Australia Day hypocrasy

With Chrissy here, gone, the next ‘thing’ is New Years’, here, gone, and then the annual nausiation of Australia Day. The bigger gill-greening factor of the event now is not the blindness to notions of invasion day (it’s concievable that the day could be kept as a deliberately imperfect national day where we exhibit pride in achievement but reflect on the costs, losses and complexities of modern society) but the unquestioning acceptance of the flag-waver’s simplified method of markng it’s arrival that bodes poorly. ‘Who can wave their flag loudest ?’ seems to be the only question now. A non-question.

Why would a project like sixteensixteen that looks at australian ideas be down on Australia day ?
The old idea of ‘we need a day to celebrate ouselves’ gave way to a useful ‘we need to question ourselves’ then quickly backlashed into ‘we need to be patriots’ (which to a once proud underdog nation, no matter how notional, was anaethema). The laid back Australian character is at odds with the exertions of rampant patriotism. Flag waving and firecrackers are a simpleton’s glossy nationalism. The lessons of many thousands of Australians dying in international conflicts of the twentieth century for competing nationalisms sake should keep us honest about chanting smiley slogans in the street.

Newspapers and teleshows generate page space and airtime to flog sales and paraphenalia. But this empty noise that is devoid of reflection on national issues of nature, society and identity only serves to alienate potential customers.

Here’s cheers to the wry and sardonic Australian, who makes fun of nationalism, not by wrapping a flag around their neck and running through the street drunk like a tool, but who dismiss it as missing the point of a national day of self-awareness. Here’s to the champs who man services, rescuers, savers, carers and volunteer to assist the smooth running of events, raise funds for real charity or plant community gardens and restoration forests. Here’s to those that extend a hand to neighbours and invite them over to share a meal. Here’s cheers to the average Bloke and the average Sheila who boohiss jingoism and cheer mateship and community mindedness.

Australia, land of borrowed time

Once was a time, when the Australian was such a simple bloke, that all the water we needed was just enough to hose the footpath and ferment hops. Now we have grown in sophistication and need water to put in the radiator of the imported hummer monstrosity, a drop or two for the pool, a drenching amount to wet down the agapanthus and other introduced nuisance weeds and a summer supply to see the show-off lawn out the front through the harsh reality of January to March, a farce lawn which we bequeath on neighbours we don’t know, to no effect, for little reason.

It will be fun when we remember where we live, the driest continent, and act accordingly.

Mostly we must critique us.

We can deride America too easily. Much of it’s excesses are worthy of derision. But only in so far as it’s foibles are those of humanity.

If we had it’s water and therefore it’s population, a point often forgotten by lobbyists for growth here, (which is humourous given their constant exhortations of reality being in their grasp alone), and the US’s coincidental foundations, namely an enlightenment document at it’s heart, we too would be as idealistic, willfully ignorant of poverty, extravagent and removed from nature.

But we can take little comfort in the fact that dazzling and saturating self-absorbtion takes place in an other hemisphere and is not us. Because we import the best of it and mimic the worst of it. And in fact we are most of those derisable things. Humans in this age are prone to global conciets not just those of their local invention or direct cultural inheiretance.

We have to be harsh on ourselves as autonomous westerners who seek out ways to ignore our own society as it is embedded here.

Nature is only the most glaring of these delusions. We are not pastoral Europe and nor are our soils as forgiving as the American continental aluvium. From the ground up our nature is different. We must look to ourselves as something apart.

Culture too is neglected.

The two are linked.

As Citizens of the here and now we need to focus energy on creating culture that faces our place. Innovation comes of it.

Is it just me cob ?

So in the seventies there was at least notionally the idea of an Australian Cultural Renaissance, but where is it now ?

We have come a terrific distance. We have outlived low comedy and stood at the cusp of decency with a national apology to the stolen children but do we stop there ?

I return to the question that haunts us and the answers will be uncomfortable for more than one side.

Australian of the year is a humble American cowboy.

