HSC Essays PACK with All modules

Resource Description

Common Module
Composers draw us into the world of the text inviting us to share a representation of human experiences.
Critically analyse how your prescribed text shares its representation.

Texts invite audiences into their world, exposing them to individual and collective human experiences that challenge preconceptions and illuminate a greater understanding of the world. Ivan O’Mahoney’s 2011 documentary Go Back to Where You Came From (hereafter Go Back) presents a conversion narrative that reveals the director’s modus operandi, wherein a journey from ignorance to acceptance can be achieved through the reception of refugees’ narratives and perspectives. Thus, this exposure to others’ experiences reveals the complex nature of prejudice, fosters empathy through personal connections, whilst highlighting the pertinence of storytelling in exploring the universal human experience of suffering. Go Back promulgates the exposure to human perspectives as instigating a transformation towards acceptance that scrutinises the complex nature of prejudice. The conversion narrative from insularity to empathy underscores O’Mahoney’s condemnation of apathetic prejudice towards refugees in the 21st-century Australian zeitgeist, presenting the participants’ peripatetic ‘reverse refugee journey’ as a vessel for ideological change. The documentary communicates that prejudice arises from ignorance and a fear of the unknown, exemplified in ‘uneducated’ Raquel’s dismissive characterisation of Muslim headscarves as dysphemistic ‘tea towels’.

However, her manufactured exposure to the shared experiences with asylum seekers facilitates her journey of overcoming prejudice, culminating in her symbolic handshake of acceptance with a headscarf-clad woman in The Response that subsequently invites responders to reflect personally on their prejudice through this reconciliatory journey. Adam and Roderick’s journeys similarly reveal initial prejudices through dysphemistic descriptions of refugees as ‘criminals’, but transform during the raid in Malaysia, where they hope the refugees being invaded are ‘bad, bad people’ and that ‘if it’s the Chins, I’ll lose my sh*t’. This epizeuxis highlights the inconsistent and paradoxical nature of prejudice, whereby subjugation is only tolerated under conditions of ignorance and rejected when a personal connection exists through exposure, such as with the Chins, interrogating the audience’s prejudices through their vicarious experiences with the participants. This engagement with new perspectives and journey towards acceptance exposes the inconsistence and malleable nature of prejudice in Go Back. O’Mahoney develops personal connections between the participants and the audience as a shared experience through exposure to cultivate empathy for the refugee experience. O’Mahoney’s aim to catalyse a more humanised discourse on the sociopolitical refugee debate in Australia after the Children Overboard Affair of 2001 is achieved through mini-biographies and montages that establish the participants’ identities. Their diverse perspectives reflect the audience’s views, ultimately prescribing a narrative transaction and personal connection through the audience’s vicarious experiences. This inextricable link effectively fosters empathy within both the audiences and participants through an exposure to refugees’ reality, described idiomatically by Adam as allowing them to see ‘reality on the other side of the coin’. Deo further encapsulates the central notion that stimulating political and social change is derived through empathy with others’ experiences, whereby if he can metaphorically ‘touch your heart, immediately you are able to understand me’.

The cultivation of empathy through personal connections is also heightened by shared experiences, such as Raye’s interactions with Maisara, where their shared experiences of loss as mothers expatiates empathy within Raye. Her following cathartic revelation having ‘trouble…carrying pregnancies through’ is supplemented by contemplative non-diegetic music, evoking an emotional response from the audience, fostering empathy for the participants and refugees through the narrative connections created by O’Mahoney. The ideological connections between the audiences and participants in Go Back develops empathy for the refugees through exposure to their human experiences.