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Thoughts on Tomorrow When the War Began

JA September 29

I was one of those school students who, back in the 90s, read the first book of John Marsden’s popular Tomorrow series and never looked back. It was the Harry Potter of our humble suburban generation – totally addictive and totally readable. I remember eagerly awaiting the release of each installment (although in my opinion they should have capped it after The Third Day, The Frost) and swapping copies with those telling barbed-wire covers at lunch time, while absently debating the merits of Ellie and Lee vs Ellie and Homer vs Homer and Fi.

It was largely for these reasons that I went to see the film, despite my qualms about the trailer, which seemed stuck somewhere between Summer Bay and a big-budget Hollywood extravaganza. Unfortunately, the film itself didn’t prove me wrong. While the action was certainly slick, with plenty of white-knuckle moments and big explosions, too much else fell flat. Several of the characters, particularly Homer, Fi, Robyn and Chris, felt like exaggerations of their fictional selves – even more the joker/the dope-fiend/the princess etc. The dialogue was painfully brick-like at times, as was the acting, with the exception perhaps of Ashleigh Cummings as Robyn. The director, Stuart Beattie, was clearly aiming his debut squarely at the heart of a teenage audience, a move which of course makes sense given the YA context, but I wonder if he could also have spared a thought for the kids who grew up with the novels as well?

More than that though, there’s also an interesting debate currently circulating about the choices regarding the invading army, which Beattie has consciously cast as being Asian:

The ethnicity just makes common sense. If anyone is going to invade Australia, it’s not going to be Europe, and it’s not going to be Africa. It won’t be Antarctica or New Zealand. It’s going to be someone in Asia.

… I never felt it would work to keep the invaders' race a complete mystery. Film is a visual medium … I wanted to spend as little time as possible explaining who the invaders are. If they were Russians, I’d have to have a long explanation of why they are invading. Because Asia is a neighbour, that leads to us not having to explain it that much, because they are close [to Australia]. In the books the clues all hint at a regional conflict.

Marsden himself has also been questioned over identity of the enemy, but, unlike Beattie, he declines to explicitly name them. The only clue in the novel is that the soldiers speak in a foreign language that none of the characters can place. Another key yet subtle difference is the level of brutality shown in both. In the books, Ellie and her friends discover that the invading forces are trying to treat people relatively well as part of their ‘clean war’ strategy. Their reasons may be dubious, but still it’s a vital point. In contrast, the movie posits a greater degree of cruelty from the invading Other – early on, Ellie witnesses the townspeople being kept in caged fences at the Showgrounds, where a man is shot in cold blood for protesting. The lines of good and evil are drawn with a slightly more definite hand.

One might easily argue that Beattie’s decision has to be appreciated in the context of this action-adventure/fantasy genre. This isn’t reality – rather, it’s an electrifying, alternate world in which teenagers can become heroes, blow up bridges and still live to save the day.

True, but as Lynden Barber argues, nothing is devoid of politics, or of context. A film, couched within the confines of the hyperreal, can also reveal much about deeper cultural insecurities.

Australia has a long tradition of xenophobic fears of being swamped by Asia, whether by Indonesian armed forces or, in more recent years, by boatloads of refugees from Vietnam, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka.

Even though it could not have been predicted by the filmmakers, it’s hard to ignore the fact ‘Tomorrow’ has been released directly following an election campaign in which one of the parties' main slogans was Stop the Boats, aimed squarely at Asian refugees.

Jeff Sparrow also points to a wider historical narrative over at The Drum:

The early invasion novels were, for the most part, self-consciously didactic, as much political tracts as entertainments. Books like ‘The Yellow Wave’, ‘The Coloured Conquest’, ‘The Awakening’ and ‘Fools' Harvest’ warned about specific, named threats (even if the source of the menace oscillated between China, Japan and Russia – or sometimes a combination of the three). TWTWB is different: a slick commercial production, an action flick aimed at teenagers. Nonetheless, as Beattie unwittingly acknowledges, when audiences think of an Australian invasion those long-standing generic conventions still come into play.

Like others, I find it hard to believe that the filmmakers were being deliberately racist in their casting. However the fact is that racism today has very little to do with open statements or conscious agendas – it’s hidden away in seemingly bland justifications like ‘logic’ or ‘security’ or arguments about preserving ‘our’ values, as the recent election shows. Equally, I don’t mean this to be a singular criticism for TWTWB, but rather an indication of a greater unease that seems to repeat itself over and over again in our media (and yes I note the Lee is indeed a memorable character, but one out of seven does not an argument make). Why is it, for example, that the major networks, with the exception of SBS and ABC, rarely feature anyone of ethnic background, or if they do, they seem to be painfully token?

It was less than two years ago that Neighbours introduced its first lead Asian character (that’s first in 25 years) in a response to criticisms about a ‘whitewash’ in Aussie soaps. Then producer Susan Bowers defended the show’s history, arguing that she couldn’t just ‘give Libby and Dan a black baby, so it has to come in a natural way’. The ‘natural way’ was of course to introduce a Korean exchange student called Sunny Lee, who was written off in under a year, rather then to simply acknowledge that Asian migrants have been part of suburban Australian life for quite some time. Are these then the only roles that are open to us – to be simply absent, or the stereotype or the enemy?

Earlier this month, Tomorrow When the War Began became the highest grossing Australian film of the year – taking out over $7.7 million at the box office. On one hand this indicates the enduring popularity of Marsden’s magic, but on the other, might also speaks to a willingness to accept and enjoy, without comment, the long-standing fantasy of Aussie battlers against the faceless Other.

 

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