Is "Game of Thrones" racist and sexist?

With the huge (and largely Piratebay-assisted) following that the HBO series Game of Thrones has gathered, has come increasing critique across the interwebz about its problems of representation. Namely, that it is racist, misogynist, and I've heard homophobic thrown out there as well. How justified are these criticisms?

The first distinction that has to be made is between the TV show, Game of Thrones, and the book series by George RR Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, on which it is based. 5 books have been released, there are allegedly 2 more left to come, and the TV series has ended its 3rd season somewhere in the middle of the third book. I should state that I'm an avid fan of both show and book, so perhaps I take a biased view of these things, but so be it.

It's perhaps a cop-out for book fans like myself to respond to any criticism of the series by smugly stating, "You need to read the book, then you would understand". But it's simply a reality that show-only viewers have a more superficial understanding of what's going on in the GoT world than book readers, and it's common to read critiques from people whose interpretations are at odds with what is actually suggested by GRRM's writing. Many of those criticising the show are doing so from a somewhat limited perspective. They don't have access to characters' internal points of view as written by Martin, and they don't have access to the two and a half books worth of details that the show has not covered yet. Which is an important factor given that scenes and story lines can be interpreted in different ways.

But at the same time, the show needs to stand on its own merits as an artistic creation, not as merely a supplement to the books. So it is entirely valid to critique how certain issues are portrayed on the show without ever reading any of the books; when talking about certain kinds of people are represented, how it comes across is as important as how it might be intended to come across.


GENDER


Many of the feminist criticisms of the story return to the theme that by portraying a fantasy world that is so rife with sexual violence and other forms of misogyny, ASOIAF and/or GoT is therefore misogynist itself. As one article puts it,

I also recognize that there’s a difference between displaying sexism because it’s the time period and condoning said sexism. But this IS a fantasy, not history, meaning the writers can imagine any world they wish to create. So why imagine a misogynistic one?

or from this article,

Well, yes, 14th century Europe wasn’t a lot of fun if you were a woman, but nor did it have, for example, dragons, or magical shape-changing witchy-woo assassins. Westeros does, because Westeros is a fantasy world. If the creator of a fantasy series can dream up an army of self-resurrecting zombie immortals he can damn well dream up equal marriage rights, and if he chooses not to do so then that choice is meaningful

The world Martin evokes in his books is a brutal one, in which the poor, weak and powerless are constantly vulnerable to the predations of those whose power comes from noble birth, or physical strength, or strength of numbers. It is these dynamics which drive the whole narrative. So in such a milieu, would "equal marriage rights" and 21st century progressive liberal values really be a good fit?

It is quite shocking to see Khal Drogo force himself on a sobbing teenage Daenerys after their wedding; many would find it just as shocking that they later fall in love. How could any woman ever fall in love with a man who rapes her? Yet, we are applying 21st century values here; in a great many cultures, women were considered chattel and had little power to make choices about how they exercised their sexuality. Still today in many parts of the world, women and children are married off against their will, and thus the concept of sexual consent as we know it goes out the window. Yet despite that, many such couples probably do come to love each other, even if it could be considered a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. Of course, if what happened to Daenerys happened today in our society it would be an outrage and a crime, yet for much of human history it was just business as usual. (I should mention that in the books, their first sexual encounter is a bit more consensual, although it still wouldn't really pass muster in a contemporary court of law.)

The threat of rape frequently hangs over the heads of many of the other female characters too, while even those women in positions of relative power are merely treated as pawns, to be married off against their will to cement alliances. Sounds rough. But it's also one of the more accurate depictions of the the lot of women in medieval life that you will ever read in the fantasy genre. In any society engaged in war or civil war of the old-school sort (see the Balkan conflict, or civil struggles in Sudan, Liberia or Congo), women are raped in great numbers. Likewise with any society without strong rules of law. Women walking around dressed however they like and remaining mostly unmolested is something that is just not possible in most parts of the world. And even in the most advanced and ordered nations in the world, women still curtail some aspects of their behaviour because of the threat of sexual violence. So while some claim that GoT seems to celebrate sexual violence, I would argue that it's just being realistic about what goes on in lawless and war-torn places.

Yes, it's different to most other series and movies that you will see, which is why I think a lot of people find it so shocking. But that's because most other dramas and fantasies take place either in modern states, or stick to the more well-known cliches of medieval fantasy - noble knights of valour and so on.  The Lord of the Rings had a dichotomy between good humans, elves and dwarves, and evil orcs and goblins, but Martin's world has only humans (mostly). Yes, there are dragons and magic in his world, but compared to most medieval fantasies, those elements are very much in the background, at least at the start of the story. It's far closer to its HBO siblings The Sopranos or The Wire than it is to Merlin; it's a story about people and how they are shaped by power, violence, loyalty and self-interest. While some characters are clearly "good" and some clearly "evil", many don't adhere cleanly to either category. To quote Jorah Mormont in A Storm of Swords (book 3), “There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.” Protagonists inflicting violence upon each other is a staple of the genre, but few fantasy works offer an exploration of the violence inherent in human nature the way Martin does.

Feminists have been trying to tell us for years, quite rightly, about how oppressive and ever-present the spectre of male power and violence is towards women. I actually think Martin should be commended for reflecting this in his books, despite some feminists seeing the books or show as misogynist. To his credit, he creates numerous compelling female characters, some of whom struggle within the roles they are born into (Cersei, Catelyn, Sansa, Daenerys), and some who break out of the bonds society places on them (Brienne, Arya, Daenerys again). Around half the major (POV) characters are female, which is noteworthy in a genre that tends to be male-dominated. And as these are women and girls in a world beset by war and turmoil,   it would be unrealistic to avoid mentioning the threat of sexual violence.

Portraying a misogynist world entails depicting misogyny, but that does not equate to an endorsement of that perspective. And I fully get that for some people, that's just not going to make for pleasant viewing or reading, and thus I can't blame anyone if they decide it's not for them. As a male, perhaps my assessment of the existence of sexism is only worth so much; but I am yet to be convinced that anything in Martin's writing indicates or promotes an unhealthy view of women.

The show, however, is a different beast. The amount of nudity and sex on display is in my view excessive. I've had this argument with some other book-readers who say it is in keeping with the sort of world Martin has created, but I think they've pushed it too far. Martin's books are certainly not lacking for sexual content and bawdy language, but the writers of the TV show have seriously amped it up, perhaps in order to attract the lucrative "horny male" demographic. Which is why the SNL sketch poking fun at the nudity in the show is particularly hilarious.


