932/whether-made-for-the-stage-or-tv-jesus-christ-superstar-is-rife-with-problems">previous popular cultural representations of the character</a>, there are other problems, too. </p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<h2>White Jesus</h2>
<p>Jesus is also played by a white actor: Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix is a talented performer, but his Christ delivers lines as if he’s stoned and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/a-cultural-history-of-mansplaining/264380/">mansplains forgiveness to women</a> who express anger about rape and femicide – a particularly galling scene given the film’s links with <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-16/harvey-weinstein-scandal-stalls-mary-magdalene-film/9554496">Harvey Weinstein</a> (Weinstein’s company was the <a href="https://www.screendaily.com/features/garth-davis-on-how-the-mary-magdalene-team-dealt-with-the-weinstein-fall-out/5127139.article">film’s US distributor</a>) and that it’s been hailed as a <a href="https://www.stylist.co.uk/life/mary-magdalene-rooney-mara-catholic-church-feminist-films-to-watch-in-cinema-2018-movies-trailers-sexism-bible-christianity/195959">feminist film</a>. Alongside Mara, whose complexion often matches her cream outfits, the whiteness of the actors in the film is startling.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212597/original/file-20180329-189795-y0ht03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212597/original/file-20180329-189795-y0ht03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212597/original/file-20180329-189795-y0ht03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212597/original/file-20180329-189795-y0ht03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212597/original/file-20180329-189795-y0ht03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212597/original/file-20180329-189795-y0ht03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212597/original/file-20180329-189795-y0ht03.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jesus (Phoenix) and Mary (Mara) in the new Mary Magdalene film.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Transmission Films.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Stranger still is the bizarre, and seemingly unnecessary, array of accents in the film. While the white leads, Phoenix and Mara, get to speak in their natural American notes, other characters, such as the main black actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays Peter, affect a variety of accents. Ejiofor – who has won a flurry of awards, including a best actor Oscar for 12 Years A Slave, over the years – swaps his natural English accent for a generic “African” accent. This proves to be a problematic move. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Chiwetel Ejiofor’s discusses Mary Magdalene in his natural English accent.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Clearly, given his natural speaking voice, Ejiofor’s African accent in the film is a deliberate directorial choice. If being African was an essential part of the characterisation of Peter, then one wonders why Davis didn’t just hire an African actor. As it stands, it’s strikingly peculiar in the film that Ejiofor puts on an accent while others – the lead white actors – do not. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Peter’s faux-African accent tends to signify negative racial and ethnic stereotyping in the film. Peter repeatedly proves himself to be the misogynist in the apostle group. While the other apostles embrace Mary Magdalene and, in the case of Judas, become her friend, Peter remains as hostile to Mary at the end of the film as he is at the start. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212611/original/file-20180329-189798-1alvd31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212611/original/file-20180329-189798-1alvd31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212611/original/file-20180329-189798-1alvd31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212611/original/file-20180329-189798-1alvd31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212611/original/file-20180329-189798-1alvd31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212611/original/file-20180329-189798-1alvd31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212611/original/file-20180329-189798-1alvd31.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Peter – played by British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Transmission Films.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Misogynist?</h2>
<p>In the scene when Mary leaves her family to join the apostles, Peter says that she will divide them, a sentiment he repeats in their final scene together (an episode borrowed from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mary">The Gospel of Mary</a>) when, after she is the first apostle to witness the resurrected Jesus, he tells her that she has “weakened” the group. </p>
<p>In another scene where Peter and Mary come across a town ransacked by Romans, Mary rushes to the aid of the starving and suffering inhabitants. Peter, however, tells an appalled Mary that they don’t have time to help. The character of Peter, then, is in danger of portraying black African men as regressive, misogynistic and self-serving. </p>
<p>Despite the assurances of Davis that the whitewashing of the Mary Magdalene movie was merely a side effect of making the best casting choices, the film remains troubling in its representations of race. </p>
<p>Mara may well hate being on the wrong side of such controversies but while Hollywood fails to take seriously racial and ethnic representations, then the dubious tradition of whitewashing in its films will continue.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94134/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Edwards works for The University of Sheffield. She receives funding from the AHRC and the White Rose Collaboration Fund.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>M J C Warren works for the University of Sheffield.</span></em></p>
Jesus and Mary are white, while an unsympathetic Peter is played with a cod ‘African’ accent.
