Through a Glass Mission Brown: Cosmo, “Paper Giants” & the 70s

Over the last two nights ABC television has presented a semi-fictional drama based on the advent of the woman’s magazine ‘Cleo’ in the Australian publishing market of the early 1970s. “Paper Giants” depicted in what many would consider to be a romanticized fashion the early career of Ita Buttrose and her tempestuous employers, the Packers (Sir Frank and Kerry). In itself an entertaining piece of TV, unlike the more lightweight brethren of the Australian TV drama world (i.e. commercial soap operas)  this two-parter not only tried to keep the viewers focused for a tick over three hours on the episodes, it also tried to resonate historically plus give some kind of social insight into the various issues it portrayed (women’s rights, sexual discourse, the pressures of work on families, etc).

Overall, from my amateur, child of the 70s, male perspective I think “Paper Giants” was an enjoyable piece of television and yet marginally of value as an interpretation of the changes underpinning Australian society and history at that time (i.e. the pre-Fraser years). However some of the themes appeared to be historically muddied or too narrow in focus, relying too much on the self-appointed importance of ‘Cleo’. Also the underlying premise, that the beginnings of a woman’s magazine run by Ita Buttrose and the Packers could provide a unique and telling insight into Australia as it was then seems to me at best a problematic position.

Taking the last point first, is the story of the ACP’s radical answer to ‘Cosmopolitan’ a solid entry point for a TV drama to examine what Australia was like in the early 70s? In all honesty no, and this isn’t the fault of the show’s producers. At the risk of taking the higher and broader approach favoured by historians of yore the most telling way to understand what was happening in Australia to Australians before and during the events of the 1975 dismissal is through the story of Gough Whitlam and his federal Labor government of 1972-1975. “Paper Giants” attempted to reflect itself against Gough’s rise and fall, showing the younger staff on ‘Cleo’ firmly behind Whitlam’s spirit of the times if not his policies, whereas the character of Kerry Packer was seen as representative of much of the old conservative business establishment of the time, writing of the ALP government as economic wreckers. However the technique of using a ‘people’s level’ standpoint to look at grand sweeping social and historical changes can only go so far. Just as one wouldn’t use ‘War and Peace’ to understand Napoleon’s 1912 invasion of Russia or “The Sullivans” to understand World War Two, “Paper Giants” is more a series of vignettes about Whitlam-era Australia. To get a far more useful and telling insight through a TV drama on the times that were arguably the most tempestuous of the last 50 years of the twentieth century the first and best option always will be “The Dismissal”:

Portraying the differences in how young Australian women dressed, found out about sex toys or struggled to find a balance between work and family as was done in ‘Paper Giants” is arguably too superficial, too focused on trivial minutiae of day to day life, or even non-specific to the era. The gender wars, fashion, culinary trends and all those kinds of social issues are always in a state of flux, the difference being the actual things we wore, drank, listened to, watched, played with etc etc. On the other hand the political and social spirit of the Whitlam era is utterly unique and needs to be seen through the two most significant lenses of the time; Kerr’s sacking of the government in 1975 and end of the Vietnam War for Australia by 1973. Both of these issues have been dealt with very successfully by Kennedy-Miller mini-series from the 1980s, and it’s an unfortunate shame that “Paper Giants” can’t tread new steps in the footprints of these programs.

There are other stories about Australia from this era that could also be just as important and just as instructive as to how Australia progressed as a nation and as a society during the 70s which have as yet not been aired. I recall with tremendous clarity another story that perhaps was far more divisive and far more influential, even though it’s origins were hardly nationally important. When Kerry Packer decided that the TV coverage for test cricket in Australia should be his on the Nine Network, and the establishment failed to do what he wanted, the same larger than life media magnate effectively destroyed the establishment of the game internationally, creating the World Series Cricket circus which for 2 years divided loyalties and sparked bitter legal, even diplomatic conflicts. That would be a highly suitable subject for the same kind of production presented in the style of “Paper Giants”.

How about Jack Munday, the BLF and the Green Bans placed on the planned redevelopment of The Rocks in the early 70s? The boat people influx from South East Asia after the Vietnam War? The anti-Kerr protest movement post-1975, perhaps tied in with a postscript on the decline of Gough Whitlam to 1977? A mini-series showing how the single most important youth program on Australian TV grew (i.e. Molly Meldrum’s “Countdown”)? Or a docudrama based on the most controversial soap opera of its time, “Number 96”? Whether from high or low culture, national politics or sport; there are more interesting and arguably just as important stories from Australia’s seventies history that could and should be told on TV in the early 21st century.

The second problem facing “Paper Giants” is the historical veracity of the program and the associated historical significance of “Cleo” itself. There were without doubt some generic accuracies relating to parts of the story. Jack Thompson did pose semi-nude for “Cleo” and at the time he was shacked up with two sisters. Kerry Packer and his brother Clyde did  struggle to deal with their father’s regime and it was true that Mike Willesee was almost the first centrefold for the magazine. However the whole significance of a racy publication that had a smaller circulation than its far more established and conservative stablemate ‘Women’s Weekly’ must be carefully weighted. How important was “Cleo” in depicting sexuality and nudity during the early 70s in Australia contrasted with more popular and arguably more important media as embodied in “Number 96”? For those who shaped Australian business and public policy magazines such as “The Bulletin” and “The National Review” were arguably just as crucial. Men still had access to the old “Australasian Post” which was perhaps just as significant in terms of readership and influencing Aussie male culture as “Cleo” was for women’s culture. Then there were local and imported books ranging from Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch” through to Alex Comfort’s “Joy Of Sex”. “Cleo hardly failed to inspire a culinary or fashion revolution in Australia, insofar as much of the impetus for these changes came from immigrants coming to this country or young Aussies coming back from overseas. Perhaps “Cleo” and the whole Packer/Buttrose collaboration as depicted in “Paper Giants” was most important historically because it was a symptom of the times, not a catalyst or causal agent. And of course journos and publishers are besotted with the idea of being the men and women who shape how society thinks (without understanding sometimes the consumer of the media can make their own mind up without guidance from a sensationalist magazine).

If one was to sit back and let “Paper Giants” do its first and primary job as a television show and entertain the viewer then I think there are far too few current Australian productions that can do what this docudrama did. It may have been 70s History-Lite or Women’s Rights Through Media 101, but it was a good story reasonably well told for an audience which may not have anywhere near the intimacy of knowledge of the subject nor the personal experience to pick huge holes in the narrative’s historicity. As a summation and reflection of a time when Australia changed more radically than it had for generations, tinted with rose colour mini-series glasses it’s was better than to be expected. However like almost all semi-fictional TV or movie adaptations of real events the underlying medium itself as well as the cribbed short cuts in terms of explaining the politics and society of the times means it fails to really inform as well as entertain. By taking its subject too seriously whilst dressing it up in both the fanciful and the vaguely historic it contorts our past for those who weren’t there in ways that aren’t always accurate.

The Death Of The Bookshop?

As we have hurtled forward through the information revolution several once seemingly integral parts of our day to day life have been consigned to the rubbish bin of history. It’s only about 20 years ago I was reasonably familiar with the use and ubiquity of the telex machine. Microfiche readers were dotted throughout the floors of my university library and I would avail myself to their use regularly. Typewriters, manual or electronic were the basis of all things beyond the handwritten letter when it came to writing, and of course the social form of corresponding to friends and family via the post office now seems an almost dim and forlorn memory.

