My (Ethnic) Kitchen Rules?

Recently it has come to my attention that a local Australian production My Kitchen Rules has been labelled as incorrectly portraying ethnic contestants as the villain of the show. The show started off with two Indian contestants who were known as the Spice Girls. The Spice Girls were portrayed as very “spicy and hard to swallow”. The Spice Girls were kicked off from the show at an early stage but as with most reality game shows, there are always twists. The channel introduced two “Gate Crashers” who would be competing against the surviving groups. Drama is ensured and to make it more interesting, the two “Gate Crashers”, both Asians were advertised as down right opinionated with bad attitude. Since the airing of the show, I have received complaints about how the channel portrayed ethnic contestants.

I finally had a chance to see the promo and must admit that the way they promoted these “Gate Crashers” was pretty bad with tag lines like, “Let’s hope their food doesn’t taste like their bad attitude” I yet to see what is going to happen on the show, but with the stir this promo started among the Asian community, I could not help but try to look at what is happening here.

It is no astronomy knowledge that the current Australian screen does not necessarily provide equal opportunities for actors of all ethnicities and does not reflect the real modern Australian society. The Equity and a few established ethnic actors including Jay Laga’aia and Firass Dirani have all spoken out on this issue. When ethnic characters were portrayed, they were usually stereotyped and micro-caricatured. The situation may be slowly changing but whether the pace is too slow is another issue.

However, this is a completely different issue. It is how people see ethnic characters on screen and how much of this portrayal would affect the general public’s view of them. The Spice Girls certainly did not strike a good chord with their portrayal. They were branded as not liked by the Indian community and were a-holes for the Australians. Their portrayal was so bad that they even received death threats (which I thought was ridiculous over a cooking show). But to replace them with a pair of Asian contestants with well-publicised bad attitude did not help to improve things either. Certainly drama is needed but is the handling of these contestants tactful enough? Or the promoters do not care at all as long as they could raise eyebrows and attract viewers? As I said this part of the show has not started yet at the time of writing, but I do feel that we are walking on thin ice here. Although I do not want to jump the gun here condemning anyone, I do feel that whether this kind of “representation” on Australian TV helps to improve the society’s understanding of people from other cultures.   Some may argue that “Well if they are Anglos I am sure nobody would cry foul” and such. Yes that could be true, but the issue here is that Australia is a predominantly white country. Even the original Australians are now minorities in the society. When you are in a strong predominant position, you can portray yourself in any manner because people would not assume generalisation on you. However, when you are a minority, or in Australia, non-Anglo, due to the lack of understanding because of racial differences, there would be chances that people jumping to conclusion and generalising another ethnic group because of what they saw in one or two individuals. This happens in Anglo society or even in the Chinese society (or else where did you think the term “Gweilo” – originally means ghostly being – came from?). The current concern I have with My Kitchen Rules is that they are fuelling and unnecessary fire for the sake of ratings. That is what I consider irresponsible broadcasting. I am sure that their troops of lawyers could justify their actions from all the legal aspects, but what I am questioning is how many of these people responsible for the current show or series of promos have a conscience to think about what they are inciting?

At the time of writing, another casting note regarding a Ewan McGregor film came under fire too for the following casting call: For the hired muscle, "Australian, Italian and European gang member/ organised crime types, for prisoners, "mainly Aboriginal, Islander, Maori and Middle Eastern males" or other "tough looking guys of other ethnicities". The production company since apologised and acknowledged the inappropriateness of such casting call (while justifying certain choices), but the issue here is whether it is a “careless mistake” or a “conscious lack of awareness”.

As a non-Anglo actor in Australia, I certainly want to be given more opportunities to show what I can do, but certainly I would not want to further promote stereotypes and unjust representation of my own ethnicity. My ethnicity is supposed to be enriching the society not endangering it.

To Be or Not To Be - Non-Chinese Actors in Hong Kong

I have been taking advantage of my stay in Hong Kong to catch up with the local media scene. The Hong Kong media scene, especially the TV industry has been dominated by one single channel – TVB. With a dominating rating since its launch 40 years ago, any competitions seemed to be irrelevant. TVB is also the reason why I wanted to become an actor – I was fed with their brilliant productions throughout my childhood.

The company has recently changed hands, not because of financial reason but because of the original owner wanted to go into a real retirement. In the last few years, productions have been criticised at times being lack of originality by copying storylines from western production and other eastern country productions such as Japan and Korea. Nonetheless, with a huge profile of well-known actors, this doesn’t seem to be an issue for this television channel.

I have been coordinating the Diversity Casting Australia group for some time now. During this period, when I discussed the issue with different people, I sometimes got people questioning me about the scene in the Hong Kong media. At that time I informed them that as long as an actor can act and can speak Cantonese, they have similar opportunities to perform on stage and on screen. I remembered when I grew up there were various Indian and western actors who were in TV and film productions. Hong Kong has a huge Indian population and also a quite notable western population, so it was natural to see them on TV and I never questioned their presence. What more is that although they sometimes do play token characters but a lot of times they were just playing your day to day characters like next door neighbours and colleagues at workplace.

This time when turn on the television and watched a recently extremely popular TV series, I noticed that a Kiwi-Australian girl who could speak fluent Cantonese is capturing the hearts of a lot of people. As a daughter of a missionary mother, Corinna Chamberlain is a graduate from the local drama school Academy of Performing Arts in music theatre. Having grown up in Hong Kong, she speaks fluent Cantonese and English. Her rise to attention was not because of her playing some token funny foreign character, but just a normal childhood friend of one of the leading characters. Her supporting role had quickly caught the attention of the audience and the media and her star has been rising quickly.

