PELICAN
Hangover Ed. 5 Vol. 84
Experiences that mean the world The Melbourne JD Law degree
www.law.unimelb.edu.au/jd
Picture byby Kate Prendergast Picture Jessica Cockerill
CONTENTS
REGULARS
HANGOVER
SECTIONS
4
credits
10 fracking
22 politics
5
editorials
11 fratting
26 film
6
what’s up
12 nestrot
30 arts
7
advice corner
13 party
33 music
9
miscellaneous
14 gold
38 culture
21 griffonomics
16 down
43 books
46 karl stefanovic
17 super mutant netball turtle 18 facebook 20 welfare bread
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CONTRIBUTORS
ADVERTISING Alex Pond DESIGN Kate Hoolahan COVER ARTIST Alice Palmer SECTION EDITORS Books - Zoe Kilbourn Culture - Simon Donnes Politics – Richard Ferguson Music – Connor Weightman Arts- Kat Gillespie Film – Wade McCagh
Candice Lamb* Danica Lamb* Kim Lateef^ Paul Lindsay* Hugh Manning* Shaughn McCagh* Wade Mccagh* Alice McCullaugh^ Michael Morrissey* James Munt* Lachlan Palamara* Alice Palmer^ Ben Pattison* Tom Reynolds* Mason Rothwell* Connor Slight* Caroline Stafford* Thea Walton* Connor Weightman* Lauren Wiszniewski*^ Kenneth Woo*
Picture by Ashleigh Gould
EDITORS Marnie Allen Alex Griffin
Contributors (*- words ^-images) Marnie Allen*^ Josh Chiat* Kevin Chiat* Jessica Cockerill*^ Samuel J. Cox Ben Craig-Wadham* Simon Donnes* Yutika Donohue* Thomas Durkin* Richard Ferguson* Mason Fleming* Caitlin Frunks* Kat Gillespie*^ Ashleigh Gould*^ Matthew Green* Alex Griffin*^ Zoe Kilbourn* Charlotte Jones*
CLIMB ABOARD YO! If you’re into thinking, writing, talking, sassing, drawing, sketching, smacktalking, whistling, airdrumming or knitting, come and get involved in Pelican! The year is running out! Also, if you have complaints, comments, thoughts or feedback, contact us at pelican@ guild.uwa.edu.au, or come and visit our office on the second floor of the guild building here on campus, ya groody! DISCLAIMER: The views expressed within are not the views of the UWA Student Guild or the Pelican editorial staff. I think we stole some beers from the guild fridge during deadline week, sorry to everyone.
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PIZZA AD?
ACTING PREZITORIAL Dear Reader. I regret to inform you that Cameron Barnes was unable to fulfill his moral obligation to his loyal subjects and write his Prezitorial for this month. Taking his annual leave in the metaphorical ‘eye of the storm’ that is the week before Semester 2 Orientation week, Cameron is in Singapore, and is probably hitting up Universal Studios as we speak. I truly hope he has a novelty hat of some sort. With many of The Powers That Be being unavailable, a unique power-void was created. Fear not, beloved Reader, for your Acting Guild President Lizzy O’Shea has risen from the ashes, like a majestic phoenix, to save the day. Everyone loves a leadership spill. Guild folklore tells of the coming of an Acting Guild President who, in a time of dire need, will stand like a beacon of light in the darkness. I’m not going to make any promises. In Cam’s absence, the wheels of the Guild will continue to go around and around – although the President’s emails may not be organised correctly into the dozens of different files and categories that are usually Cam’s preference. The Student Assist officers are still helping out those who need it with advice and loans, Guild Catering are still serving up delicious meals and coffee, and all of the Guild’s projects are still going full-steam ahead ready for Semester 2. I think Cam will be happy now that I’ve included some actual Guild information, as, alas, my reign will end very soon. I shed a small tear at the thought, but will rest easy knowing that my stint as Acting Guild President will be immortalised in a Pelican Prezitorial. I think we can all agree that everything is coming up Milhouse. Lizzy O’Shea, Acting Guild President.
MARNITORIAL Whatever your vice, there always seems to be consequences. Unless you’re addicted to mah-jong or celery or something. Or if you’re a brony. What begins as a fun carefree evening fist-pumping to What is Love by Hadaway can wind up with you sleeping naked on your bedroom floor next to a pile of vom and using The Mill on the Floss as a pillow. Sometimes a tell-tale chin graze or incomprehensible sent items can extend the hangover a little longer as you experience reminders of things you’d rather forget in the days or weeks after a big night. Hangovers can be scary, and they often outlive the physical symptoms and frantic anticipation of compromising pictures surfacing on the internet. I have fond memories of those mornings waking up with a husky voice and stamp ink on my cheek, climbing in the car with my friends and ordering multiple hash browns from Jolimont Mcdonald’s before inevitably inspecting all of my social media accounts. But I’ve also had enough mornings of regret to find a balance between fun and abandonment of self-control. As long as you’re not harming yourself or others, there’s no shame in getting tinned with your m8s. And when you do, nothing beats water, makeup wipes and friends who hold your hair back, feed you and tuck you into bed so you can wake up the next day and feel confident that you haven’t ruined your life. Mazel Tov, Marnie xx
GRIFFITORIAL Recently discovered in an ancient cave library in China were thousands of documents dating back to the eighth century BC, detailing how life went down back then. One was a template that officials were instructed to copy out and send to party hosts in case they embarrassed themselves the night before: Yesterday, having drunk too much, I was intoxicated as to pass all bounds; but none of the rude and coarse language I used was uttered in a conscious state. The next morning, after hearing others speak on the subject, I realised what had happened, whereupon I was overwhelmed with confusion and ready to sink into the earth with shame. Last Friday night, I apparently chanted ‘jodhpurs’ at the main act at the gig I was at for about a full minute, before threatening to take my shirt off. I don’t remember, and when I found out, it felt like having a dead pigeon thrust into my hands by a stranger asking me to do the trick I usually do with dead birds while apologizing that it’s not a finch. We are all pretty brimming with consciousness of ourselves most of the time, but hangovers create a nice little fog of war between ourselves and reality that can be doubly helpful in another sense; if you can let go of what you’ve done that you can’t remember, you can come to terms with the stuff you definitely did a bit more readily. If you’re trying to escape something through your actions, be it gettin’ drank or exploring the rich, fascinating world of competitive parkour, the moment you slip off that railing in the cultural center, forehead first is the moment you start facing the past, and it gets easier every time. Luv Griff
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WHAT’S UP ON CAMPUS UWA MUSLIM STUDENTS ASSOCIATION The UWA Muslim Students Association will be holding its Annual Community Iftar on Friday the 2nd of August from 5.15-7PM at Hackett Hall. This dinner is an amazing opportunity for us to share the experience of Ramadan with the UWA community. Tickets are $15 for members, $20 for non-members and FREE ENTRY for friends of other faiths. Contact 0404969751/0425290825/0 421982364 to reserve your ticket. Halal food has also been introduced into our cafes (Reid, Hackett and Guild) so make sure you try it out! For more info and updates on our events, visit our website (http://www.uwamsa.org/) or Facebook page (www.facebook.com/groups/uwamsa)! ARTS UNION Looking for some adventure? Perhaps a treasure to plunder? Do you like putting on costumes and meeting new people? (Arrrrr!) Then strap on your wooden leg, load up your muskets, and buckle on your parrot because Arts Union’s pirate-themed ‘Poopdeck’ is back! Get ready to set sail on a night full of costumes and music (and let’s not forget our good friend rum) at the Tav. Presented by your good friends at the Arts Union on August 15th, tickets will be on sale from Monday 5th August on Oak Lawn. Get involved, scallywags! PASSION 4 JESUS A Christian based club that seeks to help new students settle into university life. We are happy to help new students with housing, internet and any other university matters. We also run numerous social events for new students to get connected with other students. Stay tuned for more events coming up!
ENGINEERS WITHOUT BORDERS Engineers Without Borders are presenting the Leadership Symposium 2013. Learn leadership skills from the experts. Network with company representatives and other students. Learn about volunteering overseas with EWB. When: August 17th & 18th Where: MILC Who: Anyone is welcome. You do not need to be studying engineering. For more information: https://www.facebook.com/ewbUWA UNIVERSITY BICYCLE CLUB The University Bicycle Club (UBC) is UWA’s own student run bicycle club. The club holds group rides almost every weekend during semester, has social events and promotes cycling at UWA. See Facebook.com/UBCuwa for all our information and if you are interested in group rides join our “UBC Group Riders” Facebook group! AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL Are you interested in the protection of human rights and want to get involved in the cause? Amnesty International is a global movement of over three million people who work on a wide range of issues, from the rights of refugees to those of women in Afghanistan. We meet at Reid Lawn (Reid Café if raining or lawn wet) from 1-2pm on the second Tuesday of every month during semester, so come along to a meeting or keep your eyes peeled for our letter writing and film screening events this semester! Email amnesty.uwa@gmail. com or find us at https://www.facebook.com/ groups/137432046437202 WA MEDICAL STUDENTS’ ORCHESTRA
SAVE THE CHILDREN UWA The values of the Save the Children UWA Branch are aligned with those of the broader organisation, which emphasise the commitment to creating a world where every child has a safe and happy childhood. We try to connect volunteers with Save the Children initiatives and are always keen to get more members involved / increase our campus presence. The main event we’re involved in is the massive annual book sale, held in the Winthrop Undercroft. (Aug 16-21) Like us on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ savethechildrenUWA) or contact sca.uwa@gmail. com for more info on how you can get involved!
