Race of invaders hidden in Aussie film
Recently John Marsden appeared on ABC’s Q&A and the subject of the nationality of the invading country was heavily discussed. The ex-Western Australia premier Geoff Gallop claimed that Marsden cannot “escape from the politics” of a “very, very strong racist undercurrent” deep within Australian history towards Asia.
Race of invaders hidden in film based on John Marsden books
THE race of the invading army in the film adaptation of John Marsden’s hit novel, Tomorrow, When The War Began, will not be identified on screen, according to the producers.
The much-anticipated movie, which will begin filming in NSW’s Hunter Valley within weeks, has the potential to spark another Balibo-like clash with Australia’s neighbours.
Marsden admitted on ABC TV’s Q&A on Thursday that he had kept the racial characteristics of the marauding invaders indistinct “because I don’t want people to use the books to justify some kind of racist belief they might hold”.
He said the film’s producers had taken the decision not to identify the army against whom the book’s hero, teenager Ellie Linton, and her friends wage a guerilla war.
“I don’t want to pre-empt the producers and what they plan for the movie,” Marsden said.
“It’s their choice and I have no input to that.”
Former West Australian premier Geoff Gallop, also appearing on Q&A, countered: “I don’t think John can escape from the politics of this.”
Dr Gallop, now a professor of politics at Sydney University, said the issue of race in Marsden’s books “is quite dangerous and evokes the very images in Asia that we don’t want to have in Australia”.
The film’s producer, Andrew Mason, said the Tomorrow series of books allowed Ellie’s enemy to remain ambiguous.
“We’re happy to confirm we are not identifying the invading army in the film,” he said.
The stakes in this movie are higher than usual for an Australian film. The Tomorrow series is the closest thing this country has to a Harry Potter series, with sales running well beyond a million. The seven books have also sold internationally and have proved so popular that a number of fan trailers, in which fans create their own clips for an imaginary film, emerged on YouTube. Fans also created an online petition to take to US studios to prompt the financing of a film.
The enemy in the Tomorrow series is widely seen as Asian, and Marsden’s tribute in the latest book, The Other Side of Dawn, to the people of Tibet, East Timor and West Papua suggests his antipathy towards the Chinese or the Indonesians.
In the books, Japan, Papua New Guinea, India, the US and New Zealand (where the teenagers seek refuge) are viewed as allies. The enemy has a population many times that of Australia, is led by a military dictatorship and speaks with a guttural, unrecognisable language.
Any hint or depiction of an Indonesian or Chinese enemy is likely to exacerbate tensions.
The Chinese government protested vehemently at the Melbourne International Film Festival screening of The 10 Conditions of Love, about Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, and Indonesia protested about this week’s decision by the Australian Federal Police to investigate the killing of five Australia-based journalists in East Timor in 1975, as depicted in Balibo.
Source – The Australian
The invading army was never identified in the series and John Marsden went to great lengths within the Tomorrow series to specifically rule out several countries as being the invaders. Richard Simpson explores the nationality of the invading country on his website.
Who they are not:
- New Zealand (as they fight on our side)
- Papua New Guinea (as the fight on our side)
- The United States of America (as they supply us with equipment)
- Japan (as they supply us with equipment)
- India (as they try and broker a peace deal)
Richard Simpson further explores the characteristics of the invading country specifically mentioned within the Tomorrow series further on his website, including the question of whether an invasion of Australia is even possible. Richard has built a fantastic website with very in depth information about the Tomorrow series. Make sure you check it out!
An editorial was also written about Geoff Gallop’s claims:
Yesterday once more
Spare us from a return to politically correct censorship
TO a generation of teenage readers, and many of their parents, John Marsden’s classic novel Tomorrow, When The War Began and its sequels are gripping, inspirational stories. The books, now being made into a film, tell of a group of teenagers’ courage under pressure as they resist an army that has invaded Australia to “reduce imbalances within the region”.
