Over the years some readers have told me these newsletters are too “left-wing”, others have found traces of arch-conservatism or various crimes against race or gender. For the record, the newsletter is never intended to be a piece of publishable writing, it’s more like a diary in which I blow off steam about things that preoccupy me (sometimes morbidly). I make no apologies if it’s not suitably respectful or polite. The basic function is to say what I’m writing about this week in the art and film columns, but often it (d)evolves into a rant on politics and current affairs. And why not? We’re all political beings, or at least we should be, if we care about the way we live now.
My predilections are not party-political. There are lots of occasions when I look at the ALP, or at Albo, and despair that this is the alternative to the current mob. My lingering problem with the Coalition is the extraordinary amorality they have brought to the political process. Scummo – which is what the bushfire refugees on the south coast dubbed him when he tried for a photo-op handshake, then beat a speedy retreat – has given us three years of political stagnation and dishonesty. His true character and personality is revealed every day, regardless of his protestations. He’s embarrassed us internationally, squandered billions of taxpayer dollars, treated government funds as a personal war chest, and done precisely the opposite of what he says he’s doing.
So when Grace Tame, the 2021 Australian of the Year, was criticised for not being able to smile insincerely when she had to stand alongside the PM for this year’s ceremonies, I was pretty disgusted. Why should she smile? Tame has stood up, forthrightly, for what she believes, and has the life experience to back it up. She has been derided and marginalised by a PM who was too busy to meet the women who marched en masse on Parliament House, but he’s never too busy to turn up at the footy or the cricket.
It’s grotesque, and Tame was perfectly within her rights not to play along. Everything for Scummo is a PR exercise, and he saw this as an opportunity to show there were no hard feelings between him and a woman who had been critical of his hypocrisy and inaction. I was thinking of Morrisey’s lyric: “Why do I smile at people who I’d much rather kick in the eye…?
Who decreed that we need to shake hands and grin with those who have acted in a self-centred and dishonorable manner, almost as a policy? If one must turn the other cheek, it’s only so as not to have to look at that smirking goon. So good on you, Grace, and may you always show the same visceral distaste for people who have forfeited your respect.
As for “Australian of the Year”, this is rapidly becoming our latest jingoistic kitsch-fest, like New Year’s Eve with nationalistic overtones. Why is it we Australians spend so much time celebrating ourselves, instead of sorting out the things that need fixing?
For reasons of space the Herald is holding this week’s art column on the Chanel exhibition in Melbourne, so that leaves only one new piece of writing: a review of Spencer, Pablo Larraín’s very weird cinematic “fable” about Princess Diana. Although it’s one of those movies that held me from start to finish, I rarely felt comfortable with the indulgences taken by director and scriptwriter. The filmmakers didn’t give Lady Di a completely new sexual identity and an imaginary lesbian affair, like the makers of Ammonite did with Mary Anning, but they have allotted her a mind spinning out of control. The film was almost certainly intended as a positive portrait of Diana, but when one steps back it’s a very messy picture. Not quite as messy, however, as last week’s Australian of the Year celebrations.