Australia Needs More Brown People On TV

Have you seen how many brown people there are on TV these days? There’s that upstart Mindy Kaling with yet-another-season of her brown lady doctor travails on Fox; there’s that cheeky Nazeem Hussain with his new Dave Chapelle-esque sketch comedy that premiered on SBS on Monday. Even the new Miss America is South Asian. Miss America! The prettiest person in the most beauty-pageant-mad country on earth is officially an Indian. With properly dark skin and everything.

Observing this brown-vasion, you’d be forgiven for thinking people like me who have been obsessing over the representation of non-white people on mainstream TV would be buying up copies of the Green Guide and luxuriating in them like an actress in a perfume ad on a bed with silk sheets. But as ever, the dastardly topic of identity politics is murky and complicated. There is much to celebrate to be sure, but still more progress to be made… so, don’t incinerate that TV script yet.

The Indian Project

Take The Mindy Project, for example. Do you even know who Mindy Kaling is? She’s the Indian one from The Office US who, since getting a writing/acting gig for that show at the age of 24, went on to write for Saturday Night Live and then scored her own show on the Fox Network, which was nominated for an Emmy and saw its second season premiere last week. If that isn’t a success story, I don’t know what is.

In fact the only comparable female star on Fox TV show is New Girl, Zooey Deschanel’s housemate comedy/drama. Which of the two do you think was picked up by Channel 10? Yup, that’s right, the white lady’s one. I quite like New Girl, and I’m thrilled Zooey is getting new Aussie audiences, but it would be ace if commercial channels could do the same for Mindy, who is at least — in my generation — a pioneer. Of course Zooey is a more visible personality, with both films and a singing career under her belt. And maybe our networks tried; maybe it cost too much or there were some complications with the contract or they couldn’t get a geoblocking work-around. Who knows. But until commercial channels in Australia take chances on brown people in prime-time, we’ll remain eons behind the UK and the US.

Do The Yanks Have To Beat Us At Everything?

In fact, Indians are so common on American TV now that people are starting to observe trends in the roles they play. In an incredible essay featured on n+1 earlier this year, the editors suggest that Indians are easier to cast than black characters because they don’t bring up as many difficult questions about that particular country’s race history. Whenever there’s an opportunity for diversity, Indians are the easier choice: “No minority presence in the US is more reassuring, or less likely to get angry or acknowledge your antiblack racism.”

Yes, that’s right, there’s actually a problem with how many Indians there are on American screens. Without making light of the compelling arguments in that essay, it’s a problem that I would desperately like to have in Australia. Obviously the TV market over there is bigger; so is the market in the UK, home of Goodness Gracious Me and The Indian Doctor, which are syndicated on 7Two. Commercial risks are taken more freely overseas, and the industry seems to be taken more seriously. But Indians comprise 1% of Americans, 2.5% of Brits and approx 2% of Australians (just over 500,000) — yet when the commercial networks here try and write an Indian family into Neighbours, they get so scared of the digital race riot that takes place on the show’s website that the family gets quietly written off.

In the age of infinity digital channels, webisodes and mobile iPad thingamies, you’re telling me we can’t do better? We can do better!

SBS To The Rescue, Or SBS-cue

Of course, the SBS have been making racialist humour shows since before you were born. We know this. And we know their place in the landscape in this country is terrifically important. Who else could have commissioned Nazeem Hussain’s hilarious new sketch comedy Legally Brown? His skit impersonating a white man dancing is stone cold genius and I urge you to watch it immediately.

Having watched Hussain come up through stand-up and Triple J, it is heartening and exciting to see him take the next step, especially as the lack of non-whites on screen has long been a part of his gear: “If you wake up and find yourself in a hospital with no Asian doctor, start running because you’re on a TV set.”

Like Mindy Kaling, Hussain has had to write his own characters to get to where he is. And like Mindy Kaling, it is a cross I am truly thrilled for him to bear.

Being a brown person in a largely white country means I regularly look around and realise there is no one who looks like me in the room, or on the TV that is in the room. I’m lucky: I work in a tolerant industry, went to fancy schools and speak English well. But I can guarantee you right now there are brown kids in primary schools around the country looking at their non-white-bread lunches and wishing they had fairer skin. And I can guarantee you there’s a woman in a hijab somewhere right now wondering whether the guy at the cash register was rude to her because of her dress or because he’s in a bad mood.

Good television can educate, challenge, comfort AND entertain. TV makers, (aspiring) TV writers and TV watchers of Australia: brown people are here to stay. Now is a good time to stop ignoring us.

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HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

Aziz Ansari (Parks and Recreation)

Kumail Nanjiani (Franklin and Bash, Veep)

Archie Punjabi (The Good Wife, Bend it Like Beckham)

Sanjeev Bhaskar (Indian Doctor, Bend it Like Beckham)

Dev Patel (Newsroom, Slumdog Millionaire)

Indira Naidoo (Club Buggery, Good News Week)

Hannah Simone (New Girl)

Indira Varma (Silk)

Danny Pudi (Community)

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Bhakthi Puvanenthiran is a broadcaster, programmer, writer and editor. She’s been published in The Age, Frankie, Thought Catalog, and Crikey; made radio at RRR, 3CR and the ABC and helped program the National Young Writers’ Festival and the Melbourne Writers Festival. Follow her @bhakthi.