Apr-Jul: I'll be in the South Pacific.
“The Unit” botches portrayal of PNG
Before this week, I’d never seen an episode of CBS’s “The Unit,” a show about US special forces operatives and their families. But last night, I happened to flip past the channel, and something caught my ear. Was that woman speaking … Tok Pisin?
Yes, she was, or something like it. But soon, the local news station cut in to deliver a severe weather bulletin, which (thanks to a slow-moving thunderstorm over Fort Worth) lasted the rest of the show. So today, I watched the episode, “Outsiders,” online.
As the show begins, “Mendi, Papua New Guinea” appears over a shot of rainforest. Are we about to get a glimpse into the world I inhabited for nearly a year? I wish! Almost everything that could be wrong is wrong. From the opening scenes to the bizarre conclusion, the nasty surprises never stop.
First, Mendi is a real town in PNG. It is the capital of Southern Highlands Province, and it’s located in a mountain valley. Now, I haven’t actually been to Mendi, but I’ve been pretty close, and I’ve been to several towns like it. I can tell you that it’s nothing even close to the flat, lowland, crocodile-infested rainforest that “The Unit” portrays.
Sure, PNG has flat lowlands where crocs live, but Mendi is not one of those places.
The first “Papua New Guinean” we meet is a dark-skinned “priestess,” whose features, accent, and very long hair identify her immediately as an African woman or a Caribbean woman of African descent. There is simply no way this woman could be a Melanesian.
Things deteriorate further as she begins to speak what is supposed to be Tok Pisin, and one of the soldiers answers her. Tok Pisin, which I speak and understand, is spoken fairly rapidly and often sounds lively and animated. But the priestess and the other “New Guineans” speak with a slow, idiotic cadence reminiscent of Tonto (”That right, Kimosabe.”) or Tarzan. Some of the pidgin is actually accurate, but it is pronounced strangely throughout, sometimes with accents on the wrong syllables. Other times, though, the actors speak only partial sentences, or they do not say what the subtitles indicate they are saying.
The pidgin spoken by the “elder,” seems to be half pidgin (badly pronounced) and half gibberish. Some Papua New Guineans actually mix pidgin and tok ples (the local language) together in a single sentence, and so I wondered if that’s what the elder is supposed to be doing. The problem with that theory, though, is that the one soldier can understand him perfectly, and there’s no way he’d be able to understand the local language.
In Papua New Guinea, drivers drive on the left side of the road. Cars have their steering wheels on the right, the opposite of cars here in America. But when the two soldiers are driving along a dark road, guess which side the driver is sitting on? Yep, the left. Come on, folks! Thirty seconds of research could have cleared that one up for you.
Oh, and then there’s the kava that the elder and Jackie (a young woman who is also very clearly of African descent, not Melanesian) give to one of the soldiers. Kava is used as a recreational and ceremonial drug in many parts of the Pacific, but PNG is not one of those places. I crisscrossed the country for months and never once encountered it or heard it discussed. If you want to find kava, go to Vanuatu or Polynesia, but forget Mendi.
Irritations aside, it is the central plot that I find most distressing and outrageous. Partway through the show, we find out that the villagers are putting one of the soldiers through a sort of initiation ritual. They poison him, cut him, brand him with a burning stick, and send in a giant (where’d they get a giant??) to beat him up.
Then, they send him into a shack with a painted up woman who seduces him, muttering some nonsense about needing to become one.
I lack words to express how ludicrous and offensive this is. It is true that some Melanesian cultures have initiation rites that include drugs, torture, isolation, mutilation, and sexual acts. These days, though, such practices are much less common or have disappeared completely. Either way, the idea that the people would inflict such things on a stranger who stumbled into their village is beyond absurd. The whole thing appears to have been cooked up to to titillate a salacious and gullible American public.
Were there more things wrong? Yeah. The drums are wrong; the clothes are over the top. But I think you’re getting the idea.
Did they do anything right? Well….
Probably the truest thing this episode portrays is the fear that many Melanesians have of evil spirits. Once, Jackie refers to the missionaries who taught her English, but it is clear that the people of her village put their faith in sorcery, not the Christian God. In fact, they seem totally ignorant of the meaning behind the cross tattooed on one soldier’s breast. The people are afraid of their neighbors, and they are afraid of the spirits. They attempt to control circumstances with herbs, amulets, rituals, and hokey hand-waving ceremonies. Sadly, this gives at least a hint of the spiritual state of many Papua New Guineans, though usually there is some sort of syncretism with (rather than total ignorance of) Christianity.
Papua New Guinea is an amazing place. It is home to millions of people, each with a story to tell. Some would make you laugh, and some would break your heart. There’s enough beauty, drama, kindness, horror, intrigue, grief, and warmth to fill script after script after script.