I don't have a problem with sex and nudity when it's in context. But when the writers invent entirely new scenes (the ridiculous scene with Gendry and Melisandre sticks out for me), or modify scenes from the book, seemingly just to find an excuse to fit some exposed breasts into the shot, it's like they are channelling the teen sex comedies of the 80s.

Given the rich source material the show's creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have to work with, I think their penchant for portraying naked women is one of the drawbacks of what is otherwise a very good series; it's not like they need to use boobs and bums as a way to distract from a non-existent plot. As mentioned before, I don't have a problem with the show's portrayal of rape as a common phenomenon; but when this intersects with frequent rather pointless nudity, I can see why some people think it is eroticising sexual violence. The story lays bare the ugliness of patriarchy, but the visuals scream "Look! Check out the naked ladies!"
Trying to have it both ways doesn't work.


RACE

The GoT world centres on the continent of Westeros, which is based on western and northern Europe, particularly Britain. But the story arc of Daenerys Targaryen, a princess exiled in the Eastern continent of Essos, raises some issues about how the show represents non-white people. Essos is something like the Eurasian landmass; the Free Cities of its western coast seem reminiscent of Greece, while the  Southern coast (Qarth and Slaver's Bay) is similar to the Middle East in many ways. The Dothraki, whose warlord Drogo is gifted Daenerys as a wife, are clearly based on Central Asian pastoral peoples - the Huns, Turks and Mongols.

 Dany's story arc has a smell of four ugly racial tropes that are very common in popular culture.

1. Coloured people always viewed through white eyes: The story or storyline that is set in a non-white culture, yet it has to be told through the eyes of a white person, since the audience presumably can't relate to something that is only about non-whites. Examples are Cry Freedom (about the white friend of South African activist Steve Biko) or The Last King of Scotland (about Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, yet the lead character is a fictional white doctor).

2. Barbarians and proud warrior races: The non-whites are defined as "barbaric" or "primitive", rather than regular people with a range of normal motivations and feelings (this is in too many movies to count), and often belong to a "warrior race" which prizes strength and fighting prowess as the only way to earn honour and respect. See the Klingons in Star Trek (who tend to be played by black actors) and the title aliens of the Predator movies. Even within that series there are humans from warrior races too; Predator and Predators respectively have a Native American guy and a Japanese guy who stop fleeing and stay back to take on the aliens in single combat with a bladed weapon. (Of course they die, but at least they were "honourable".)

3. Mighty whitey: Taking the white-centric story even further... the white person finds themselves amongst a strange exotic culture, yet learns their ways and eventually manages to become respected by them, often becoming their leader or most awesome warrior. Examples include The Last of the Mohicans, The Phantom, Avatar, Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, and Tarzan.

4. White man's burden, or white saviour: In which white people, out of the goodness of their hearts, save non-white people from the terrible situation which they couldn't have got out of themselves. Examples are The Help, The Blindside, Gran Torino, Dangerous Minds, and the sitcom Different Strokes.




While you could argue that all tropes are at play here, I think it's also a little more complicated than that. To address those point by point:

1. Coloured people always viewed through white eyes: Danaerys is Westerosi, but has grown up around the Free Cities, and then her journey takes her further east into cultures she has never experienced before. All the cultures are presented as strange and exotic, and we never really get any insights on the inner life of these people, despite spending a lot of time around them. The focus is all about the white princess. They are permanently "Othered".
Except that the series is not really about them. Like it or not, the story is primarily about Westeros, and the people of Essos are very much a peripheral feature. This makes it different to Cry Freedom or The Last King of Scotland, which are films about black people, but told from a white viewpoint for no apparent reason.
The way Martin structures his narrative - each chapter presented from the point of view of one of the main characters - means that any other culture will seem strange, exotic and perhaps barbaric. The show to an extent has to reflect that. Daenerys is a young woman sold off against her will into a culture she knows nothing about that is very different from her own. To portray the Dothraki, Qartheen or the Ghiscari as being "just like regular folks" would not make sense in this context. In contrast to the Westerosi who speak the Common Tongue (aka English), most people on the show from Essos speak imaginary languages (Valyrian, Dothraki, Ghiscari), which again clearly defines them as different not only from the Westorosi characters, but from us, the viewers. But this is unavoidable, really, unless you want everyone in the show to speak made-up languages, which is just not feasible.

2. Barbarians and proud warrior races: The Dothraki are horse nomads who seem primarily occupied with fighting each other and plundering the settlements on the edges of their plain. They are referred to everyone else as barbarians and savages, and many of their customs celebrate violence and seem primitive by most standards. They like having sex beneath the open sky, only like doing it doggy-style, are quite frank about raping as one of the spoils of war, and consider it good entertainment when deadly brawls erupt at weddings.


Let's not forget: the people who are the obvious inspiration for the Dothraki (Huns, Turks, Mongols) made their mark on history through conquest. These are warrior cultures. Of course they weren't entirely that; throughout most of history, Central Asian nomads probably spent their time with rather un-warlike pursuits such as taking their livestock to graze, and making fermented horse milk beverages.  But these weren't what led to them conquering everything from China to Baghdad and Hungary. The nomads were brilliant at the art of war, and also employed tactics that were considered utterly foreign and frequently dishonourable by the "civilized" nations they fought against, and were renowned for their cruelty and terror. And unlike Europe of the time, the nomads lacked the stratification between warrior, peasant and artisan classes; most able-bodied men became soldiers in times of conflict, and thus the warrior ethos was more prevalent throughout their culture. It's also come to light recently that 1 in 200 men in the world have some genetic link to Genghis Khan and his family; let's assume this is more likely to have come through rape than Genghis being some kind of Casanova.

Martin does exaggerate these "savage" elements, to be sure, and the show does so even more - the line "There is no word for thank you in Dothraki" takes this too far as far as I'm concerned. But should a  fictional people based on some of the most feared and ruthless armies in history be treated as more well-rounded? I'm not sure, considering that they do not actually play a large role in the story. If not for their fierce war-making ways, they would have no place in the story at all since Daenerys' brother would have no need to offer her to them in exchange for an army. And at the end of the day GoT is not really about the Dothraki. If you want GoT to be about non-white people, of course you will be disappointed, but it doesn't claim to be that. Instead, go watch something like Sergei Bodrov's (admittedly impressive) 2007 movie Mongol, which portrays Genghis Khan as a great fighter, leader and romantic with no nasty side whatsoever. Martin writes from his own area of expertise - medieval Western Europe - and those outside that milieu are have only fringe roles to play. I think wanting to see a bigger and better-explored non-white presence in this story is a bit like wanting to see equal marriage rights and gender equality; that's just not what this world is meant to be about. It's like criticising The Sopranos because it didn't have any main characters who were Chinese. If you want to read that story, then maybe you need to go and write that story yourself.