Katie Edwards, Director SIIBS, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/83331
2017-09-05T11:52:33Z
2017-09-05T11:52:33Z
From Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Hellboy: the ongoing problem of Hollywood ‘whitewashing’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184683/original/file-20170905-13783-q1ohib.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/29069717@N02/31910335016/in/photolist-U8jrQq-T5V89f-TMkLaY-U8jszS-T5Vei9-T5V7dN-T8GoDR-U8jrAN-T5Vemq-U8jsgq-T8Goci-T5V8jf-T8GpBc-QBNNRW-QuBw4X-QrSmnw-QuJYFF-QrShvd-QuBwoK-PoFvN5-PoFsqd-QrSm9f-QBNNAf-Q6We1h-PoFt9Y-QBKA1w-PoFwSQ-QuJYpP-QrSkVQ-PoFtr1-QrScRU-Q6WgnG-QrShQ1-QrSi8L-PoFsES-PoFw4L-PoFrTG-PoPp3L-PoFvHq-QBL78q-QrSkvm-PoFvVE-Q749DC-QBC27u-QEWzfn-QrSir1-Q77T1q-5dQV2X-PrAh6B-QEY1VD">Classic Film/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Actor Ed Skrein’s much applauded <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-41077054">withdrawl</a> from the role of Asian character, Major Ben Daimio, in the Hellboy reboot has again highlighted the pervasive practice of “whitewashing” in contemporary Hollywood. Whitewashing is not new. It was a common practice in classical Hollywood where some of its most egregious examples include <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/movie-toxic-killed-john-wayne-tragedy-conqueror/">John Wayne as Ghengis Khan</a> in The Conqueror and Mickey Rooney as Mr Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. </p>
<p>Audiences know instinctively that whitewashing is bad – hence the criticisms of other whitewashing films and the resulting hashtag <a href="http://starringjohncho.com/">#StarringJohnCho</a> that went viral in spring 2016. As a cultural practice, having white people play, replace and stereotype characters of colour obscures and erases their history, agency and power. Although it is fair to reject whitewashing as false and offensive on these ideological grounds, to do so without further scrutiny does not allow us to explore the reasons why it exists.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EHt0Pb8rkXU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Whitewashing happens in a number of ways. It can be the whitening through casting of a character who was originally a person of colour in historical or source material, as with Daimio in the new Hellboy or Major (Scarlett Johansson) in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219827/">Ghost in the Shell</a>. But it can also be the casting of a white actor to play a character of colour and the use of makeup, acting and other features of <a href="http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780199587261.001.0001/acref-9780199587261-e-0447">mise-en-scene</a>, editing and narrative to draw on racial attributes – a practice often referred to as Yellow, Brown or <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/01/history-of-blackface_n_4175051.html">Blackface</a>. One early use of the latter includes D W Griffith’s <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20150206-the-most-racist-movie-ever-made">Birth of Nation</a> in 1915: a white supremacist text that celebrates the founding of the Klu Klux Klan. All the major black characters are played by white actors in Blackface.</p>
<h2>Whiteness as the ‘norm’</h2>
<p>Whitewashing exists historically and contemporaneously in Hollywood because from its early and silent periods Hollywood has, as Daniel Bernardi points out in <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/classic-hollywood-classic-whiteness">Classic Hollywood, Classic Whiteness</a> “constructed whiteness as the ‘norm’”. What’s more, Hollywood acting styles have shown “whiteness” to be the norm over “otherness”. Look no further than John Wayne’s impassive acting style in almost every film he appears in. We also see the assumption of whiteness as the norm in the idea that a white actor can play any character by simply “being” themselves or – if they are cast as a character of colour – by putting on an accent, makeup and other ethnically defining attributes and performance styles. </p>