Now, thanks to the recent financial woes and the demise of the corporate owners of the Borders, Angus & Robertson and Whitcoulls chains much debate has been had over the decline and possibly inevitable fall of the bookshop. The shift away from the traditional form of the book, inherently unchanged since the days of Gutenberg has gathered immense pace in the last decade or so, what with E-Readers, downloadable content from the internet, Google Books, the spoken word book etc etc. Publishers looking to extend profits have moved away from bulk print runs of glossy mass market titles, beginning to reach out to their customers through direct sales or by becoming more specialised in their product and philosophy. Authors can and do become more independent thanks to the likes of Lulu and other self or garage publishing companies, cutting out the middleman to go direct to their reading public. Online stores such as the Book Depository and of course the elephant in the room, Amazon, can build a monolithic stock listing without ever putting up a shop front in the high street or shopping mall.

In summary there is a world of change and hurt for the bookshops we’ve known for years both in terms of the basic product it sells and the sprouting of new rivals, so the question has to be asked; is the bookshop dying? Is the likes of Dymocks on life support, or shall we see the likes of those remaining Borders and A&R stores here in Australia dwindling like refugees on the run from an invading rapacious horde of predators? Having worked in the book game for over twenty two years I still think the bookshop has a life. However to paraphrase Dr ‘Bones’ McCoy from ‘Star Trek’, it’ll be life Jim but not as we know it now.

The first thing all bookshop operators must understand is that the reading public generally do not have the time as we once did to give over to the simple pleasures or the academic rigour of sitting down with a book and pouring over the text. Thanks to the rapid expansion of new media, the demands placed upon those of us in the work force by a far more aggressively anti-social employment environment, a television industry that now spews forth dozens of new channels, more and more pressure to be the engaged parent or hop on the social merry-go-round, travel not to relax but to experience the locals’ lifestyle and many other factors the days when you could tell the world to go hang and stick your head in the latest Patricia Cornwell or spend hours seeking out the nuances in a DH Lawrence novel are dead and buried for most of us. My writing of this blog is but a single simple illustration of this point. Instead of increasing the verbiage online I could be reading that copy of ‘Tristram Shandy’ that has remained unfinished since 1985. The bookshop operator can’t expect his or her product to be as integral a part of our lives as it once was.

Next, the advent of the online/electronic/audio/alternate media form of the book has effectively raised questions about the actual raison d’etre of the book’s form. Why buy something that doesn’t allow you to update it’s contents thanks to the discovery of new information or a faster, better way to access the material? Why read a paperback on the train when you can log in via your IPad to the 3G network and access the same content online with the benefit of electronic addenda integrated into the e-book? Love the idea of picking up the new book from Anthony Bourdain? Well as he has a digital version of that same book available for purchase so you can put it on your personal MP3 player and listen to him read it himself why bother? Haven’t got time to wade through the Penuin Classics edition of ‘Pride and Prejudice’? No worries, you can always watch the Blu-Ray version of the five or six movie or TV productions that can be bought online or even downloaded thanks to to Bittorrent. The actual printed word on paper has become what some would consider laborious old tech that does little more than fill up shelves.

Another issue facing the world of the bookshop operation is the capabilities and interests of the staff and owners of the shops. For decades if not centuries bookshops were owned and operated by people who wanted to make money whilst selling a product that had more than its physical, commercial value as its selling point. A book represents so much more than the sum of its pages. There is the creative spark behind the book, the craft and the intellect that goes into its publication. Then once it is in the store the staff who have the role of selling it were once probably avid readers themselves, understanding that whilst the wages may be low the pleasure taken in finding that one customer who appreciates your recommendation of Boris Akunin or can talk to you about Foucault’s ‘History of Sexuality’ is a real perk of the job.

Sad to say nowadays the bookshops that most people deal with on a semi-regular basis have become soulless places where the same stock is carried across every branch or every outlet and the shop assistant is either too busy doing daily stock takes or chained behind a counter relying on a computer to give them every bit of knowledge they need. For every Abbeys or Gleebooks there has been a dozen A&R, Dymocks, Collins etc etc, and of course the apotheosis of the bookshop as supermarket, Borders. Instead of selling books because it is a passion or a way of life, or something beyond just another box of Corn Flakes or dental hygiene goods, the majority of bricks and mortar bookshops have become generic, disinterested in more than your wallet and selling some knick-knack or loyalty program or online newsletter. Throw in the unrealistic expectations of the investors who think that setting up American style superstores that will arguably stock everything but won’t create the environment where you feel like your interests and your queries will be fielded by a knowledgeable, considerate staff member, who will then shove you onto a self-serve computer interface is the perfect way to make an absolute motza…well there is some seriously fucked up attitudes to bookselling.

Then there is the cost of the book and the availability of it. A bookshop in Australia unfortunately cannot compete on price and availability when it comes to the dogged book buyer’s needs nowadays. If I want the latest Lindsey Davis Falco novel I am more likely to go online and buy from the Book Depository based on price alone. I have consciously shifted my dollar overseas and online because the local book store may sell the same book up to thirty per cent more expensive. Right now with the Aussie dollar buying about $1.05 US and the economies of scale via Amazon mean you can make a huge saving there, why wander into a bookshop when you can get the title you desire probably cheaper and possibly faster?

Now  these are but a selection of some fairly basic problems the bricks and mortar bookshop faces, and it is easy to understand why some are predicting the death of this way of selling and purchasing books. I haven’t even begun to consider publisher margins, authors’ rights, academic bookselling and the changing face of education material across all three levels of schooling. The question is, how do we revive this arguably dying activity?

The first and best option available to all bookshops is to actually try and define who you are and how that relates to your local market. If you are a megaplex designed to be everything to all people then don’t be surprised that you fail. The customers who shop there won’t stay because of loyalty or product knowledge; they will quickly move on to the next big thing that is possibly cheaper or easier to buy from. I’m not going to make a quid carrying thousands of books about sport, cooking and travel if my local returning customers prefer crime and/or graphic novels. For that matter opening any type of bookshop in an area that is economically or socially disadvantaged, or with low literacy levels or poor English will also impede profits. Plus lower your fiscal expectations; show me a man or woman who has made huge amounts of money from selling books from a store in the last decade and I’ll show you a nice way to make a few bucks out of buying the Sydney Opera House. My advice is to find a location that is amenable to the customer you want, not vice versa and then concentrate on squeezing a decent (not ginormous) living from selling either lots of books in bursts (such as at Christmas or in the academic context during enrollments) or lesser quantities to a more stable customer base.

The next thing; don’t be scared of pushing your barrow by being more selective with your product and then integrating the publishers and authors into the process. Wonder why Gleebooks and Abbeys are still in business when Borders Parramatta is closing? It’s because these types of bookshops will carry more learned or more specialised books and then get the authors to engage in launches and book signings on a regular basis. You won’t find cappucino machines and Maxim magazines in these bookshops, but you will find a selection of interesting commentaries from the likes of Noam Chomsky or PJ O’Rourke. When was the last time A&R in your city had a book club session with a major local or visiting author? Brilliant self and/or publishing promoting authors such as Peter FitzSimons has churned out a bucket of books that are popular, and I know that the Dymocks chain has made a decent quid out of getting him and his publishers to tout for business with those bookshops in mind. Same goes for the SBS affiliation that Dymocks has.

