Perspective in Australian Comedy

Frontline, The Games and now The Hollowmen are all topical to the extent that we recognise some or all of their characters as fictionalisations of public figures. In each case, they are profoundly unpopular figures. Like their fictional counter parts they are involved in immoral projects and like them their benefit is always at the expense of the public, who is, of course, also the audience of the program. These programs use comedy for social critique and yet, the protagonists are not anti-heroes as such because these shows co-opts the perspective of the audience so that we adopt their perspective so completely that we lose sight of the implications of their actions. This puts the audience in a constantly oscillating position in relation to the characters, whom we develop a fondness for despite everything. We see their ordinariness and that their intention is not born of malice. And yet, the programs constantly remind us of how worrying the outcomes of their actions are. I think it acts against the apathy that is such an inherent part of Australian culture.

And Speaking of Pathological...

My favourite event of this Olympics was unquestionably the Men's Javelin. So many extraordinary looking people and all with such visceral energy coming off them, energy which doesn't relate to my everyday experience of humans in any respect. Even Bannister had spooky husky's eyes. The Finns were uniformly terrifying, of course. And as for an act of God like Thorkildsen - so odd in such a calm way.

All of them conformed to the Ancient sense of profound excellence taking humans out of the human realm and making them something really uncanny and slightly worrying.

Freaks of Nature

It used to be that Australian Olympians were proper freaks. People like Ian Thorpe; prodigious, superhuman. Thorpe's proportions have more in common with a dolphin than a human and he swam like it. They were fantastically disciplined, of course, but they also were physically set up in a way that made capable of more than normal people.

This time it's different. One of our marathon cyclists competed with a collapsed lung, our Olympic silver medalist short track cyclist broke her neck, several limbs and took the skin off one side of her body a couple of months out from Beijing, and our Olympic Gold medalist 10 metre platform diver suffers from vertigo.

The extent to which each of these incapacities is taylored specifically to disadvantage the athelete in their chosen event strikes me as highly suspicious. I mean, it's a bit pathological, isn't it?

The thing that seems to make these people champions is the extremely relaxed nature of their grip on reality. The cyclist didn't, for example, think 'a broken neck probably takes me out of contention.' Surely, theoretically at least anyone who hadn't broken their necks just before the Olympics would be in an better position to win a medal than our girl. And is it really the case that there's no one on the planet that can dive better than a man with no head for heights?

But more importantly, is "pathological" really the best direction for sport to be going in?

Cultural History

My sense of the British post-WWII attitude to Neville Chamberlain is almost entirely based on a Monty Python sketch, "Joke Warfare". Despite Hitler's early failures in joke warfare, the Nazis eventually develop a joke even funny than Britain's great pre-War joke. Cut to a shot of Chamberlain with the piece of paper - peace in our time.

It's in that context that I think Genesis of the Daleks is really quite amazing. There is a clear line being drawn between the Kaleds and the Nazis and the Doctor has the opportunity to blow up the lot and instead, Chamberlainesque, he allows himself to be convinced that Davros' eugenics program can be halted via democratic means. He is utterly and naively wrong, of course, but the program totally endorses his decision as the only viable one, in spite of being wrong.

That must have been quite something, if 30 years after WWII even Monty Python was bitter about a figure who wouldn't accept that war was the only way.

Metaphors

In the beginning, all metaphors were God's metaphors, or natural metaphors, if you prefer. And as material culture developed that was incorporated into the vocabulary of metaphors as well but all that is still the way of things.

But computers were made in an extremely primitive form of our own image, a basic and appallingly binary analogy with our own brains. Because they were new, a new vocabulary was made to fit them. Now we use this vocabulary and computer metaphors to describe our own consciousness.

Which means that it is also conditioning our own understanding of our own consciousness because, as Wittgenstein or possibly Peter Greenaway said, 'to imagine a language is to imagine a way of life.'

Without joining the "Replicants Are Coming to Get Us" section of the population, I would like to say that there's really is no bit of that which I think is a good idea.

Ad BlueJunillam

I would never have thought of you as 'Calvinist'. Low Church, certainly, but Predestination? Are you? Ex-Calvinist, I mean. And does this explain where I've been getting confused all these years? When you talk about optimism without faith - or perhaps optimism and 'faith' without the One True God - are you talking about the Schroeder's Cat (which is a much less stupid idea in Theology than it is in Science) element of Predestination in Calvinism? That that particular impasse is what allows for optimism?

