I’ve made two new breakthroughs this week with regards to limiting my scope of research.

The first happened after a meeting with GFS guest artist Myrna Gawryn.

Myrna’s background is in choreography for theatre but her specialty in human movement and expression led her to work with animators from studios such as DreamWorks, LucasFilms and Gobelins.

Myrna’s just one of those awesome people whose name will slot into sentences like ‘When I grow up, I want to be just like (insert name)’

Anyway, the Honours students were given the option of consulting with Myrna about their projects. Given my project was a live-action/ animation documentary I didn’t really think I’d have much to talk about with Myrna.

It turned out she’s a wonderful art therapist and a great sounding off board for any creative project. We ended up chatting for over an hour just on pure concept development. She really got me thinking about what was my motivation for this project. After our consultation, I realised I had major anger and cultural pride issues which could impede on the sympathetic male point of view I wanted to portray, and which would probably lead to disastrous interviews.

The second breakthrough came after a phone meeting with Dr Nicki Saroca, whose work in sociology/ cultural studies focuses on trans-cultural marriages between Philippinas and Australian men.

Nicki gave some practical advice as to how to recruit subjects for my study as well as how to apply for ethical approval with Griffith. She was also convinced that my idea to use animation to explore the ‘The mail order Bride, the chimera’ was a unique perspective that hadn’t been looked into before.

As this was also the view of both my supervisors, this is where I’ve decided to narrow my research.

Refinement of Research Question

Key words:

-Social stigma

- shifting context of the chimera bride

- hybrid animated/ live action filmmaking techniques

Further refinement of question:

How can hybrid animation/ live action filmmaking techniques be used to depict the social stigma of the mail-order bride in contemporary Australian society?

How can hybrid animation/ live action documentary techniques be used to portray the shifting context of the social stigma attached to the term mail order bride?

I’m pleased with where my research is going and feel confident I will begin the practical experimentation side very, very soon!

This week I’ve been working on refining my research area by watching a lot  ( A LOT) of documentaries and reading heaps of reference material. Here are some of my ideas in week two:

Refinement of my research question:

How can the issues surrounding the exploitative practice of mail-order brides be re-contextualized by using a combination of the male perspective and hybrid animation/live action filmmaking processes to create a documentary film?

How can a documentary about mail-order brides written from the male perspective integrate hybrid animation/ live action visual style to expose Australian society as complicit partners in this exploitative practice?

Key areas of focus:

The Male Perspective

Current media portrayal of mail-order brides are usually approached from a victimized female perspective. Portrayal from a female point of view easily gains sympathy from its female audience yet it is not this demographic who are the consumers of the mail order bride trade. Furthermore, the traditional portrayal of Australian male as aggressive, uneducated chauvinists driving this trade sets up a culture of blame which does not inspire action or change amongst the core demographic.

Regardless of whether the aggressive chauvinist archetype is the norm amongst men who participate in this exploitative practice, by researching and presenting the experiences of a range of mixed cultural couples, I will identify positive behaviors and outcomes to model future policies and attitudes of Australian society towards this contentious issue.

Animation in live-action documentary

There is a trend to use animation in hybrid live-action/ animated documentaries to portray an ‘other worldliness’. This may be a fantasy landscape such as Jessica Wu’s ‘In the realms of the unreal’ or as a dysfunctional character that flits between realities in ‘Ryan’ and ‘Grasshopper’.

I will experiment with the aesthetic style to incorporate animated elements in the depiction of the bride. The mail order bride has been described as many things: a sexpot, domestic goddess, queue jumper, social climber and prostitute amongst other stereotypes. To different factions within Australian society, she is an object of derision, pity, predation or anger. The idea that the animated bride is an object which is seen throughout the documentary and can shape-shift to suit the opinions of the interviewees is a constant commentary of the failure to realistically represent this marginalized group.

