Month: May 2011

Whose ABC? My ABC.

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The front page of the Inquirer in Saturday’s Australian was devoted to ‘Whose ABC?’, an article by journalist and former political staffer Chris Kenny. Attacks on the ABC re-emerge with such regularity that it is almost tiring, and most such articles exhibit a stubborn willingness to admit that the ABC might actually be of immense value to sectors of society. Kenny’s piece is no different.

The article questions the appeal of the ABC to the ‘mainstream’, or to ‘middle Australia’. If the ABC were to adapt accordingly, in order to appeal to Kenny’s conception of these groups, one assumes that ABC 1 would end up looking like the commercial television stations. If so, then people like me would have nowhere to turn except to SBS for media content that interests them.

Commercial television has nothing for me. News and current affairs programs on the commercial stations are sensationalised, insular and often downright offensive in the assumptions they make about their viewer’s values. I have little interest in the AFL, and few of the ‘mainstream’ movies that screen on Channels 7, 9 and 10 appeal to me. I have no interest in ‘reality’ TV, Dancing with the Stars, or MasterChef. Nor would I waste my time watching American crime drama. The commercial channels represent few of my interests (even in their advertising), don’t examine issues that I consider important in any depth, and frankly bore me.

So I watch the ABC and SBS. Admittedly the ABC is not for everyone, which always prompts questions about the use of taxpayers’ money. However, a core part of the ABC’s aim is to fill a gap in the market. Kenny suggests that the ABC isn’t fulfilling this aim, drawing on comments about The Drum website, but in my view, programs such as Q&A, Four Corners and Media Watch certainly do fill a gap in the market.

These programs contain content that does not ‘dumb down’ the audience. They contain content that encourages critical thinking and that seeks both to inform and to challenge viewers; content that, in my view, cannot reliably be found on the commercial channels.

While Kenny lampoons the supposed Left-wing bias of the ABC’s Kerry O’Brien, Channel 7 and 10 give Right-wing presenters such as David Koch and Andrew Bolt free rein to state their biased opinions on national television. Sunrise, one of Channel 7’s flagship programs, featured ‘Kochie’ beckoning to viewers in the wake of a news report on protests at Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney.

‘If you’re watching at Villawood,’ said Koch, ‘come in close: Australians have a great sense of fairness – when you do things like that, we say, on your bike fella, get back out again, don’t take advantage of us.’

It’s a prime example of a presenter telling the audience what they should think, and it completely lacks any in-depth analysis of the issue. Admittedly Sunrise is an entertainment show more than anything else, but that kind of overt bias exhibited immediately after a news item is definitely not quality TV.

I also disagree with Kenny’s argument that the ABC offers nothing for rural audiences. For my family in Victoria’s high country, the radio in the kitchen is permanently tuned to ABC, and it is a lifeline of support each summer when fire danger is high. ABC 1 also presents Landline, a long-running program that comprehensively examines a variety of rural issues. Landline was a regular part of my media diet as a child, and it made me aware of the incredible complexity and diversity of rural life in Australia, outside of the rural environment that I was already familiar with.

I am also worried by the use of terms such as ‘mainstream values’ and ‘suburban values’, with the ABC apparently being out of touch with the groups that represent these values. ‘Mainstream values’ is a term thrown around on a regular basis, but defining what it encompasses is impossible. Who gets to say what these values are? Who belongs to the category of the so-called ‘mainstream’? It is incredibly short-sighted if ‘mainstream’ is defined by images such as the nuclear family and a house in the suburbs – images that dominate the commercial media’s prime-time advertising.

Early in the article Kenny puts forward the assumption, supposedly ‘for argument’s sake’, that the critics are correct and that the ABC’s content and analysis is skewed to the Left. This point of view (analysed in more depth by Queensland journalist Derek Barry) persists throughout the article, with no attempt made to challenge it, nor to consider an opposing angle. Thus Kenny’s piece of writing, attacking the relevance of the ABC and accorded a prominent position in Australia’s only national broadsheet, operates on a mere ‘assumption’ throughout.

