This thesis examines the representation of Arab male protagonists in three Australian crime drama productions: East West 101, The Combination and Cedar Boys. Since 2007 Australia has seen a notable increase in the inclusion of Arab and Muslim male characters in various serials and films, particularly as their visibility increased in news media after September 11, 2001. As popular culture reflects and shapes opportunities for belonging within the nation state, this thesis aims to understand whether or not the inclusion of Arab and Muslim minorities is a sign of greater acceptance of these community groups.
East West 101 garnered significant media coverage for its realistic portrayal of multicultural Australia. Most notable was its positive depiction of (fictional) Arab Muslim police detective, Zane Malik. Through Malik, East West 101 effectively demonstrates how religion, class and culture can intersect, not to the detriment of a society, but to create skilled and savvy individuals uniquely positioned to contribute to their communities and professions. It further displays the kind of difference that is considered acceptable within a multicultural society; that is, the kind of difference that does not compromise the dominance of the white majority.
Likewise both The Combination and Cedar Boys, although lesser known, were reported in Sydney Metropolitan newspapers as ‘edgy’ and importantly were made with the intention of rectifying the image of young Arab and Muslim men, often tarnished in the Australian media. Unlike East West 101, which delves into the struggle of a Middle Eastern man with access to resources and social mobility, these films discuss the realities of life of young Arab males with little social mobility and a strong desire to acquire it, leaving them feeling they have no option but to resort to crime. In choosing to tell these stories in this way, writers George Basha and Serhat Caradee bring their own, often polarising experiences, to the screen in a way that seems to reinforce the existing discourse of Middle Eastern men as thugs and criminals.
By drawing heavily on the concepts of Orientalism and Whiteness this thesis attempts to explain the feeling of (un)belonging as experienced by men of ‘Middle Eastern appearance’. It asks how they experience a lack of belonging as depicted in these films/series and enquires into the pursuit of whiteness as an assimilative approach to belonging in a multicultural nation. Furthermore, it asks what these depictions tell us about national identity.
These questions point to the central question of this thesis, ‘to what extent do cultural productions such as EW101, The Combination and Cedar Boys open up space for new understandings of the place of Arab and Muslim Australians in contemporary Australia?’ It is argued that, while representations in these three case studies are a much-needed addition to current voices in Australian cinema and television, in one form or another these products still conform to Orientalist discourses.

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Heroes, villains and more villains : representations of Arab men on Australian screens

Pierre Sorlin studies a series of Italian films for insights into the ways historians learn from moving images.

Historical Films as Tools for Historians

This thesis argues that stability of the concept ‘national cinema’ is located in the discursive positioning of individual films in such a way that they are connected to a national ‘common ground’, one which is ritually accessed via engagement with media such as cinema. This positioning, however, is not quantifiable and may not be identified as arising from any particular production practice, dimension of popularity, theme, style, characteristic of production personnel, and so on. By synthesising the work of several theorists and applying this synthesis to a selection of films, a framework of ideas (around the ritualised ‘flagging’ of the national via the expression of stakeholder interests) is applied to cinema in New Zealand. In particular, an ideoscape is ultimately mapped as a result of applying this framework of ideas. The normative assumptions of national cinema are examined in this way and found to be lacking despite the weight that the term ‘national cinema’ continues to have.

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A Necessary Fiction: the Ritualisation of Stakeholder Practices in New Zealand Cinema

Suffused with a sense that earlier filmic imaginings of Australian identity were ‘beginning to look threadbare’ (Turner 1994a: 68), 1990s Australian cinema provides a key site for the examination of Australian identity in multicultural terms. Drawing on the work of Ghassan Hage (1998, 2003), Stuart Hall (1990, 1993) and Daniel Nourry (2005), this article investigates how notions of Australian identity in a multicultural society are played out (and with) by Australian cinema of the 1990s. Particular attention is paid to Head On (Kokkinos, 1998) and Strictly Ballroom (Lurhmann, 1992), as examples of different approaches to this issue. Enlisting a Bakhtinian approach, whereby identity is conceived in terms of ‘thinking from the margins’, I argue that whilst films such as Strictly Ballroom enlist a ‘good multiculturalism’ to extend, through tolerance, the boundaries of Australian identity to the Other, Head On provides a way of thinking about Australian-ness that refuses to simply assimilate or incorp...

Head On: multicultural representations of Australian identity in 1990s national cinema

Much recent scholarship has identified an urgent need to address distribution opportunities for Australian cinema in a digital age. In trying to understand why Australian film policy has been beleaguered by complacency for distribution, this paper looks abroad to see what precedents and attitudes exist in distribution-related cultural policy. Why hasn’t support for distribution and exhibition been the touchstone of cultural policy for national cinemas? Why has policy support for the production sector prevailed, when distribution is the film industry’s key zone for profit? This paper surveys international policy examples of what governments are doing beyond the production realm. It examines legal interventions into the distribution realm, including direct state measures such as subsidies, levies, quotas and import restrictions, indirect state aid, and cultural initiatives by film funding bodies that stimulate audience engagement in the distribution and exhibition sectors. The paper combines these primary s...

Film distribution as policy: current standards and alternatives

(1984). ‘National identity’/‘National history’/ ‘National film’: the Australian experience. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 179-188.

‘National identity’/‘National history’/ ‘National film’: the Australian experience

A Bicentennial History: The Australian television miniseries

(1988). From Silence to Reconciliation: The representation of the Vietnam war in Australian film and television. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 75-89.

Ina Bertrand

Papers

‘National identity’/‘National history’/ ‘National film’: the Australian experience

A Bicentennial History: The Australian television miniseries

From Silence to Reconciliation: The representation of the Vietnam war in Australian film and television

‘Goodbye Mr Red’: Paranoia and film culture after the Second World War

Australia's ‘Come in Spinner’: feminist ideology as best-seller (1946) and television mini-series (1990)