Then there is the willingness of some shops to be just the place to go because they are the gurus for one subject. For example, for the hard core military history buff in Sydney they wouldn’t dream of going to Borders to get their fix…it’d be Napoleons or Battlebridge bookshops in the CBD and Parramatta respectively. Small and selective stock holdings combined with interested staff and a decent blend of a browsing and buying environment means they should be able to meet their customer’s expectations. Love your sci-fi in Sydney? It has to be Galaxy Books next door to Abbeys. Manga and illustrated/graphic books? Kinokunya or the Art Gallery of NSW bookshop. Film? Perhaps the ACMI Bookshop in Federation Sqaure, Melbourne. The general purpose bookshop has its place and may continue to exist in lesser numbers; the niche bookseller on the other hand can flourish if again they bring the appropriate level of sales skill, passion, market knowledge and fiscal expectations to the table.

As for the actual question over the physical nature of the book and its possible perception of obsolescence sometimes ‘old tech’ is the best. What’s wrong with the idea of selling a book based on the idea that it is a never changing simple construct? A beautifully bound first edition of something more important than a trashy pop culture novel is going to be a more rewarding product to sell at a higher price than a few e-readers. Or what about emphasizing the  low-tech requirements of the book itself…all you need is eyes, literacy and a light to read it by. No need to download 350 megabytes of updating software. No batteries, no device that might break when drop, can;t be used by a small child or an infirm, technophobe grandparent. A book is at heart an assemblage of ideas, not a gadget that makes the user cool or with it. It can transport you to Periclean Athens or Hogwarts Academy whilst you’re on the toilet, in bed, traveling to work on the train or down the back of the bus on a journey from Brisbane to Perth, and you don’t need to plug it in or change the batteries.

Conversely if there is a customer base for the print on demand or the e-book go down that path, but don’t expect to be called a bookshop as most folk would understand. You are now part of the e-commerce or digital economy, selling something less about books and more about technology. This may attract many younger users (and it may be snobbery but I don’t think these types of customers are ‘readers’, the traditional basis of the bookseller’s market), however they won’t be the kind to engage with your lovingly maintained shelves of Dickens novels. Don’t pretend to be a bookshop when you are in fact an internet cafe with more bookshelves.

Or what about building bridges with clients earlier in their life. The whole ‘Harry Potter…’ phenomenon has seen an explosion in children who read books. Or, as I experienced when I was much, much younger there were book clubs designed to sell children’s novels direct to kids in the school. Why not gather in the children and just as importantly their parents with well managed, carefully selected stock of quality kids book’s that can be looked at in a child friendly environment. Again the margins may not be there to start with, but if you start the child associating pleasure with going to the bookshop then years down the track the adult will feel the same.

I could prattle on, try and divulge some secrets about publisher’s margins or staff conditions in the book trade. That’s not my place nor is it something I fully understand myself. However the above summary of a very complex and long-running issue does I think answer some fairly fundamental questions with soem straight forward answers. The bookshop isn’t dead, nor indeed is the book itself. Price and convenience as well as service levels and market demographics will always shape the casual buyer of books, and they won’t be the ones to form the basis of the sustenance of the bookshop’s continued existence. It will instead be the reader who is encouraged to engage with not just a passionate and informed bookseller but also appreciates what they are doing when they walk into your store that will keep the tills moderately filled with money. Don;t expect to make a killing from this people; respect them as you would the books you sell. And don’t try to be all things to all people; let the Amazons of the book world do that. Instead concentrate on what you care about, what your customers want and the lifestyle that comes with selling and reading books, instead of some monolithic greed-based commercial operation.

Australia Needs a New Damien Parer

The first Australian film to ever achieve the honour of collecting an Oscar from the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was ‘Kokoda Front Line’ , which shared with three other winners the 1942 Best Documentary award. A Ken G Hall produced and directed feature length newsreel film, this iconic part of Australian cinema and military history relied upon the footage shot by one of our greatest cameramen, Damien Parer. Much like his static film predecessor Frank Hurley and the later Australian combat cameraman Neil Davis Parer was able to combine a true artist’s eye with personal bravery and a connection with his subject, giving Australians a better than expected insight into what happened to men before, during and after battle. There would be hardly any person who has not observed Anzac Day in Australia who would be unfamiliar with iconic images such as this one from ‘Kokoda Front Line’:Parer was able to do something that the founder of the Australian War Memorial and the man who did more than anyone else to create the legend of the Aussie digger, C.E.W. Bean could never do with his words and his official histories. Damien Parer showed not just the people back home but a world wide audience moving images of Australian men fighting a cruel and rapacious enemy. Yes, it may have been propaganda but the work of Damien Parer gave a world wide audience the opportunity to see how Australia was defending what it believed in, and how our soldiers fought and died battling the Axis forces. Arguably consigned to a certain anonymity whilst operating with the British in the European and North African theatres of war, the men of the AIF (as well as those of the RAN and RAAF) were properly given their own cinematic face in movies such as ‘Kokoda Front Line’, ‘Men of Timor’ and ‘The Battle of Bismarck Sea’.

Sadly Damien Parer was killed filming US Marines during the Pelielu campaign in September 1944, suffering a fate innumerable combat cameramen have both before and after his death. Other Australians contributed to the filming of war after Parer, firstly for the newsreels and then with the advent of TV their footage was made available for the nightly news. The aforementioned Neil Davis was the next cameraman to get up close and personal to the soldier fighting a war, in his case the South Vietnamese and Cambodian troops of the Vietnam War. It was Davis who took the footage of an ARVN police chief executing a VC insurgent during the Tet Offensive, then at the war’s end he filmed an NVA tank crashing through the Saigon Presidential Palace gates.

Davis would die filming a Thai Army coup, leaving the succeeding generations of Australian film makers and TV journalists struggling to match his and Parer’s legacy. Partially (and thankfully) for last quarter of the Twentieth Century Australian soldiers did not fight in any wars. Our cameramen did watch, film and (as in the case of the Balibo Five) sometimes suffer the cruel fate of becoming the victims of other countries’ wars. However no one was able to do what Parer did for the diggers of Kokoda or Salamaua on the big or small screen.

In itself this would not be something to be too concerned about except within media and film making circles. However the environment has changed since September 11th 2001. The commencement of the so-called War on Terror’ has seen Australian troops fighting in two major theatres of that war, Iraq and Kuwait. And so far, aside from Department of Defence footage, some YouTube video and the occasional ABC current affairs report the work of our fighting men and women has been woefully under-reported in film:

This isn’t a reflection on the abilities or desires of the Australian combat cameraman or film/TV maker to get deep into the heart of the 21st century digger’s war experiences. It is however an indictment of the failure of the Australian government, no matter its political persuasion to trust people at home with something more than micromanaged minutes of footage authorised by the Department of Defence. I would not call it censorship, although others almost certainly would. Nor would I say that the vision that has been released is utterly worthless propaganda (as the likes of a John Pilger may say). However the manner in which our vision of the war in Afghanistan has been conveyed since the almost total withdrawal of Australian ground forces in the Iraq theatre must be considered utterly unsatisfactory. There have been two VC’s awarded since January 2009 and our casualties there have risen steadily. Brave men have fought and become casualties in a war that supposedly is on our behalf and yet through governmental deflection (at best) or misdirection (at worst) we have not been given the moving images to properly dignify our troop’s efforts nor their sacrifices. For too long there has been a huge gulf between the occasional DoD news briefing and the almost stock scenes of our political leaders attending the funerals of those who have fallen in combat.

