Media Portrayals of Indigenous Australians - The Nobles and Savages Paradox

The Nobles and Savages Paradox

Frances Peters-Little, an Aboriginal film-maker, has observed that television portrayals of Indigenous people are divided into nobles or savages. At the savage end of the pole is the portrayal of Aboriginal criminality in the mainstream news media. Many systematic content reviews of mass media have found that the race of criminal offenders is mentioned more often when the offenders are Aboriginal. Author Heather Goodall has argued that photos used repeatedly in the coverage of the 1987 Brewarrina riot, which took place after an Aboriginal death in custody, illustrate how mainstream media pander to whites' expectations of Aboriginal violence. The first of two iconic images depicted a young Aboriginal man throwing a stone at a hotel, evoking "an Aboriginal threat to the country pub, that symbol of Australian rural life, mateship and social networks." The second, a photo of a breaking window, was shot so close-up that one can no longer recognize the image as one of Brewarrina; instead, one could only see an Indigenous Australian relentlessly destroying white property.

These negative images, however, coexist with "invariably positive and sympathetic" portrayals of Aborigines in advertisements and documentaries, which typically depict them in "'traditionalist' roles, dress, poses, and activities." For example, one study of 100,000 seconds of Australian advertising found that the only Indigenous Australians pictured were children with painted faces. Documentary film-making about Indigenous subjects generally also centers on traditional culture in northern and central Australia, neglecting the more urban areas of the south and east. One author has suggested that these positive images of Indigenous Australians can coexist with the negative news images because advertisements and documentaries depict Indigenous Australians as distant from the modern world; only when they interact with contemporary society are they seen as threatening.