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The WA Medical Students’ Orchestra is seeking musicians and choir members to join us for our end of year concert. Under the direction of past WA Doctors’ Orchestra conductor and renowned musician Mark Coughlan, we will be joined by members of WADO and are excited to be undertaking some great works. The concert will be at Hale School, on Thursday the 10th of October. Proceeds raised will be donated in support of Autism West. 7 Tuesday evening rehearsals will be held starting late August at UWA. We invite all interested in joining to contact us at medicalstudentsorchestra@gmail.com
UWA FRENCH CLUB The UWA French Club is a collection of students and othersinterested in French language and culture. You don’t have to speak or learn French at UWA to become a member! We host conversation evenings, cultural events, and cocktail evenings. If you’d like to join, come along to our Semester 2 Sundowner in Week 1 (look out for the posters!), or to our first conversation evening at Llama Bar in Week 4. Later this semester, on Friday 18th October, we’ll be hosting the annual Jazz Soirée in Hackett Hall. Tickets available from the 7th October. Chris Burch, Secretary uwafrenchclub@gmail.com MULTICULTURAL WEEK The biggest UWA student run event is finally here again! Multicultural Week has been an effort organised under the International Student Service Department of the UWA Student Guild. This year we will be celebrating 15 years of effort towards multiculturalism. With an organising committee of over 80 students, we endeavour to provide a series of events to celebrate, educate, and raise multicultural awareness to the wider community. One of these events includes our ever-famous Spring Feast night festival for which stall registrations will open in semester two. Please visit our website (multiculturalweek. org) and Facebook page (facebook.com/ multiculturalweek) for further details. RUSSIAN RESURRECTION FILM FESTIVAL Здравствуйте! Coming to Perth this August is the Russian Resurrection Film Festival, now in its 10th year! With films running every day from the 1st to the 11th of August, there’s no excuse to stay in and watch cricket or whatever. The films will be screening at Cinema Paradiso in Northbridge. Highlights include Soulless, (ДухЛecc) the opening night film of the 34th Moscow Film Festival, The Snow Queen, and the Todorovsky Double Feature Under Moscow Nights (1994) and Hipsters (2008). Get your tickets online at www.lunapalace.com.au or in person at Cinema Paradiso, 164 James Street Northbridge. BYO Vodka!
Hay its me your fav poet percy bysshe shelley I am here to answer your questions. Right now I am just doing my thing maxing and relaxing at the villa diodati in geneva. All my bros are here byron is here trelawney is here so are the williamses edward and jane tho janes not a bro obvi haha just an expression. I am doing what I do best dropping lots of sick rhymes, thats when I am not thinking really hard about things like liberty of course. Sorry for the delay I try to answer all my questions but the post has been really bad thanks but no thanks to the recent storms. Also I am getting ready for a big trip me and edward made a boat, we are going for a sail. Mary is here she is fine, you dont need to ask all the time ok. Dear Mr Shelley, I spent years being nice and optimistic and never getting the girl. I only just discovered pick up artistry, but it’s a big change for me. Do you have any advice for a lonely beta learning to man up? “Examiner”, East Cheap. Well you asked the right person because I am very good at women. All my friends ask me for help and I help them always. Yes thats right even byron haha no one thinks that but hes always like ‘how do you do it’ and I am like ‘its an art’ haha true fact he needs me. um. its an art but i find writing poems, talking about milton, liberty etc works sometimes, if it does not work shes a bitch or you need to be more melancholic about it. If your really stuck sometimes threatening to drink laudanum is good. If you cant get laudanum try dynamo Mr Shelley, I’m crushing on two boys. Am I normal??? “The Female Werther”, Surrey. Dont worry I know how hard it is to have lots of love to give. Thats why I wrote my poem epipensykin which is also philosophy, I said you shouldnt have to select a special fav from the crowd. This is poetry for ‘have lots of sex’ like in drake and r kelly who I really like, but with better words. Oh and hay if your ever in southern europe you should give me a shout I am not epipsykidding haha. mary is fine. call me.
Mr Shelley, How do I ensure my poetic output is as timeless as yours? “Laureate”, London. Well this problem is in my poem osmindas. “Look on my works ye mighty and despair”, lol jk everything is mutable haha. I cant help you. Unless your touched by the muse, if so you can be amongst the english poets when you die. My mate keats said that. Hes dead now
Picture by Marnie Allen
PELICAN ADVICE CORNER
Bysshe. You better believe I’ll do it this time. Don’t act like you don’t know who this is. o m f g I am so d o n e Dear Mr Shelley, I need to know how the rise of the Gothic informed “The Witch of Atlas” before twelve tomorrow. No reason, Dan B., Western Australia. Well Im glad your interested so keenly in my work but Id really suggest you read more of promethius un omfg is this for school? This is for school? Let me tell you something dan. School is for squares and tories. I got expelled in like my first year at oxford and sure dad wasn’t happy but he’ll live, right? If your smart and not a loser you’ll get out of there too, theres no reason why you shouldn’t live a real and meaningful life before your parents die and your 60,000 pound entailed inheritance is transferred Dear Mr Shelley, Mum says I shouldn’t listen to rap and it stunts my growth, but I think she’s a hater. Do you think she’s a hater? “Notorious”, Hants. Look Im not really across any of the edgy ones like mackel or childish gambol, its really hard to get wifi here with all the damage from the napoleonic wars and things. I have had a listen to yeezus, its cool but I think he got a lot from me honestly. Its like, ‘i am a god’ just like my demigorgon in promethius untrapped and ‘oh im making atheism cool now’ well guess who lost custody of his kids for being ungodly in like 1810? The paparazzi is right kanye is a dick. Another thing he got from me is naming his kid something weird. I really like original names I think they sound tough and independent. Thats why my son is called florence
When Percy Bysshe Shelley was cremated, his heart would not burn, possibly because of a health condition that caused its calcification, but possibly because he was ice cold
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AA by Several Anonymous People When you go to an AA meeting, there is surprisingly little talk of alcohol or retelling of drunken stories. What people tend to focus more on is an avoidance of hangovers in everyday life. For example: ever studied too hard and felt empty after an exam period, drank too much coffee, not been able to sleep and then spent the next two days really tired, or got in a fight with someone, cried and then found it hard to open your eyes for a few hours? After alcoholic hangovers have been removed from the equation, there is time
and room to think about these other types of hangovers, in life. When thinking about it, the feeling of being hung-over is something we have when we are sick. So being hung over can be thought of as being sick. But how do we avoid the behaviours that lead to us feeling sick and ultimately embark on a life committed to health?
Looking at the people in the room and hearing their stories seems to prove that this approach works and has worked for millions of people around the world. The wonderful thing, was that they told their stories of recovery with an attitude of “oh I’m just a drunk, don’t copy, listen to or admire me”.
The answer/program that AA offers its members is one of spirituality. A relationship to a Higher Power through prayer and meditation practise leads to an experience in which it is almost impossible to over consume because of the presence of spontaneity and embodiment.
GOOD DAY SUNSHINE by Ash Gould Well, you’ve picked your poison, now it’s time to lift those spirits by choosing your antidote. In the horrible world of hangovers everybody has some miraculous cure that they swear by. For some lucky individuals who don’t have to get out of bed the next day, sleeping for hours on end will usually do the trick. Most of us, however, aren’t so lucky and we have to drag ourselves out of bed and into work or uni. For this we need a little more assistance from food and beverages. HAIR OF THE DOG We’ve all heard the saying, but does it really work? My first complaint is that when sporting a really bad hangover, one’s first words upon waking are “I’m never doing that again”. Having only tried this remedy once, I can’t say with absolute certainty that it never works, but it definitely didn’t work for me with tequila. If you don’t believe me, just ask my neighbour’s front garden. The Bloody Mary is supposed to be the cocktail to help you recover from the depths of your hangover, but drinking a vodka-
based cocktail after a night of debauchery is like deferring a compulsory unit until the last semester of your degree, it’s only prolonging the problem and you’re going to hate yourself for it later. PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE Don’t worry, this isn’t a warning against drinking at all, that would be ridiculous. No, this is the tried and tested method of consuming a 600ml bottle of water and two Panadol right before you fall asleep. Possibly the only hangover remedy that has ever really worked for me, this preventative measure has helped me sit through many painful “next days” with only a minor headache. That said, it does nothing to help the embarrassing memories from the previous night, for this seek professional help. SUGAR SUGAR Sweet things are usually last on my list after a big night out, but someone suggested that I try chocolate to give myself an energy boost. The only thing that it boosted was
my desire to die. If you want horrific stomach cramps, then chocolate is the thing for you! Rumour has it that fruit is a great way to bounce back from a hangover, but I suspect that it works just about as well as chocolate. GREASY GOODNESS A common craving which begins during the drunken hours and lingers until the following morning, greasy carbohydrates are the go-to hangover cure. We’ve all been in a busy McDonald’s late on a Friday night, and it is usually a sobering experience for two reasons. Firstly, getting those fries in your belly seems to make you feel instantly better and, secondly, you have the stunning realization that you are nowhere near the drunkest person in the room. You see a girl with her jeans on inside-out, a guy walk into the ladies room by accident, and a 50 year old employee who puts up with these drunkards for minimum wage, suddenly you start thinking your life ain’t so bad.
