Domesticating refugees: the border-crossing other in Marking Time

Abstract

John Doyle's mini-series Marking Time, which screened on the ABC in 2003, tells the story of a white Australian boy, Hal, who falls in love with an Afghan refugee girl, Randa. The mini-series was publicized as a narrative about Australian tolerance and multiculturalism, set against the backdrop of events from 2001 such as the Tampa incident. But we can read it as a fantasy of white multiculturalism in which white Australians are central to the nation and must order multiculturalism by facilitating the entry of non-white migrants into the nation. Within this fantasy, Hal and Randa's relationship functions as an idealized interaction between the white, male national subject and the peripheral figure of the female, non-white refugee. The non-white woman's body comes to symbolize the space where the white nation may be reproduced under the control of white men. Appearing in Australian culture at a watershed moment when the acceptability of even conservative white multiculturalism was being questioned, Marking Time's fantasy of the appropriation of the non-white woman highlights the precarious status of women (white and non-white) within the nation, and the need to reconceptualize belonging and borders.