Updating/ re-contextualising the mail-order bride in contemporary Australian society

In his thesis ‘The representation of Filipino women in Australian film: The case of Mail-order bride’, Larry Marshall argued that the film introduced the characters John and Ruth, two school teachers on rural rotation so that the audience could have a safe vantage point as urban middle class Australians blaming the bride’s mistreatment on the country yokels.

Research needs to be updated to capture the views of a broader cross section of Australian society.

Subjects I’d like to interview include:

Policy makers

Advocacy groups

White Australian males

White Australian females

Asian Australian males and females – raises the issue of cultural pride?

Business owners of online matchmaking websites – raises the issue of ethical responsibility?

In a way, this documentary is less about the experience of the mail order bride and more about how the mail order bride as an object exposes Australian society as complicit partners in an exploitative practice that is anti-feminist, classist and racist.

I’ve been intending to return to uni to complete an Honours research project for the past couple of years but work commitments always got in the way. As enrolment dates for 2012 loomed, I bit the bullet and enrolled.

There’s been a story I’ve been wanting to tell for the past few years – something I’ve observed in my frequent visits to my family in Hong Kong every year. It’s something I’ve always wanted to talk about but avoided because the topic smacked of social injustice and I’ve been notoriously lazy in this area all my life, preferring instead to make monetary donations to organisations willing to put in the hard work.

Here is my initial research proposal for Honours;

INTRODUCTION

The negative portrayal of mail-ordered brides from Asia has a negative impact on the integration of this group into Australian society. There have been many cultural and feminist studies in this area intended for written dissemination but no recent Australian documentaries addressing this practice.

For my honours project, I plan to research and write a documentary exploring how the portrayal of mail-order brides in the media perpetrate a culture of racism, sexism and classism which isolate and can potentially expose this group of migrants to danger.

RESEARCH METHODS

To identify potential interviewees, I’ve been in touch with Dee Hunt, editor of Kasama and head of the Brisbane branch of CPCA (Centre for Philippine Concerns). She has offered to put me in contact with potential subjects.

Potential interviewees include:

-   Young women in the Philippines with the attitude that marrying a white Australian man will improve their economic and social standing

-  New migrants from the Philippines who have arrived because they have married a white Australian –  how did they meet – online matchmaking sites, tourist holidays, family connections (less than 3 years)

- Older Australian- Filipino women who migrated more than three years ago for the purpose of marriage with a white Australian male

-  Australian men who have participated in matchmaking sites with the views of sponsoring a wife from an Asian country

- Australian men who have participated in sex tours

-Australian men  who own some sort of a bar/ club/ lounge in the Philippines which functions as an unofficial brothel to enable other Western men to meet up with Filipino women

- Australian females unconnected with the mail order brides expressing their views on the trade

- Australian males unconnected with the mail order brides expressing their views on the trade

- Representative from SPAN (Solidarity Philippines Australia Network)

- Representative from IWSS (Immigrant Women’s Support Service)

In addition to interviewing people involved in this area, I will also research case studies and recent film/ television/ digital media works to assist in the development of my feature length documentary script.

SIGNIFICANCE OF RESEARCH

As an Asian-Australian filmmaker, I am passionate about telling Asian stories as this cultural group is under-represented in the arts and media. ‘Mail order brides’ may be a minority group in Australia but it is a practice that every Australian has an opinion about, and exposes the unsettling truth that as a society, Australia may still be classist, sexist and racist.

A large volume of resources have already been developed but only for written dissemination.  Given the popularity of television documentaries at present (reflected by both broadcast hours and the level of state, national and private funding available), I believe that a documentary production is the most effective way to tell this Australian story.

REFERENCES

1.       Saroca, N 2002. Hearing the voices of Filipino women: violence, media representation and contested realities. School of Social Sciences, University of Newcastle

2.       Marshall, Larry 1997. “The Representation of Filipino Women in Australian Film: The Case of the ‘Mail Order Bride’”. Master of Arts Degree, School of Arts and Media, Latrobe University, Victoria.

4.       http://cpcabrisbane.org/Kasama/2007/V21n1/IWD2007.htm