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GONE FRACKIN’ by Charlotte Jones
CSG mining is currently being undertaken at a number of locations in Queensland and New South Wales. The mining process involves the extraction of methane gas, which is locked into the coal matrix deep underground and held down by bodies of water. Getting it out requires drilling down and injecting a mixture of water and chemicals at high pressure to fracture the rocks above the coal seam. A mixture of fluid and gas is then pumped to the surface where the gas can be separated and processed. This fracturing process, or ‘fracking’, is all going on hundreds of meters underground. The end result is a liquefied natural gas product which is marketed as the clean and green fuel of the future. I don’t know about you, but that sounds to me like pulling two adjacent blocks out of a row at the bottom of your jenga tower and expecting it not to fall down. Pretty much, CSG could turn out to be the ‘I drunk two entire bottles of something without a label and did vodka shots into my eye last night’ sort of hangover for future generations
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in Australia. The potential environmental impacts of CSG mining are so poorly researched that a literature search for impact studies returns alarmingly few results. But, given the way it interacts with hydrological systems that are interconnected, it is difficult to believe that such a mining method would not have some significant impact on nearby groundwater supplies, as well as surface water flows. Also, the colossal volumes of water required to be injected into the coal seam need to come from somewhere, depleting a valuable and scarce resource. In Australian operations, much of this water is currently taken from the Great Artesian Basin, compounding an existing over-extraction problem. Once used, the wastewater (containing significant volumes of chemicals and salts) needs to be disposed of, which poses further problems for the environment. Some known potential risks of CSG mining include water and land contamination, groundwater depletion, and methane leakage. The latter has an obvious risk relating to climate change, but the other factors could have more profound impacts on the local environment and public health. The depletion of groundwater systems affects the flow to surface water systems like rivers, lakes, and creeks. These systems are not only used for drinking water and irrigation, but their health is essential for the survival of native vegetation and wildlife. Several farmers in Queensland and New South Wales have reported a declining availability of water in their bores since the installation of proximal gas wells. Contamination risks have also become reality at some mining operations in Australia. A 10,000 litre spill of the toxic water used in extraction occurred at Pilliga in New South Wales in 2011. Soil and water samples taken from the Pilliga State Forest subsequently showed lead levels five times acceptable drinking water standards, as well as toxic levels of arsenic and chromium. This spill could be linked to impacts such as plant deaths, salinity, and altered soil structure. Casting further doubt on the ‘clean and green’ nature of coal seam gas is the emissions intensity of methane compared with other greenhouse gases. The Global Warming Potential of methane is 72 times higher than that of carbon dioxide. All in all, it seems to me to be doomed to become a malevolent and expensive vestige of the ‘seemed like a good idea at the time’ legacy that today’s energy
Picture by Marnie Allen
When it comes to hangovers of the poor environmental decision making variety, Australia could compile a list that would bring tears to even the Gina Rineharts of the world, even if only for the sheer length of the thing. Since for the English settlers the beauty of a place was contingent on its likeness to old mother England, it was necessary to BYO gardens and hunting fodder when moving to the island while getting rid of all that dastardly scrubby stuff and those wretched rainforests. Over the first two centuries after colonisation, native vegetation was cleared with such vigour that countless species were probably destroyed that we’ll never know existed, while countless ecosystems were irreparably altered. This has resulted in legacies that persist today, such as problems of salinity, biodiversity loss, and habitat fragmentation. If that wasn’t enough, there have been over-extracted rivers, fisheries overfished, bounties put on the heads of native mammals, nuclear tests in the desert... the list goes on and on. You’d think that we might have learned that some of these things maybe weren’t such marvellous ideas, and that we’d be a tad more precautionary before pursuing major environment altering processes, especially when we barely understand the environmental impacts. Yet, the energy industry’s present love affair with the mining of coal seam gas (CSG) in Australia suggests the opposite.
companies will leave for future generations and governments, akin to asbestos or the introduction of cane toads.
Methane leakage Launching into large scale CSG extraction projects without comprehensively understanding the potential adverse impacts to the environment, safety, and human health is foolish and reckless. These impacts need to be determined and assessed at all stages of the product’s life cycle, and weighed up against the benefits to determine whether it is really worthwhile. In a case of short term gain, long term pain, it’s easy to be blindsided by the immediate benefits, but important to consider the splitting headache you could be lining up for tomorrow. Like, I wouldn’t do vodka shots into my eye even if you paid me to. Just sayin’.
America pumps 2 billion cubic metres of natural gas a day. Meanwhile, lighting your tapwater on fire has become a popular party trick in many homes close to fracking sites (see the 2011 documentary Gasland, it’s a doozy)
Picture by Lauren Wiszniewski
THE GREAT FRATSBY by Thea Walton Some of the worst hangovers in my life have been caused by fraternities. Sure, you can pretend to yourself that you’re the Second Coming and tell me that really it’s my fault that I got that drunk and my choice to enter their establishment, but this would only serve to prove your ignorance regarding fraternities and their parties. This is because there’s a certain je ne sais qua about frat party hangovers that you just can’t grasp unless you’re there, dancing on that couch, getting warm liquid thrown in your face. However, I will try to impart at least some of the frat-wisdom I gleaned over the past year on exchange, like a drunken female David Attenborough, taking you on a journey towards a better understanding of a frat party hangover. Like stainless steel off-cuts from a building project, fraternities come in all shapes and sizes. Fraternities usually have some sort of “rep” to help make it easier for students to effectively differentiate between them, which can include (but are not limited to): The Preppy Frat, The Rich International Frat, The Roofie Frat (see below), The Hipster Frat and The Jewish Frat, although maybe don’t mention my name at The Jewish Frat because the last time I was there the alcohol mixed with my Catholic upbringing to unleash from within me this wild curiosity in all things Jewish. Thus when I entered the frat full of guys wearing kippahs I started yelling, “This is so cool! I love Judaism! Mazeltov!” and then proceeded to tell some guy called Lior that he was named after an Australian indie musician whose music defined my later high school years. Regardless, what fraternities all have in common are the unbreakable “brotherly” bonds, formed through a process known as “pledging”. This intense, sometimes dangerous, and often illegal experience is what each fraternity is founded upon. And once each pledge has eaten all the semen-infused ice-cream they can handle, spent upwards of forty-eight hours locked in a room that is continuously piped full of weed fumes and the same Frank Sinatra song on loop, and bought a one-way ticket to China just for the lols, they get unreserved access to the best show in town. Every frat brother intuitively knows what is required of a successful frat party. Firstly, you need some sort of theme that people will vaguely adhere to, preferably one that encourages women to wear minimal clothing. Secondly, you need a couple of Brothers on the door, who will only allow in groups of people with the right
“ratio”. The math is pretty simple – the more women, the more favourable your “ratio” is. Thirdly, you need one of the Brothers to set up their DJ kit, and spin all those fresh new tunes that the kids are listening to. Most importantly, you need a veritable fucktonne of alcohol, including a couple of kegs and some “Jungle Juice”. Throw in a beer pong table and you have all the crucial elements of a frat party.
Crotch on your bum Now I’m not saying that every frat boy is at these parties to get laid, but if you go to a frat party, you’re gon’ get grinded on. As an Australian, I find this style of dance offensive because it impedes my ability to flail my arms as a physical expression of my enjoyment of the music. That and it’s hard not to feel objectified when some upstanding young gentleman starts rubbing his crotch on your bum. What’s interesting about this phenomenon is that American girls are often very willing and eager to grind too, which leads me to forgive anyone who’d never been to a frat party before for thinking that they’d accidentally walked into the audition room for an Usher music video. Again, while I’m not saying that every frat boy is at these parties to get laid, on our second night out on campus two of my friends were roofied. I personally don’t remember this happening because by this point in the evening I had followed some randoms to a party in an alleyway
and was incoherently Whatsapping my ex, but one friend had to send himself to hospital and was later helpfully informed by his House Dean that, “Yeah, this thing happens quite often. Although, the drink probably wasn’t meant for you.” I present to you an Ivy League Institution’s attitude towards the date rape drug. Personally, what makes frat-related hangovers so bad is waking up with the guilt-laden knowledge that you went to a frat party. When you’re a bit drunk, if you ignore the door bitches, avoid the grinding and don’t drink the Jungle Juice, you can actually have a pretty great time. But when you do drink the Jungle Juice, you wake up the next morning wearing someone else’s t-shirt, with your coat and wallet thrown in the trash by the Frat House cleaners and your dignity left somewhere by the pizza shop where those girls let you steal one of their slices. I start telling myself that it’s because of people like me that frats continue to function, students continue to die or get seriously injured due to irresponsible consumption of alcohol and that one in four women in college are sexually assaulted. Then I drink some water and slowly come to accept that fact that the issue is really just with American college culture as perpetuated by the media. I’ll see you all down at Pi Lambda next week!
Vermont passed an anti-hazing law in 1999 due to an incident at the University of Vermont where freshmen were forced to perform “Elephant Walk”, often defined as a group of males walking in a straight line, each person putting one thumb in their mouth and the other thumb inside the anus of the male in front of them.
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MID YEAR RORTNEST by Danica Lamb
It’s a reoccurring sentiment among students that the best way to cure a hangover is to keep drinking the morning afterwards. It’s no surprise then that a ninety-six hour VB fiesta attracts hundreds of students across the ocean from Perth to a small, beachy island- most drinking from a silver bag concealed under their coats on the luxury ferry trip there. Once on the island, the serious drinking kicks off. A two-hour wait for the delivery of caskets, bottles and slabs to one’s doorstep only briefly delays the 2pm centurions, and for those who want a slightly less competitive environement, there’s always inviting the strangers from next door (and their soup pot of goon) over for a game of Slap Cup. Put simply, the drinking is spontaneous, constant and inelegant. This could be down to the security of knowing an available bed and a friend to hold your hair back is never less than 100m away, but it’s more likely that after a semester occupied by responsibilities and anxiety we ‘rink to remind ourselves that we can still be young and reckless. Doing this alone would be alcoholic, but engaging in the binge with a thousand of your peers around gives the whole ritual a sense of justification and solace from self scrutiny. My neighbour summed it up perfectly- “wanton mutual indulgence”.
who aren’t so young, many male attendees with their name already on a diploma come in search of escape, to avoid seniority and re-enact their lost adolescence with eighteen year old girls. You awake in the morning- be it on the jetty, or in the neighbour’s bed- met with the sight of a literal sea of bottles and tin cans flooding into the back of the garbage van next to your unit. Interestingly, the Rottnest Authorities are as keen to clean up and erase any traces of the night before as we are. All evidence of the festival of conspicuous consumption is removed by 10amleaving no verification except for the testimonies of our friends. It seems that removing all evidence is a recurring theme when it comes to how Rottnest has been used since colonisation. For ninety-four years, the island was a ‘penal establishment’ for Indigenous Australians; where tourists are now charged $240 a night for residence in the island’s Quod, groups of men were imprisoned and crammed in each tiny room for years on end in numbers far exceeding the 50% overflow restrictions I was subject to. Prisoners were forced into slavery, often until death, building roads, cottages and the church, for crimes as petty as stealing a lamb. This infrastructure was then used to satisfy
Rottnest’s recreational possibilities for whites, while the prison continued to torture and kill. The island also acted as a WWI prisoner of war camp to around one thousand Austrian and German detainees – yet, all evidence has been removed as quickly as my Jim Beam was on the Tuesday morning.
