Muted Suffering
Last year’s most acclaimed Australian TV series has also been a target for criticism over its foregrounding of white characters in a story that’s ostensibly about Australia’s racialised refugee policies. But while such choices reflect much broader structural issues within the screen industry, Dave Crewe argues that the show’s missteps go deeper than just casting decisions.
The night of 30 November 2020 should have been one of unadulterated celebration for Elise McCredie, co-creator of miniseries Stateless. Her show had just picked up an impressive thirteen AACTA Awards, including Best Telefeature or Mini Series and all four television-drama acting awards. But her comments in an ABC News article the day after betray more than a hint of defensiveness:
We wouldn’t have been able to get [the series] financed, unfortunately, unless we had white stars […] As a creator and someone who felt passionately that this story needed to be told, I would have preferred to focus entirely on refugee stories.1
It’s fair to critique Stateless for its inability to centre its refugee characters; at every turn, this is a series that prioritises white faces and white feelings.
That defensiveness stems from sustained criticism of the show’s choice to foreground white faces in its refugee-drama narrative. A Los Angeles Times interview with co-creator Cate Blanchett was titled ‘A New Netflix Show About Australia’s Refugee Crisis Has a White Heroine. We Asked Why’, while a Rolling Stone review decried the show’s emphasis on its white characters: ‘Instead of elevating these immigrant stories, the show diminishes them, by heaping attention on Sofie [played by These are not isolated critiques, and much of the conversation around Stateless – before and after the AACTAs – has centred on the disconnect between its refugee-centric storytelling and the overwhelming whiteness of its cast.
