Where’s Our ‘Beef’?

Beef, the dazzling new A24 series centring on the existential grief of two deeply pissed off Asian-Americans, is being hailed as some of the best TV of all time. Meanwhile, Screen Australia’s freshly dropped report reveals that most minorities, including Asian-Australians, are still underrepresented on TV. 

I know. You’re tired of this conversation. We’re all tired. And the only way to make it stop is for Australian TV to catch the hell up, because much like Beef‘s warring protagonists, I’ve had enough.

Beef, a dark comedy which springs from a flashpoint of road rage between Danny (Steven Yeun) and Amy (Ali Wong) is just the latest offering in what many are hailing a golden age of Asian-led TV, especially after the huge success of Everything Everywhere All At Once at this year’s Oscars.

There’s a lot that’s great about Beef, but what I love personally is that it’s a story that could technically be about two white people, but isn’t. The show’s not called Hey, Would You Look At These Asians — but nevertheless centres on characters with Asian heritage, whether it’s Korean, Chinese, Japanese or Filipino. That is, the point of the show isn’t that its characters are Asian, but their ethnicity still impresses upon their lives.

That’s basically what being a racialised person feels like, too. My heritage, for example, isn’t all encompassing of who I am, which is why acquaintances who swiftly ask about my “background” will usually be shown the wallpaper on my phone. It’s incidental to who I am, but there are moments — say, for example, Amy having to put up with shop assistant Mia (Mia Safaino) inexplicably speaking to her in Japanese, or when your success is contingent on gracefully dodging a white lady’s microaggressions — when it consumes you to your core.

Of course, I don’t want to disregard the Australian TV that has existed in this space, including The Family Law and Homecoming Queens; not to mention the incredible casts of New Gold Mountain, Heartbreak High, and Wakefield. And Screen Australia does report that we’re heading in the right direction. Main characters with non-European heritage have more than doubled since the last report, and in huge news, the representation of First Nations people is at an all time high.

At the same time, how much time does this place want for its progress? None of this is happening fast enough, especially considering that people of Asian descent make up a much larger slice of Australia’s population than the US. According to the 2021 census, people of Asian descent make up about 17 percent of the population here, but they’re only about seven percent of the overall population in the US.

Obviously, it’s not completely fair to compare the situation in Australia to what’s happening in the US, which has a much larger population, and is home to the biggest production companies in the world. But the fact is that we’ve seen a lot of white stories — Neighbours, Rake, The Secret Life Of Us, Offspring. There’s no reason why these shows couldn’t have featured Asian-Australians, it’s just that an active decision was made to do otherwise.

Beef is just one example of what we could do with a little more imagination, a little less nostalgia for a bygone Anglo-Celtic Australia, and a little more verve. All it takes is the choice to make a story about white people about other people instead.

Image Credit: Beef, Netflix

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