Party, yack and continue. Maybe Rottnest pulls us in so strongly because it represents who we are as students. We’re a group separate from the masses, distinct in our assets and confident in our attractiveness. We’re aware of our lapses in judgement but don’t seem to care – we keep drinking and looking pretty without any real consequences. The island is waiting for a hangover from its history that never seems to come. The real hangover for us, however, will be what reflects back at us when we look in the mirror and ask ourselves whether University social life is completely and wholly defined by the amount of drinking games we play, hickeys we accumulate and standard drinks we consume. If it is, then only a synthetic culture can be claimed to exist, and what type of culture is that at all?
Driven by impulsiveness and egocentrism, a fetish seems to swell around how big the party is that you’re at, or how many empty cans you have stacked on your bench top. Everyone is willing to party, yack, and continue partying, but only if it isn’t at your own house. We obsess over how much we plan to drink over the course of the night and which friend is having a party that we’re invited to, all in an effort to flee from any adolescent’s worst fear- an anticlimax. For those
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Despite what the Dutch called the place (in mistaking quokkas for giant, oversized rats), Rottnest was an important sacred site called Wadjemup – “place where the dead spirits go”.
Picture by Akima Lateef
It’s always a special moment watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean from the vantage point of a blighted Rottnest. With voonbag in hand, you struggle to distinguish your best friend from the couch you’re sitting on, which you got onto your balcony via the window, somehow. Praise be to Mid Year Rottnest. The rate of loss of dignity over the four-day trip for many students is only matched by the rate of decay of UWA social culture over the last few years, which has involved the banning of the notorious O-Camps in which binge drinking and group bonding became mandatory (Ed- and often leading to illegal consequences- stay alert, freshers!). It’s because of this that ‘MYR’ has taken on the new role as a ‘rite of passage’ to many students, especially freshers. There seems to be something mystical and tempting about Rottnest, that helplessly draws us in, shapes us and pushes us away changed for the better. Maybe.
HOW TO BE THE STAR OF A PARTY by Connor Slight
Bring Alcohol When lugging drinks to a party it helps if you have a rambunctious story accompanying the obtainment of the alcohol – the more hijinks the better. Increase your chances of hilarity by having odd and kooky friends, usually with names like Fogell or Tom Green (more on names later). These guys will usually trigger your wacky adventure through a miscommunication or a remark being taken out of context, which will eventually lead you to a jail or a street curb, =signalling the low point of your adventure where the odds are pretty stacked against you. But a chance encounter with a mysterious janitor and/or stripper in an angel costume who will give you an inspirational talk about wasted youth and no regrets will spur the resolution phase. Not only will you be fashionably late, but also juvenile alcoholism means you’ll be cheered and celebrated as you enter triumphantly with a keg or detergent container raised high. Kick off the drinking with a beer chug yourself then proceed to steps 2 and 3. Have a Dance-off One quick way to become the life of a party is to engage in a danceoff; two minutes that can make or break your life. It’s important when starting your skirmish to adhere to all danceoff formalities, such as the pep talk from your side-kick and the face-to-face meet in the middle where you’ll trade clichéd barbs such as “you ready muchacho?” “Readier than ever kemosabe”. Proceed to then cue up some SaltN-Pepa and channel your inner 90’s b-boy. If you are planning on performing in a duo, you must at all costs both start dancing without any prior communication. Perhaps a shared
nod is permissible, but the routine must appear as if it has spontaneously emerged through shared passion, even if you have been practicing every Sunday for the past two years. For a guaranteed win, completely copy the dance from White Nights, air punches and all. If choosing to engage in a group danceoff, the more synchronised pirouettes and twirls the better. Make sure you start off with a chorus of finger clicking, and finish with ‘the move’. The move should be mysterious and dangerous and never before performed except by your deceased brother who died attempting it. Defy your stereotype There’s no image more powerful than a skinny white geek slamdancing to Run DMC in front of a crowd of black people, or a skinny white geek screaming out “paradise city”, not only destroying but transcending their stereotype. According to the script, pulling this off can be done in two ways; you can get arrested and go to jail and gain some early noughties swagger from a tokenly inserted black guy, or you can consume enough alcohol to bring out your “cooler” personality. Both are known as the DJ Qualls approach. After all, at the end of the day the only thing holding weird looking, socially inept misfits back is their reluctance to get drunk and party. For girls, undertake a makeover à la Shes All That, because only hot girls can be stars. Sorry. Have a great name A great name will not only solidify your night’s success, but eventually take on a persona all unto itself. History’s great achievers are remembered not just by, but through their monikers; the Iron Lady, Plato and Ghandi are no different and have the same impact as McLovin or Frank the Tank. It doesn’t stop there. Pocahontas means “Mischievous one” in Algonquin, and the legacy of her promiscuity travelled the land through her name, meaning she’d never be alone at a party. A true star.
Picture by by Natalie Thompson
A house party is a defining moment in any life/coming of age movie. Whether it’s the last day of summer, or a hastily arranged shindig after someone’s parents have left for a midwinter business trip, a drunken congregation will always serve as the last chance for inbetweeners to land the hottest girl in school or finally shed their v-plates. Can there be real-world lessons from these reliable universes though? That’s not a question I’m asking just to excuse excessive movie watching over exams, but a deeper one to aid in our own optimistic dreams of becoming party superstars. How does one go about becoming one of those rare few who enter party history, whose exploits are narrated to gaping mouthed freshers for years to come?
Names have to be meticulously thought out to arrive at that great combination of zaniness and believability. Matt Stifler wouldn’t have been the great party man had it not been for his last name and Van Wilder would never have been able to churn out consistently worsening spin off movies had it not been for that incorrigible surname. Realistically, this is the real world and life doesn’t just end after 90 minutes of setup, conflict and resolution. You can look forward to a life of high expectations and highschool reputations preceding your every move. You’ll probably end up as a child entertainer or campus tour guide wondering what would have been; but at least this way you’ll have stories to tell in your mid-life crisis road trip movie.
“Among John Belushi’s favorite party games was “cocaine chicken.” Having cut an ounce of coke into one line several feet long, he and a competitor would start snorting from opposite ends in a race to the middle. Belushi almost always won.”
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GONE FOR GOLD by Kate Prendergast The Man with the Golden Eyelid When a young Stephen Prendergast was in his twenties— later to become my father— he went touring round the Rotarua hot springs of New Zealand. Never a man to put fashion ahead of comfort, he had on shorts and scholl shoes, and was engrossed in taking snapshots of the remarkable spectra of yellows created in the wreaths of sulphurous steam rising from the pools. Stepping backward, the muddy crust of the springs gave way, and his leg was plunged into the scalding hot water beneath. Although he got the leg out again faster than you can say “put your left leg out”, he was taken to hospital with burns from his foot to his upper thigh. Creaking round the waiting room in his hospitallent wheelchair, Stephen encountered several characters of varying colours. Stories were exchanged, names were given, and tales of misfortune recounted. Here he met a man with an unfortunate burn to the side of his face, which had given his left cheek a painfully shiny burnish. But the man had been here for a different reason: his eyelid wouldn’t close properly. The muscles just wouldn’t permit him a bit of shuteye. The hospital’s doctors— those ingenious intrusionists— had solved this dilemma by weighting his eyelid with gold; seaming it in at the crease. “And the guy said— I’ll always remember this” my dad recalled excitedly, “he said— ‘I’ve got now an 18 carat wink!’”
Space-Rocket Margarine As a noble metal, gold has been extremely useful to medicine and dentistry. Resistant to both oxidation and corrosion, it is inert to the chemistry of the human body. Aside from moistening eyeballs and crowning teeth though, gold has a few other significant uses, often overlooked. Foremost of these is the fact that in almost all modern electronic devices, a touch of gold can be found— from calculators to mobiles to televisions to laptops. Non-corrosive and highly conductive, gold is used to coat critical nodes in the internal wiring to create long-life, efficient circuitry. (Resist the urge to take a hammer to your iPhone when you read your next bank statement though; Cash Converters would give you about 50 cents for the amount you’d find). Whilst it’s mainly only technogeeks who like to gild the innards of their beloved machines, NASA engineers depend upon the metal when building spaceware; electrical mishaps being inconvenient when you’re millions of miles from the nearest rocket repair station. Bling it. So apparently, gold can do more than glitter. Still, around two thirds of gold consumed annually is in the form of bling, A lamentable percentage of which has gone into the manufacture of Lil Wayne’s grill. I’m at odds over what this incurable fascination with the element says about us. On the one hand, it could be interpreted as an estimable sign of man’s transcendental sagacity—a materialized reminder and intuition that the most valuable things are beyond functionalism, speaking to us instead through the enigma of beauty. Yeah, well, perhaps. Such a mellow philosophy may suffer a little curdling, however, when you realize that it takes about 20 tonnes of ore and waste rock to make your standard 18 carat band. Cry when he proposes. The larger, jaundice-wracked part of me is more convinced that our lust for the precious metal just shows us up as damnably vain and ostentatious apes. Apes that like to swan about in bits of rock, bellowing at their social underlings and competitors to “look at the shiny shiny! Look at the shiny shiny!” Actually, our fascination may be apish at its root. In the halcyon days when homo sapiens were at their evolutionary pip, gold abounded in its alluvial deposit form
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of nuggets. Our ancestors must have lumbered upon them glimmering chunkily in streams and riverbeds all around the world, gibbering “look at the shiny shiny!” in their native grunt. The relatively pure, surface phenomenon of such deposits has caused some to speculate that gold was the “earliest metal known to hominids”.