I’m not saying that we need to be shown a myth-making paean to our men and women in the war zone of Afghanistan, and I know that contemporary media cynicism means we won’t be able to accept a new ‘Kokoda Front Line’ set this time in Tarin Kowt. However there are effective and meaningful precedents from other countries and their film and TV journalists, who have brought back from the war on terror significant movies that actually go some way to reflecting a combat reality we don’t get in government coverage of embedded ‘Four Corners’ type reports. My prima facie evidence is the much lauded US film ‘Restrepo’:

‘Restrepo’ gets into the FOB of a company of US troops and doesn’t just go out on patrol with the men then scoots back to Bagram air base for hot meals, cold beers and an editing suite. It’s classic combat documentary cinema, insofar as the men in battle aren’t mythic heroes, they are soldiers who can do things no civilian would ever want to and yet at the same time they are fallible and vulnerable. There are mistakes and casualties, bravura and boredom, however one thing there is not is the BS factor of a micromanaged government sponsored film crew. This is a film that is a great example of how embedding with the troops to film their war actually adds depth and reality to something we civilians are almost utterly divorced from.

It has been utterly remiss of our media, our film and TV producers, our government and even those of us home here in Australia not to ask for more realism, more access to our men and women as they are engaged in a war on our behalf. We can’t all be expected to read Department of Defence media releases, nor can we seek truths that are at best relative and at worst not possible to find. We can however ask why no one has been able to put together for more than the length of a sound bite an independent documentary film or TV production that gets behind the barbed wire, goes out on patrol or nestles in underneath the OHP of a firing pit with the current generation of diggers. Marshall McLuhan said that the Vietnam War was lost in the living rooms of America; that may be true. For Australia the Afghanistan War is invisible not just from our lounge rooms, but also from our streets, our cinemas, our worplace discussions and our political debates. Let’s hope a new Damien Parer or the production team behind such a combat film maker can emerge before too late.

He’s Not Dead Jim: An Evening With William Shatner

If anyone could be given the accolade of being a self-made post-modernist superman in the world of popular entertainment then the unbackable favourite for such an accolade would have to be William Alan Shatner. Best known through his TV roles as a star ship captain, a veteran cop, an eccentric lawyer amongst dozens of other roles, as well as being a song stylist, writer, horse trainer and all round entertainer Shatner has taken self-aware parody and a congruent earnestness to levels never seen in contemporary pop culture. Denigrated as a has-been, he records an album of theatrical white-man rap backed by the incredibly credible Ben Folds called ‘Has Been’. Defined by his iconic status as Captain James T Kirk (the original and still the best) in ‘Star Trek’, he not only ran towards the type-casting he also undermined it with roles in movies such as ‘Free Enterprise’, or poking fun at his fans with the famous “Get a life…” sketch on ‘Saturday Night Live’. The man cannot be separated from the act, and yet his act is not necessarily the sum of the man.

Now I will freely admit that my interest in William Shatner is almost exclusively based on his role as Kirk on ‘Star Trek’. I’ve seen his performance as Bob Wilson in ‘The Twilight Zone’ classic episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, and some other incidental movie roles. I was not particularly interested in ‘TJ Hooker’ (although I do pride myself on my trivial knowledge of who was his lead male co-star in that show…and the answer is Adrian Zmed), and his work in the role of Denny Crane in ‘The Practice’ then ‘Boston Legal’ has mostly slipped me by.  Like any Shat-man fans I love listening to his truly unique recitation of the songs ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and ‘Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds’ on his classic album ‘The Transformed Man’, and I still recall watching with great hilarity his take on ‘Rocket Man’ from the 1978 Hugo Awards.

I’ve both volumes of his ‘Star Trek’ memoirs and there was a rather intriguing TV show some years back called ‘Invasion Iowa’ that perhaps gave us the best insight into Shatner the performer; this was a favourite of mine from the later Shatner oeuvre. I couldn’t tell you much about his other activities such as his horse breeding nor his charity work. It goes without saying that his professional career has been wide, long and varied in scope and I’ve but dabbled in watching it.

On reflection it would be incredibly hard to take some of this body of work seriously if you didn’t actually read or watch his off-camera discourse on these adventures in the world of film, television and music. Or taking into account his classical training as a theatre actor, his accomplished legacy of working with many greats of stage, screen and recording studio. You don’t reach the level of popular appeal he has by being a simple one line running gag, nor can his 50-odd year place in the public eye be seen as a stable career of excellence and artistic integrity. For every Emmy Award winning performance as Denny Crane there has been a B-grade movie role or a TV commercial which has shown Shatner happy to flog himself as a mouthpiece for whoever will pay his way. So the question is, how can such a confusing melange of genius and banality, of self-referential piss-taking and brutally keen seriousness about his craft and his life experiences be all mixed up in the one Canadian celebrity? Is William Shatner utterly egotistical (as perhaps feuding ‘Star Trek’ co-stars George Takei might contend)? Or is the man behind James T Kirk a contradictory cultural phenomenon that no one including the man himself can get a hold on?

I don’t know if I got any definitive answers from his presentation ‘William Shatner Live: Kirk, Crane and Beyond’ which I took in on the evening of Tuesday April 5th at Sydney’s State Theatre, but I sure as hell found the man on stage to be utterly engaging and entertaining. Over the course of an almost three hour interview/recitation/comedy routine/confession/self-serving celebrity roast William Shatner ranged from the unaware comedian, saying and doing things that raised as big a laugh as one could expect from perhaps a Mr Magoo come to life, then with a knowing inflection of his words, a cutting remark to his interlocutor Jonathan Biggins, or a simple change of posture the audience were signaled this was one big act from the great man. Not afraid of a self-deprecatory insight he dangled like a worm on a hook for his audience to swallow, hook line and sinker, there was also some rather pointed remarks about the environment, education, friendship and most affectingly addiction. One minute he was regaling his fans with stories of being held in a crushing grip of the testicles thanks to a sign language capable gorilla, then the next he was recounting the story of the death of his previous wife under the most tragic of circumstances. The presentation had a strange mix of embarrassment and guffaws, self-induced exorcism and hammy silliness, perhaps drawing a look on many an audience member’s face mirrored in this classic look of bemused exasperation from Shatner as Kirk:The moments that we came perhaps closest to Shatner at his most truthful were in those times when he spoke about himself with self-deprecatory comments, remarking upon his willingness to take almost any job available, his thankfulness at being cast as ‘Star Trek’s’ Kirk, and his effusive praise for his friends. His discourse on matter environmental were a little too naive, a little too simplistic and it was disingenuous to plead ignorance over the feud he has been part of with most of the other cast members from ‘Star Trek’. A more critical observer would have preferred real insight, or perhaps less happily a rant that whilst not pleasing could have been more honest. However to expect more from William Shatner is unreasonable; he was there to make people engage with him first and foremost, not reflect on the capabilities or flaws of George Takei.

