By Lena B
The films The Combination and The Combination Redemption offer a unique look into the perceptive of both Anglo and Lebanese Australians living in a increasingly intolerant, unhospitable, atmosphere pushing them to breaking point, demonstrating what happens with two different cultures and people attempt to co exist. Setting the scene in Western Sydney, which opens with Lebanese, Turkish, Asian and Anglo youths colliding with one another within school grounds, followed by the dodgy gangs’ the main characters affiliation to illicit criminal activity and the dangers it poses.
For example, two of the main dominant roles of Charlie and George are focused on George released from jail, being the protective older brother type, who somewhat unsympathetically expects Charlie, his impressionable younger brother to follow suit of his revival to clean society. While Charlie, wanting to set his own image to his peers, ends up being killed for not delivering money for drugs he failed to deliver to his gang’s boss. All the while both men having to deal with the rising tension of conflict daily in the streets.
This demonstrates a negative, uneasily stereotype to the Lebanese in Australia, in the role of a ‘typical token ethnic‘ under the guise of attempting sympathy, while showing the instability of attempting peaceful multiculturalism. It’s difficult to watch, along with the uneasily revival of a point in history that should never be repeated. It is not relevant to why the the riots started in reality and yet seemed to be the main focus of the story, rather than the story itself and how people need to come together to prevent tragedies like this happening again.
To make matters unnecessarily worse, it’s sequel The Combination Redemption did the opposite, focusing on mainly the Anglo Australians increasing distain against various non white ethnicities; mostly Native Australians and blacks, and how ”wog bashing” was their main motivation. Further salt was rubbed into the wounds, by casting in my opinion an obvious light skinned, blue eyed Ashkenazi actor with the surname Wiese ( Wiese or Weiss ( a surname that tends to be of Ashkenazi origin https://www.avotaynu.com/books/DJSGNames.htm ) to be a Anglo Australian Nazi, which of course had a main hatred for the Lebanese. The deliberate casting of him, along with darker skinned Lebanese actors playing the role of criminals, made what happened in the Cronulla riots seem irrelevant.
Failure to mention the riots apart from a handful of scenes in both films, along with the sloppiness not mentioning the other ethnicities who were caught up in the violence, make these films seem unsympathetic cash cows, willing to make a situation that should of been forgotten about in 2005 unnecessarily brought up. Couldn’t they at least shown the Lebanese male actors in a positive light, or perhaps mention the thousands of Anglos who didn’t take interest in racially motivated violence as well? Why was there a need for George to have a English girlfriend while her parents’ attitude towards him being the only attempt where racism trying to be cured?
Ultimately both films only create negative drama, they certainly won’t cure peace on earth and derive from a typical Hollywoodesque look at race related issues. It won’t be the first or last film that tries to tackle this subject, but at least films like GO or American History X have decent and positive story lines as conclusions. This should be a hard miss for anyone interested in blatant, low budget catastrophises.
