TV Show’s Reality Racism Angers Austrians

VIENNA — One family lives in subsidized housing. The father is an ex-convict, both parents are unemployed, and their 18-year-old daughter is a single mother of two. The head of the other family runs a restaurant where the mother also works, in addition to holding down a job as a nurse and taking care of her 6-year-old son.

Confounding stereotypes, the members of the first family are Vienna natives, the second, Turkish immigrants. And stereotypes aren’t the only thing being confounded; count the public in too. Reality television has come to Austria, publicly confronting -- exploiting, say critics -- taboo subjects such as racial bigotry and xenophobia.

On “Family Swap,” one of most watched unscripted shows of the fall season, a Turkish family agreed to exchange members with an openly racist Viennese household.

The results were so disagreeable that one of the Turkish participants gave up on the exchange, but not before the show sparked a heated discussion about the charged issues of immigration and the treatment of foreigners in Austria, where the far-right, anti-immigrant Freedom Party is a member of the ruling coalition.

“The show has done some good,” said Bulent Oztoplu, founder of Echo, an association for second- and third-generation Austrians of foreign descent. “It shocked a lot of people -- they said, ‘This cannot be true,’ but it is true. These things happen every day.”

Although a clash of cultures may be the point of unscripted programs such as “Family Swap” -- two families exchange a member or two for a week and see how they get along -- critics thought that with this recent pairing, the show had gone too far.

The first of three episodes introduced viewers to Dursun, a Turkish-born Austrian citizen, running home from his restaurant to enjoy a farewell lunch with partner Melike, who leaves Dursun to watch the spaghetti while she picks up her son Samim from school.

Meanwhile, Vienna natives Fritz and Gerda are shown wreathed in a cloud of cigarette smoke. Like their parents, soccer-obsessed son Fritz Jr. and daughter Tina are jobless and inveterate chain smokers, although one of Tina’s children has severe asthma.

Melike, who, with son Samim, moved in with Fritz and Tina, endured a stream of racist abuse as father and daughter, apparently unaware of the irony of their comments, informed her that foreigners were dirty and lived off welfare.

After being told that she needed to know her place, Melike protested that she wasn’t a slave -- and Fritz shot back, “You are Turkish and automatically a slave.”

ATVplus, the television station behind “Family Swap,” received thousands of angry phone calls and e-mails, and still more irate viewers posted messages on the station’s website and on Austrian newspaper forums.

“A disgrace for Austria,” read one post. Others attacked ATVplus: “This show ought to be banned.... I find it awful that one is allowed to distribute such rubbish through the media in Austria.”

Many viewers were upset that 6-year-old Samim was present while the family hurled racist epithets at Melike. She sent her son away after a few hours, and the exchange also ended prematurely, with Melike leaving a day early and moving into a hotel.

Gerda and Fritz Jr., 23, who went to live with Dursun, initially refused to eat Turkish food and had pizza delivered to Dursun’s restaurant -- although later Fritz Jr. tried kebabs and admitted that they didn’t make him vomit as he had expected.

Alongside the anger against ATVplus, “Family Swap” also unleashed a flood of public sympathy for the Turkish participants. Scores of people showed up at Dursun’s restaurant, some bearing flowers and gifts to apologize for the other family’s behavior.

Race remains a contentious issue in Austria, which recently introduced an “integration agreement” requiring foreigners to take German-language classes or risk losing their residency permits.

Turks are among the largest immigrant groups in Austria, and although many have lived in the country for generations, speak German and have Austrian citizenship, they are still often viewed as outsiders and are seldom represented in the political sphere or media.

But even those who believe that the problem of racism needs to be tackled do not agree on whether an unscripted program such as “Family Swap” -- which broadcast the racist behavior without comment and did not end with the Vienna-born family learning a lesson in tolerance -- is the right way to go about it.

ZARA, a center providing counseling and legal advice for victims of racism, has filed a complaint with the Austrian communications authority, charging that the show violates the ethical standards set by the country’s private television law, which forbids programming that “incites hatred on the basis of race, sex, religion, disability or nationality.”

“They are using an issue that is very sensitive and is a problem for people in their everyday lives,” Maria Fernanda Perez Solla, a legal advisor for ZARA, said. “We are not saying there should be censorship, but you cannot promote something and say you do not support it.”

But Oztoplu, the founder of Echo, argues that “Family Swap” addresses the pervasive racism in Austrian society that otherwise goes ignored.

“[Critics] are saying these things should not be shown, and they mean well, but they are not right,” he said. “Not showing racism and not discussing it does not hinder it. With this show, ATV has done more than a podium discussion [on racism] attended by 30 intellectuals who all think the same way anyway.”

ATVplus tried to address the furor by televising a discussion panel of independent experts, mediated by Armin Thurnher, the respected editor-in-chief of the alternative Vienna weekly newspaper Falter, after the second episode was aired. But detractors dismissed the discussion as an effort to head off criticism.

“It was not a real discussion, just a way to justify themselves,” Perez Solla said.

Thurnher also believes that ATVplus was wrong to air the episodes.

“You cannot act like you are just reproducing reality, which you never are,” he said. “Regrettably, there are probably more Austrians like that than people think, but racism shouldn’t be shown in that way, as entertainment.”

ATVplus, in what has arguably become the standard defense of unscripted programming, says that it is just showing real life, unrehearsed and uncensored.

Markus Andorfer, ATVplus’ program director, said the aim of “Family Swap,” which is based on the popular British unscripted show “Wife Swap” (ABC is also planning an American version), was to show Austrians the diversity in their midst.

Past episodes have included exchanges involving a lesbian couple, a family of asylum-seekers from Congo and a cross-dresser.

“We wanted to bring different social realities together,” Andorfer said. “We wanted to find something that is specifically Austrian, and one of the problems in Austria is xenophobia, to be against difference.”

The final episode with the Turkish family aired in December, and the latest exchanges on “Family Swap” -- featuring, among others, a family that owns a chain of swinger clubs in Vienna -- have proved far less polarizing.

But the show remains a ratings success for ATVplus, which only went on the air in June and is the sole private television station in the country.

ATVplus has had a tough time in the small Austrian television market, which is dominated by the state-owned broadcaster ORF and the far better-funded German channels available by satellite or cable.

The station’s market share is still below 5%, but its popular unscripted shows -- the station also does a version of “The Osbournes” with an Austrian celebrity family -- have helped it win over younger viewers attractive to advertisers.

Few doubt that ATVplus had profits in mind in drumming up controversy with programs such as “Family Swap,” but a recent comment in Profil, an Austrian news weekly, called the show “sociologically very valuable” nonetheless.

“Although it is well to condemn that ratings and money are being made with racism,” the commentary said, “one should also not forget that in these parts, there is certainly more than just one family to be found that says and does similar things every single day.

“Sometimes, it seems, television just has to hurt.”