THERE YOU GO… ΠΑΙΘΑΚΙ ΜΟΥ….

 

In the lead up to Christmas, the airline Jetstar caused to be published on Instagram, the following offering: “Can’t get off Yiayia’s plastic covered couch? Refresh yourself with a Post-Chrissie Recovery at a swim-up bar instead. This Chrissie is gonna be hotter than a Shearer’s armpit, so tell us your favourite summer cocktail for the chance to win a $3,000 flight voucher on us.⁠” 

The text is accompanied by an animated sketch whereby a young man clad in a singlet, shorts and white socks, wearing around his neck a large golden cross that covers almost the entire length of his chest, sits upon a plastic-coloured couch, presumably that of his yiayia. The man’s luxurious tresses are in the style of Vince Colosimo in the original Wogboy movie. On the wall behind the young man, in prominent position, hangs a very large cross. Around it are arranged picture frames, containing the obscurely drawn images of what presumably are members of the yiayia’s family as well as an image around which there exists a halo, most likely an icon. 

 

As the scene opens, a narrator informs us that it is the hottest Christmas day on record. A hand appears on the screen. It wears a thick pearl bracelet and its fingers end with long curved nails that look more like talons or claws than anything else. These nails are coloured a deep shade of maroon that almost looks black. The claws are curled around a long glass containing an orange liquid. We assume at this point that the hand belongs to the yiayia referred to in the text, for as she sets the glass down on the table in front of what we can infer to be her grandson, she intones in a faux ethnic accent, “there you go, παιθάκι μου.” The hapless grandson subsequently engages in valiant attempts to disengage himself from the plastic that is adhering to his skin but is unsuccessful. There shall be no prospect of refreshment at the house of his grandmother. 

 

The offering was forwarded to me by a colleague and social activist who found it disquieting: “Is this sakhlamara racist? It just hits me the wrong way.” Indeed it does. For in their attempt to either: a) “embrace diversity” with all that this means for a dominant class that proclaims its own self-enlightenment and tolerance b) appeal to a specific ethnic community or c) create an advertisement that is actually humorous, the perpetrators of this crime against good taste have shown that they are unable to conceive of non-Anglo Australians and specifically in this case, Greek Australians, outside of well-worn anachronistic tropes and stereotypes. Given the objectification and blatant trivialisation of Greek Australians in material of this nature, it beggars belief that any member of that target community should choose to fly Jetstar ever again. 

 

The last time I saw a plastic covered couch was in 1987, paying a condolence visit to an old lady whose husband had just died. Even back then, three decades ago, plastic covered couches were a rarity. My grandmother’s neighbour on the other hand, a lovely Australian lady who would yell at my grandmother as she watered her garden every time a trickle of water would pass under the fence, covered her couch with a blanket she knitted herself, upon which her border collies slept and which until she died in the early two thousands, never washed, creating a heady mixture of stimuli for one’s olfactory nerves. Fond memories aside, we find ourselves on the cusp of 2023, not 1987 and one would be hard pressed to find a plastic covered couch anywhere within our community, something that even the most cursory of enquiries would have revealed. We are therefore entitled to ask the thought process of those who have unleashed this offering upon us, in deliberately propagating an anachronism. 

 

The same applies to the entrapped hero of the scene, caparisoned in all the trappings of a “Mario” of old, in a time when the extremely few Marios that are left among us exist only either in comedy sketches by unrepentant members of the sub-species in whose interest it is not to evolve, or a certain cul-de-sac in Thomastown, for whom the Renaissance was something that happened only to other people. By and large however, the Greek Australians of today cannot relate to the caricature commissioned by Jetstar, though admittedly, the Anglo-Australian community can, for it is this caricature, long after it ceased to be relevant as satire to our community, that it has chosen to endorse and perpetuate for decades, as the “go to image” of the quintessential Greek-Australian. It is the image of the perpetual foreigner, who is rendered safe, for he has easily identifiable attributes, quite distinct from the modern Greek-Australian who is an eternal subversive, for he generally walks among us, unseen. 

 

One does not know how to take the “yiayia,” portrayed in this concatenation of cliches. If the scenario indeed takes place in decades past, my recollection of the grandmothers of that era is of careworn, large callused hands, some with fingers missing owing to industrial accidents at a time when migrant workplace safety was subordinated to profit, and invariably with nails cut short, for these were working women in whose hands the future of generations rested. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a Greek-Australian grandmother with talons, although I know quite a few that enjoy getting their nails done. They range from school principals, politicians, lawyers, scientists, fashion designers, property developers to shopkeepers and journalists. Sadly, however, they don’t appear to fit the desired look. 

 

Of note, is the yiayia’s speaking part and in particular, her utterance of παιθάκι, instead of παιδάκι, possibly because someone wrote down in Romanised fashion, the word paithaki for the voice actress and she was not given any guidance as to properly pronouncing the voiced dental fricative, opting to pronounce a voiceless dental fricative instead. Of course, a native Greek speaker could have avoided such a basic mistake but then again, it is not certain if Greek-Australians can be trusted to speak Greek or Australian, in a manner acceptable to the dominant class when portraying Greek Australians, nor indeed whether they would be willing participants in what is tantamount to linguistic blackface. 

 

One element that the vignette does get right, is the prevalence of icons in our homes. They are ubiquitous, even among the second and third generations. These icons, like stereotypes, are generally drawn the same way and no other, because they act as types for the figures they represent and also because they are not just pictures, but items of veneration that go to the core of Greek-Australian spirituality or at least, identity. To reduce them, as the perpetrators of the Jetstar advertisement have done, to crude, abstract cartoons, plausibly to their quest to add just a bit of ethnic colour, is an act of ignorance at best and at worst, an act of desecration, blasphemy and religious intolerance facilitated by the fact that it is the dominant culture that is the ultimate arbiter of how we and our ethno-cultural attributes are portrayed and we have little or no redress when we are affronted. Instead, we are expected to take such slights in good humour and actively collaborate in their propagation, or risk being branded over-sensitive and possessed of a sense of entitlement. 

 

Not the offer of the nectar of the Olympian Gods will induce me to extricate myself from my yiayia’s  πολυθρόνα, a fabric couch purchased after a good deal of scrimping and saving in the nineteen fifties, or indeed, from my children’s yiayia’s couch, a rather contemporary arrangement in whose construction many innocent vinyls were slaughtered, in order to fly Jetstar ever again. I cannot in all good conscience give my custom to a purveyor who, as the advertisement implies, objectifies my people as its target clientele, indulges in some of the crudest, most unimaginative and inordinately irrelevant parody and appropriates and profanes my religious symbols. Jetstar owes the entire Greek-Australian community an apology for the grave offence it has caused, or failing that, free tickets to Bali for us all. Now that, παιθάκι μου, is definitely something to tear yourself from your IKEA Landskrona three seat leather sofa for…. 

 

DEAN KALIMNIOU 

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 31 December 2022