Cry when he proposes. Unearthly trinketry Gold, it would then seem, has had millenia to embed itself within the deep strata of our mythologies. Ancient Egyptians believed it to be the skin of the Gods— particularly Ra, Sun god and most revered of deities. Incidentally, this bit of old world trivia can be found in Macklemore’s Heist album, on the track “Gold”. Other notable lyrics include: “More gold bottles, gold bottles, never sober up”, and “Ditch Jesus, in Gold I trust”. Ah, cultural progress. Anyway, Egyptian kings used to cram their tombs full of this holy dandruff. Young Tut making his entire funeral mask out of the metal (presumably after Ra had a good exfoliation session with his loofah brush). The ancient Greeks and Peruvians made a similar connection between the sun’s neverrotting eggy eternity, and the yellow metal’s perpetual brilliance; the latter believing gold to be a particularly dense combination of water and sunlight. Uncannily enough, science has since learnt us that gold is astral in origin. Like all naturallyoccurring elements with an atomic number greater than Iron’s 26, gold was nucleosynthesized in the weltering heart of dying stars. Since our planet’s native gold coalesced down into the core when the earth was still molten gloop, it’s thought that most of the gold present in the earth’s crust was delivered cosmically, during an asteroid bombardment that happened billions of years ago—the very same believed to have left the Moon so pock-faced. So what you may now have coiled round your wrist is— given the right time reference— not from this world. Perhaps there is more to gold lust than superficial avarice then; some fey impulse driving the enchantment of civilizations and cultures old
It’s been estimated that all the gold ever mined would fit into a cube 21m3.
and new. Like a gleaming dragon’s egg, it nestles majestically as a symbol of our pride and folly in the global consciousness, reappearing in our legends and stories in an indefatigable dreamlike reprise. And despite its seductive perversity, the metal is somehow always at a remove from the fervid raptures and base jealousies it incites. It remains...precious to us. “The orb-like eyes of a grey, spidery-limbed creature waver in the tenebrous darkness of the pit. It pauses, alert to an invisible sentience. The creature then slinks off with a horrible, oily, delicacy of movement”. Yeah, Old Tolkein knew the metal well. The ultimate corrupter, with connotations of power that are like the metal itself: incorruptible. Au-some / Ore-full Nowadays, gold’s despotism has reached new heights. Following the US deregulation of gold in 1971, its price went up and down for a bit like an epileptic blowfly, but in the mid-noughties began a dubiously vertiginous hike. In late 2011 it reached an unprecedented $1,800 an ounce, as investors scampered to the traditional hedge haven, hoping to buttress their assets against a global economy that had shaken the world like a rabid dog since the 2008 downturn.
Yet, as National Geographic writer Brook Larmer writes: ‘gone are the hundred-mile-long gold reefs in South Africa or cherry-size nuggets in California. Most of the gold left to mine exists as traces buried in remote and fragile corners of the globe. It’s an invitation to destruction.’ Midden-ish Touch When big corporations cast their avidly assessing eyes on such regions, an ominous gong should be clapped repeatedly over the heads of all who live there. It’s easy for corporations to implant themselves in such places, once their reconnaissance agents have assured them of its profitability. On sites like Bata Hijau on the remote Indonesian island of Sumbawa, mining companies offer growth, employment, and urbane facilities: mollification in the form of a simulated slice of middle-class American living. In return, plains and forests are blasted up and chewed out to form vast, mile-wide open-pits, thousands of feet deep.
The circuitous routes on which trucks trundle up and down like dung beetles look nothing so much like the added circles to Dante’s hell. A little way off, huge tailings dams gurgle sumpishly, filled with the toxic, sulphur and cyanide-rich slurry of chemical effluence from the upheaven ore and separating processes. Spills from these dams are the major liability of large-scale mining, and can be devastating to the regional biodiversity and community. Finicky as they are in the prospecting and extracting business, the mining industry has put fuck all effort into what to do with this vomitous slurry. Some shrug, and leave it to ooze indeterminately. Others smother it on the landscape like an icing of shit. If companies choose to make use of an area’s lax environmental standards, it can also be pumped into oceanic depths through a method known as “submarine tailings disposal”. Only stupid greed and heinously irrational rationality could create such ugliness and ennoble it as a search for beauty. This search, moreover, is so painstaking, it’s categorically absurd under all logics other than economic. We gotta sort out our priorities here. Yeah, gold is beautiful and buttery, but—and not to sound too much like Brian Cox (whose current Wonder of Life series reminisces of a high-school science video on pot)— all the multiform beauty of a forest is far more aweinspiring and mysterious than a droplet round a woman’s neck. Just imagine gold as god-snot; we might get somewhere that way.
Pictures by Kate Prendergast
Whilst gold’s spot value has sloped since then, demand remains relatively high. America and China are two of the top consumer nations fuelling the industry, but it is in India where gold is welded inextricably with tradition and culture. It is the obligatory glam of most ceremonies and
rituals, weddings in particular. Entire volcanoes have not only been levelled but inverted so that the parents of Indian brides can hoard a dowry that bespeaks to the groom: “she’s worth it”. The recent wave of gold obsession has meant people are gouging out the earth more feverishly than ever. This goes for both poor migrant workers, who depend upon small-scale artisanal mining to make a living, and transnational corporations like the Denver-based Newmont, that manages huge, open-pit mining operations all over the world (including WA’s Boddington mine).
In 95 BC, Chinese Emperor Hsiao Wu I minted a gold commemorative piece to celebrate the sighting of a unicorn.
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DOWN AND OUT by Thomas Reynolds
Picture by Marnie Allen
I’ve recently lost 25kgs. Actually, I hate describing it as “losing” weight because that makes it sound so absent-minded. “Whoops, looks like I must have dropped a few kilos under the car seat, better go find them later”. The reality is it’s taken a lot of difficult, sweaty, hard work every day for four months to get here. To give you some perspective 25kgs is equivalent to: 5,000 marshmallows, 1,000 slices of bread, 312 Golden Gaytimes, 123 Quarter Pounders, 10 cats, or 1 toddler. I have literally lost enough fat to make a tiny semi-literate person from. Two years ago I was having dinner with friends when a random guy lodged a steel pole into the back of my head while screaming “fucking faggots” at us. I know I was “lucky” I didn’t get a concussion, or brain damage, or die because “lucky” was the word the police, my friends, the doctor and a shrink all emphasised to me. The night it happened I went to my best friend’s house. I told him what had happened, explained that I’d had a paralysing panic attack at home and needed to be somewhere safe. He sat there in silence for a while before asking “so, what did you do to provoke him?”
312 Golden Gaytimes
I thought about luck a lot. If I was so unlucky as to have been at the “wrong place at the wrong time” then what was to stop other unlucky things from happening to me? What was stopping the roof from falling in on my head, or stopping me from getting hit by a bus, or waking up with cancer? What was going to stop a million other uncontrollable, unfair, unlucky things from happening to me at any moment. These were the thoughts that kept me awake at night for many months afterwards. I’d also wonder what my ex-best friend was doing. The best friend i’d fallen in love with. Neither of us dated anyone during the years we were friends, and over time our friendship assumed the air of a long term relationship. Sometimes he’d call me walking home from clubbing just to tell me about his night and how much he loved me. When we we’d drunkenly walk together in the dark he’d hold my hand. If I told him my hand hurt
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he’d examine it with his fingers as we sat alone in front of the TV at his house. And it was the same man who was telling me I was exaggerating about the assault, who explained that I must have enjoyed it because “now you’ll have a new story to tell”. The same man who now conceded in essence that I deserved to have my brains beaten out of my head if I acted “too gay” in public. I was a wreck for the next six months. There were days I went to work unwashed, unshaved and wearing my pyjamas. I would come home and lay on the floor watching endless loops of Parks and Recreation wishing I could dissolve and pool away. Eating until my stomach bloated gave me my only sense of being physically present. I’d completely isolated myself in the process of greiving and it took me a long time to begin opening up. Binge eating became habit forming, and it
triggered cravings. A craving isn’t a desire; it’s an ever-present obsession with a specific food or flavour. It is there in the morning when you wake and is there until you go to sleep. It will be there every single day until it’s satisfied. And that’s how I gained the 25 kgs. I would like to conclude with telling you about some magic formula I found that eventually fixed my circumstances. Except that never happened, I did not find God, or medication, or a mantra. Change came in degrees. I went on holiday. Friends encouraged me to get involved with Pelican Magazine. I made new friends. I got a fuck buddy. I saw a shrink. I started to talk about what had happened and how I was feeling. I have not become transcendent. I still feel the attraction of emotionally damaged men. Sometimes I test my luck by taking needless risks. But today is the day I exorcised the ghost of my unhappiness, and I feel lighter, I feel liberated.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has reported that 80% of LGBTQI participants had experienced public insult, 70% verbal abuse, 20% explicit threats and 13% physical assault, and that’s not taking into account underreporting.