‘Mallee bulls’ tear up the turf at ADFA

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‘MALLEE BULLS’ TEAR UP THE TURF
at the Australian Defence Force Academy

On 6 April 2011 an 18-year old female cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) went to the media with a story that has shaken the military.

A couple of weeks earlier this cadet, Kate, had consensual sex with a male cadet, also 18 years old. What she didn’t realise at the time was that the other cadet had set the whole thing up to be filmed on a webcam. It was transmitted via Skype to a watching group of six male cadets in an adjoining room.

Kate may never have known about this if it wasn’t that one of the watching cadets reported it to superiors at ADFA.

The Skype sex scandal is the kind of incident with the potential to shake the establishment, not least because it occurred within an institution that has a responsibility to uphold some pretty firm values. It’s prompted questions about whether sexism in this form is embedded within our culture as a whole, or within subcultures in Australian society.

Ironically, the scandal has fallen out of the media and been superseded by weeks of coverage of one particular wedding, and of a woman named Kate who has found herself in a very different situation.

In the midst of the royal wedding coverage, the media on Friday 29 April did report that two of the young men involved in the ADFA Skype scandal had fronted the ACT Magistrates Court.

Back at the beginning of April, there was talk that the principle male player in the incident, Daniel McDonald, could be charged with rape, since the situation in which the female cadet consented to sex was misrepresented to her. Instead, the charges he faces are “using a carriage service to cause offence” and “committing an act of indecency”.

These are charges that don’t have much of a ring to their name, and that aren’t likely to stick to a young man’s reputation in the way that the single word “rape” would.

Instead, the men involved continue their studies at ADFA, where officer cadets essentially study a university degree while also taking on board the culture of the Defence Force, for better or worse.

This notion of culture, and of a sexist culture particular to the Forces, is one of the biggest issues to come out of the whole scandal.

Defence Minister Stephen Smith initiated a series of reviews into various areas of the Defence Force as soon as the news of the Skype abuse came out. One of these is an enquiry into the treatment of women at ADFA, to be conducted by Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.

Meanwhile, ABC News Online reported that ADFA graduates denied any culture of sexism, and Australia Defence Association director Neil James appeared to blame the incident on a kind of unavoidable need for sex on behalf of young men at ADFA.

As reported by news.com.au and AAP, James described ADFA cadets as “fit as mallee bulls”, and in need of a sexual outlet from the “high pressure environment” that they are apparently in.

While James was careful to say that he didn’t condone the behaviour of the male cadets involved, he did describe Kate as “a bit of a troubled lass” because of some unrelated issues at ADFA.

One gets the impression that his “fit as mallee bulls” description wasn’t designed to be applicable to the women at ADFA – he was specifically talking about “bulls”, after all.

This in itself positions females as the sex outlet that James says the men (and boys – some of those involved are not yet 18) need. Sure, sex can be an outlet for all sorts of people, but the positioning of it in this manner – such that the woman provides the outlet to the man – by the head of the Defence Association appears indicative of some underlying problems.

Aside of James’ perhaps thoughtless comments, there’s also questions about what actually initiated the incident. What prompts a few young people to decide to broadcast an intimate act to others without consent of one of the involved parties?

These cadets had only been at ADFA for two months. They brought attitudes and values with them from the outside world. Two months probably wasn’t long enough to shake these attitudes to the core and replace them with entirely new values – thus many have argued that their behaviour has nothing to do with a culture particular to ADFA.

But two months was undoubtedly long enough for the cadets to sort themselves into social groups based on some of the attitudes and values they brought with them – and on how these attitudes fitted into ADFA’s existing culture.

It was long enough for them to figure out that being “fit as mallee bulls”, in spite of rules surrounding fraternisation, was what was expected of them.

It was also long enough for loyalty to the male friendship group to rank above loyalty to a female sexual partner. The betrayal here is enormous. Regardless of the level of emotional attachment between the two cadets – whether they slept together that day purely for sexual enjoyment or with a deeper level of feeling involved – it was still an intimate act.

It was an act that required some level of trust between the involved parties and that expected a level of discretion in return.

That this discretion and trust was so openly violated is evidence of this sense of loyalty to the male friendship group over the female sexual partner. That only one of the six watching cadets stepped forward is another indication.

Some commentators have suggested that all of these cadets should be immediately expelled from ADFA, with the possible exception of the one who blew the whistle. How can these young men be trusted on a battlefield if they cannot be trusted in the relatively low pressure environment of ADFA?

The discretion between partners is frequently betrayed in the way that groups of both men and women tell each other about their sexual exploits. Often, it’s done in a way that would upset the other party if they knew about it. Sometimes, it leads to a development of a “reputation”.

The positive or negative nature of this reputation is largely dependent on the gender of the person involved – evidenced in the well-known double standard applied to women who are described as sluts for behaviour that might earn a man a few approving slaps on the back from his mates.

The capturing of the actual act of sex on a webcam was premeditated in a way that the sharing of exploits after the fact usually isn’t – making the betrayal ten times worse.

Whether or not Broderick’s enquiry finds evidence of a culture of sexism within ADFA, this incident is a pretty clear indication that there are some serious issues in the way that women are perceived and treated within the Forces.

This article originally appeared in the Women’s Edition of La Trobe University’s student newspaper, Rabelais, on 12 May 2011.

Letter to The Age

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Vale Labor values

I worry about the values of Julia Gillard’s Labor government in the light of the ‘Malaysia solution’. Instead of striking nonsensical deals with countries that are not signatories to the 1951 Convention on the Rights of Refugees, the government should be working to make the arrival of asylum seekers by boat into a non-issue. I am sick of hearing about ‘boat people’ and ‘queue jumpers’, terms that are meaningless and misleading.

I am also disgusted that 10 years on from Tampa and under a new government, the same scare tactics are used to make asylum seekers into a political football. What happened to Labor’s values? What happened to Prime Minister Gillard’s concept of a fair go? Clearly, it is not extended to those who have arrived in Australia under the harshest of conditions, and who deserve our compassion and care.

Published in The Age on 11 May 2011. It’s the second letter on this page.

A delayed reflection on Biutiful

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I saw the movie Biutiful several weeks ago, and before seeing it I had intended to write a review of it. But the movie was too heavy for me to engage with it immediately afterwards. It left me shaking, an indication of it’s power. One expects grittiness and confronting images from the films of Alejandro González Iñárritu, but this was too much for me. Afterwards I spent days trying to shake some of the more disturbing images from my mind. At night when my thoughts relaxed, the images crept back in and kept me awake.

I went to Barcelona in 2008, to Barra Gotica, the Gothic Quarter. This is the tourist area of Barcelona, and while young men may try to sell you beer or something stronger in back alleyways, there is little obvious sadness or suffering or pain in this bouyant, active area of the city.

The Barcelona of Biutiful is another city altogether, a city where illegal sellers of imitation goods on the street live in tiny cramped apartments. It is a city of poverty, vicious cycles and exploitation. Only in long shots where the Temple de la Sagrada Família can be seen rising above the suburbs, or in the images of the beach, can the Barcelona that I experienced be glimpsed at all.

Javier Bardem plays the main character in Biutiful, Uxbal, and brings his usual gruff charisma to the screen. But here his character is also pained, dying, angry, afraid. When he loves, it is bittersweet.

The most disturbing scene involves the Chinese workers who are paid a pittance to produce those imitation goods that Uxbal’s African workers then sell on the streets. The movie is powerful and well made in a gritty, awful sense – there is nothing soft about the way the cinematography portrays the city and the lives of people in it.

I can’t say much more, because I don’t wish to re-engage more closely with my memories of the film. I acknowledge this movie’s strength and Iñárritu’s ability to capture humanity so confrontingly, but for me, it was too much.