Like most people I know I've been watching Go Back To Where You Came From on SBS. I have a tremendous problem with Raquel. Like Geoff Lemon said she's a 'bandsaw-voiced tracksuit mannequin whose casual racism and innate sense of privilege has made her the anti-matter star of the show'. Geoff raises some interesting points in his post but I'd like to depart from his reasoned and informed opinion and go my own way, just for a minute.
Raquel was crying because she was not able to bring herself to use the toilets in the refugee camp. I sympathise with her plight, as a woman who never mastered the art of squatting to wee without weeing on my shoes, down my legs or on my pushed down trousers I get why she was upset. What I don't understand is how she failed to understand that weeing in those circumstances might be upsetting for other people as well as for her. If there is a personal yet universal act it is surely the act of doing a wee. Everybody wees.
It seems to me there must be a malfunction with Raquel's humanity. I admire her sense of self, her sure as shit everyone else can get fucked attitude, but I don't understand how it hasn't been dented by her experiences. It seems to me that she has wound her sheltered suburban lifestyle around herself tighter than a flak jacket.
I was waiting for her to arrive at a compassionate thought but I've given up on that now. I don't have a point, not yet. Unlike Raquel I'm trying as hard as I can to be compassionate, to attempt an understanding of her point of view and how she might have arrived there.
Raquel was crying because she was not able to bring herself to use the toilets in the refugee camp. I sympathise with her plight, as a woman who never mastered the art of squatting to wee without weeing on my shoes, down my legs or on my pushed down trousers I get why she was upset. What I don't understand is how she failed to understand that weeing in those circumstances might be upsetting for other people as well as for her. If there is a personal yet universal act it is surely the act of doing a wee. Everybody wees.
It seems to me there must be a malfunction with Raquel's humanity. I admire her sense of self, her sure as shit everyone else can get fucked attitude, but I don't understand how it hasn't been dented by her experiences. It seems to me that she has wound her sheltered suburban lifestyle around herself tighter than a flak jacket.
I was waiting for her to arrive at a compassionate thought but I've given up on that now. I don't have a point, not yet. Unlike Raquel I'm trying as hard as I can to be compassionate, to attempt an understanding of her point of view and how she might have arrived there.
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