Hong Kong’s cultural change has been moving forward quickly. Two years ago another Hongkong-Indian actor Gill Mohindepaul Singh also rose to attention because of his regular role as a next- door neighbour in a TVB sitcom.  Similar to Corinna, he speaks fluent Cantonese. He is now working actively in the film industry.

In fact accepting non-Chinese actors in local production is not something entirely new in Hong Kong. One of my childhood friends’ fathers was a TV and film actor before he retired. He was of mixed descent but he looks like a westerner. But he was never short of any opportunities in the industry. When I grew up there are other western actors such as the Australian actor GregoryCharles Rivers, who came to Hong Kong to pursue acting because he was fascinated by the Hong Kong pop music scene. He had a successful run at TVB and now he is a voice coach in Hollywood after being invited by Chow Yun Fat. Another case is Brian Thomas Burrell from America, who is now also working on TV regularly.

One might argue that these are just exceptional cases. But what I wanted to point out is the concept of embracing cultural diversity to reflect our society.  As “mono-cultural” as Hong Kong, as some Australian peers noted, the Hong Kong screen embraces cultural diversity on screen as a norm. Nobody questioned why certain westerner or Indian actor is on screen doing certain role. It was just accepted as it is. Unlike my experience in the past when I discussed the issue with some people, I was informed that I needed to “justify” my presence as a character in an Australian production. Non-Chinese actors can be just anyone apart from their token roles and that was reflected in local productions. People talked about how good Corinna Chamberlain was in her current role but nobody talked about why does the main character have a westerner childhood friend.  I think that is the main difference.

Australia is slowing changing for sure, but is the pace itself too slow compared to other countries? That is my question.

The Unexpected Journey

Walked the last mile with granny the other day. The service was a very simple but respectful one. We moved her body out from the morgue and the funeral home people took over and made her look like her old self again. At the age of 101 (I thought she was 98 but was informed that she reported herself a few years younger when she fled the war to Hong Kong to make it easier for her to look for jobs) she looked pretty good after her last respectful and professional make up session. It was hard to believe that a once healthy and strong person is now in her eternal sleep.

All her relatives and friends were here to pay their last respect and everyone was trying to keep their emotions in control. A Taoist monk was there to do a bit of chanting, representing a peaceful transition to the eternal world and good afterlife without suffering. Sniffing sounds and running noses scattered across the room but since the chanting was proceeded with everyone’s eyes closed, it helped to minimise an uncontrolled crying outbreak. It was hard for everyone as nobody saw that coming. But then as with all lives, death is inevitable. The polar opposites of all life forms dominate us whether we like it or not.

The service was carried out at a funeral hall in the hospital near the morgue. We chose to do it this way because we believe that this is the simplest and most straightforward way to handle the funeral. We care about the last journey that came unexpectedly, so we wanted everyone who attended to focus on the tribute and to reduce the moaning component as much as possible. Granny, as a happy person who always liked company would prefer to feel the love of everyone than to feel the pain in everyone.

After the funeral service, everyone went to the crematorium with us. As there were a lot of friends and relatives, one of my aunts booked a coach to take everyone over there. As for my family and I, we went with the mini bus that carried granny’s coffin. It is a tradition that the immediate family, or in some cases, the closest person make the last journey to the crematorium with the deceased. At the crematorium, I really felt that the funeral business is a business. Everything was done according to a precisely timed schedule and no one single second was wasted. Maybe this is good or maybe not. I couldn’t really tell as everything happened so quickly there. However, I believe the pressing of the button must be really hard for mum. As the eldest daughter (granny did not have sons), the responsibility of this task rested on her. The pressing of the button was done again with our eyes closed so I did not know how mum did it. But from her description of how she peeked behind the “veil” to find out where did the belt lead to, it seems that she was still pretty clear minded at that time, which I found extremely impressive. Maybe it is in the genes that she is strong too.

The last part of the ceremony involved the sending of granny daily needs through the fire. We had prepared a house, three majong players and a set of majong, two servants and also some furniture and netherworld currency for granny. Granny likes company and majong so we thought that would make her very happy in her afterlife. It is during this part of the ritual that a strange thing happened. Since the items were pretty large, we had to use two chambers to send them all over. However, the second chamber refused to light up no matter what. As the worker was wondering why, a family friend pointed out to the worker that one of the legs from a chair had fallen off during the process (they were all paper arts). The moment the worker picked up that fallen leg and put it into the chamber, the fire lit up and consumed everything within the chamber. It could be coincident it could be not. But I would like to think that granny was with us even up to that moment to make sure that everything was done properly. It made me feel better.

The wake was held at restaurant in the form of a banquet. With the help of one of my aunts, we booked three tables to cater everyone. The food was great and everyone was trying to lift the mood. Although from time to time you could still feel the weight in the air. After all granny was much loved till the end.

This unexpected journey at this particular chapter of my life had made me to re-evaluate a lot of things in my life. I think it is not until you witnessed someone you loved ending his / her journey that you would think about yours. Many decisions in life seemed to be hard but then we still had a chance to make those decisions. However, for people like granny, they had no choice but to face the end of theirs. Looking from this angle I strongly felt that we should feel blessed that we still have a choice to make those decisions for us, no matter how hard they are.

Granny had during her life taught me a lot of life lessons, and she did not fail even till the end of her journey.  Everything she taught me will continue to be something I treasure and remember for the rest of mine.