But former West Australian premier Geoff Gallop sees darker, political undertones in Marsden’s work that evoke “the very images in Asia that we don’t want to have in Australia”. His criticisms, made directly to Marsden on the ABC’s Q&A program on Thursday, are a depressing return to the stultifying world of political correctness that we hoped was behind us.
Mr Gallop claims that Marsden cannot “escape from the politics” of a “very, very strong racist undercurrent” deep within Australian history towards Asia. Citing “Western imperialism and colonialism defined by race” he suggested “bringing race into the question of … the invasion of Australia is quite dangerous”.
In fact, the Tomorrow novels, with strong characters and fast-moving plots, do not identify the invading army. Nor are they racist. In a nation that grew up and gained confidence during the vigorous debates of the culture wars, Mr Gallop’s views remind us of the arid arguments that shut down debate for a decade or more and fostered resentment among those who don’t share such arrogant assumptions. While it would be instructive to see Mr Gallop’s approved abridged version of Marsden’s novels, we doubt if they’d sell.
Source – The Australian
Well! The aim of these movies and books is not to show who is “evil” within our world, but to show that teenagers can be brave, loyal, honest and intelligent and not slobs (as said by Marsden in his interview with Q&A)
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Tanz replies:
November 15th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Definately, i couldn’t agree more with you but i pictured them more Russian looking!!!
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I think people should just get over it
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WazzuMan replies:
September 18th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Agreed. What’s the point of showing them in the first place anyway.
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I really want the film to identify the enemy as Chinese/Indonesians just to create controversary.
I’m not racist (seriously!) I’m just over people being so politically correct all the time.
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I think identifying the enemy as any country in particular would create very unnecessary controversy.
It’s impossible to point the finger at any country as it is, even though some may realistically be more likely than others, because it is right at the ‘impossible’ end of the scale anyway. There really is no country that has the needed resources to pull off such an invasion.
If a country was labelled as the invaders, people can start picking holes in the plot. If the country is left as a fictional one, then there is much more room for a good story.
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Andrew replies:
September 14th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Dear Nick, countries do have capacity if they want, one nation already occupies 5% of the Australia continent mining Papuan gold and copper.
But the books are drama about human potential, not historical or political comment.
Just like Samuel Youd’s Tripods, the story is located where the author & audience can relate to; there is no need to know where the fantasy invaders come from.
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Nick replies:
September 14th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
I don’t know about that. Which country is it? Are they here illegally?
Which country do you think has the capacity to invade Australia on such a scale as the invasion written about in the Tomorrow series?
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daniel replies:
October 5th, 2009 at 11:06 am
to Nick
i know of at least two countries with the capacity to invade Australia in this scale and they would be North Korea as where 1 in 6 people are in the army airforce or navy and they have a total population of 23,479,088 (July 2008 est.)divide that by 6 and you have an army of 3,913,181 which would easily be able to invade australia espically when in the first book it clearly states that Australia is not really expecting it and not ready for it due to commeration day. the actual standings of the north korean army are as standing:
The Reserve Military Training Unit consist of approximately 1.7 million persons (men 17-45 and unmarried women 17-30) who are not either in active duty or important rear area personnel. They are mobilized under supervision of provincial military units, for a total of forty days’ training out of the year.
* The Worker-Peasant Militia is a combination of older men aged 45-60, along with men ages 17-45 and unmarried women ages 17-30 who are not included in Reserve Military Training Unit. They train for a total of thirty days out of the year. Their current numbers stand at 4.1 million.
* The Young Red Guards consist of 1.2 million male and female Higher Middle (High) School students aged 14-16. They are subject to a mandatory four-hour drill session every Saturday and a total of 160 hours of on-campus drills annually. A total of 450 hours of off-campus training is also mandatory.
