The Elephant in the Review
During Reconciliation Week 2023, I attended The Bigger Picture at QPAC as a reviewer. In short, I loved it, and if you haven’t yet read my review of The Bigger Picture, I recommend you to do so first for context. For those of you who have, we’ve got an elephant to examine.
As I stated at the end of my review, it is disingenuous of me to write the aforementioned review without acknowledging my whiteness and that every day of my life I directly benefit from the oppression of the First Nations peoples of Australia. It is also disingenuous of me to have written the review without addressing the larger aspects of our current cultural environment.
In the Q&A before the The Bigger Picture, the moderator Dr. Chelsea Watego brought up the concept of Sovereign Storytelling. This is a framework for BIPOC to tell their stories “radically, unapologetically, and fully”, with an end goal of telling their stories without any white gaze whatsoever. For those interested in this framework, further reading can be found here.
For any white people reading this who feel resistance to this concept, I urge you to take the time to reflect on what is actually being said. What is not being said is that white people should be excluded from the audience. What is being said is that people of colour should have the freedom to be able to tell their stories without feeling the pressure of appealing to a white audience, without needing to consider the perspective and reaction of a white observer – a particular privilege white creators have been and continue to be afforded, even if they aren’t aware of it. As the singer Nina Simone said on her album Black Gold when introducing the song To Be Young, Gifted and Black: “It is not addressed to white people. It does not put you down in any way, it simply ignores you.”
The Australian arts community is no stranger to this conversation. Earlier this year, the creative team of the Melbourne production of seven methods of killing kylie jenner made the decision to request the play to only be reviewed by people of colour. To be clear, they were not banning white people from seeing or reviewing the play – they simply weren’t accommodating white reviewers with free tickets. As Shari Sebbens, the co-director of the play, said afterwards: “There is no denying the fact that white critical responses to Black works are tinged with white guilt, white shame, a lack of depth... It is impossible to leave your biases at the door.”
In response, The Age newspaper chose not to publish a review of the play at all, with the arts editor writing a frankly sanctimonious and bad faith click-bait opinion piece instead, criticising the policy as “tokenism” while wholly ignoring the reality that culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) people are underrepresented across major arts organisations and institutions in Australia. Productions actively advocating for BIPOC reviewers is absolutely one of the ways in which we can begin to address this disparity within the industry. Not only is this direct harm reduction, it will also enrich our artistic and cultural landscape as a whole.
After the altogether excellent performance of The Bigger Picture, I was left with a number of questions. Was I the appropriate person to review this show? Was it wrong of me to put my hand up to review it? Is it better for a white person to review the show than no one at all? In my effort to acknowledge my inherent bias, am I inexorably centring whiteness?
Ultimately, while these may be valid questions, I don’t actually think I’m the person who gets the answer them, nor am I the one who gets to prioritise the importance of asking them in the first place. That I attended the show as a reviewer, that I have written a review of a show that is so deeply not about me, is a microcosm of the broader issues in the Australian arts community, which are themselves just one part of the ongoing issues in our country.
We have just seen one of Australia’s most prominent First Nations journalists relentlessly and dangerously harassed for thoughtfully expressing a reasonable opinion on the continued impacts of British imperialism and colonisation. We have then recently seen the complete lack of care and support from a media organisation that had previously told staff that racism is not allowed or tolerated in its workplace. We are currently in the midst of a debate that is effectively robbing communities of self-determination by inviting the entire population of Australia to choose whether or not First Nations peoples get a particular form of parliamentary representation, while stripping all nuance from the conversation so that those fighting for a treaty are more easily dismissed.
Shows like The Bigger Picture have value whether a white reviewer approves of it or not. As much as I enjoyed it, my review is ultimately an incomplete understanding of the work, because I will never have the lived experience that would allow that level of depth in analysis. While I don’t think I, or QPAC, or NEHIB, did anything “wrong”, it doesn’t mean the situation is equitable, nor does it mean we can’t improve. It is a privilege for me to have this platform, but if I cannot sit in the discomfort of acknowledging that privilege is borne on the back of the oppression and silencing of First Nations peoples, then reconciliation is just a word without action. The same is true for other reviewers, media organisations, and arts institutions in Australia.
Reconciliation is action. The action is connection, and genuine connection is work. It is important work, it is meaningful work, and it is necessary work for us all to do.