Their portrayal as "savages" also depends on who they are being compared to. As mentioned previously, Westerosi society is portrayed as incredibly oppressive and cruel. To be sure, it professes nobler values, much as the West does today. Rape is regarded as a heinous crime... yet unguarded women are never safe. Slavery is considered an abomination... yet most of the nobility treat peasants like property anyway. The character of Sansa Stark seems to represent the readers' belief in the traditional fairytale fantasy notions of chivalry, charming princes and noble knights, until she is dealt a hefty dose of reality. Westeros has its own white "barbarians" too... the Iron Islanders, loosely based on the Vikings, do take slaves, and define their existence through their love of rape and pillage. They are actually worse than the Dothraki, since cities in Essos can mostly avoid Dothraki attacks by paying them in gold and slaves; the Ironborn's whole culture revolves around killing. And let's  not forget that in the same episode which introduces the Dothraki, we see Dany groped by her brother, and Jaimie Lannister push a child out of a window after being caught in the act of boning his sister. If the most shocking thing you get from that episode is how "primitive" the brown people look, maybe you are paying attention to the wrong things.

Also regarding the Dothraki; I've read some criticism that rather than being portrayed as a homogeneous population, they seem to be played by "miscellaneous brown people", which might encourage the view that all non-whites are basically the same? For example, while the book-Dothraki are described as having copper-coloured skin and almond-shaped eyes, Jason Momoa who plays Khal Drogo is Hawaiian, while the rest of the Dothraki look mostly like they are from the Middle East, while there are even a few people who are clearly of African origin in there as well.

What struck me initially as a lazy misstep is actually quite plausible on reflection. The Dothraki population absorbs a lot of slaves acquired from cities on the fringes of their domain, and many of those cities themselves acquire slaves from other regions. Even the Central Asian populations on whom the Dothraki are based were far from homogeneous. Given that the nomad way of life spanned such a huge swathe of the Eurasian continent, and was by definition likely to spread into new territories, the empires that arose incorporated a mix of East Asian, European and Southwest Asian phenotypes. A look at the people in modern Afghanistan or Xinjiang reveals this diversity. So while I don't know if it was by design or laziness, the casting of Dothraki as "miscellaneous brown people" is not as odd as it might initially seem. In any case, Jason Momoa as Drogo looks exactly as a Dothraki should, to my mind.

3. Mighty whitey: In some ways, Daenerys does fit this trope; as she travels through the foreign cultures of Essos, she acquires an army of non-white followers who revere her as the Mother of Dragons. But unlike Avatar or Dances with Wolves, she never really becomes accepted into any of the cultures she interacts with. She becomes khaleesi of the Dothraki, yet is abandoned and threatened with death after her husband dies. Indeed, everyone who doesn't become one of her followers seems out to kill her for the destruction she wreaks everywhere. Those who do follow her are mostly outcasts and freed slaves who don't have a lot of better options.

4. White man's burden, or white saviour: The final scene of season 3 did come off as clumsy - the lily-white Daenerys being hoisted above an adoring crowd of swarthy freed slaves. Real white saviour stuff; saving all those brown people from the other brown people, it was the sort of thing Americans who advocated invading Iraq and Afghanistan would be proud of. To me it was a major misstep, but again it brings us to a difference between show and book.

The books make clear that the slaves in Yunkai are drawn from all over the world, and are white, black and brown skinned (inspired by the slave trade of ancient Rome and the Middle East, which took slaves from anywhere they could). It doesn't look that way in the show. Logistically, one can understand why; most scenes in Essos are filmed in Morocco, thus the extras would be expected to have a fairly North African look. But even then, they seemed darker than I'd expect from Morocco, and it can't have been too hard for the directors to round up some white folks from the crew to diversify the crowd if they'd wanted to. At to that the drab brown clothing of the slaves, contrasting with Dany's pale skin and hair and blue outfit, it just doesn't look good.

Which makes me wonder if it was deliberate move by the producers, because for them to see that scene and not see what's wrong with it either means they are oddly deluded or they want it to be that way. Anyone who has been following the show knows that George RR Martin likes to subvert the traditional cliches of fantasy fiction, often setting up premises only to knock them down. The first season sets up a typical righteous hero, Eddard Stark, as the main character, until he is beheaded; a huge shock to the audience who presumed he would escape. Logically, we expect his son Robb to seek vengeance, which seems inevitable... until he meets a shocking end at the Red Wedding. So is it another case of the show's writers setting up a cliched premise (the white saviour) that we've all seen before, only to knock it down? *Mild spoiler alert*  For those who haven't read the books, things don't all go to planned after Dany liberates the slaves of Slaver's Bay. In fact, the Iraq and Afghanistan analogies are not far off. In many ways, it's an argument against well-meaning foreigners meddling in a country's affairs.

Another key point for me is that the "white man's burden" trope also relies on the white saviour being "good". No doubt Daenerys is one of the most popular characters, and she is seen by many followers as having the qualities of a just ruler that have been so lacking in Westeros. But is she a morally "good" character? Certainly, she tries to stop the Dothraki warriors from raping women, and becomes embroiled in the politics of Slaver's Bay due to her compassion for the masses of slaves. But at the same time, the trail of death and destruction she leaves behind is comparable to the legacy of Tywin Lannister (who is definitely not a "good" guy). Mirri Maz Duur understands the potential cost of Dany's ascendancy, and takes steps to prevent it; Dany burns her alive, proof that she can treat those who cross her with a ruthlessness that would do Tywin proud. And all this in order to satisfy her massive sense of entitlement (she constantly reminds everyone how she is blood of the dragon, and demands they respect her), in regaining the throne her father lost because he was an insane murderous tyrant. She no longer has any right to the throne (she's never even been to Westeros), if you consider that the Targaryens once took power by force and eventually had it taken from them by force. I think readers and viewers are smart enough to see that despite Daenerys' beauty and awesome girl-power appeal, she's someone who is motivated primarily by self-interest.