<p>The flip side of whitewashing is that an actor of colour can only ever be cast as a character of colour and must perform in a way that marks or over determines their “difference” to the “norm”. Thus, in John Ford’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040064/">Three Godfathers</a>, Mexican actor Pedro Armendariz – who actually grew up in the US and spoke English without an accent – has to put on a stereotypical Mexican accent and act with exaggerated gestures to play a Mexican character.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184686/original/file-20170905-13755-11pg7vs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charlton Heston (far right) playing Mexican character Mike Vargas in Tough of Evil.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkcowphotography/5548817119/in/photolist-9sk91F-5QnLkJ-4NtPhe-NowwZ-7op5bG-494c6m-4zq9N3-9pPfRV-4zkYm8-4zqca1-4zq9xC-4ZkZvY-5fNosy-4ZgM7F-4zkiqi-5Qivon-4zkTPr-5FzhUw-d2jLc-8aX4gf-rdYxkJ-rqKUza-d5L52G-qfb5oo-a8dXe-45CWJ7-x6b5F-4RAR8j-qWBt28-r9qJnD-btLj4a-r9qJqV-4M9VDs-rqKUWx-joHUJU-8euaRf-qWvsdY-rqMqxq-omiVJm-hGgDr-qhgB3k-PaQJiJ-oALv4Q-r9F6iU-omjmY8-er15Z-aGxL9c-7sNv3h-btLk8z-jCHgW">CraigDuffy/Flickr</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the post World War II Hollywood of “liberal” race dramas, whitewashing allowed whiteness to be the clear moral voice of films, even when the narrative focus was on non-white characters. For instance, the sense of visible whiteness that whitewashing permitted is important to the 1958 movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311/">Touch of Evil</a>. In it, Charlton Heston plays Miguel Vargas, a Mexican police chief fighting against corruption and organised crime on both sides of the US/Mexico border. </p>
<p>Heston is visually “Mexicanised”: he has curly hair, a moustache and darker skin. But as the hero of the film, it is important that Heston’s whiteness is maintained, at least in terms of his star profile. Interestingly, Heston went almost directly to the character of Vargas after playing Moses in The Ten Commandments – another whitewashing role.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/184685/original/file-20170905-13714-1dgleaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.image.net/xads/actions/layout/endusersearch.do?folder_max=48&selection_action=null&box=false&page=3&forward=search&product_nav_root=&product_nav=&category_nav=&search_spec=541516138&display_asset_matches=true&seldir=4&unselected_assets_prodgrid_search=478183579%2C478183586%2C478183598%2C478183620%2C469927379%2C478183236%2C469927344%2C474988334%2C453915623%2C453915624%2C453915634%2C469927333%2C469927352%2C469927367%2C469927373%2C469927375%2C474988355%2C478183297%2C478183250%2C478183311%2C478183536%2C478183615%2C469927364%2C469927388%2C&pageNoTop1=">Film Frame..©2016 Marvel.</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the contemporary era, the casting of white actors in non-white roles persists. For this, we need look no further than Tilda Swinton as a Tibetan mentor in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1211837/">Doctor Strange</a>. This despite protests from minority advocacy groups demanding more accurate representation and more parts for actors of colour. </p>
<p>The problem of whitewashing is frequently linked to the lack of diversity and institutional racism of a Hollywood film industry that is disproportionately white and male and in which people of colour are underrepresented – not just in front of the camera but also at the executive level and in producer and director roles.</p>
<p>It has been suggested that the key to solving Hollywood’s whitewashing issue is recognising the achievements of those actors and film personnel of colour who are making films. This has been encapsulated in the hashtag <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/feb/25/oscarssowhite-right-and-wrong-academy-awards-audience">#OscarsSoWhite</a>. There needs to be structural change and more effort needs to be made at getting more minorities into the industry. Audiences also need to start signalling to film executives that the casting of white stars in non-white roles is not acceptable. Ed Skrein’s rejection of whitewashing is to be applauded. We will now see if other actors are brave enough to follow his lead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83331/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dolores Tierney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Why whiteness became the ‘norm’.