PLAYING THE MAN by Tom Durkin
In the final game of the season I encountered something that I didn’t think existed within the social netball sphere. My team, against one of the best within our league, were knocked out of finals contention by a mere point. After playing a ripper of a match as my team’s GK, my friend from the opposite side messaged me apologising for her team’s behaviour. She remarked that the tall, athletic and very well built person who had been playing on me had been espousing some rather unsavoury remarks at half time. I know straight away when I started reading these messages what they were in regards to. They were about me being gay. Let’s just pause for a second and assess the situation. The team we had been playing against had been named the Ninja Turtles. Yes, you did hear me correctly. The team that had resorted to such insults had named themselves after possibly the gayest show in television history, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The lovable show of our childhood featuring four turtles calling themselves “brothers” who enjoy dressing up in assorted colourful fabrics whilst living “underground”
That night I drove home and was thinking about what he could have possibly said. This was quite an ironic experience as I had just scored my P-plates that day and thought it only appropriate to pump Madonna at the
Social netball sphere height of my speaker system’s volume. Had he deemed me a faggot because of the way I hit the ball out of the court? Did he think of me as a poofter because I had accidentally contacted him during the game? Were my effeminate rebounds case enough to call me a Nancy boy? My answer to any of his questions is a big, fat, queeny, fairy: yes! I do play netball just as the gay stereotype would have you think. But there in lies the biggest issue with the debate surrounding Jason Collins coming out. When Collins plays a game of basketball there is no way in which an average viewer can discern what his sexual orientation is. In this way he is the perfect poster boy for the gay community as he reflects that being gay does not mean you cannot be an aggressive and masculine athlete. However this can in many ways distort the perception of a gay athlete. Effeminate gay men should be able to perform as effective and dominant sportsmen without receiving undue criticism. The biggest test of Collins’ impact on the game will not come in the form of masculine gay men. Yes, these players will now be able to stand proud of their achievements. However true change will be realised when effeminate men are able to play sport without the continual white noise of homophobic language lurking behind. There is still a long way to go until arguably the gayest sport in the world is free from homophobia. To the ninja turtles I would say save your fight and criticism for Shredder. And for those of you playing at home, Michelangelo was always my favourite. I know that he would not have put up with this!
English footballer Justin Fashanu was not only the first black player to command a £1 million transfer fee (he was pretty good at what he did), but also the first to come out. Despite being only 29 and fit, he never again held a full contract with a club, suffered abuse from fans, players and coaches, end took his own life eight years later. Only one (retired) professional footballer has come out since.
Picture by Marnie Allen
Sport was never my forte. I’ve always been an avid Collingwood fan and played anything from soccer to water polo while I was growing up. The only advantage I had when playing sport was my height. A lack of coordination and reflexes impaired my abilities quite heavily. My devotion to Collingwood can be boiled down to family influence and a thing for tattoos. However, once I got to Uni I found my true athletic calling; the netball field. Under the bright lights of the UWA Gyms’ outdoor courts, I found myself. Whether it was the nail check at the start of the match, the lack of contact or the ridiculously short quarters, I was home.
in New York. If that doesn’t serve as a serious metaphor for repression then I really don’t know what does.
Picture by Marnie Allen
When NBA player Jason Collins became the first openly gay NBA player in history I was understandably very excited. This wasn’t just because it gave me another person aside from Beyonce to stalk on BuzzFeed. It also wasn’t just because I now had a pro athlete who I could finally realistically fantasise about. It was because I understood the huge difference the announcement would make to young people playing sport all over the world. However I didn’t anticipate that his coming out would impact upon my own mediocre sporting career.
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FACEACHE by Matthew Green The screen flickers momentarily. Your eyes attentively dart to the top left corner of the page, where a distinctly red bubble flashes, perfectly contrasted against the familiar warm blue glow of the webpage. It’s a notification! Your heart nearly skips a beat, and you hopefully speculate as to why Facebook wants your attention. Maybe someone has responded to that witty (or so you thought) comment you posted just now. Perhaps someone likes that tongue-in-cheek photo you uploaded last week, where you’re bafflingly rocking lederhosen AND a sombrero. Maybe your crush wrote on your wall to say “hey” (but remember: the amount of ‘y’s they use in the word ‘hey’ is crucial to how much they like you; 1-2 = casual acquaintance, anywhere between 3-5 and it’s looking good, more than that and they might require specialist round the clock care). Any and all of these are tempting enough for you to click and check, little boosts to your ego that you wouldn’t care to admit to. And so you burst the crimson bubble, eager to lap up the attention of your peers. And ... it’s just a notice from a now-defunct app you subscribed to in 2007. Someone’s commented on a photo of you that you’d rather did not exist. It’s a post from that slightly weird relative you added only out of courtesy: “Heyy Br05eph, c00L to CU @ tha BBQ lololol 2328585-innit”. That shit is the fucking worst. We all know the feeling, the weird expectations built up by the desire to show off within the public sphere. Well, at least I used to know that feeling. Last November I went cold turkey and (on a whim) de-activated my Facebook account. I am officially a user of the anti-social network that is Real Life. What consequences, might you ask, are there for intentionally disconnecting myself from the wider world? There are a few, some good and some bad. There are a number of totally valid reasons for dropping FB. It’s a time vampire. There are concerns about online privacy. I prefer Google+ (lol no-one does). They just want to sell advertising space. I’m addicted to
the internet. I don’t actually know half the people I’m ‘friends’ with. It’s an inherently stupid concept. These are all fine, and I’ve heard them all from most of my Real Life friends (except the Google thing). One friend of mine referred to FB membership as being “slave to a website”. I’ve used most of these excuses myself to explain why I quit FB in the first place. But none of them are particularly true. I genuinely believe FB is a harbinger of the Anti-Christ. But more on that in a minute. This is supposed to be about my post-FB hangover. I used to log in for at least 5 hours a day. That’s an absurd amount of time to sit around hoping for dots of light to arrange themselves the way I wanted them to. Something had to give.
Lederhosen and a sombrero
As many as 1.1 billion people use FB. Roughly 1 in 7. The social network giant has claimed to have as many as 10 million users in Australia. That’s half the total population. The site hit critical mass sometime around 2007-2009, and the people who were likely to get FB, got FB. If you weren’t signed up, you were automatically out of the loop. FB operates on the near perfect execution of a simple, yet effective, advertising premise. It promises you exclusive membership to a larger group, while appealing to users’ individuality by allowing them to edit and ‘perfect’ their own personalities for the pleasure of other members of the group. There’s a sly implication at work: without FB, you can’t really know what’s going on in the private lives of those around you. For voyeuristic people like me, it’s fucking irresistible. And the thing is... we’re all voyeuristic people. Don’t tell me you haven’t FB-stalked someone, or consciously judged them based on their pictures, sense of humour, or status updates. It’s the guiltiest of pleasures. Add to this how practical FB is. You can talk to your friends
anytime, anywhere. You can organise a party in 30 seconds. Superficially, it’s just so useful. This was the main problem with quitting (apologies, by the way, to the people who have quit legitimately addictive things, like smoking or crack). FB is more or less blackmailing its users to stay with the threat of withholding their ability to communicate immediately to one another. On the one hand, the decision to abandon the warm blue glow was disastrous for my social life. Among my friends at least, FB has even reduced the amount of time we use our phones to actually call or text each other. My phone barely rings at all. That probably has more to do with the fact that I got my phone in 2004 rather than people deliberately ignoring me, though. That being said, I do find out about things considerably later than everyone else in my social circle, mostly via word of mouth. I do love me a game of Chinese Whispers. In this sense, abandoning online social networks has (perhaps appropriately) dramatically reduced my participation in Real Life social networks. And yet, on the other hand, I know I don’t actually need any of this nonsense. I had roughly 300 or so ‘friends’, most of whom I hadn’t spoken to in ages. A majority of them I knew from high school, and a decent share of those were fuckwits. I was even friends with people who actively treated me like shit at school, so why the hell should I care what meaningless bullshit they’re into? “XXX likes will.i.am.” Of course they fucking do... The really beautiful and meaningful friendships I’ve made in my life (in particular the ones I’ve made since I enrolled at UWA) are the ones that still exist outside of FB’s familiar glow. Sure, FB was a perfect forum for developing these friendships, but if I were to say it was a defining or central factor in them, that would be a very sad thing indeed. You just can’t match a ‘Like’ to a Real Life spontaneous, goofy smile. That might sound corny or clichéd, but the thing about clichés is that they’re generally derived from truth.
Ten and a half billion minutes are spent on Facebook daily (not including mobile phone usage). 18
Picture by by Natalie Thompson
My decision to stop using FB coincided with several of my close friends going on exchange at the same time. That probably gave them the impression that I wasn’t
I do love me a game of Chinese Whispers. keen on keeping in touch with them while they were away. Not so. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t very comfortable with the idea of waiting for them to get back, having gained a whole new set of friends and experienced all sorts of shenanigans, sans me. I’d see a status update, or worse, a photo, and be
struck by the realization that I wasn’t in it. This is a disturbing and absurdly selfish thing to say, and I reckon it’s directly related to how FB is designed. According to one writer, the premise of advertising is simple: “create an anxiety relievable by purchase”. But what happens when the thing being advertised is in fact you? FB is almost entirely about advertising your persona, both to yourself and to others. This can only lead to egomania. The fact that this was getting through to me was reason enough to give it up then and there. I’d much rather resume my social life in person than vicariously through a computer screen.
If the purpose of art is to relieve loneliness (which, by the way, it is), and art is the mortal enemy of advertising, then it follows that advertising exists only to isolate individuals and breed loneliness. And ultimately, that’s what Facebook is explicitly trying to do. Ostensibly, it’s supposed to be an intimate and personal way to connect with the people around you, when in Reality it can have the opposite effect. Sure, I might miss that warm blue glow, and crave for a notification to pop up and tell me something’s going on. But then I take ten seconds and realise how utterly ridiculous that is. There’s always something going on, and it’s not some website’s right to tell you that.
After nineteen year old Andrew Cain failed to comply with an arrest warrant for breaking probation from the sheriff of Latah County, Washington, a deputy posted on the local police facebook wall that Cain was “no longer the Wanted Person of the Week… he is the Wanted Person of the Month of June. Congratulations!” After receiving a torrent of online abuse, Cain killed himself.
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LESS MONEY, MO’ PROBLEMS By Ben Pattison As a fulltime uni student who works 3 days a week, under Youth Allowance (which I’ll refer to as Student Allowance) I’m only eligible to receive no more than $32 per calendar fortnight. Apparently, If I make over $400 a fortnight (which most people who have car loans, pay rent/board, car/health insurance, phone/gym bills, want to leave the house at all/don’t-have-a-mummy-and-daddy-who-paystheir-way do) the usual fortnightly Student Allowance recedes from the usual $250 odd a fortnight to sometimes a little under 10% of the usual sum.
full engagement and contribution to society. So it is illogical to deduct from any student allowance if they are taking further initiative to be financially selfsufficient as well as academically. No wonder people try to fleece the system by not declaring their income or being on the dole instead of Student Allowance whilst studying.
This is effectively a penalization for young people taking the initiative to try to be selfsufficient. Whilst endeavoring to undertake studies to improve their intellectual and financial horizons in the future, how can it be logical to deduct up to and over 90% of the already-measly Student Allowance due to that person displaying qualities such as financial/social initiative, time-management, determination and thriftiness? The flipside is that it almost pays to not work: as can be usually observed by peeking an eye into the not-vacuumed-in-seventy-three-months Arts common room, where all day every day ‘progressive’ overlords can be seen being ‘activists’ on greasy, stickered laptops with their Socialist-Workers-Party homepages.
We all remember that during the GFC the Rudd government injected stimulus into the Australian economy, shunning austerity and thereby according to much analysis ‘saved’ Australia from a European/US-style severe recession. Many young people were eligible for $900 bankaccount injections to help bolster the economy by increased spending. Whatever your economic doctrine, it at least partially contributed positively to the short-term fiscal outlook. As you’ve probably gathered by now, I bring this up because surely the same philosophy is relevant in regards to the Student Allowance. Once the bills and board are paid, it means uni students have a chance to spend more: thereby contributing to the economy. For a start it means more Pints sold so more revenue to the government; it means more nice little holidays down south to help the
Well, here is where I’m compelled to chant: Go Labor! Of course, I must concede that the Liberals would probably offer me a paltry $28 a fortnight for my cheek to expect a proper student allowance whilst working 3 days a week. But, alas, it is the incumbent government, especially one so hell-bent on trumpeting it’s overall fairness, that must face the music first and fore mostly. The capstone fact is that successive governments treat Student Allowance like the dole. If your young and single on the dole and pocketing a rather reasonable $500-odd a fortnight minimum, when you get a job and start earning your own coin its natural for that sum to recede - as the purpose of the dole is to enable an average, healthy individual to reasonably function whilst in search of employment and self-sufficiency. But with Student Allowance the premise is that an individual is already busy and applying themselves to a line of intellectual and financial advancement that will in time facilitate their
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We all know what Coles says. glutted tourism industry; It means perhaps that a young woman might be able to spend a little more on an Australian Made dress for that special occasion rather than the cheaper, foreign alternative; it just means more of everything! Even the frugal hoarding of the
extra money in high-interest bank accounts or allotting substantial saved-sums into investment only has overall good national and individual financial ramifications. Anyone arguing that the government actually decreases conspicuous debt by curtailing the Student Allowance of students who work is nonsense. And don’t even start me on the Government deeming anyone under 22 who has parents on more than $40K a year as not independent and thereby ‘not eligible for Student Allowance’. Who hires these cretins? So, Canberra, this is simple stuff. Sort it out – as you’re perennially sending the wrong message to a million university students. Oh, and if you’d like to know where my state-funded $16 a week goes? Well we all know what Coles says: every little bit counts – and yes, I’m still grateful for anything given to me by anyone. But, in all honesty, that’s about a quarter of my weekly fuel tank. Or just about one pint at The Breakwater! Now there’s another story!
Mission Impossible 2 director John Woo was homeless for a long while as a child after a fire in Hong Kong burned down not only his family’s home, but the homes of fifty thousand other people. It was Christmas Day.
GRIFFONOMICS: OLD, OLD MONEY by Alex Griffin Ah, capitalism. Whether it’s through overconsumption, overwork or (if you’re not on the right side of the equation) starvation, it has us like rats stuck in a washing machine; it’s fast and it’s fun, until it’s fatal. Yet, despite what the Koch brothers might tell you, the whole system altogether has a tendency towards self-destruction, and the proof of the final hangover of all this productive frenzy is starting to appear in capitalism’s most irrepressible product- the human population. Demographic change is increasingly becoming a reality in Australia, but the country isn’t being overrun by fleeing Tamils in boats like Today Tonight would have you believe; it’s old people. That’s a little apocalyptic, but our society is irreversibly greying, and the example Japan is setting is worrying. After experiencing record growth, birthrate and living standard increases during the half-century long boom after the second world war, Japan hit a brick wall in the 90s, partly due to the combination of declining birth rates (lower demand) and longer lifespans (higher government expenditure). These trends are set to continue; currently over one in five people are over 65, meaning that by 2025 there’ll be two pensioners to support for every three workers in the population. By 2060 it could be roughly 1:1. With a birthrate of 1.39 babies per woman, the young aren’t replacing the old, meaning the Japanese population has peaked (in 2005 at around 128 million people) and will fall to 95.2 million by 2050, with over a third of that proportion over 65. This is really final frontier stuff; no society in recorded history has experienced such an inexorable greying process, nor had to prepare for the consequences. On projections, people over 65 will outnumber those under 14 by a staggering four to one. Older people demand a high amount of healthcare and government pension support, but since a smaller proportion of the population is working working, there’s less moolah to go around, so money is diverted away from education and youth services towards catheters and colostomy bags; from the future into looking after the dying. At the same time, old folks who do have money don’t tend to spend it, as they demand less and their investments tend to be very
safe, as opposed to placing money in more speculative or entrepreneurial pursuits that tend to offer more opportunities for younger people or economic growth. I want to stress at this point that I love my grandparents. Yet, an older, unproductive workforce is virtually the vanishing point of capitalism; a population too worn out by production to keep producing, but able to consume in a fashion that prolongs their lives beyond the end of their productivity. Ageing societies decay, socially, politically and economically, and nobody knows what comes after that yet. Problems like crime, suicide and depression have increased across the board in Japan; almost double the shoplifters apprehended in Japan last year were over the age of 65 compared to under 19, either stealing out of desperation or boredom. Because of Japan’s limited immigration intake (there is no way to ungrey like importing youth), we’re not greying at the same speed, but in Australia, the >65ers by 2047 will be a quarter of the population, and the decade after that- when many of us will be in retirement age- it’ll be approaching 30%. We are literally facing the grim spectre of our future selves. There are two paths to facing a greying future. One is to kill yourself and take the pressure off everyone else, and the other is to try and find a way to balance the needs of the diminishing young and the increasing old. Conventional wisdom says that you should make as much money as possible while you still can and own property so that you can be self-sufficient in retirement; that way, if you eventually go into care, you can afford it. Yet, laying the financial burden of rapidly increasing property ownership on the most outwardly mobile generation in history is problematic, especially in cities like Perth where the further expansion of cheaper outer-suburb housing is nigh impossible (not to mention environmentally the equivalent of sticking a knife into an open wound and just widening it by about a fifth). At the same time, blindly championing selfinterest in such a way tends to encourage the build-up of the kind of problems that lead to extra strain on government resources. Raising the retirement age is another option, but that has met fierce resistance in other nations worldwide. Also, surplus fetishism isn’t
the way out of escaping this kind of future (it helps nothing, people!), since if we cease investing in current generations by trying to save for the future, a poorer gen Z will struggle even more to provide for X and Y in their frail dotage. Most troublingly, there’s a political set of consequences to greying out; as older generations increase in numbers, the intergenerational balance will swing to them; the grey vote will bloom in importance, and the spread of policies will move even further away from youth affairs towards the priorities of those too old to contribute but alive enough to have their say. As Luke Kemp over at the Conversation points out, in countries like Austria conscription has been upheld, despite a majority of the now-outnumbered young voting against the idea, while in Northern Ireland there’s a debate about lowering the voting age to take in those who pay tax under the age of eighteen.
I love my grandparents.
Basically, no matter which way you cut it, our society is shifting irreversibly, and as rankling as it might be to say, ambition, openness and optimism are essentially the most important things to carry forward- the big shift has to come in terms of attitudes on both sides of the age spectrum. If older people want to keep working, the workforce needs to find ways to accommodate them and their contributions, whether through reskilling or making it harder for employees to discriminate against them on the basis of age. At the same time, as we all get older, wealthier and more selfish, it’ll only get more and more important to remember what it was like to be twenty, poor and hopeful, because that’s where the future is. By the time this becomes the issue facing society, it’ll be us inadvertently crushing our grandchildren, and if the best balance to the excesses of the free market is remembering your neighbor, then the least we can do is to remember ourselves as we used to be when we think of how society should divvy up the pie.
By 2020, more diapers will be sold for the aged in Japan than for babies.
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A FARRAGO OF MENDACITIES? TALKING JULIA GILLARD’S LEGACY By Richard Ferguson and Alex Griffin THE BEGINNING AG: Well, the beginning was the end, wasn’t it? Legitimacy as a leader comes from a few things, but the fundamental thing Gillard lacked was trust. The midnight nature of the coup (the defining image of which I reckon was Bill Shorten looking anxious on a mobile phone at 12am- sums it up) of what was a pretty popular PM took not only Kevin Rudd and the media off guard, but the entire public, and it’s very hard to shed the characterisation of being a ‘usurper’ or ‘untrustworthy’ when you have what are in isolation pretty ordinary government problems (cabinet reshuffles, misbehaving MPs, hung parliament, treasury black holes, leaks, trenchant opposition, Rob Oakeshott) all happening at once constantly for three years. You don’t get a chance to make a case. The last three years have been a long, unprecedented period of political bile, and when you have such an intense feeding frenzy, there’s bound to be some bones rising to the surface. Never forcing a way clear of the narrative around the manner in which she took the job was what left Gillard for dead. RF: There’s a big question as to whether she deserved that legitimacy anyway. Ever since she began her career in the House of Representatives, Julia Gillard has always gotten ahead due to other figures behind her (usually in the union movement) and she never really had the will to get ahead for herself. From the very beginning, it was perceived that Julia Gillard did not instigate the coup, but rather the union powerbrokers who backed her. Her own colleagues seemed more frightened of her unionist friends than keen to serve her. Moreover, she didn’t build a sense of authority through her deeds; whenever she took a risk, she fell flat on her face, those few risks seemed careless and proper consultation or instinct about how they’d play out in the country. She may be a very good policy-wonk and a much better man-manager than Rudd, but she’s a really awful politician in the classical sense- no political instinct. COMMUNICATION RF: Unfortunately, Julia Gillard has to be one of the worst communicators in Australian political history. The general consensus is that she is a good-humoured, friendly person
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– especially next to the sociopathic Rudd – but none of that seemed to come across on camera, and when you can’t project your personality, it’s very hard to project any authority. An early, fatal example of this came with the 2010 Queensland floods, where she seemed unable to convey the empathy, warmth or leadership on camera that Queensland Premier Anna Bligh did to the extent that some overseas commentators thought Premier Bligh was in fact the Prime Minister of Australia. At the same time, Kevin Rudd was basically swimming the flooded streets of Brisbane, trying to save every television news reporter he could find. Julia Gillard seemed constantly petrified by the sight of a camera and just couldn’t perform in the public gaze the way other Labor leaders have been able to do. AG: Alas, it was a different story when she was in her element in parliament- she switched from timid head girl to fiery debating captainbut the people of Australia mostly saw the press conferences full of hammy slogans and awkward phrasing. Her rhetoric was extremely weak; “Moving Australia Forward” is a phrase that will hopefully haunt the guilty copywriter all the way to the great thinktank in the sky. Yet, the people most effective at drowning out the good policy work being done were herself and Wayne Swan. Instead of opening up the extremely important public debates the country needs, they reduced complex debates to blunt targets: class wars, gender wars, media wars. Australia desperately requires higher levels of debate, and I think the public wanted them to take the high ground. That they didn’t showed how much Abbott was dictating terms. All they achieved was stoking old antagonisms transparently for political gain instead of starting conversations. No wonder it backfired. In my personal view, the chief problem with Australian politics is the dominance of the media environment by Fairfax and News Limited. They’re virtually cultural gatekeepers in that it’s hard to be heard (let alone popular) without their assent, and the same follows with the extent to which ideas reach critical mass. Against that hegemony of newspapers that didn’t truly support her from the outset, it was going to take a far more conciliatory attitude than the one that led to the Finkelstein inquiry to get her message out. The thing about being a Labor leader- representing the mainstream progressive agenda- Is that you need to be able to take the people with you where you’re
going. Whenever she had a captive audience, she seemed like she was fumbling with the gears, and Abbott’s tactics coupled with the media’s treatment of her deprived her of more opportunities. POLICY RF: Gillard passed more legislation than many of her predecessors put together, but she failed to really own her policies, sell them or apply them correctly. Take DisabilityCare Australia, which was the jewel in the ALP policy crown and probably the most important social reform in this country since Medicare. Despite this, Gillard never seemed to gain any traction on it and she originally appeared to have it thrust upon her reluctantly by Bill Shorten and other disability causes advocates. Even her pride and joy education reform was billed under David Gonski’s name rather than as a Labor Gillard policy. Just as she seemed unable to attach herself to any of her communication endeavours, her lack of authority made her unable to truly put her stamp on those policies popular with the public. Also, there were policy failures that completely drowned out coverage of the good policies. The Malaysia Solution and the 457 visa reforms were disasters for the Gillard Government, as they completely alienated the social progressive base who began doubting their support for a Prime Minister who was to the right of Howard in immigration policy. They also suggested a ‘quick-fix’ approach to political problems with an inability to see the political consequences while starting fights with a thousand different groups in the process. In many ways, Julia Gillard’s Whitlamesque legacy was ruined by her own tendency to shoot herself in the foot.
The great thinktank in the sky
AG: I think it’s more important to look at the achievements of a government as a whole than to look too hard into who was pushing the policy at the Cabinet table. Her government got things done behind closed doors, negotiating with independents, stakeholders, and other governments to get across the NBN, flood levy, plain packaging, great strides in foreign policy with China and India, the NDIS, continued
Julia Gillard is the first (known) PM to have an ex in her cabinet, with her former boyfriend and then Trade Minister Craig Emerson serving, uh, under her.
Picture by by Natalie Thompson
education reform and action on carbon pricing, all inside three years, set against the most hostile Opposition and public in living memory. Unfortunately, it’s the stuff she didn’t get done – further action on improving the lot of Indigenous Australians, the mining tax we should have ended up with, encouraging tertiary and innovation investment – that reflects the emptiness of her mission as PM. Rudd took everything on, but Gillard tended to walk away even from the battles she came out swinging for. DESTROYING THE JOINT? RF: Her elevation as the first woman to take the highest position in this country was rightfully universally commended, and she held that historical burden with great dignity, especially in her last press conference. The level of misogyny levelled at her is impossible to ignore, but it was not the source of her political problems; it was more terrifying than that, as her opponents generally thought it was perfectly okay to simply use hatred for women as a political weapon against her, as opposed to legitimate political criticism. I believe that the level of sexist rage wouldn’t have been raised against a Liberal woman prime minister; I especially can’t imagine the likes of Howard Sattler questioning Julie Bishop’s partner’s sexuality. The treatment of Julia Gillard was a calculated move late in her tenure by her opponents. The callousness of it shows how deeply engrained sexism is in Australian culture; that it is something that can simply be resurrected when it is useful. However, I do argue that feminist causes were something Julia Gillard also used politically when it suited her. To bring up abortion as a political issue in one breath and move single mothers to lower social benefits in another fed into an image of a woman with no true political convictions. AG: This was a government where marginal, fringe voices impacted the tone, quality and direction of the public debate incredibly. You can blame the impact the internet has had on etiquette and restraint, the influence of Tea Party style approaches to ‘truthiness’ or the glee which the likes of Alan Jones waged war on Gillard with, but ultimately Gillard exposed very dark sides of the national psyche. The people who wanted Howard dead were fighing for something specific, either gun rights or refugees or some cause he was trampling on. Gillard’s opponents just seemed to want her gone, .and what that showed is that it’s much
more dangerous in our society to be a woman who is disagreed with than it is to be a man, and that’s something we all wear a responsibility for changing every day. The lesson from the Gillard era is that whoever can bring unity out of fragmentation – be it Abbott through fear, or Rudd through kissing babies – will succeed, or else likely perish completely. “FACELESS MEN” RF: Gillard really represented the old unionist element of the party, in opposition to the social progressive Blair-style of politics represented by Kevin Rudd. In many ways, the idea that Julia Gillard was a more natural fit to the party and had better relations with its members was what made her so attractive to the powerbrokers in the first place, but her style of management in the end of the day was very similar to Rudd’s. All decisions were made within a sub-cabinet of loyalists and she heavily relied on spin doctors and staffers to both drive her government’s message and control her troops. The war with Kevin drove her to a state of such paranoia that she became her own worst enemy; the patron saint of transparency and consensus failed to talk to backbenchers and ministers about relevant policy decisions and every decision was a reaction to news cycles. And in a final
skirmish in the war against the New Labour lovers and the old union warriors, Julia Gillard the unionist ended up relying on the advice of UK New Labour’s spin-master John MacTiernan. In fact, the final straw before her final ballot was her use of MacTiernan to strike fear in MPs with the threat of a show of hands at caucus; using a staffer to relay messages is a cardinal sin amongst Labor MPs and she showed a great lack of respect that morning. She seemed to betray everything the Labor Party hoped she would bring to party management and policy direction. When Bronwyn Bishop called her a “farrago of mendacities,” a few Labor MPs probably thought the description was not far off by the end of her leadership. AG: The party is at a crossroads similar to the one it faced in 1967 when Whitlam outed the ‘faceless men’ and insisted on dragging Labor into the future. In terms of policy, they have to figure out what their values are, and in terms of the party, they need to know who they represent. These are extremely real questions and real problems. The road ahead for Australia is without end, but we’re moving up a slope. If even the Labor party are keen to slum it in second gear as they were forced to over the last three years, then we all might find ourselves going backwards.
Julia Gillard was not the first Atheist Prime Minister. Hawke, