Rethinking our protagonists: Absence on screen and meta-narratives of empire

In this article I argue that responsibility for diversity needs to be inbuilt at a much earlier stage in the screen drama production process – from the very moment, indeed, when protagonists and plotlines are first conceived. Genuine diversity is everyone’s responsibility, not just the ‘diversity manager’ or ‘diversity initiative’. This is an issue for screenwriters, for the education of screenwriters and it is something that screenwriting research needs to explore. My focus falls here on historical drama, for which I argue that inbuilt diversity is especially pressing. Populist ideas about the past impact the lives of ethnic minorities today, and are perpetuated by invisibility, which is then treated as evidence of that same invisibility. I explore how Britain’s relationship with colonial Australia is understood – and perpetuated – through the meta-narrative of Empire and culture and how this informs my approach to my own writing practice. This article is based on the papers presented at the 2017 Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) conference, University of Otago, Dunedin; the 2019 European Association of Studies of Australia (EASA) Conference in Toulon, and at the 2019 Australian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP) conference, University of Technology, Sydney.