But whatever the intention, the show certainly peddles an image which is at very least racially uncomfortable, and not truly in keeping with what is suggested in the books. Reading them, I didn't get the feeling that there was some stark ethnic difference between Daenerys and the people she encounters in Essos. But fiction is like an ink-blot test in many ways; how we read it often says something about our own perspectives.

The deeply cynical view of human nature espoused by Game of Thrones is a hard one for a lot of people to handle, especially those who are used to more traditional fantasy. Humankind's capacity for cruelty in the quest to attain power is the central theme of the story, even if it may play out in different ways in different cultures or have varying degrees of openness. The raider-cultures (Ironborn and Dothraki) are fairly open about their penchant for sexual violence and slave-taking, while the urban/agricultural societies claim a higher set of values yet do not keep to them. To me, it's reminiscent of how we define the difference between our "Western" values and everyone else's. Our values are, at least in theory, more progressive and modern than we believe most of the world's to be, in the same way that the Islamic world, for example, sees its values as morally superior to the decadent West. But is either belief system any more than a thin veneer that masks all people's capacity for both nobility and brutality?



More like this...

Racial analyses of "Avatar"

"300" and racism

South Asians achieving comedic milestones on US and UK television

The always amusing Hari Kondabolu has a nice bit here about seeing a few more brown faces on the small screen these days, with the premiere of Mindy Kaling's new series The Mindy Project.
(This clip is from Totally Biased with W Kamau Bell)



His line that “there are now enough Indian people where I don’t need to like you just because you’re Indian” is so funny because it reflects something real. Often, members of minority groups feel so starved of representation in the media that we will automatically like anyone who ticks that box regardless of how good they actually are. But the reverse can be also true, as we can be overly critical of someone in the public eye who doesn't represent us properly. This might seem silly to some; white people don't tend to feel embarrassed because Honey Boo Boo Child is making white people look bad. But that's because there are enough white people everywhere else on TV that Honey Boo Boo is not going to create or perpetuate stereotypes about all white people. A subset of white people, perhaps.


Meanwhile in the UK, the BBC's first South Asian sitcom, Citizen Khan is well into its first season. Starring its creator Adil Ray, it portrays a British-Pakistani family man who overestimates his influence and importance as a community leader. Its debut episode stirred a lot of controversy and complaints that it mocked Islam and relied on lazy stereotypes. The latter count is true enough - it often feels like something that was made in the 70s or 80s rather than 2012. But it also plays with the stereotypes cleverly enough at times to make it just about worth watching, even if the laugh track seems overdone.
As for the accusation of being insensitive or insulting to Islam... meh. The aspect of the show that seemed to cause the most consternation was Mr Khan's daughter Aisha, who plays the perfect Muslim daughter in front of her parents but leads a rather different life when they are out of sight. But as Homer Simpson once said: "It's funny 'cause it's true." It's reflective of one of the major themes that runs through the show - the contrast between the public facade and the private reality, exemplified by Mr Khan himself. Also cleverly done is the interaction between Khan and the mosque manager, a white Muslim convert.

Funny-wise, Citizen Khan has a few laugh-out-loud moments but overall is well below the standard of the UK Asian sketch show Goodness Gracious Me, and perhaps not even at the level of The Kumars at No. 42. But I actually think this is an important show, even if it's not quite as funny as it should be. Being able to laugh at oneself, and by extension one's own culture, seems to be an important part of fitting into the British way of life. And frankly, if there's one community that needs a show like this, it's the British Pakistani community.

Sorry, I didn't mean to racially abuse those Indians, I meant to racially abuse THOSE Indians...

If you happened to see episode 3 of ABC2's Dumb, Drunk and Racist, you would have noticed a particularly nasty incident that occurred while filming in the streets of Melbourne's CBD. As two of Joe Hildebrand's Indian guests go for a walk around to get a sense for whether Melbourne was as hostile and dangerous as had been portrayed in the Indian media, they are accosted by a drunken individual who swears at them, calls them racists and tells them to go back where they came from, ending with "White pride, motherfuckers!"

You can see it here from about 3:45 onwards.



It's an odd exchange that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but is noticeable for how coolly Amer handles the whole thing. (Amer is consistently awesome throughout this series, by the way.) It certainly makes it seem like random drunk racists are just waiting to come out of the woodwork on central Melbourne's main street.

The show's website features a page that puts it in a bit better perspective, and is disturbingly hilarious in its irony. It's a written apology from the drunken racist douche, who explains that it's all a case of mistaken identity:

To whom it may concern On the way home from a night out I walked past a group of people with a camera crew who I thought, at that particular time, to be the provocative Indian comedy duo "Fear of a Brown Planet". My comments were aimed at this comedy group solely, not the people who I have recently found out were Indian tourists from overseas.At the time I had had a disagreement with my fiancé and was not in a good frame of mind and had been out having a few drinks watching a band. I said some ridiculous things which I would not normally say. I live and work in a very multi-cultural area and associate with many cultures including Indians. This incident has strained relationships between myself and my family. I do sincerely apologise for what I said and the way I acted which is very out of character.
I apologise to the Indian tourists and want them to know I had no idea it was a documentary on racism and acted out of my dislike for the comedy group. I am extremely worried and stressed how I come across in the program. I am very embarrassed about my actions on this evening and am remorseful of any hurt I have caused. Thankyou.

Note the obligatory "Some of my best friends are Indians" line he sticks in there, which is the standard disclaimer you make when you've said something racist and you want people to think you are not racist.
I guess he wants us to think, "Ah, that's not so bad, he wasn't just abusing random Indians, he was abusing what he thought was a controversial comedy duo who some regard as being anti-white."

Of course, this "controversial Indian comedy duo" are not actually Indian - the Fear of a Brown Planet guys are Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan, but whatever, it's all the same, right? And considering this chap basically saw two young South Asian guys with a camera crew and immediately assumed they were FOABP and began abusing them... well, that's understandable I guess. I mean, it's an easy mistake to make, right? Why, just the other day, I went to buy some curry and naan from my local Indian restaurant, when I thought the woman behind the counter was the provocative Indian duo "Fear of a Brown Planet". So obviously, I racially abused her, as one does in those situations. How embarassing for me!


Essentially, he is giving his own answer to the question posed by the show's title; he's not really racist, he was only dumb and racist because he was drunk. Ok then.


If you are wondering about who these Fear of a Brown Planet fellows are that seem to inspire such antipathy from random passing drunken douchebags, I've blogged about them here before.


