‘But what about the black man?’ According to Qian van Binsbergen, director of the three-part documentary The White Man, that was a common comment on the screening of her series over the past three weeks. A typical reaction from a white man (m/f/x), she said during a live Q&A at Tivoli Vredenburg on Monday 14 September. After all, her documentary was not about specific men of a particular skin colour, but about the system that has, for many centuries, granted the white, Western man a position of power taken for granted – at least since the Romans conquered the Celts in what is now England matriarchy destroyed.
But how do you tackle something as abstract as a system in a television documentary? As well as the essential ‘talking heads’ of Gloria Wekker and Marieke Liem, she needed something else, and she found it in her decision to select a sample of men named Jan. She gathers these men in a somewhat shabby brown pub. There, each reacts in his own way to the others and to their loss of traditional privileges. In recent decades, not only women but also minorities have been claiming their place on the pecking order.
Not objective?
The series proved brilliantly that this does not happen by itself. That is a greater achievement than one might think at first glance. Qian van Binsbergen, who previously directed the award-winning documentary The Ahaal Chinese who made a documentary about the adoption industry, explained during the meeting that white male journalists can make documentaries on any subject and are always seen as objective. As a woman, and certainly as a woman of colour, everyone automatically assumes that you are being subjective – even if you aren’t.
The fact that, whilst making *De Afhaalchinees*, she spoke to hundreds of people about their own experiences of adoption did not, in the comments, detract from the fact that she herself was adopted, and that it would therefore all be about her after all. Even though that wasn’t the subject. Partly for that reason, she looked for something for her next project that was very far removed from her own life. Enter: the white man. But then, of course, it ends up being about her again, because ‘black broadcaster’ and ‘woman from a minority background’. So surely not objective.
Louis Theroux
Perhaps that is precisely why the series has turned out so incredibly well. Let’s certainly not resort to the term ‘un-Dutch’ here, but *De Witte Man* surpasses the best work of the undisputedly talented documentary-maker Louis Theroux. Not Dutch, but white and male, yet a master of value-free listening. And Qian van Binsbergen is far better at this, as she demonstrates by regularly venturing into the lion’s den.
She is eating bitterballen with the founder of Defend Nederland, who tells her to her face that anyone who isn’t white doesn’t belong in the Netherlands. With a true disregard for danger, she stands not on the sidelines but amidst a demonstration by asylum centre hooligans, who, in all their drug-fuelled hysteria, completely ignore her presence. She does not engage in argument, but remains curious. Something very few people can do.
Reasonable men
She told the audience – which was mainly made up of women – that making the series had given her little pleasure. It was quite a heroic feat, too, because it takes courage to present yourself as so vulnerable in such a hostile environment. And then there’s the world of the pub, where the assembled lot did their best to pass themselves off as decent blokes – a challenge at least as great as the first.
With her unique approach – such as the camera angles chosen for the interviews, whether in a cramped canal boat or high up on the wall at men’s fitness influencer Tibor’s place – Van Binsbergen has brought something new to the Dutch media landscape that no other broadcaster could have achieved. Because the ‘white gaze’ still prevails there, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Omroep Zwart, which joined the broadcasting system at the same time as the Nazi-sympathising rag *Ongehoord Nederland*, has once again demonstrated that it is an indispensable addition. Because we really don’t hear this sort of voice nearly often enough.
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