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.