Recently ABC1 featured them on Australian Story, which each week does a somewhat mushy profile of interesting Australian people. There was also a 2 hour special on ABC2 recently which featured their whole act. The guys, Aamer Rahman and Nazeem Hussain, are a couple of young Muslims whose act focuses primarily on racism, and the experience of being South Asian and Muslim in Australia. There has been an ongoing debate going on in Australian politics about the alleged left-wing bias of the ABC (the government-funded broadcaster), and this sympathetic profile of an act that tends to make white people a little uncomfortable is more grist to that mill. 

 

In any case this profile is interesting to look at how South Asian Muslims balance their identity with an Australian one, and how the two guys balance their humour and decidedly liberal activist views with a religion that is both rather illiberal and not especially known for its humour.

"Dumb, drunk and racist"

Journalist and blogger Joe Hildebrand has a new series starting this week exploring the different sides of race relations in Australia - on one hand a highly successful example of multicultural immigration, yet also one frequently perceived, both here and overseas, as a sort of redneck wonderland.

I'm looking forward to it. As a frequent reader of Hildebrand's stuff, I like that he's not beholden to the dogmas of either Left or Right, and will be able to present the issue in a way that won't just go for easy answers.

It starts at 9:30pm on Wednesday June 20 on ABC2.

Australian TV's White Australia Policy

Thoughts?

"The Slap" and racebending, part 2

I wrote recently about the acclaimed Australian mini-series The Slap and its rewriting of the ethnicity of a major character from the Christos Tsiolkas novel it was based on. Not a huge deal, perhaps, as it was seemingly done to accommodate the availability of the wonderful black British actress Sophie Okonedo. Thus, the Indian character Aisha in the book became the Mauritian character Aisha in the series. My point in the previous post was that it was a shame that Asians, and South Asians in particular, are majorly unrepresented on Australian TV, and here was an explicitly Indian main character in a hotly anticipated series, and now she's no longer Indian.

Now, I was happy to let that go. But for all it's excellence as a series (and it is very good indeed), the more I realise the makers of The Slap need a slap themselves for the way they are treating the story's Asian characters.

Aside from the character of Aisha herself, there is the Eurasian man she ends up having a dalliance with.

To quote the book:

She had noticed him immediately. She assumed every woman at the conference had, for he was almost ridiculously handsome, Eurasian, with a delicate snub nose, a gym-trim body and the most pale-white skin she'd ever seen. At first she had thought he might be Spanish, but the surname on his name tag was unmistakably Chinese, Xing. Art Xing. It sounded like the name of one of the bands that Hector enjoyed listening to.
At the first dinner, after their shared laugh, she had asked him where he was from.
“I’m Canadian.”
“Obviously,” she snapped amiably, rolling her eyes and pointing to the red and white maple-leaf insignia at the end of his tag. “But what’s your ethnic background?”
“I used to think that was a very Canadian question. But I’m discovering you Australians are exactly like us.” He was smirking, his eyes teasing her. She found she had to force herself to look straight back at him. Her impulse was to look down at her empty plate. She felt absurd, but his beauty did make her swoon. Oh grow up, Aisha scolded herself, you’re not some teenage twit and a Beatles concert, you’re a forty-something mother of two.
“My father is third-generation Chinese from Toronto. My mother is Czech.”

So, how is this ravishingly sexy half-Chinese man represented in the TV series?

Well, for a start he's not Chinese anymore. In the series his name has been changed to Art Ramirez and he appears to a Hispanic American of some kind. His ethnicity is not mentioned.

Speaking of Asians, another Asian character from the book has been completely omitted from the series - Van the Vietnamese DVD pirate, who is the business partner of Kelly, Harry's mistress.

Am I making a big deal about nothing? Perhaps, perhaps not. The ethnicities of Aisha and Art are not essential components of the story, in comparison to the Greek and Anglo characters whose culture plays a very real part of how the story unfolds. Likewise, the presence of Van the DVD guy is not integral.

But given that the novel version of The Slap won so many plaudits for exploring the way ethnicity and culture interweave in modern Australian society, it seems extremely odd that the directors seem hell-bent on minimizing the role of Asians in the TV version. Especially given that one of the directors, Tony Ayres, is half-Chinese himself. You'd expect better from him, surely.

Representation on television is important. I don't want to watch wall-to-wall Asians, but I do expect that when I watch a story with Asian characters, they won't be modified to be anything other than Asian.
Particularly for Asian men. If Asians have little visibility on Australian television, then Asian men are harder to spot, and sexy roles for Asian men are downright invisible. So it is saddening that while the directors are happy to show a naked Asian prostitute in one episode, they think nothing of changing the sexy Asian guy to a sexy Latino guy.

So for the time being, if you want to see an Asian man on Australian TV, you'll have to be content with watching Asian tourists getting detained on Border Security.

"The Slap" and race-bending

The television adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ multi-awardwinning novel The Slap has been one of the most anticipated events on Australian TV this year. Set in Melbourne’s suburbs, it explores the fallout amongst a group of friends and family after a man slaps a misbehaving child (who is not his own) at a barbecue. Tsiolkas focuses particularly on the diverse tapestry of modern suburban Australia, and how ethnicity, gender and age influence the characters’ actions and reactions to the incident.





I should state firstly that I haven’t read the novel, and so don’t have any positive or negative preconceived notions about how it should be translated to film. But it’s interesting to note that one of the notable changes in the production process has been to the ethnicity of one of the characters - Aisha, wife of Greek-Australian Hector and the organiser of the barbecue at which the titular slap takes place. In the novel, Aisha is described as Anglo-Indian, but the Aisha of the TV version is played by British actress Sophie Okonedo, who is Nigerian/Jewish by ethnicity.

According to this article:

As much as possible, the filmmakers looked to actors who matched the characters' ethnicity.
In the case of Aisha, this led to a drawn-out process after Connolly travelled to London to audition British-Indian actresses.
After meeting the ''staggeringly great actress'' Okonedo, a decision was made to change Aisha's cultural background to Mauritian. According to Connolly, Tsiolkas was very open to the changes, even writing a detailed backstory for the ethnically transformed Aisha.

While Tsiolkas's book is specifically about the experiences of Greek-Australian migrants, Aisha's Indian ancestry is explored in less detail. What mattered to Tsiolkas, Connolly says, is that Aisha regards herself as an outsider to mainstream Australia, a common bond that links her to Hector and his close-knit Greek family.