Dolores Tierney, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of Sussex
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/40837
2015-04-28T20:09:07Z
2015-04-28T20:09:07Z
Whitewash? That’s not the colour of the SBS charter
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/79711/original/image-20150429-7111-1wbvo19.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Janice Petersen – one of the faces of World News Australia on SBS, which is facing accusations of 'whitewashing'.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In commercial television you live or die by your ratings. </p>
<p>If viewers switch off, the advertisers go too. Consultants are ushered in, focus groups are formed and they will tell management what will stop them from reaching for the remote. Apparently they’re turned off by stories about the Middle East, Indigenous issues, refugees and ebola. </p>
<p>They want stories on fish oil and not the Ukraine. </p>
<p>It sounds like a scene from the 90s news parody Frontline but <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/mar/30/sbs-news-presenters-urged-to-run-quirky-and-not-turn-off-stories">according to The Guardian</a> this is SBS and what is in store for its flagship World News. </p>
<p>SBS is a hybrid commercial-public broadcaster and it faces a dilemma: ratings or charter responsibilities? </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/corporate/index/id/25/h/SBS-Charter">SBS charter</a> clearly states that the broadcaster should be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>meeting the communications needs of Australia’s multicultural society, including ethnic, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>By inference, stories about Indigenous issues, refugees, the Middle East, Ebola and the Ukraine should be back in the bulletin.</p>
<p>So what is happening at SBS? The Australian newspaper recently accused its director of News and Current Affairs, ex-commercial television executive Jim Carroll, of “<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/the-changing-faces-of-sbs-under-jim-carroll/story-e6frg996-1227310927401">whitewashing</a>” the reporting staff; of the 11 new hires under Carroll, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/the-changing-faces-of-sbs-under-jim-carroll/story-e6frg996-1227310927401">all but three</a> came from commercial networks and only two were from non-English backgrounds. </p>
<p>One of those new hires seems to have taken it personally and thereby totally missed the point.</p>
<p>Ellie Laing, on Mumbrella last week, bemoaned that being white <a href="http://mumbrella.com.au/just-because-im-a-white-young-woman-doesnt-mean-i-dont-deserve-my-job-at-sbs-288703">should not exclude her</a> from a job at SBS. Ellie – it doesn’t and this is not about you.</p>
<p>SBS has never employed people only on the basis of their colour – if it did it would never have engaged Paul Murphy, Jenny Brockie, Mark Davis, Kerry Brewster, Andrew Fowler, Greg Wilesmith … The list goes on.</p>
<p>They were attracted to SBS because of what it stood for and SBS employed them for their cosmopolitan and inclusive values. There may have been a time when there were few qualified media practitioners of non-Anglo backgrounds but this is not the case now. </p>
<p>Journalism schools are full of first-generation students that fit the SBS charter’s directive to “make use of Australia’s diverse creative resources” and “reflect the changing nature of Australian society, by presenting many points of view”.</p>
<p>Which brings me to the case of SBS journalism cadet <a href="https://widyanalubudy.wordpress.com/">Widyan Al-Ubudy</a>. </p>
<p>SBS sources tell me they were shocked when they heard that management did not offer the Iraqi-born reporter a job upon the completion of her cadetship, late last year. The reason, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/blander-sbs-sending-all-the-wrong-messages/story-e6frg996-1227322163136">reportedly</a>, was budget contraints, which didn’t stop the station hiring two Anglo women in the same period – Brianna Roberts and Alyshia Gates.</p>
<p>Fluent in Arabic, Widyan Al-Ubudy <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/tale-of-two-refugees-seeking-a-new-life-in-australia-20131216-2zh5c.html">came to Australia</a> as a child refugee from Iraq. She graduated from Wollongong University with Honours; her thesis examined Muslim women’s media advocates post-9/11 and how they fared in influencing mainstream media. </p>
<p>She also built up a following among her peers as the presenter of SBS’s PopAraby radio show. </p>
<p>She writes <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pub/widyan-al-ubudy/38/12b/637">on her Linkedin page</a>, that her mother tongue “has proven an asset when sourcing talent for local and national stories.”</p>
