Baden Eunson

Gruen 9 Dec 2020 panel lamented the lack of diversity in casting of Australia ads. I would like to offer a counter-intuitive perspective: When you look at the ethnic breakdown of the Australian population https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-insider/from-the-founder/australia-s-big-demographic-shifts/ , you will see that ethnic groups featuring fairly heavily in ads- Africans, Indians, Asians, Pacific Islanders- in fact as sub-groups only occur in the 1.3%- 5% range. In other words, there is a case for their being too much diversity in the ads. Perhaps casting directors don't want to appear to be racist, and therefore overcompensate, but increasingly television land looks very little like the main street. I appreciate the impossibility of casting fractions of people in a 2-shot or a group shot or montage shots, but I think creative directors should be able to justify a more accurate ethnicity palate by referring to stats such as these, rather than portray us as a hyper-cultural, rather than a multicultural society. It's fiction, not fact (not to mention the dearth of indigenous faces on the screen). Parse the visual grammar more tightly, please.