Not having read the book, I can’t yet comment on how integral Aisha’s Indian-ness is to the story, and whether her character would be essentially compromised by being Mauritian instead. Blogger Byron Wong tells me that the Indian element is important and the alteration is extremely disappointing. Tsiolkas obviously didn’t think it was a huge deal.

Now I like Sophie Okonedo, and it’s hard to dispute her ability as an actress, having been previously been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Hotel Rwanda. But it’s still a shame. Over half a million Australians have South Asian ancestry, and it’s one of the fastest growing segments of our population. South Asian Australians have a very prominent presence in fields like medicine and information technology (as well as some of the stereotypical ones like driving taxis and working at 7-11s). Yet as far as Australian TV drama goes, they may as well not exist.

Notably, this is one of the first times that a major role in a major Australian TV series was of a specifically South Asian character, yet whoever was involved in casting The Slap could seemingly not find an Australian actress of South Asian background anywhere. Now admittedly, I can’t think of any off the top of my head, as there are none with a significant profile. Yet that also says a lot about the industry’s reluctance to give such people the chance.

Even if they had gone with a British-Asian actress instead, that would still have been a positive thing to at least see a desi playing a desi in a sizable role on Australian TV. Alternatively, if someone of Indian descent was required, I hear there’s a country called India which is apparently full of them, and presumably some of them can act too.

At least I’m glad that while Aisha got “race-bended”, she didn’t get white-washed as frequently happens to non-white characters in film and television (see the Billy Sing story as an example). Melbourne has a sizeable Mauritian community and I’m happy to see them get some love, even if Okonedo is obviously not Mauritian herself. It’s good to see an “African” character on Australian TV, and it’s good to see an actress the calibre of Sophie Okonedo on Australian TV. But surely it’s not an impossible task to have a specifically South Asian character played by a South Asian actress.

UPDATE: It turns out that Aisha is not the only Asian character in The Slap who has been de-Asianized. Check it here.


See also:

The lack of Asians on Australian TV, and why it matters

Yellowface is still alive

What the f***, Comedy Central?

To my friends Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart: it's been nice knowing you.

For the last year or so, The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart have been two of my favourite shows, providing a valuable window on American politics. First, when they were on ABC2, then when they lost the rights, via the Comedy Central website.

No longer.

Comedy Central has apparently signed an exclusive deal with Foxtel that blocks Australian viewers from watching the show online. Switching on yesterday to get my daily dose of Stewart, I was greeted everywhere with the message: "Sorry, this video is unavailable from your location."

So now Australian fans will only be able to watch these programs if they pay for it. Of course, they are not on free-to-air in the US either as I understand it, but Americans can still watch it online nonetheless.

So what the f***, Comedy Central?

There are several ironies here. Firstly, Stewart ran a story a couple of weeks ago complaining about how British broadcasting authorities had censored The Daily Show because of laws forbidding the use of parliamentary footage for satirical purposes. At least the British can still watch you, Jon.

But more ridiculous is that the company that Australians will have to pay money to in order to watch The Daily Show is Foxtel, owned by Rupert Murdoch. Part of the same global corporation responsible for Fox News, the right-wing propaganda station that Stewart rails against on a nightly basis.

I won't be forking out the monthly fee to Foxtel, because I have more important things to spend money on, such as putting food on the table, keeping a roof over my head, and paying my way through school.

So thanks for the memories Jon and Stephen, it's been fun.


UPDATE:

So, I've sniffed around, and the internet being what it is, there are still ways to watch it. I'm not a technical computer-thingy-type-person, but you can watch it via a proxy IP address. Plus there are other ways. Search around.

The problem with "Angry Boys"

Chris Lilley's comedy Summer Heights High was one of the great recent successes of Australian television, dominating the ratings in 2007 and introducing a number of terms into the popular lexicon ("ranga" being the most obvious). Australia has not had a stellar record for producing sitcoms, but SHH was one of our best; smart, edgy and hilarious. Lilley, who created the series and played the 3 main roles, was widely lauded as a comic genius.

Angry Boys is Lilley's much-awaited comeback, but its initially high ratings have plummeted. While some viewers and critics still love it, the general consensus is that it's just not funny. SHH had 3 brilliantly-drawn characters that could have carried an entire series on their own; the 6 characters Lilley plays in Angry Boys are barely interesting enough to carry an episode. His mockumentary-style has always walked a fine line; like The Office, which is the modern benchmark for this kind of comedy, Lilley's characters are often quite unpleasant and prone to inappropriate and cringeworthy moments. Yet in his first two series (SHH and We Can Be Heroes), the writing was clever enough to balance those aspects, and the characters had enough depth to make them interesting. Angry Boys amps up the foul language and "edginess", but forgets that SHH was popular primarily because it was funny.

But the series has drawn criticism for other reasons, too: it has been described as homophobic and racist.

The homophobia accusation is fairly unfounded, to my mind. Yes, the word "fag" is thrown around seemingly hundreds of time during the series, but since Lilley is trying to capture the world of the uncouth teenage boy, it's hard to avoid such a term. And while there is plenty of homophobic language, it would be a stretch to describe the series itself as being at all homophobic.

The racial aspect is a bit more troubling.

I have real problems with the two non-white characters being played by Lilley: S.Mouse and Jen Okazaki. It's not the first time Lilley has played ethnic characters, with SHH featuring Tongan school bully Jonah Takalua and WCBH featuring Chinese scientist and aspiring actor Ricky Wong. I thought Jonah was a brilliant character; having worked with many Polynesian kids in the school system I've seen plenty of kids like Jonah and it really worked for me, particularly as Lilley nailed the accent and mannerisms required for such a character. Ricky Wong was not quite as interesting a character, but worked for the most part. Both were quite easy stereotypes - Asian nerd and Pacific Islander dumb tough guy - but Lilley was able to pull off the performances, primarily because they were funny, but also because he got the nuances correct, mostly.

By contrast, his performances as S.Mouse and Jen Okazaki just seem lazy. In a recent interview with Voyeur magazine, Lilley says:
"I never sat down with a Japanese lady and studied her hand movements or anything... the performance side of it and the language is much more instinctive."
And perhaps therein lies the problem. Maybe Lilley has been around enough young Pacific Islander and Asian kids to sufficiently absorb their mannerisms and accents, so that he can "instinctively" conjure the Ricky and Jonah characters. But in playing an African-American rapper and a Japanese mother, he is in unfamiliar territory and it shows.
Jen Okazaki only seems Japanese if you've never met a Japanese person. Lilley summons up the same generic Asian accent that was passable for Ricky Wong but is just wrong here. The assumption that Chinese and Japanese people speak exactly the same is kinda ignorant.


