‘Kebab Kings’ May Be Less Fraught Than ‘Struggle Street’, But Can Drunk People Consent To Be Filmed?

When judged by the trailer, Kebab Kings looks as if it would be a fun watch; it promises all the jollity of watching drunks at play, without the fear that they’d turn towards you to enquire, “What the fuck are you looking at?”

The actual show, which debuted last night on SBS, essentially lived up to the promise of the trailer. In fact, the first three minutes was simply the trailer played again.

The voiceover (Kenny’s Shane Jacobson) describes the program, for which cameras were installed in two busy kebab shops, with words like ‘culture’ and ‘values’ and ‘diverse’ and ‘melting pot’, but the accompanying video footage could be better described with words like ‘drunk yobbos punching on’, ‘inventive ways to be cruel about a meal’ and ‘sad woman in a headscarf’.

Much like a kebab store itself, the first episode — which aired last night — imbued me with a nagging sense that we’ve been here before, and that it didn’t end well.

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SBS’ Doco Problem

To talk about Kebab Kings, you have to talk about Struggle Street. Each documentary series consists of three episodes fifty minutes in length, aired on SBS at 8:30pm on Wednesdays. Both take for their subject matter Australians at their most vulnerable (in the first case, poor; in this case, shit-faced). Both feature voiceover commentary by a true blue, fair dinkum’, workin’ class Aussie bloke, and both have their problems.

Struggle Street sparked a furious backlash. Several people featured in the documentary protested that they had been unfairly portrayed (if not in the series, then at least in the trailer), the mayor of Blacktown demanded what he termed “poverty porn” be taken off air, and garbage men from Mt. Druitt formed a blockade with their trucks around SBS studios in protest.

In spite of all this (or perhaps because of it), the show was a massive ratings success, and the most watched documentary in SBS’ history. Furthermore, it did what good television is supposed to do: it got people talking. There was a whole Q&A episode about it. Members of Parliament feigned outrage. It inspired a gargantuan outpouring of opinion pieces, four of which appeared on this website. It briefly sparked a national conversation about urban poverty, an important and often overlooked issue. Granted, it was a national conversation that has long since fizzled out, but at least it felt important at the time.

Kebab Kings seems unlikely to ignite that kind of backlash, or attract that level of commercial success. There have been no protests, and the show attracted fewer than half the number of the viewers Struggle Street enjoyed. The Turkish and Indian people who run the shops are treated kindly by the show. They work long hours, seem to all abstain from drink, and love each other, their customers and their businesses.

The divisiveness and appeal of Struggle Street was the way it scrutinised (some would say sneered at) how the subjects’ lives and opinions differed from those of mainstream bourgeoisie Australia. Depending on how you look at it, it was either an unflinching look at how things ‘really are’, or A Current Affair-style sensationalism.

Kebab Kings could easily have played the same angle with the kebab shop owners, but chooses a less controversial course. When one devoutly Islamic kebab technician begins to talk about how he believes that insisting on modest dress “gives a woman dignity”, it would be easy to push a little harder in this direction and ask him, say, what he thinks ‘immodest’ dress would look like, or whether contemporary Western female apparel actually robs a woman of her dignity.

Instead, he’s portrayed as a nice, if lonely, man, and that’s that.

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A Question Of Consent

Patrons of the kebab shops have a harder time of it. They’re forever talking vulgarly about sex, or fighting each other, or grabbing at their own genitals, and in this regard Kebab Kings is weighed down by some of the same ethical baggage as its problematic predecessor. I don’t just mean the kind of baggage inherent in dragging a once-noble broadcaster towards the lowest common denominator of sensational documentary filmmaking (remember the high-minded good old days when SBS stood for ‘soccer before sex’?), but the more tangible concern of how these shows are treating their subjects.

Last time around, SBS’s head of content Helen Kellie argued that, “Struggle Street is a fair and accurate portrayal of events that occurred during filming…further, we believe the series fairly reflects the program description contained in participant release forms.”

But that ignores several pretty uncomfortable questions. Is a heroin addict in a fit state to sign a release form about his television appearance? Pursuant to Kebab Kings, is it reasonable to assume that somebody eight beers deep has the wherewithal to read an A4 piece of paper in a shop window warning them that they’re on telly?

As a spokesperson for SBS explained to Junkee, it’s legal to film in a public space without seeking formal permission. “Most of the filming was recorded in very public spaces, in the kebab shops and on public streets, where there is generally no expectation of privacy,” she told us. She also emphasised that the fixed cameras were highly visible, and the microphones were not concealed. “Where possible, some customers were approached and told about the filming, and many provided verbal consent.”

Verbal consent from a person whose brain is impaired by alcohol? That should be taken with a grain of salt, too.

With Kebab Kings, the production company is taking advantage of the drunk and unsuspecting for their own gain; even if those people enthusiastically consented at the time, it’s ethically pretty yucky. Those moments may be perversely fun to watch, but that doesn’t make it good TV.

In closing I’d just like to emphasise that, as a South Australian, it was torture to repeatedly write the word ‘kebab’ in this article. Call it a yiros, you barbarians.

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Kebab Kings airs Wednesdays 8:30pm on SBS.

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James McCann is a stand-up comedian and writer.