<p>Her <a href="http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1984473/widyan-aims-to-remove-headscarf-barriers/">goals</a> included “giving a voice to the voiceless” and being Australia’s first veiled news anchor". </p>
<p>SBS thought differently.</p>
<p>SBS has always been a niche broadcaster and it, like every other network, is suffering falling audiences in the light of the great media disruption. But its role is now more important than ever before.</p>
<p>When it began in 1978 as a radio network – one of its roles was to explain government services, such as Medibank, to Australia’s multicultural population in their own languages. Like the much undervalued ethnic media – this served to engage migrants with their new homeland and to help create a distinct ethnic Australian identity, one that has evolved from that of the home country. </p>
<p>But the internet and satellite television has changed all that. </p>
<p>Many new arrivals are not receiving their news through the prism of an Australian perspective. They are transnational citizens still engaged with their home countries via information disseminated from countries where they no longer reside. That does not bode well for Australian integration and our multicultural foundation.</p>
<p>At its most alarming, this is evidenced by the number of young Muslims who are more connected with radicalised websites than with local cultural institutions.</p>
<p>The SBS charter reminds us that its principal function is to provide:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and in doing so reflect Australia’s multicultural society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That means more than just SBS World Watch, foreign movies and Ethnic language radio programs – it needs to find creative ways of engaging new migrants and first generation Australians.</p>
<p>In 2010 SBS embarked on an innovative program that fulfilled its charter obligations. <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2010/11/24/sbs-launches-mandarin-news-australia">Mandarin News Australia</a> was an online and television news and current affairs program headed by executive producer Liz Deep-Jones. </p>
<p>It had a young bilingual staff that sought stories from the Chinese community and broadcast in Mandarin with English subtitles. It had a late afternoon timeslot on SBS2 with a repeat on the main channel, and it engaged and rated well for its target audience. </p>
<p>The program was a template for others that were to follow in the most widely spoken languages like Arabic, Cantonese and Vietnamese. In 2012 Mandarin News Australia was <a href="http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2012/06/axed-mandarin-news-australia.html">axed</a> and none of the others television shows ever eventuated.</p>
<p>Its ironic that in the last year the ABC, especially ABCNews24, has begun to reflect the diversity of Australia’s multicultural fabric, on air if not entirely in content, and cosmetically is looking more like SBS.</p>
<p>Every so often the amalgamation monster raises its ugly head and when it does the ethnic communities rally around and slay it.</p>
<p>But if they are all at home watching Good Morning Athens or Tonight in Beirut on satellite television and their children are on websites that speak to them more than the Australian media does they may very well think there is nothing to fight for.</p>
<p>In the case of Al Ubudy, SBS’s loss is <a href="http://www.crc.nsw.gov.au/home">Multiculturalism NSW</a>’s gain.</p>
<p>Hakan Harman, the CEO of Multicultural NSW (formerly the Community Relations Commission), confirmed that Widyan Fares (nee Al-Ubudy) is now working with his agency as a writer for The Point Magazine, a digital publication that aims to be a leading source of accessible, youth-focused information, news and current affairs relating to violent extremism and its impacts on community harmony in Australia.</p>
<p>Harman told me, when I spoke to him for this article, that Widyan is an outstanding member of the team and was a welcomed return to Multicultural NSW. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Widyan’s journalism skills and her dedication to addressing often difficult community issues are highly valued. We are lucky to have her on board.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40837/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Helen Vatsikopoulos reported on SBS's international current affairs program Dateline as a reporter for 11 years and the Presenter for two years. She also presented Face the Press. She is UTS's internship co-ordinator for SBS.</span></em></p>
Journalism schools are full of first-generation students that fit the SBS charter’s directive to ‘make use of Australia’s diverse creative resources’ and ‘reflect the changing nature of Australian society’.
Helen Vatsikopoulos, Lecturer in Journalism, University of Technology Sydney
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