Lee Kernaghan: I thought he was Texan ?

Australian of the year ? It comes as news to me that he is Australian. He looks like a texan (with his big hat, with it’s texan brim), he sounds like a Texan (with his imitation American twang and disdain for singing with an Australian accent), is there noone more appropriate for Australian of the year?

Un-Australian Activities

McCarthiest America 1950’s style is a ripe subject for ridicule. It’s perverse witchhunting in the name of freedom is highly laughable if not funny. But it’s unfunny and contradictory memory was lost on a lot of Australians when comedians and skit writers here starting parodying xenphobes in the eighties. They simiply didn’t get the joke when the term ‘Un-Australian’ was thrown around as a catchphrase only to be heard from an imbecile’s lips. Instead they adopted it. Like shock-jokes with a new whipping boy the perennially dumb now seem hell bent on whipping themselves into an onanistic frenzy trying to find a friend who cares.

Psst….    It was a joke. An it still is !   The only thing that is ‘unaustralian’ is giving a pigs arse about  patriotism.

Posting Comical responses to Jyllands-Posten

The very idea of an image in any religious context of Islam was, I thought something to be avoided. I have always thought this a beautiful thing. A ’severe poetry’ as Lawrence Durrell described it. It has proved a good way to avoid a lot of the extreme kitsch of the Christian religion. But it must also be remembered that the days of Islam followed the excesses of image worship that the Egyptians were prone to practice. It is perhaps an historical antidote to aesthetic decadence. It seems surprising that photos of suicide martyrs are carried around as icons of faith when the prophet is not to be depicted. The act seems to put political soldiers above god and his prophet. Perhaps true Islamists would not even aggrandise their martydom to their faith by depicting themselves before an attack. But that is for moderate muslims to elucidate. The Jyllands-Posten comics are small examples of what the moderate muslim has to answer in a light voice. Never let them see you bleed.

What might work better than trying to get more people angry with the west is to be above reproach. The way to speak to the west is to say loudly ‘I will resist you with non-violent action’, through speech, media, song and without malice. This is a hard task. The depiction of Muslims is so slanted now that the moderate voices are drowned on both side of the argument and almost everywhere on the media circuit. There are some arab comedians in Australia. Their voices need to be heard, they also need perhaps to surprise the so-called ‘west’ by not pandering to the cliche of the arab as a subwoofer obsessed , female belittling egomaniac. To be funny in another genre, rather than Choco-chic is a hard ask when it’s such an easy and well worn button to press, but there are clever observations to be made, mild ones, social ones, feminine ones, and the muslim is up to the task. Jyllands-Posten should not be another flashpoint it’s a pointless dull thud in history if played better.

Jyllands-Posten sore and sorry no doubt…

…However, the threats by extremists continue to vailidate the cartoonists. The time and oppurtunity is here for moderate muslims to demonstrate an alternative. Times of hardship are the exact moments when non-aggressive retorts make the most impact. After-all the crowd awaits expectantly for more bad behaviour from both sides. Like a schoolyard full of kids egging on the fisticuffs. Imagine the magnanimous impact if George W. had said ‘we will not be provoked’ and did not go to war, but quietly went about making life safer in the world. Rather than using it as an excuse to roll back rights, wage oil wars and corporate takeovers. Imagine if he had tended his wounded and kept the peace. He would not have lost the good will and sorrow the world showed his nation directly after the September 11 attacks. Can enough moderates speak up against Jyllands-Posten without declaring violence over cartoons?  There are indeed antisemetic cartoons in arab newspapers, is the difference that people expected better of the west ? If enough moderate muslims demonstrate a sense of proportion and dismiss these cartoons as mistakes, be they childish, politically motivated or uninformed, without making ugly statements of doctrin and ideology the situation can be turned into a venue for the demonstration of why racism and dogma are wrong. The answer is indeed more freedom of speech until dialogue brings a diffused state and peace. It is time for communication.