The SBS TV show, Go Back to Where You Came From returns to our screens tonight, Tuesday 28th August, at 8.30PM.
Tune in tonight, and join us on this webpage for a live chat with other GetUp members. Just come back to this webpage (http://www.getup.org.au/gobacksbs).
What: 'Go Back to Where You Came From' - the new series of SBS' documentary, which takes Australians with "outspoken views" and invites them to see the world through the eyes of a refugee -- retracing real journeys all the way back to places like Somalia and Afgahanistan.
When: 8.30pm tonight (Tuesday 28 August), continuing at the same time on Wednesday and Thursday nights.
Review – Go Back To Where You Came From
SBS’s reality series Go Back To Where You Came From kicked things off tonight and continues tomorrow night, finishing up on Thursday. In an effort to recognize Refugee Week SBS has gathered together six Australians and put them through a month of living as a refugee. “Boat people” and refugees have become a go-to villain for the Australian media so it’s always refreshing when a network like the ABC or SBS treats these people like actual people.
The six Australians gathered for this ‘social experiment’ include Raye, a 63 year old farmer who lives next door to a detention centre and isn’t happy about it one bit, Raquel, a 21 year old self-proclaimed racist from Blacktown, Darren, a family man who seems heavily influenced by the media’s portrayal of asylum seekers, Gleny, an opinionated country singer who would be more than happy to have a refugee stay in her home, Roderick, an aspiring politician who’s the vice-president of the Young Liberals, and Adam, a Cronulla lifeguard who was there the day of those disgusting Cronulla riots.
Their host is refugee expert Dr. David Corlett who guides them on their journey through the life of a refugee. The group was first split in two and sent to the homes of recently settled refugees. Darren, Gleny and Adam moved in with a group of Iraqi men who arrived in Australia illegally by boat, while the three R’s, Roderick, Raye and Raquel stayed with a large African family who legally obtained a refugee visa after 9 years in a Kenyan refugee camp. The experience of living with these people is more eye-opening for some of the participants than it is for others.
While it feels early on as if the show is going to play ‘let’s make the racists look bad’, which would be just as reductive as the black and white way other media outlets treat asylum seekers, thankfully the show rounds out their personalities somewhat. The show lets Raye, who at first seemed like she was just going to be used for her unfortunate soundbites on foreigners, be shown as a real person too. Her confessionals to camera about the African family’s terrible experiences were honest. Unfortunately not everybody is that easily swayed, and both Darren and Raquel finished the episode still looking like racist jerks, although Darren’s prejudice comes from a more reasoned place than Raquel’s selfishness and complete lack of self-awareness. How many times can that girl say something like ‘it sucks not having a phone’ and not put two and two together to figure out how somebody else would feel in that situation?
The risk that comes with reviewing a show about a hot button topic like this is to miss the TV show for the message. The message is obvious: refugees are people just like you and me and they go through all this because they want a better life, like the one you lead. This is an important message that feels like it slips through the cracks whenever ‘boat people’ and ‘asylum seekers’ appear in the news. However, while I think that Go Back To Where You Came From is worth watching mostly because it’s helpful to see what these people go through, I don’t think that it’s that great of a television show.
Again, I just want to reiterate that I’m not saying there isn’t an important message being told here, I simply think it’s being told in an above average reality television setting. I obviously can’t speak to the second and third episodes, but the first episode had some wonderful moments but came up lacking. The conversations with the recently settled refugees were heartbreaking on their own, and didn’t need the sad music to start playing each time to remind us that we should feel sad.
As for the ‘boat experiment’ where the participants believed they were sinking only to find out it was all faked to teach them a lesson, I’m unsure why the show needed to fake us out as well. Was Go Back also trying to teach us a lesson? It could have been just as effective to let us know that they were going to fake the sinking boat, because otherwise it puts us on edge for the rest of the series. By not letting us know when they’re ‘faking’ something it may leave us questioning the reality of future experiments.
Go Back To Where You Came From is an average reality show with a message that needs to be heard. It’s going to get a lot of press because of that message, and hopefully the next two episodes warrant all that talk. For me the first episode didn’t stack up alongside something like the Four Corners report ‘Smugglers’ Paradise’ from last year, which was a far more enlightening and devastating look at the life of “boat people” and the horrors they suffer in an effort to find freedom. Go Back makes for a good antidote to the typical media beat up on “evil” asylum seekers, but there’s no need to get carried away when praising it: it’s a vital message but it comes in only an okay package.
Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright