Last year, two documentaries regarding the Adam Goodes booing fiasco were released mere weeks apart: Shark Island Productions’ The Final Quarter and Madman Films’ The Australian Dream, anchored by Stan Grant. These two films took different tacts reflecting on this public example of racialised harassment and how it manifested using the power of retrospect. While The Final Quarter relied entirely on archival footage to construct the narrative, The Australian Dream primarily relied upon interviews and talking heads to set the scene.
Both have now aired on Australian television, leading to heightened discussion on racism and the role it plays within the sporting world. Given the topic and timing of both of the films, I couldn’t help but compare the two films as an Aboriginal viewer who spends a lot of time dissecting Australia’s racism in her own analysis. As I watched both of them, my reaction to each was markedly different.
The Australian Dream, through its use of interviews, set the scene with regards to Goodes’ backstory. It gave viewers an insight into how Goodes, a man of humble beginnings, came to be one of the greatest players on the ground. It is inspirational both to watch Goodes’ skills grow but also to see him come into his own identity as an Aboriginal man.
The film also features interviews from past players such as Nicky Winmar and Gilbert McAdam, giving some insight into how racism has manifested on the ground over the years. This was valuable as it showed the 'it’s just because Goodes is a flog; other Aboriginal players didn’t face racism' argument for the complete fallacy it was. These interviews were then interspersed with other talking heads such as family members, conservative commentators and fellow Indigenous sports people.
Rather than gaining insight, however, I found myself perturbed by the interviews. A lot of my reaction has to do with who Stan Grant chose to interview for the film and just how entry level some of the discussion around racism was. It was correctly pointed out to me on social media that as an Aboriginal woman with demonstrated progressive politics, I was not the film’s intended audience, rather it was made to appeal to those who aren’t across the Black history of this country, who don’t find their humanity questioned on a daily basis, and who don’t understand that collectively acting against an Aboriginal man because he dares to not put up with racial slurs is indeed vilification.
That being said though, I don’t think understandings of racism are gained by listening to Andrew Bolt reframe his countless columns demonising Goodes so they look perfectly reasonable. I don’t believe giving Eddie McGuire another opportunity to state that his racist comment about King Kong was a 'mistake' assists. I wondered why these white men, who still have strong media careers long after Goodes retired from AFL, got so much airtime yet the Aboriginal people who documented this at the time, or the allies who took a stand on the ground, hardly got space.
'Seeing an Aboriginal man like Goodes treated that way was deeply confronting. I had always seen Goodes as the role model type who, through his focus on collaboration and individual achievement was less threatening to the mainstream than our other activists.'
Perhaps that’s why I personally found The Final Quarter the more powerful documentary. Through its use of archival footage, it was able to show how this saga was constructed, brick-by-brick, in a way that was impossible to deny. We saw how the voices trying to highlight racism were consistently drowned out by those insisting it was not. From the commentators misrepresenting Goodes’ statement after he was called an 'ape', to them cowering in a corner over a war dance, to them lying about him 'staging for free kicks' — they were rabid and constant. And how an unthinking public absorbed, then projected this.
The Final Quarter also highlighted the many failures to identify and deal with racism as it was playing out on the field. Far from individuals failing to identify that their choice to boo might, in fact, have racist tones, I was left wondering why it was that the AFL consistently failed to do something or even name it. I wondered why the AFL Players Association didn’t take measures to ensure their members were working in a safe environment. The film showed me just how hard the mainstream media works to reinforce the status quo and promote those voices who ensure Aboriginal people don’t get too uppity. Racism is so much more than calling someone bad names, it’s the structures which work together to exclude Aboriginal people from society.
One of my own headlines from an article I wrote responding to this vilification was featured in The Final Quarter and seeing it again, in the context of both these films, caused me to reflect on what had driven me to write that piece in the first place. I remember when I wrote it, I was shocked at how bad things had gotten because only a couple of years prior, I felt that the AFL had done a lot more to counteract racism than they had sexism, and I wrote as such.
Seeing an Aboriginal man like Goodes treated that way was deeply confronting. I had always seen Goodes as the role model type who, through his focus on collaboration and individual achievement was less threatening to the mainstream than our other activists. Goodes, for example, was promoting the government’s Recognise campaign at a time other Indigenous activists were rejecting this in favour of treaties and recognition of Indigenous sovereignty.
Goodes did everything right by the mainstream. He educated and called for calm when he was racially vilified. He played on when he was being booed and kept holding his head high. Yet Goodes was still treated this way. If an Aboriginal man who is this respectable, this dedicated and this much of a role model can be vilified this badly, what chance do other Aboriginal people who reside more on the margins of mainstream society have?
Let’s hope the next chapter documented is one of acceptance and an Australia actually working to ensure this never happens again. It’s a nice dream.
Celeste Liddle is a trade unionist, a freelance opinion writer and social commentator. She blogs at Rantings of an Aboriginal Feminist.
Main image: Adam Goodes farewelling crowd at the SCG (Matt King/Getty Images)