Stereotyping in the Australian entertainment industry

by guest contributor Sabriel, a self-described struggling small fry in the Australian entertainment industry, originally published at Please Smile for the Camera

In case you haven’t noticed, *cough cough*, I’m of mixed decent and I look more or less like a strange looking asian girl. (Read as: I’m not a White-Australian Sydney Dweller.)

I could give a rant on the difficulties of being a/looking like a minority in the entertainment industry in Sydney, but I’m not too sure on how to go about it without sounding like a complete jackass about it – so here I go anyways (Please take a deep breath and go into your brace position):

Syndeysiders would definitely be the first to puff their chests up and do a whole musical production on how Sydney is such a great place to live and that racism isn’t really an issue here, but to a great extent there is some sort of racism going on everywhere, no matter how covert it is.

Repeat after me: Stereotyping is a form of racism.

I’ve personally been to only a handful of auditions where they didn’t specify for an ‘asian-ish’ looking person. Understandably, the film industry is all about types, however, how many times do we really need to see an asian-ish looking girl (sometimes from the wrong ethnic group) do stereotypical ‘asian’ things on screen?

Consider that Mars Bar TVC not too long ago with the girl doing the whole hand waving kung fu thing with a almost-too-cute-to-be-dead superimposed Bruce Lee.

Or the Virgin Credit Card TVC with the martial arts “Haiiii-ya!” and “Hooooorrrh!” shrieks of two greasy (and dare I say unattractive) looking asian men.

Or that Mccain’s TVC with that adorably old asian man who could not for the life of him pronounce BEANSPROUT! (He says ‘BeeeeeenSprou?’)

*I shudder at Australian TV commercials sometimes- Why do I watch television?! Oh yea.. because of HOUSE M.D. and LOST and to a lesser extent Big Brother…*

I remember this audition for a drink commercial last year where three very Anglo-Australians were in the audition room requesting for me to ‘swear in asian’ and ‘do some martial arts moves’, while pretending to be in a poodle costume. (I assumed none of them spoke any asian languages or knew anything about martial arts but probably were all picturing me in a poodle costume.) *ahem*

Right…….

I have been to auditions when even though race wasn’t specified, it was probably more or less intentionally left out by the person who wrote the audition brief, after all, why waste your time writing “we’re actually looking for someone white……” on the brief if you don’t have to?

There have been occasions when I’ve walked into an audition room only to be met by wide eyed split second stares by producers giving me that ‘Oh? An …. Asian?” look, wondering what I was doing that in the first place and if I spoke any English at all.

I know most people don’t mean to stereotype and I know in my own way how our globalized world has its little codes and assumptions about anything and everything(after all I sat through most of my culture 101 classes – awake), like if a girl looks Chinese, she therefore must speak Chinese and must some how feel some connection towards all sorts of main land Chinese people regardless of their different dialects groups, even though in reality she’s so removed from her racial/cultural heritage that she’s really as Chinese as an American fortune cookie.

I can only give you my honest account of my experiences in Sydney and it has always been somewhat convoluted and contradicting. I’m sure no one is going to persecute me for being Asian-ques or for knowing several different cultures and languages to some fluency (maybe not yet!) but I would really like to be treated as a person in the entertainment industry rather than just an Asian-typed and be offered more roles that allow the expression and recognition of diversity. My Asian-ness shouldn’t always have to be that one pivoting element as to if i’m even allowed through the audition doors. I’m not asking to be de-raced. I’m simply saying that race isn’t and shouldn’t be everything. Am I really not gorgeous or appealing enough to the masses in my own way? On a general note, decision makers would say that ethnicity isn’t really an obstacle in Sydney, however, when it comes down to the final punch, I find myself losing out for reasons I can only imagine.

And I would like it if my make or break won’t have to rely that heavily on these “Asian” roles, just like how having blue eyes wouldn’t make you that much worse off than anyone with green eyes when you walk into an audition room.

On another point of this “the way I look affects my work choices” rant is the fact that at some auditions, we ethnic-looking actors/models are also asked about our ‘nationality’. It’s almost as if they can’t make a proper educated decision about how they wanted their models to look/or be without trying to further separate Asians into boxes – after all they DID request for an all ‘Asian’ casting call in the first place. If specific ethnicity was an issue, why do a ‘just Japanese’ or ‘just Korean’ casting call instead of making us ‘general’ asian-ish looking people turn up? Maybe even our agents have trouble telling us apart. I once had a photographer mistaken me for a Korean for a good two days before I realised he actually had the audacity to racially label my photographs without having me clarifying my background with him. He just simply assumed I was Korean (since we asian-ish looking people all look alike anyways, I suppose.).

Here comes the ‘Nationality’ Question!!! *faints*

For some reason when you’re in Australia, there is this assumption in the Australian use of the English language that you cannot be an Australian and an ethnic minority at the same time. As long as you dont appear to be a ‘typical’ white Australian, you should therefore always belong to some other nationality since you can’t possibly be just an Australian, and thus you accept the use of the phrase “What is your nationality?” to enquire about your ‘background’ even though the one who’s asking is obviously and simply enquiring about your race, not about your political loyalties or the culture you identify with. Try telling them you’re a true blue Australian (which i am not) and they’ll look at you with a puzzled stare and rephrase the question to, “What is your background? Where are your parents from?”

I’ve heard ethnic minorities here taking up the use of this “What’s your nationality?” phrase in conversation, perhaps not realising the underlying connotations of it. Someone would go, “What’s your Nash? What’s your Nash?” and I’m not too sure what a ‘Nash’ is but apparently, according to google, this guy is a ‘Nash’:

And I’m not sure if he’s my Nash or someone else’s Nash. Could he be possibly everyone’s Nash? How does one tell when it comes to Nash-es? Why would I need a Nash?

Thus it has been the case that I have been asked to list out my many racial backgrounds at auditions, even though there were no specifications stated prior to the audition casting calls. For a person like me, my nationality has almost nothing to do with my race and vice versa. Should I just prey on the ignorance of others and make up my own country called “Sabby-land” where everyone looks like me, hoping that no one would catch me out, so that I could some how accurately portray my ‘nationalism’ and racial group?

I’m not really sure if I should count myself lucky to have been born so physically diverse in my looks that I could almost pass off as most races at a glance. However, there have also been many moments in my life when I didn’t look stereotypically enough for a job. Maybe I’m just a little too diverse in my looks as I’m of Cantonese, Peranakan, Portuguese and some Dutch decent after all, but I’ve also been told I don’t look mixed enough to look mixed – whatever that means. Sometimes I feel like I’m in that limbo of being somewhere and everywhere in between but never really there at all. I know that this industry is all about perception and that sometimes art is suppose to be a caricature of life and that in caricatures there sometimes isn’t room for chimeras like me who don’t fit anywhere. Yes, I do struggle with my racial and cultural identity and this discomfort sometimes becomes acutely so when I’m trying to represent myself in the industry. I constantly find myself in a tension of trying to ‘pass off’ as one thing and yet staying true to part of who I am.

So what and where am I really?