S.Mouse is even worse. Adopting blackface is a risky move, and is bound to draw displeasure from some people. I personally would be okay with it if Lilley put the effort in to creating a decent character. But he can't do a convincing black American accent, so settles for an unconvincing white American accent instead. Lilley seems to think impersonating a black American is as simple as saying "motherfucka" and "nigga" a lot.


The Vine magazine ran a story last week in which they showed some American hip-hoppers the segments involving S.Mouse, the black American rapper played by Lilley. Their comments were less than complimentary.


Given that the "Aussie" characters in Angry Boys are quite well-rounded and are depicted with enough pathos that they almost seem like real people, it seems strange that Lilley's two ethnic characters are so ridiculous and lazily drawn. And one obvious question for me is: why does S*Mouse have to be black? Lilley clearly can't pull off a black American character, but a white American rapper, or even a white Australian rapper, would be more within his capabilities. And given that S.Mouse is a stereotypical "fake rapper", a rich kid trying to act like he's from the streets, a white S.Mouse would actually work well for such a theme.

Is Angry Boys a racist program? I wouldn't say that, but I would say that when it comes to the issue of race, it is a dumb program. Interestingly, the series (like SHH before it) probably shows non-white faces more than any other series on Australian TV. But while there are many of us who are crying out for more representation in the media, Angry Boys doesn't portray minorities in a particularly enlightened manner. Sure, most of its characters are somewhat unpleasant, but there's just something that makes me uneasy about the way non-white characters are portrayed here.
The inmates at the juvenile facility where Gran works are virtually all Aboriginal, African or Pacific Islander, and the one who receives the most attention is an Aboriginal boy whose crime was masturbating a dog. Then there's S.Mouse, of course, whereas Lilley admits that with Jen Okazaki he aimed to create "the meanest, most awful character I've ever done." The obsession with her son Tim's sexuality - and the implication that pretending that he is gay is a lucrative marketing strategy in Japan - is uncomfortable when you consider the emasculated way Asian males are portrayed over and over again in the West.
 
But for all that, Lilley would still get away with it if Angry Boys was only funny. But he has clearly mistaken "edgy" for "funny", and this pursuit of edginess informs his clumsy portrayals of non-white people.

Translating Australian comedy to the US

Wilfred has proved a surprise hit in the States, premiering to an audience of 3.8 million viewers last week. The show, about the friendship between suicidal loser Ryan (Elijah Wood) and a dog named Wilfred (played by Jason Gann in a dog suit) garnered the highest premiere rating ever for a program on the FX network.
It's surprising for a number of reasons; there is a dark streak to Wilfred that would seem to sit uncomfortably with American audiences' tastes in humour, while the show's whole premise is too left-field for many viewers to quite grasp. And even in its original format in Australia (where it ran for two seasons in 2007 and 2010, winning three AFI Awards in the process) it was hardly what you could call a smash hit. I think I'm the only person I know who watched it regularly, and most people barely seem to have heard of it.

So is the US version actually any good?



Well, yes, although I still think the Australian version is better. Despite it's deliberate edginess, in many ways the US version pans out like a typical odd-couple bromance; Wilfred may be coarse and seedy, but he "completes" Ryan and pushes him out of his comfort zone to be a better person (although its not quite as cheesy as that sounds). The original Australian Wilfred had a far more sinister character; aside from his undying loyalty to his owner Sarah, he was manipulative, cruel and entirely self-centred. The American producers obviously found this too dark and have tried to make it a bit more like the film I Love You, Man, with Wilfred as the Owen Wilson character.


That said, it's nice to see some better production values (the Australian version was as unglamorous as you can get), and nice to see that the concept originally birthed by Gann and Adam Zwar has found the appreciative audience it deserves. Keeping Gann as the titular character makes a huge difference; it is one of those cases where the lead actor is the show. As an example, while Steve Carrell does a creditable job in the US version of The Office, he is barely a patch on the toure de force that is Ricky Gervais in the original.

The relative success of Wilfred sits in marked contrast to the last Australian comedy that was adapted for US screens.

Kath and Kim was a huge hit in Australia. Not what would be termed sophisticated humour, but what it did, it did well. The US version was utter garbage and was thankfully put out of its misery after 1 season. Aside from it being completely unfunny, the problem was that the producers seemed to completely miss the point of what made it work.


The key theme of Kath and Kim - the contrast between one's real and imagined class - is emphasised by the Australian series' low production values, and a cast whose lack of physical attractiveness is played up by "bogan" accents, and deliberately bad hair and fashion. Yet the US version has a good-looking cast and a glossy set, and the social class aspect is downplayed. The original Kim character is dumpy and style-deficient yet is convinced of her own hotness (emphasised by co-creator Gina Riley being considerably older than the character). But Selma Blair as the American Kim actually is hot.

Kath & Kim Episode 10 - News by JumpinJollyHolly

It's hard to imagine a translation of Kath and Kim to the US ever being truly successful, but it's harder still to imagine how they could ever get it quite this bad.

"The very foreign correspondent"

I was a fan of the UK series Balls of Steel. Sure, it was occasionally puerile, and prank-based humour can often be annoying rather than funny, but it did the genre better than most. Now Balls of Steel Australia is out on Foxtel. I haven't watched it since I'm too cheap to pay for Foxtel, and I'm a bit sceptical anytime someone tries to take a winning British comedy and replicate it in another culture. But here's a taster, and it features comedian Nazeem Hussain of Fear of a Brown Planet and Salam Cafe fame.

Hot brown news journalists on SBS

I posted recently on the difficulties that non-white models are said to face in the Australian market, after an agency told an Indian-Australian model, successful overseas, that she'd struggle to find work in Perth due to her ethnicity.

So where does that leave all our young good-looking go-getters who happen to have somewhat swarthier complexions?

They could always try out as a journalist on SBS TV. Australia's multicultural broadcaster has clearly taken it upon itself to overcompensate for the lack of ethnic diversity on the mainstream channels' news departments. You would hard-pressed to claim that their selection of faces represents the Australian population. But I ain't complaining. Particularly since the network has been gradually upping the good-lookingness of its on-camera team in recent years.

Of course, SBS has by far and away the best coverage of global news of any free-to-air network in Australia. But this post is not about news, so much as it is a celebration of this oasis of brown hotness in Australia's broadcasting desert.