another very likely country that it could be is of course China. and these are their millaraty thingies:
it is estimated at about 7.5 Million troops,18,000 tanks and 8 AK47s. Never underestimate the power of stupid! From all the various sources (non classified) if they went to war, on day one they’d have 2.7 million in all services. By D+30 they’d decide how many of their 30 million reserves they want to activate. If I remember my history correctly, the chinese have been stockpiling weapons since WW2. When they funneled weapons to Vietnam from Russia, they kept a third. So the militia divisions raised would have an assorted collection of weapons from the last 40 years with a very few modern weapons. The chinese do have something like 350 submarines, 6 of which are hard to find with modern technology. They have destroyers and frigates, 100’s of missile boats, and an odd selection of non-mission specific naval vessels which are defenseless. Chinese heavy industry, power generation, and war making capabilities are centrally concentrated in 1960’s era facilities (result of their russian cousins teaching them communism) which are easily eliminated. But the country is so large you could expend all 22000 nukes and they would still have 600 million people. If is hasn’t escaped people’s notice, every country in the world has a chinese community deeply entrenched in the R&D community. The USA couldn’t get ahead without it’s core group of chinese scientists. The chinese could put up 18,000 jet planes and flood out/taiwans defenses. If they were smart (who says they’re not), they have stockpiled 10,000 tactical missiles to saturate our defenses at sea and on land. But why? They are a patient culture and can wait another 1000 years for the US, Russia, France, UK, and others to sell them all the weapons and technology they’d need. With 4 trillion in US securities, they could destroy our economy in a day. India has fought them three times and vietnam once in the last 20-30 years and all have lost. India lost over 8000 soldiers. Vietnam 1500 and retreated. It didn’t matter to the chinese how many soldiers they lost. Those tactics haven’t changed in the chinese army. Besides some specialty regiments, the mass of chinese soldiers are still fighting the 1950’s war.
of course their is also Indonesia that could pull it off plus the are so extremely close to Australia to do it
hope this helps you out Nick
marley replies:
September 30th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
good point. i totally agree
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The invading nation issue is a mountain being made out of a mole hill, it is a work of fiction, how many movies still depict germans or russians as ‘bad guys’. same with middle eastern people used as terrorists in shows like 24, The Unit etc. that is not saying that germans, russians and middle eastern people are the enemy, it is just fiction, regardless of past or current real life events.
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First of all I loved the series. I managed to read one of the books within 12 hours one day. Secondly, seeing as though its already a fictional story, if anyone knows anything about Australian army training (Full time or Reservist), the fictional enemy that they train to fight against are called the ‘Missourians’. Funnily enough, the ‘Missourians’ are located to the north Of Australia and whose equipment is quite similar to that of the Chinese/Russian Armed Forces. So maybe to avoid such a political storm by speculating over the invaders, the ‘Missourians’ should be the fictional force which invades Australia!
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marley replies:
September 30th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
i agree with you too.
exept about the 12 hours part- took me 5… but it was at 3 in the morning with a lot of coffee.
you know what; i agree with everybody full stop.
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sme asain country are the invaders thers no other country that fits!?
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The invaders OUGHT to be portrayed, Otherwise this amorphous mass attacking us fould range from the Borg, cylons to Airport Hare Krishna activists,.. not that theres anything wrong with that. I mean to say this mass could then be co opted by ANYONE saying “look how racist the Australians are that’s US they are portraying there!”
If a deinitive invader is made then we risk offending only one nation, not the entirety of Asia.
It should be China as only they have the weight of numbers and give incentive for the US/Japan/India/EU to stay on the sidelines as opposed to being in the trenches with us. And where is the UK in all this??? the Queen or King Charles III, would they stand idly by while a commonwealth member gets overrun?
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Someone Else replies:
November 17th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Well, apart from historical precedence (the UK *and* the US originally had a policy of ignoring the situation in the pacific during WWII), I’m pretty sure that the UK doesn’t have any defence treaties with us, meaning that they’re probably not obliged to help us in any way, shape or form.
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doogyboy replies:
November 17th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
why china? your reasons for this are wrong. we have treaties with britain etc for defence. i think that its not known who they are is good,
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I reckon that it’s not that big a deal, maybe they should make the ‘enemy’ all obvious different races and ethnicities so that it doesn’t target just one!
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Its not a big deal really they should just not have a specific race, just heaps so it doesn’t target just one!
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mr gallop should get over himself really pc is going too far these days
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