I find the Gospels and especially what Christ talks about in the Gospels very heartening, though I don't believe in his Divinity, nor Monotheism in general. Doctrine I always find endlessly disheartening. The idea that abandoning Doctrine eats at optimism is rather strange for me, because Jesus says what he does and that's the end of it. Doctrine is the scaffolding we build around it because we don't trust it to stand up - so much for our faith! - and I think, because we're rather frightened some bit of masonry might fall an crush something we hold dear, like, as JayBee points out, Usury.

The nature of faith

For many years I fell into that category that might be roughly described as Christian, typically few others describing themselves in the same way would have agreed with me but nevertheless, I was a believer. Now I occupy a demographic group, more numerous than one might be inclined to think, that could with reasonable accuracy be referred as ‘recovering Calvinist’. As far as it is possible to ever ascertain what might precipitate such an amorphous and infinitely complex thing as the loss of faith, it was all the usual suspects. A growing horror of the escapades of both churches and individual religious, loss of patience with the endless and pointless scholastic paradoxes of a faith tied too rigidly to a testament and that disillusionment with the world and its compromises that is the true nature of the loss of innocence.

These days what strikes me most forcibly about the issue is, as I see it now, the utter absurdity of using exclusionary belief in a particular deity with a particular nature as a measure of virtue and scaling ever loftier heights of the ridiculous, as a measure of spiritual evolution and enlightenment. To emphasise my position, I see nothing wrong in it, and often it provides people with the strength to be better people than they could be without it and that of course has infinite value. But as the keystone of doctrine I can see no good in it as an end in itself. As is almost certainly obvious at this stage, my own brand of thought and background places exceptional emphasis on this aspect but it is a principle present in all denominations.

But I was thinking recently that perhaps there is some use in retaining the idea of pure faith - optimism, hope, what you will, as an achievement worth striving for and valuing highly. It seems a very obvious idea but I do believe we underestimate the challenge of maintaining a genuinely optimistic outlook and that maybe our standards for the definition of hopeful are a little low. Or possibly I am just deeply enamoured of the notion of Saint Peter (or your chosen conceptual equivalent) meeting people at the gates and asking, ‘Why are you looking so worried?’

Cyber Gender

I notice with cyber space communities that they tend to polarize into those in which the absence of visual contact (and therefore accountability, oddly) has led to the total break down of all forms of regulation of behaviour and those which have, for exactly the same reason, developed highly pronounced etiquette, ethics and ethos. Ebay being one of the latter and indeed just yesterday I was 'reviewed' by one seller as "a first-class Ebayer and a credit to Ebay". No one has ever thought I was a credit to anything, so it's taking a little time for me to adjust my self-perception.

I suppose the development of these communities represents a fascinating social experiment, but the thing is, I hate fascinating social experiments. Any experiments of any real interest everyone ignores anyway, like "Australia" - Q: what happens if you settle an island with criminals? A: you get one of the highest voter participation levels in the world and one of the lower levels of violent crime - or "America" - Q: What happens if you settle a land mass with puritans? A: you get an isolationist interventionist culture.

I recently joined an Envro Community site, using what I now realise was a gender neutral username. Because cyberspace freaks me out, I fall back on a highly diffident, and what I would consider, extremely feminine manner of constantly apologising for my presence, checking I haven't inadvertently offended anyone or indeed, put anyone out by existing. Yesterday, two other member of the site said that initially they thought I was male and only realised I wasn't when I made some oblique reference to my gender.

So, hmmm.

Long Tan

I want to know about the Battle of Long Tan pretty much exclusively because no one will tell me. This is reverse psychology at its best.

Clearly Long Tan is a battle of tremendous propaganda value. As one writer says, immediately before he moves on to riduicule propagandist Viet Cong accounts of the battle:

"as a result of Viet Cong stupidity in the face of Australian courage and mateship, 108 Diggers were able to defeat 2500 Viet Cong."

Even War isn't as ironic as War Historians.

But moving swiftly on. The Australian platoon was decorated by the US. Several soldiers were awarded individual Commenwealth honours and a recommendation was made that the Australian Government honour the platoon. But it didn't happen.

Now, the Rudd Government (and by the way, does anyone else wonder if the Government is entirely made up of androids - I mean would it really be possible to get so much done if you were sleeping occasionally as well?) has reviewed the case and is awarding the honours after all this time.

Given that every News or Current Affairs program last night ran the story, why didn't anyone report on why the honours were not awarded in the first place?