Janice Peterson (newsreader)

Peta-Jane Madam (reporter & newsreader) 

Auskar Surbakti (reporter)

Yalda Hakim (host, Dateline)

Kathy Novak (reporter)

Anton Enus (newsreader)

Leroy Ah Ben (reporter)

Former newsreader Indira Naidoo, one of the first Indians in a prominent Australian TV role.

See also:

The lack of Asians on Australian TV, and why it matters

Ughh... and it was hairy...

In case you thought the Japanese had cornered the market for perverse and bizarre game shows, Denmark's Total Blackout proves otherwise.



But seriously, if you were a contestant, wouldn't you have foreseen this eventuality straight away upon learning the premise of the show?
You also have to wonder what the guy did to ensure his ass was at just the right level of stankiness.

Whitney has really let herself go

Does there exist a country whose television has the capacity to beat Japan in the oddness stakes?

Based on this evidence, it's The Philippines for the win.



If you are looking for answers, I'm afraid I'm all out.

Whitewashing Attila the Hun

So I'm watching this BBC docu-drama historical re-enactment show called Warriors (although it's originally called Heroes and Villains in Britain), and this particular episode chronicles the life of Attila the Hun, whose marauding armies laid waste to much of Europe in the 5th century BC. I'm a sucker for medieval military history so I watched it eagerly, but it's not all that great really.

Now, the series carries the claim that "it is based on the accounts of writers of the time. It has been written with the advice of modern historians."
But the most glaring feature of the program for me was how Attila and his Huns were portrayed - as a kind of generic medieval European warrior force. They could have been straight out of a Viking movie, or Lord of the Rings, or Braveheart (particularly as they sounded kinda Scottish when they spoke). Attila (played by Rory McCann) was depicted as the stereotypical alpha-male warrior leader in the Western tradition - tall and powerfully built, with long hair, a beard, and a big sword. His soldiers looked much the same.



Problem is, everything we know about Attila says that he looked nothing like that. He and his armies came not from Northern Europe but Central Asia, beyond the Volga River.

Roman writer Priscus describes Attila thusly:

"Short of stature, with a broad chest and a large head; his eyes were small, his beard thin and sprinkled with grey; and he had a flat nose and tanned skin, showing evidence of his origin."

Of the Huns, Gothic-Roman bureaucrat Jordanes wrote:

"They made their foes flee in horror because their swarthy aspect was fearful, and they had, if I may call it so, a sort of shapeless lump, not a head, with pin-holes rather than eyes. Their hardihood is evident in their wild appearance, and they are beings who are cruel to their children on the very day they are born. For they cut the cheeks of the males with a sword, so that before they receive the nourishment of milk they must learn to endure wounds. Hence they grow old beardless and their young men are without comeliness, because a face furrowed by the sword spoils by its scars the natural beauty of a beard. They are short in stature, quick in bodily movement, alert horsemen, broad shouldered, ready in the use of bow and arrow, and have firm-set necks which are ever erect in pride. Though they live in the form of men, they have the cruelty of wild beasts."

Clearly, the real Huns did not resemble Rory McCann. But descriptions of them are complicated by the likelihood that they were not a single homogeneous ethnic group. The Central Asian steppe from whence they came was gigantic inhabited by numerous tribes, and as they conquered more territory they would have absorbed more diverse populations. So among the Hun armies there might have been people who spoke Turkic, Uralic, Mongolic, Slavic and Iranic languages. As for Attila himself, he was probably not purely "East Asian" in phenotype (in the way that Genghis Khan would have been); rather, he likely resembled a modern day Uighur, Uzbek or Kazakh, or a Hazara from Afghanistan.

The Huns played an important role in shaping the history and genetics of Europe. Firstly, they were one of several nomadic groups to have introduced East Asian DNA into Eastern Europe. Secondly, their invasions displaced numerous other barbarian tribes, such as the Goths, who then in turn invaded Western Europe and precipitated the fall of the Roman Empire. It also pushed the Angles and Saxons out of Germany and into England.

So it's a shame that the folks at the BBC didn't see fit to acknowledge the Oriental origins of the Huns. The East-meets-West culture clash between the Huns and Rome would have made for a far more interesting program.

"The wrong Wong"

A Current Affair featured this story this week of a Chinese-Australian man who was exposed as a fugitive welfare cheat on Channel 7... except that 7, and the Department of Social Security, had confused him with another Andrew Wong. With a different middle name. I dunno how many Andrew Wongs there are in Australia, but I imagine there are heaps.



Now I'm glad ACA ran this story to allow Wong to clear his name, but really, did they really need all those Chinese sound effects? Kung Fu Fighting playing in the background? Check the 2 minute 57 second mark for some signature Chinese percussion, as the reporter walks through Chinatown, for reasons that have nothing to do with the story. There are approaching a million people of Chinese background in Australia now; is Chinese-ness really still that exotic?

(Hat tip: Yuey)

Another reason to love Vince Masuka

Dexter? Awesome, awesome show. And one of its most awesome features is Vince Masuka, played by C.S. Lee. Watch this clip once, then watch it again with the sound off, just for good measure.

Japanese TV weirdness of the week

This is some kind of test involving former boxer Yoko Gushiken to see if his uber-friendly dog will recognise him while he wears a disguise. For some reason, the disguise is as a Lil Jon-esque rapper.  Why? You tell me.

yo yo facepalm yo
Uploaded by marlowalls. - More video blogs and vloggers.

(Hat tip: Japan Probe)

Japanese TV weirdness of the week: Flower-arranging chimp

Pan-kun takes the traditional Japanese art of ikebana in new directions.


ikebana 2
Uploaded by percyjpnprb. - Discover more webcam videos and video blogs.
(Hat tip: Japan Probe)

Iron Chef montages

This made my day. I love my foodie shows, but Iron Chef was always more about the campness than the cooking.


Not that I ever really liked the US version that much - I miss hearing "Fukui-san!" and seeing Chairman Kaga's lascivious manner of eating things, as demonstrated below:


Btw, many of you may not know that in the original series of Iron Chef USA, the Chairman role was actually played by William Shatner! Which, to be honest, is who you want for the ridiculous "I take cuisine so seriously" campness that you want in a Chairman.

Unfortunately that series was killed off after only 2 episodes in 2001, until it was resuscitated in 2004 as Iron Chef America, with Mark Dacascos as Chairman.