Released globally on Netflix this week after being aired on Australian television (ABC) earlier this year, the six-part series called Stateless raises an important issue that we rarely see on our screens – that of claimants asylum. And yet, this important topic seems to be secondary to the main scenario, which focuses on how a “white girl” accidentally ends up in a detention center as a refugee.
Executive producer Cate Blanchett and writer Elise McCredie are old school friends and when asked how they were inspired to stateless they said they were shocked to hear the story of a “white girl” who ended up in the Baxter Detention Center in South Australia after several stays in correctional facilities.
The “white girl” is Cornelia Rau – an Australian citizen of German descent. Due to mental health and other issues, Rau ended up in the Baxter Detention Center by mistake. Blanchett and McCredie said they were so fascinated with Rau’s story that they used it as the central story – intertwined with three other storylines – and that’s how they came up with a television drama, Stateless.
But that begs the question – can’t a story of refugees and asylum seekers justify itself?
Do we really need to sensationalize this important subject with a more “interesting” story about how a “white girl” somehow ends up in a detention center?
It seems so. By far the main character of the first episode of Stateless is Sofie (played by Yvonne Strahovski from The tale of the servant). We are given all the details about Sofie’s background, including her rather severe German family, who lives in Sydney, Australia.
Sofie’s story
Sofie works as a stewardess and after a heartbreaking family Christmas dinner where she is put up with a potential partner, she escapes through her parents’ bathroom window (a scene that some critics have cited as “improbable”) and soon after, we see Sofie dancing in a fascinated state during a meeting of a group called GOPA.
Sofie is involved with GOPA and as other commentators have written, this part of the story is not “completely convincing” and seems “exaggerated”. GOPA is portrayed as a cult with Cate Blanchett and Dominic West playing the two leaders, Pat and Gordon.
Blanchett and West portray a grotesque pair of unwanted “cult leaders”, but inexplicably, Sofie finds himself drawn to their influence.
Of course, things get worse and she becomes even more traumatized during her stay at GOPA. When she leaves, we see her bathe, and soon after, she shows up in the queue to enter a detention center. How is it possible that we ask?
Is that how it happened?
The creators of Stateless place this disclaimer at the start of the first episode: Although inspired by true stories, the events and the characters represented were created for a dramatic effect.
But the facts of what happened are available. Cornelia Rau was involved in a “cult” at the age of 32. Six years later, when Rau was 38, she was found in the Baxter Detention Center in South Australia.
An investigation into this matter took place in 2005, called The Palmer Inquiry, and the report that followed made no reference to “worship”. Instead, the report looked at all of the checks and balances that were not followed, allowing the situation to arise.
But for the drama, these elements of truth are not shown in Stateless and that makes the whole series a dramatic beat with no resemblance to what were actually real life events.
is Stateless Worth watching?
There are two other intrigues in the first episode of Stateless and maybe that’s where the real stories reside. We meet the Afghan family who are trying to flee Afghanistan in order to provide a better life for their two daughters. The father of this close family, Ameer, is played by the Australian actor Fayssal Bazzi and we see him constantly fighting to ensure the safety of his family.
The other affair story features a young local family man named Cam (played by Jai Courtney of The Suicide Squad fame). His friends tell him that he should get out of his dead end job as a boilermaker and become a detention center guard. In the end, he follows their advice and we can see that there is now much more in store for him.
There is another scenario that we do not see in the first episode but which is part of the second episode. This is where we introduce our golden daughter, Asher Keddie, when she arrives to play Clare – sent to clean up the public relations mess that takes place in the detention center when it becomes clear that a “white girl” like that Sofie, shouldn’t be there.
So – is it worth watching?
We’ve talked a lot about how Stateless is beautifully shot and features a star cast. It’s great to see the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) invest in dramatic production with all the costs involved. And while the first episode disappointingly focuses on Sofie’s sensational personal story, the other scenarios finally show more perspective on what it is like to be sent to a detention center or to work in a center. detention – prospects we hadn’t known much before.
Sufficient to keep Stateless we’ll see. A lot of critics have written about the “disturbing white packaging” that we see in Stateless. As a review in Mashable summarizes, written by Alison Foreman and titled: The overwhelming whiteness of Netflix’s “stateless people” undermines its good intentions:
“The series has good intentions, but its narrative proportion is contrary to its serious message. The stateless people assumed that his audience needed white characters to care, reinforcing the disturbing feeling of Rau’s experience – that white people will always be the first to be taken into account in a crisis. “
And another criticism of the Detroit News by Tom Long states:
A series on the terrible way the refugee system is told through the eyes of white people is just a little weird, especially since tens of thousands of people around the world are parading calling for racial equality. I mean, yeesh….
The system is a mess, no doubt, totally awful, unfair and brutal. And “stateless” addresses this front. It would have just been nice to think more about those who are mistreated than about the whites who cage them. Again, yeesh.
So while this is a step forward to seeing a story about refugees that is finally adorning our screens, there are obviously many more steps that we need to take before covering this problem in the way it deserves.
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