At show’s end there came one final masterpiece of Shatner-esque post-modern strangeness. No doubt inspired like so many other overseas celebrities to somehow connect with an Australian audience by going straight to the old trick of performing a local classic, William Shatner sang/rapped/declaimed the Men at Work classic ‘Down Under’. It was as if the same man who had taken on Cyrano de Bergerac followed by ‘Lucy in The Sjy With Diamonds’ was now channeling a significant phase in Aussie pop culture. To top it off he merged this worldwide Australian song performed in his own inimitable manner with Gough Whitlam’s oration from the sacking of the Federal Labor government on 11th November 1975. There was something hilarious yet compelling watching Bill in only a few moments give all his mock-Shakespearean acting skill to a line such as “…he just smiled and gave me a vegemite sandwich”, then scant seconds later recite historical words like “Kerr’s curr” and “…God save the queen, because nothing will save the Governor-General”. If he hadn’t won over his already compliant fans by now at Sydney’s State Theatre he never would.

So where does this leave me when contemplating William Shatner? He’ll always be ‘my’ Captain Kirk from ‘my’ Star Trek’. He will also always be a seriously funny man who has achieved more than one could possibly expect considering his self-evident flaws as a performer. Perhaps he could be considered to be a walking celebrity Peter Principle, having reached the level of his incompetence and made that his successful career schtick. Maybe I’m being harsh; he has given so much amused or addicted joy to cynics and geeks alike. Ultimately William Shatner is not Kirk, not Crane, not Hooker or the Transformed Man. William Shatner is just that…the one and only Shat-man.

Bob & The PRC: Tangled Up In Red (Tape)

I read this morning that the artist who arguably defined the Sixties and its progression from the conservative safety of Eisenhower, Menzies and Macmillan into the radical, free-love, Ban The Bomb, Make Love Not War, Yasgur’s farm counterculture has bowed to the Chinese government and performed a censored list of songs at his recent Beijing concert. Yep…Bob Dylan, the man who sang ‘The Times Are a Changing’, who mused on how ‘With God On Our Side’ and told us that the ‘…answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind’ did the right thing by the regime that brought you such freedom loving activities as the invasion and occupation of Tibet and the repression of Tienanmen Square and didn’t sing classics that would have offended the local political sensibilities.

It could be said that in the spirit of openness having Dylan and his somewhat lifeless concert performance occurring at all is a start. You can’t expect a Jasmine Revolution to start with one riff from ‘Chimes of Freedom’. Also considering Dylan is Dylan, and the crotchetty old man has every right in the spirit of personal wealth accrual to swoop down on Beijing, grab the loot from a gig then exploit a few more wealthy locals and foreigners in Shanghai before making back for home, then who are we to complain. Other performers of a similar age have been to Beijing and kow-towed to local sensitivities (yes, I’m looking at you The Rolling Stones). Hell untold thousands of hugely successful international companies as well as foreign governments and autonomous world bodies have made sure that they’re on their best political behaviour when in the Middle Kingdom. Is it fair to have a dig at a veteran folkie who is after all just a singer/songwriter changing his tune when picking up the acoustic guitar and warbling into a microphone in front of a mainly Chinese live audience?

Of course it is…this is Bob fucking Dylan after all!

This is the same man who sat at Woody Guthrie’s bedside as the musical voice for the downtrodden of America’s Great Depression slowly slipped away? This is the same man who walked out on an Ed Sullivan Show complaining of censorship? How can one not feel disappointed that in Taiwan he could perform ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, however when he reaches the mainland the same classic gets left out?

Let’s look at it from another angle; in 1987 Billy Joel went to the USSR. This was in the era of Perestroika, and whilst the then Leningrad concerts may have had a goodly proportion of foreigners in the audience there were thousands of Soviet youths exposed to Joel’s Western pop music. In what we now know to be the declining years of the Communist regime of Soviet Russia Billy Joel was arguably brave enough, and his political minders relaxed enough to allow the American to perform a Dylan song. It was ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’; and as recorded Joel was explicit in associating the political context of Dylan’s masterpiece from the 60’s era US to the Gorbachev era USSR.

It would be fatuous to say that Dylan is a less noble troubadour for human rights than Billy Joel. It would be stupid to say that the USSR in 1987 is the same as the People’s Republic of China in 2011. These are two different countries with two different political systems at two different times with two different performers. Perhaps the Soviet minders felt that Billy Joel was far less threatening than the likes of a Bob Dylan could ever be, no matter the material. Perhaps Bob Dylan’s presence in Beijing is more politically charged than his actual music.

Then again if a glorified piano man with a successful but hardly legendary presence can sing a song that is redolent with themes of change, or revolution, of people doing something about their lack of individual rights and exerting their free will, why the fuck doesn’t the man who wrote the bloody song have the same conviction? What happened to the same man who went electric and then ignored the hard core folk fans who called him Judas? Why doesn’t he want to thumb his nose at the same regime that has just recently jailed the man partly responsible for the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium, artist and dissident Ai Weiwei? Is the wad of money the Chinese promoters giving Dylan that large he can’t but use it to metaphorically gag himself? Has Dylan really sold himself out that much?

I guess Bob himself doesn’t give a damn about it all; in his seventieth year like all grumpy old men he can tell anyone younger than him to shut up and stop trying to tell him what to do. The problem is when you create your own identity as a man willing to use music and art to inspire people to think about what is right and wrong, how to live a better life and do what you should do and not what the government enforces you to do, you sometimes have to actually live to that standard. Otherwise your work is negated and all the hyperbole from critics and fans alike becomes nought but empty rhetoric. Frankly I’d rather see an honest Billy Joel sing ‘Just The Way You Are’ or ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ knowing full well the guy is entertainer pure and simple, than a Bob Dylan undercut his own gravitas by playing into the censoring hands of the ruthlessly corrupt dictatorial bastards who keep about a quarter of the world’s population under tight controls.

Homo Rugbyleaguensis: Decoding Prop Forward Morality in 5 Steps

Once more as the men of Rugby League grind forward into a new season certain individual blemishes have raised the ire of NRL CEO David Gallup, created hundreds more paragraphs of newsprint in the Sydney and Brisbane newspapers (AFL dominated state capitals have been fixated on the sleazy St Kilda teen sex scandal which falls outside the parameters and the care factor of this blog), and seen shuffling, mumbling man mountains talk about “Sorry for the embarrassment, apologies to the team,  I’ll come through this as a better person…etc, etc”. For every sweeping back line movement that leads to a try from nowhere on the paddock, off field there is a matching incident of pissing against a shop facade in public. For every feel good moment of a team from Parramatta or South Sydney visiting the long term stay ward of a Children’s Hospital there is a matching time of shame as a Rugby League professional does something stupid and/or criminal under the influence of booze. Recent memories of players engaging a pet dog for moral oral sex provide uneasy shade for the recollection of last years premier’s victory (St George after a 31 year drought).

So the question has to be asked. What the fuck is going on with Rugby League players?

Now if I was a smug fan of aerial ping pong I’d make some derogatory comment somehow tying in the use of the scrum with homoeroticism to form such a cogent comment as “What do you expect from a game where 1 man tries to push two guy’s heads up three men’s arses.” Unfortunately for the well-funded game of AFL as mentioned it has its own cross to bear when it comes to the discerning morality of their players. Rugby Union aficionados could take the “What does one expect from the working rough house classes who haven’t been exposed to rugby, thuggery and buggery in the Great Public Schools?” Looking down your nose at the likes of Anthony Watmough whilst sipping a Penfolds Grange and watching the Waratahs under perform from a corporate box is not sound starting point, as certain union types have been known to engage in all manner of stupid anti-social behaviour (perhaps rooted in the ‘thuggery, buggery and rugby’ origins of the code in the great private schools). The round ball game both world wide and domestically has had its shares of ups and down when it comes to the moral behaviour of its players. One of the greatest footballers this nation has even seen wear a Socceroos jersey imploded thanks to a heady cocktail of too much money and cocaine (thankfully Mark Bosnich has turned things around mightily since those dark days). Thus it would be hard put for any advocate of the rival codes to take a swipe at the likes of Mark Gasnier, Todd Carney, Benji Marshall and others who have fallen from grace thanks to off-field antics.