And more importantly, why weren't the honours awarded in the first place?

For BlueJ - remember the lilies, and that other bit about birds and anyway, I'm sure they'll work out about the birdfeeder, but in the meantime, this:

We Fight in the Shade

When I first saw the trailer for 300 I wrote this up and then lost it, you know the drill. Belatedly, here is it.

The original quote is from Heroditus and Cicero retells it in Latin. It is quite appropriate to be adapted to an action film because it is the Classical equivolent of 'you talking to me?'

Simonides promises to send the Spartans to Hell/ the underworld and further that their arrows would be so thick they would blot out the sun. Leonidas says 'then we will fight in the shade.' The pun is on 'umbra', 'shade' which is also the word for 'hell/underworld.'

I don't know if the Persians were worried about a Hell-based resurgence from the Spartans, but if they were, its a great line. If they weren't, I don't know that the pun works on all its levels.

As far as I can tell the point of the story in Heroditus is nothing to do with bragging or chest-beating. The Greek is simply and quietly making the point that the Persian threat is a lousy one since its more fun to fight in the shade than in the heat.

According to Wiki, 'we fight in the shade' is now the slogan of the Hellenic Army XX Armoured Division. I can't tell if this is because they are actually inside tanks when they do their fighting, or if they require opponants to provide a clean, clear battlefield with towels, drinks, refreshments and a predetermined amount of shadey terrain so as to prevent unnecessary stress and strain.

"THEY LIED" - like the Herald-Sun can talk...

No one can blame Shaw for not grassing on a mate, and Collingwood was not founded on the ideals of honesty and integrity.

Obviously, no one could blame anyone for lying to Eddie Maguire.

What is interesting is the absence of a good behaviour clause in Didak's newly-signed contract. Given Collingwood's position on the ladder at this point in the season, I wonder who gains most from that...

Narratology

So, this week David Murphy, a fictional character from The Hollowmen, added me as a friend on his Facebook page. I didn't go looking for him, you understand - how could I, he's fictional - he came looking for me - how could he, he's fictional, I heard you say. Putting aside ontology, just for a moment, how did he find me? I mean, I have a quote from the show, but not the name, on the page, did he really search Facebook with a complete copy of the show's scripts?

When TV spins offs started to become overlapping shows, acting in complete alternative universes in which any number of other groups of fictional characters independently participated, I also started to realise how many people would rather live in those alternatives - just look at the rise of fanfic.

People have always needed stories, but I don't think any group of people have ever wanted stories the way we do. There are probably positive aspects to this, but the whole thing makes me uneasy, though, not really as uneasy as being friends with fictional people makes me.

Vandalism

There are a lot of new Doctor Who/ David Tennant fans amongst the Ladies, but I am no longer one of them. I have had enough of the babbling. And the melodrama; every week everything explodes, everyone sacrifices themselves (though not really as it always turns out) and everyone cries at how totally rad everyone is. All of this held together by the idea of the Doctor as a 'man' whose awesomeness justifies anything. When it was more true, they said it less.

Let's do a microcosmic side by side.

In The Girl in the Fireplace, the Tenth Doctor makes a flippant reference to meeting Cleopatra or 'Cleo', as he insists on calling her.

In The Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Sarah Jane remarks that the phonebox has probably been vandalised, to which the Third Doctor replies, "That's a very unfair word, you know. The Vandals were mainly very decent chaps."

The first is like the most embarrassing kind of groupie name-dropping. From an historical point of view, it refers to an idea of Cleopatra which is very old fashioned. (Despite the view created in Roman propaganda, Cleopatra was in fact not especially beautiful, which was fine because she was a brilliant astronomer and mathematician, astute strategist and totally ruthless, calculating political operative.)

The second, on the other hand, makes a series of implications about etymology and the agency of a history written by the victors as it is expressed in popular culture. It also assumes a revisionist reading of the 'Dark Ages' which is pretty progressive for the early 1970s.
And better yet, no one cried or spelt it out at tedious length while other people stood around cheering (which is what happened in last week's episode).

There is film, shot by Tennant's girlfriend, of him standing, holding the action figurine of himself, so I suppose the decline and fall of Doctor Who is no one's fault, as such, (not even the Romans).

Newman

So Sam Newman has made an idiot of himself again. AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou said "If everything Sam says is going to be … analysed, I think we're going to start to become terribly unfair," he said. "Analysed"? Like "listen" you mean? That is unfair. Funny the way no one else manages to "accidentally" say anything horribly offensive.