But whoever wrote this show didn’t care about that. Instead, they served up a hodge-podge of stereotypes, misinformation, and total, complete stupidity. I thought we had moved beyond the days of gibbering South Pacific “natives” as portrayed in the otherwise-hilarious “McHale’s Navy.” Apparently, I was wrong.
CBS, you botched this one bad. Shame on you.
categories papua new guinea, stateside
Comments
Comment from bungee
Time: April 5, 2007, 1:26 am
Unfortunately, I think that’s what Hollywood is all about these days: a hodge-podge of stereotypes, misinformation, and total, complete stupidity. They often have very accurate portrayals of places and events…until you learn about the ACTUAL places and event. It is a sad state of affairs. But it makes good TV right? I guess….
But for the record, I’ve only seen a handful of “The Unit” episodes, but I did like what I saw. Maybe they just mess one up. Or maybe they’re all a bit off. Oh well.
Comment from Sunny
Time: April 5, 2007, 10:24 am
have you seen they way they portray America? That’s not very realistic either. Realistic isn’t necessairly bery entertainting.
Comment from TANK
Time: April 5, 2007, 12:27 pm
I have never even heard of that show. It all looks pretty cheesy to begin with. Why can’t we have war/army/fighting shows anymore like Gomer Pyle, USMC?
Comment from David J. Ringer
Time: April 5, 2007, 2:03 pm
bungee: I guess it depends on how you define “good TV.” My definition would not include this tripe.
Sunny: The trouble is, fiction doesn’t just entertain us, it also teaches us and shifts our opinions, sometimes subtly and sometimes dramatically. Fiction can be “the lie that tells the truth.” Fiction can also be the lie that lies. It can lead us into an unhappy condition called hyperreality, in which we believe that the fiction is actually the truth. I’m not expecting The Unit’s writers to do a documentary on PNG. But because they failed to respect PNG’s people as real people with real cultures and real languages, they did a terrible disservice to Papua New Guineans and to everyone who took one more step into hyperreality after watching that show.
TANK: Shazam!
Comment from Lynn
Time: April 6, 2007, 11:10 am
I don’t think you can be a Christian and a reader of history and still believe things “naturally” get better as time goes on. Stereotypes, prejudice, overdramatism and laziness are HUMAN, not historical. Even C.S. Lewis had a hard time shrugging off “chronological snobbery.”
I’m sorry watching that episode was an ordeal for you, a knower and lover of the truth about PNG. Being a knower and lover of the truth about anything is pretty much a guarantee of grief and pain.
TANK: I also put my stock in ’60s-era sitcoms. Would you believe…
Comment from Corey Adams
Time: April 8, 2007, 10:20 pm
LOL David. I heard that it was on, but I could not watch CBS where I am at. I will have to watch it and get a kick out of it. It sounds weird since I was in the Southern Highlands of PNG with the Folopa in 2005 and it is not swampy at all. If you go over a few mountains into the Gulf province maybe, but not the Southern Highlands. I wonder where they filmed it? Take care.
Comment from Corey Adams
Time: April 8, 2007, 10:26 pm
Crazy that Hollywood still thinks that the people in PNG are in stone age. Most people in PNG speak more languages than any American. Many use computers, cell phones and such. That’s American Hollywood for yah. I agree a bit of research would have put most of this show to shame. I will still have to watch it. Sad the way the world views good ol’ PNG.
Comment from Joan Wussow
Time: April 19, 2007, 9:26 am
Our family is serving with Wycliffe Bible translators,and we too have served in PNG. I didn’t see the show,but I agree with David about the inaccuracies of the people etc. from what he said. It’s a shame the power TV has, and the impressions that are given only perpetrate stereotypes that aren’t necessarily true.
Comment from Rachael Karcher
Time: August 27, 2007, 1:34 am
Well… not sure if I should admit this or not… but I did all of the translation for that episode of The Unit… The plot greatly frustrated me… SO many things that were not true to the PNG culture as you pointed out, David. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said! I did what I could to communicate that to the language/translation coordinator I was working with (specifically about the kava, as well as the whole scene with the PNG woman seducing the American), but obviously it didn’t make a difference. As someone commented earlier, it’s not about accuracy to them, it’s about entertainment, which is definitely unfortunate.
As far as the pronunciation of the actual Pidgin went, it was TERRIBLE! I spent hours writing everything phonetically, and then on top of that more hours doing recording of the way words were supposed to be pronounced. I’m glad I got paid, even though they butchered it. The Elder was the worst! He obviously didn’t listen to my recordings and completely butchered it! I was impressed with Williams (a regular, played by an African American actor) - I thought he did an awesome job saying the Pidgin lines correctly. Well… at least PNG got some recognition… if only it were accurate.
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