However Rugby League in the recent professional era has seen some spectacularly stupid and avoidable fuck-ups that go beyond the “Oh it was just a young fella doing something silly” excuse. Going through the motions of having a dog lick the male genitive organ, allowing accusations of rape or sexual harassment to emerge, speeding while under the influence of alcohol seems to be de rigeur with the current stars of the NRL, and whilst it isn’t hurting the sport’s appeal to its existing fans it’s certainly impeding its progress beyond the relatively small niche it holds in Australian sporting culture.

The way I see it there are five basic reasons why we see Rugby League players engaged in the kind of activities only a soap opera scriptwriter or an anonymous author of a Penthouse Forum letter would find appealing, and concomitant with that the increased perception of Rugby League being a sport played by neanderthals. With apologies to the great writers of the game such as Ray Chesterton, Alan ‘Clarko’ Clarkson and  Peter Frilingos here are my observations:

1. The Rugby League Professional is Inherently Undereducated

Let’s face it, when was the last time you heard of an exciting five eighth talent packing down with the North Queensland Cowboys having just finished a dissertation on the symbolism of food in Marcel Proust’s ‘À la recherche du temps perdu’. Thanks to the exacting standards of a sport that is built around generally large and fit youths becoming even larger and fitter men who run at each other whilst their opponents try to bring them down to the ground the idea of academic excellence is generally seen as useful as membership to the now defunct Adelaide Rams Super League team. Cognitive skills and analytical thought rarely goes beyond counting to 6 tackles or remembering what 10 metres means. Now it would be fair to say that universities are no purely moral breeding grounds for intelligent and ethical young men to flourish, however when the basic constituency of the league’s playing cadre is general unable to think beyond the next tackle, the next weight session, the next promo appearance don’t be surprised if they think that drinking to excess then getting into a car is a good idea. The brain that is used to working out how to sell the dummy or make sure the sliding defence is enforced seems to find it incapable to comprehend the ethical dilemmas of letting a canine nibble at a penis. Admittedly you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to play rugby league nor did previous generations of league players demonstrate an acuity for higher academic achievement. However the gray matter was occupied by not just tackle counts and training times, which leads me onto my  second point…

2. The Professional NRL Player Needs a Trade

Before the advent of huge dollars in the game (arguably starting from the Super League wars of the 1990s) it was more common than not for a player to have a day job or secondary occupation that kept them busy between hitting the tackle bags, fronting up to the judiciary on a Tuesday night or packing down in a mid-week Amco Cup game at Leichhardt Oval. There was a famous link between the NSW constabulary and the ranks of Sydney football clubs such as St George, with both Craig Young and Pat Jarvis taking off the big red V then donning a copper’s uniform when the whistle blew full time. From cleaners to sparkies, carpenters to brickies, publicans and club concierges the league player of past generations when elevated to the highest levels usually still had a day job to go to. This meant that they weren’t continually submerged in a footballing culture where everything was about being physical and matey amongst a group of men who only had one reason being together. The violence of the weekend game may have exploded with just as much energy and excitement as it does now for the player of yesteryear, but come Monday they had to go back to being the ditch digger, the electrician, the car salesman. Being responsible for both themselves and their non-footy careers gave the previous generation of players a reason not to act like a fuckwit in the general public. Parallel to this was the lack of support or cover given by the club machinery. In a time when the only person who spoke to Rex Mossop after ‘The Big League’ game of the week or had to deal with the club’s fans at an open day was either the coach or team captain, the average pre-1990s Rugby League player understood that no one would massage the ego nor the message of a public stuff up. You had to toe the line or make damn sure you kept your dirty linen behind closed doors because no one but you would be there to face the music if the shit came down. Which leads to…

3. The Growing Intrusiveness of the Media

Parallel to the growth of the bumbling rock ape image of the NRL professional is the ferocious appetite for ‘news’ from a more avaricious, utterly fragmented media. In today’s environment it’s not going to be Ron Casey, Keith Barnes or Frank Hyde who will alone talk about what has happened with player X or player Y. Nowadays everyone from pay TV sport channels to shock jocks, online observers (including myself perhaps) and politicians, feminist academics and Hollywood movie stars need to find some kind of byline from the game to get their audience focused on their point of view about the game. In the 70s and 80s game reports in the back of The Sun or Daily Telegraph, weekend broadcasts with Rex Mossop or the ABC non-commercial coverage, or ‘Rugby League Week’ and ‘The Big League’ were the main purveyors of rugby league related stories. Reporters and journalists would be welcomed into the change sheds before and after the game, possibly thanks to being a recent club mate not that long ago and hence aware of the player’s dynamics and motivations. Articles and broadcasts focused on how many tries were scored, who got through the most tackles, how many weeks suspension will Les Boyd get for this week’s hit.

Now the media circus is both fed and feeds on almost every issue away from the game it can, to fill in the airwaves, the internet bandwidth and the newspaper columns . Forget the days when a rugby league player would only need to worry about the radio pundit or the newshound sniffing around because he’d turned in a shocker against the Newtown Jets. Nowadays through a toxic combination of self or managed promotion with a 24 hours sports news cycle the professional NRL player has to demonstrate the same media-savvy capability as a politician or a Hollywood starlet. When you get caught short taking a piss against a shop front, when you have your mobile phonecall telling a female acquaintence to ‘fire up bitch’, when you find out that you and your team mates may have been associated with sexual assault its most likely not emerging thanks to the traditional writers and broadcasters of the game. Now it’s all being discovered, dissected, disdained and distributed by a rapacious media that doesn’t give jack shit about what it means to you the Rugby League player. It certainly means that the behaviour of the players are more scrutinised than before but unfortunately it has come at the cost of making a generally media-naive person both protagonist in and victim of some fairly heinous news stories.

4. The Rootless Factor

Rugby League for almost all of its history in NSW was a community game. If you were born in Hurstville you played with St George. Kids who grew up at the foot of the Blue Mountains became chocolate soldiers with the Penrith Panthers logo over their left chest. If you started with Balmain in Jersey Glegg or SG Ball you might have Keith Barnes come around to give you some pointers on how to take a conversion kick, then years later when you had your testimonial dinner at the Rozelle club house for being a Tiger’s man through and through Keith might pop in again to share a cold schooner with you.

Sad to say those halcyon days are dead and buried, sold like the contract for a Melbourne Storm player. Today’s NRL professional will almost inevitably place fiscal need and ego above community loyalty. It’s fair enough that when the game has become more focused on the dollar then the player does too. However when over commercialization means that the player doesn’t live in the area he supposedly represents on the footy paddock, when his manager is the only conduit between the club’s higher ups, when he is seen as a tool to be exploited by the club owners to sell jumpers, souvenirs and assorted club paraphernalia then the disconnect has repercussions in the wider community. Why bother if you hit on a teenage girl with an abnormally high interest in Bacardi Breezers when you are passing through town as part of some money-spinning bandwagon. How can you respect the heritage and honour bound in with wearing the coachwood and myrtle, the big red V, the tricolours, or the gold and blue when next week, month or year you’ll be sold as part of a salary cap deal that takes you to or away from a community that has no knowledge of the game or of you. The humble journeyman of rugby league (such as a Phil Blake) has become the much-hyped swaggering cash cow human headline such as Greg Inglis or Willie Mason. How can we expect these rootless professionals who have a coterie of fiscally integrated hangers on, advisor, managers, PR gurus and club executives to engage with the public like an average person when their very circumstances mean they aren’t connected to their suburb or town like before? The modern game actively encourages professional players to live outside their community norms, and then normal community reacts harshly when we see the difference between the club hero and the itinerant mercenary with a bad bladder or the need for frequent sex and booze sessions.

5.  Rugby League is a Brutal Man’s Game

At the risk of sounding politically correct and destroying some of the myths created around the sport’s PR spin aimed at bringing in sponsors and the female audience, Rugby League is based on some fairly base masculine appetites. The need for competition, the need for mateship, the need for participating in or watching violence, the need for ego boosting and sexual satisfaction, the need to be ‘one of the guys’ and piss higher and harder against the wall than your associates. It is a brutal game that can cause life changing injuries and force young men to retire from their sport scarred and debilitated. Unlike the AFL which has a more athletic openness to its on field violence, Rugby Union which labours under the stop start nature of the game and soccer which is supposedly non-contact, the league is a fast, high energy collision of muscle and sinew where you are more likely to leave the ground concussed than win a man of the match award. It is an undeniable fact that when watching the game fans are just as excited to see a big hit, or revel in some great fisticuffs as they are about free flowing backlines scoring tries.

This has been a truth of the game since Dally Messenger first picked up a Steeden. However unlike earlier eras where the violence of the game was more or less kept on the pitch, today’s sensibilities and media coverage means that the more crude collisions and game play has been suppressed. Coat hangers and squirrel grips have become a rarity, and with the increase of the gap between attack and defence from 5 to 10 metres the brawling prop has almost been legislated out of existence. Scrums are no longer a seething mess of hidden uppercuts and shin-barking kicks; they are now a farce where the ball comes out quicker than it goes into the second row. In turn this has led to the same generic man who in previous generations could work out his aggression on the paddock left with a strange paradox off the field. He is expected to play like a warrior and hit up hard and often whilst showing great athleticism, yet he can’t show those same hard-wired energies in his non-football environment.

Okay, not all modern footballers are unthinking brawlers on the prowl after the game for a vicarious thrill to appease their cro-magnon tendencies. However there are far too many who can’t understand that old adage of what happens out on the ground stays on the ground.  The same mentality that was behind John Hopate’s date-finger work a few years back has now become a part of the thinking that leads to women being mauled sexually in social situations. The traditional softening up period is a relic the NRL doesn’t like to see revived, and yet that pent up aggression from the game has to go somewhere, including hitting people outside a McDonalds in the wee small hours. Violent, competitive, physical men can;t become SNAGs overnight, contrary to the essential spirit of the game they play. No one should be in shock, making exclamations of disgust about so-called footy role models when their activities and their personalities are determined by a sport that encourages intensely physical brutality, and then confuses the issue by spinning the game as a feast of athletic prowess. Let’s get real about rugby league players; they are modern gladiators who have pain and violence as constant companions on the field. Expecting them to be utterly different off the ground is well nigh impossible.

When all is said and done I love Rugby League as a sport. It is not supposed to be politically correct, nor is its supposed to be a socially acceptable academic pursuit which conforms to some idealized world where there is no violence, no drunkenness, no sexual dysfunction, no ridiculous machismo, no greed and no public aggrandizement. It is supposed to be about two teams of 13 men running at each other for 80 minutes and being paid arguably more money than they deserve for the dubious privilege. It is supposed to be about club and community, the big hits and the amazing tries. It’s supposed to be about winning thanks to your team of big, quick and well-trained bastards doing what the opposition’s team of big, quick and well-trained bastards couldn’t. It’s not about being role models. It’s not about expecting players to always understand the rights and wrongs of what they do. It’s not about becoming some kind of pure superfit SNAG who is kind to small children, animals and old ladies. Rugby League morality should only be validated on the field and in play; once the boots are unlaced and the jersey is changed for street clothes the professional of today has lost the plot that possibly we have scripted unrealistically for them. Homo Rugbyleaguensis is at heart a fairly simple man who has lost the way to cope with what modern society expects of him…is it any wonder that betting scandals, public urinating, unwelcome groping of female’s privates, boozing and mock-bestiality has emerged?

Where Is The Australian ‘Treme’?

In the golden age of Hollywood particular studios were well known for their excellence in specific genres. Universal delivered wonderful horror films, MGM glorious technicolour musicals and Warner Brothers gritty crime dramas. Then, with the advent of television cinema changed, the old studio structure broke down, wunderkind directors and their producer associates shopped their cinematic vision from Paramount to Twentieth Century Fox, via United Artists, Sony etc etc. There was no one corporate entity who could claim to be the wellspring par excellence of a specific form of the moving image.

Then, along came HBO.

Within a seemingly short time Home Box Office created a slew of seriously wonderful television dramas that have (I would argue) instituted a golden age in American TV not seen since the 1960s. ‘Oz’, ‘The Sopranos’, ‘The Wire’, ‘Rome’, ‘Band of Brothers’, ‘Generation Kill’, ‘Treme’, ‘Dead Wood’, ‘True Blood’, ‘Treme’, ‘Carnivàle’ and ‘Boardwalk Empire’ constitute a body of work that the previously mentioned studios would be hard put to match qualitatively in the 1930s through to the 1950s. These are mature and intelligent television programs when if anything the general TV environment has been been dominated by the so-called reality show, leading to such mind-numbingly low brow product as ‘Jersey Shores’. As one section of the TV watching public can be challenged and entertained by a vision of a Marine unit’s participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq or the day to day problems faced by a New Jersey crime family, a more populist and undoubtedly less discerning audience is happy to be fed the TV equivalent of a large Big Mac meal as they gorge on so-called ‘American Idols’, ‘Dancing With the Stars’ and then told everything they do is validated thanks to Oprah Whinfrey’s pop-psych mega-rich bullshit.

Now whilst this may sound like a paean to the elite level of American television culture, what is my actual concern is where does this place the Australian TV industry and its viewers. Where is our ‘Treme’, our ‘Oz’? Whilst there has been a slavish and eager attitude by the commercial  networks to replicate the baser aspects of US TV product, or an almost gentle reassuring approach to drama through well trod genres (the crime show, the medical drama, the family soap), hardly anyone has fronted up and given us anything close to the best of HBO. ‘East West 101’ from SBS has been a rare exception, with a gritty realism drawn from such predecessors such as ‘Wildside’ and ‘Phoenix’. However this is an object lesson in what is a sorry comparative lesson in Australian TV culture. The ABC hasn’t delivered anything like these programs for years, and its dramadies have been based on the same tired old genres as the commercial networks. ‘Rake’ might be an entertaining diversion but how many law programs do we need (remember ‘MDA’?). At least they aren’t pumping out the utterly banal Logie friendly ‘Packed To The Rafter’ type of domestic drama. However our public television networks can do better.

Foxtel’s ‘Showcase’ has made a minor effort thanks to the likes of ‘Spirited’ and ‘Satisfaction’ however their supposedly more meaty dramas ‘Love My Way’ and ‘Tangle’ have trod paths that are depressingly familiar (i.e. family angst) and only one step removed from soap operas. They are not cinematic in terms of their narrative nor in their complexity of character and direction. Whilst some may argue there are no bigger issues than what happens around the kitchen sink or the dinner table domestic tragedies and the minutiae of invented people barely different from us makes for unsatisfying TV.

So, where are the Australian TV shows willing to look at our past and our present, our fantasies and our realities through a 12 part, four or five season well-financed and creatively intelligent vision that is uniquely ours? The Kennedy Miller mini-series of the 80s were a good start but they haven’t been embellished on or used as a developmental phase. ‘Underbelly’ has used the semblance of HBO style without the substance, whilst local movies such as ‘The Boys’, ‘Animal Kingdom’ and ‘Snowtown’ have given us movies which could be the kernel for such TV programming. Our history and our current society are rich veins for HBO-like mining if only there was similar bravery and fiscal liberalism from our production houses. Until someone rises to the challenge our local television landscape will be relatively barren, populated by vapid reality shows and innocuous soaps, and viewers like myself will continue to devour the likes of ‘Boardwalk Empire’, ‘Treme’ and ‘True Blood’.

The Decline and Fall of the NSW ALP (or How I Became Eddie Obeid’s Rejected Love Child)

It’s been over a week now since the teetering edifice that the Sussex Street machinery built with the rejected ex-premier Kristina Keneally as its American-tongued perky leader has come crashing down here in New South Wales. Destroyed in a tsunami of electoral hate that would barely shade the wrath of rebel anger across many despotic Arab states, the regime that gave more seductive promises than a $10 hooker  (and left every customer with a used and dirty feeling afterwards) was left with a rump of seats in the NSW parliament barely large enough to warrant a ticket allocation to the next Legislative Assembly disco. Seats previously considered cast iron rusted on Labor were snatched away with bigger swings than a hyperactive gymnast on a kiddy’s play-set, giving the coalition of Liberal and National parties enough electorates to run around with a well-credentialed ‘Look at the size of my mandate’ holler. Meanwhile in Canberra our esteemed Madame Prime Minister gallantly places her red coiffure in the CO2 filled bucket of unsold policy trying to make any positive light from the destruction of those same elemental ALP forces that raised her upon high during last year’s Rudd d’etat.

 

Not happy Eddie, Eric, Sam, Mark...

Now before we get carried away and start looking to the Coalition under Barry O’Farrell to sort out the inchoate mess that this state has become, I think it is only fair I too sink the slipper into the corpulent corpse that is the state Australian Labor Party, as run out of 337 Sussex Street, Sydney NSW 2001. I think it only proper to ponder the past before hurtling down the clogged M4 that is the political future of this once convict settled state, where Olympics were held with great popular acclaim and no government minister knew how to simulate breast intercourse with a colleague.

The first and biggest misnomer about the ALP’s malaise in the post mortems after the election is that the split in the party over the privatization of our electricity suppliers and infrastructure was the Achilles heel that nobbled what could have been a stable run to the polls. The recently elevated leader of the opposition John Robertson had led the anti-privatization charge within the membership which in turn led to the removal of Morris Iemma, and whilst he represented one strand of the ALP’s policy approach, the likes of the Eddie & Eric foisted Premier Keneally wanted to grab the money and run by flogging off anything bigger than a D sized battery from the NSW ledger. The clusterfuck that was the partial sell off in December followed by the almost immediate proroguing of the NSW parliament was a farce that even an episode of ‘Are You Being Served’ could never match. As Eric ‘Let’s Make a Deal’ Roozendaal and his vapid leader-ette Kristina Keneally dodged and weaved questions relating to probity and the economic benefits like punch drunk geriatric boxers on a trampoline the ALP mired itself further and further into self-destructive navel gazing.

However it wasn’t the privatization itself nor the supposed ideological battle within the once great social democratic party that drove the humoungous bloody nail into the plywood and cardboard coffin that was the now punted state government. There was a single cause that had festered and oozed like a sucking chest wound under the boils of the ALP’s body politic. This was the simple shocking fact that the ALP are no longer relevant to the vast majority of the people in NSW to whom it either looks to as its natural supporters (the voters in Western Sydney, the Hunter, Illawarra and certain ethnic groupings). Additionally their progressive appeal to the chardonnay set and the chattering classes has dispersed amongst the ravings of the Greens (who find council boycotts of Israel more productive than understanding the misery of Sydney’s crap transport infrastructure) and the disengagement from the party itself by some of its so called leading likes (yes, Carmen Tebbutt and Verity Firth the finger is pointing at you).

Keep Verity...so long as the ALP is minimized

The party that for over a century that has been touting itself as the worker’s party, the disadvantaged person’s party, the party of social justice, of equality, of strong public infrastructure investment, of the battler and the person with a social conscience took every single one of these standards, every one of these clarion calls to their supporters and flushed them down the political shitter at Sussex Street quicker than a development involving a hotel and pokie machines would get clearance from their hopelessly compromised public service. If you were a commuter traveling between Sydney’s western and northern suburbs you could well be sitting in traffic for almost 4 hours a day, whilst the much mooted Epping to Chatswood train line became a story of if not now when, and only if Julia can get some mileage to save the seats won in the Ruddslide of 2007 (which she didn’t). Nurses (a key constituency of the ALP) as well as teachers (ditto) were swamped by the growth in demand for their services whilst infrastructure and support was left to wither and rot. Billions were pissed against the wall in such travesties as the inner west metro, the V8 races at Homebush and the almost diabolically decrepitude of regional and city hospitals (join the dots between the Bathurst swing and the abysmal construction standards of the new hospital).  Your average voter who had to deal with the real world of life in NSW saw what all bar the likes of Obeid, Sam Dastyari,, Eric Roozendaal etc etc knew was the reality of NSW after 16 years of ALP misgovernment. NSW’s government was being run by a party with no connection to people or ideals beyond whatever got the most benefits either politically or financially for a chosen few in Sussez and Macquarie Streets.

To make matters worse the stench of gangrenous self-interest and political corruption saw ALP parliamentarian after parliamentarian stinking of an inability to keep their pants on, properly account for their financial arrangements (and then lie to a court convened to investigate their misdemeanours), claim they couldn’t achieve what they knew was best for those they represented in cabinet whilst staying in that very same government…the list goes on. Between marital strife, assaults, drug charges for leading advisors and council level corruption the NSW ALP made The Sopranos look like pillars of society.

So at the end of the day, when so many ALP state members had sated themselves on parliamentary largesse and then sat back stunned as the public verdict was brought down on their incompetent and unscrupulous behaviour the soul searching has begun by putting into the leadership a member of the self-obsessed gang that has brought the NSW Labor party to such a nadir. The echoes of Arbib, Tripodi, Obeid, Roozendaal etc still resonate for the now state opposition, and in so called traditional Labor seats such as Penrith, Newcastle, Kiama and Campbelltown there is no hope for a roots revival. The disconnect and the ideological waywardness will continue as no one in ALP headquarters is willing to return to the credible Labor ideals of a Jack Lang or a Joe Cahill. Instead the spivs and the opportunists, the excuse makers and the indolent run the ALP in New South Wales.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.