PORTRAITS AND POLITICS IN STATELESS

Stateless is a gritty Australian Drama recently released on Netflix. Centred around the Barton Immigration Detention Centre, it’s a six-part saunter through a portrait gallery: the hopeless, the hapless and the helpless.

While Barton is fictional, the characters feel very real, with many based on real-life stories. The characters we meet include ‘Eva Hoffman’ – an Australian citizen who was wrongfully bounced into Barton for almost a year – a fictional retelling of a real life story.

The story behind the story.

Stateless is a story well-told. Well shot, well acted and well worth the watch. But the story behind the story was its reviews. Being someone who loves to see what the people think on IMDB, I looked it up. Average rating 7.5 from almost 3,000 opinions.

But here’s the thing, people either loved it, or hated it. With passion. Usually you get some ‘fanboy’ 10s and some haters. But Stateless was 1s and 10s, consistently. Digging a little deeper, it had nothing to do with the show: 

“Incredible performances and heart breaking story,” says one reviewer. “Left wing propaganda about refugees…” says another. And as I read through the polarising reviews, the politics became clear. If I tend to lean liberal, I loved the show. If I’m generally more conservative, I hated it. People’s responses to the story were directly aligned with their politics. 

Making things better means re-thinking our thoughts.

This all got me thinking. How do we make stuff better, when people have already made up their minds? It’s an idea explored by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind. He draws on 25 years studying moral psychology to conclude that most people don’t problem solve by listening to reason, they just look for any evidence to back up their gut. 

But you don’t need to read pointy-head books to see how that works. Just dip into your Facebook or Twitter and watch outrage play as sport in the name of social change. It’s happening everywhere. And moving us nowhere. 

So as we head into our election, here’s a challenge. Will you listen with an open mind, weigh up your options and make the best decision for you? Or will you vote how you’ve always voted because that’s what you’ve always done?

I reckon an open mind is the better way to go. And maybe if more people had watched Stateless with an open mind, they could have looked past the politics to enjoy the stories, characters and amazing cinematography, as much as I did.

That’s what I reckon, what do you think?