Aboriginal Film

Aboriginal people, film and the media

Discuss some examples of both positive and negative representations of Aboriginal people and culture. How do such representations of Aboriginal people within the media impact upon Aboriginal subjectivity?

Like every citizen around the world, Australians use the media to get information about the world around them. The media not only provides information about international events but also about national, regional and local events.

The events that happen and that are covered by the media are used by people to construct an opinion about certain themes.

The Australian media is representing Aboriginal people and their culture in a negative way. This has been so for a very long time, though there are some channels now that are portraying Aboriginal people without bias or prejudice. Channels such as ABC and Channel 7 have regular weekly programs about Indigenous people.

For the most part the media in Australia has been negatively portraying Indigenous people due to the institutionalized racism that has worked its way in the mainstream media. Some are blatantly racist and others a bit more subtle in their reporting. Aboriginal people cluster in two media genres; advertising and news/current affairs programs. In soaps and serials Indigenous people have made occasional but no long term or permanent appearances. In advertising and news however Aboriginal people are depicted in divergent and contradictory ways (Goodall: 1994)

Some reporters or editors are unaware of the fact that they use their own set of principles and assumptions when reporting or selecting the news. But the fact of the matter is the way they depict Indigenous people affects the opinion of the mainstream Australians.

The report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) was released in 1991. The 339 recommendations of the RCIADIC sought to implement fundamental changes in order to reduce the levels of incarceration of Aboriginal people (Carpenta: 2001). In this report there is a section that covers Aboriginal people and the way they are depicted in the media. RCIADIC commissioner on racial stereotyping;

Ð''Racial stereotyping and racism in the media is institutional, not individual. Which means, it results from news values, editorial policies, from routines of news gathering that are not in themselves racist or consciously prejudicial'

Grossberg and others (1992:34) have made an attempt to define stereotypes. They came to the conclusion that Ð''stereotypes, however inaccurate are one form of representation, like fictions, they are created to serve as substitutions, standing in for what is real. They are there not to tell the like it is but to invite and encourage pretence'.

Aboriginal people have always been depicted as a stereotype. Either they are savage, a menace, victim, criminal, primitive, violent, deceptive or passive full of childlike obedience. Since few people, especially in larger urban centres, actually came into contact with Indigenous populations, these portrayals, however inaccurate, had all the more impact. As stated before the Australians use the media to form opinions about Aboriginal people and when the information is incorrect the opinions formed are as a result incorrect. W Wilshire's opinion on Aboriginal people (W Wilshire, Reynolds 1987:109);

Ð''They are ungrateful, deceitful, wily and treacherous. They are indolent in the extreme, squalid and filthy in their surroundings, as well as disgustingly unpure amongst themselves'.

People trust the media and they have no reason to second-guess the media items shown on television. So when mainstream Australia sees a story about Aboriginal people they will consider the Ð''facts' of that story as the truth. Since they don't know any Aboriginal people to verify its accuracy they form their opinion solely on that news report.

This is a problem because the misrepresentation of Aboriginal people in the media can lead to different kinds of problems such as prosecution, harassment and exclusion from society.

One example of this is the link between crime and Aboriginal people. Media items on Aboriginal people are focusing on the negative stories. There is an artificial link between crime and Aboriginal people. This leads to a stereotype that everybody who is not a Ð''white Australian' to be a potential criminal. These kinds of stereotype have had disastrous consequences of Indigenous people for there are more Aboriginal people incarcerated than white people (McCausland; 2004)

By using stereotypes the media ignores the uniqueness of individuals. They are portraying every member of a certain group as the same. There are good (All Australians are good surfers) and bad stereotypes (black people are lazy).

The media should be aware of using stereotypes when covering a story but the overall majority doesn't care or is unaware when using stereotypes.

As the anthropologist Eric Michaels stated;

Ð''The sorry fact is that media producers are generally unconcerned with what interpretations a minority group with little economic or political power will make'

(Michaels; 1984)

There are approximately 18 million Australians in Australia. Indigenous Australians are about 2 percent of the Australian population. Many non-indigenous Australians will spend their whole life not coming in contact with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. They will however learn about them through the media. In Media Dreaming: Representation of Aboriginality In Modern Australian Media Bullimore reminds us why the media is so important. The media not only plays a primary role in informing Australians about the issues that affect Indigenous Australians, it also plays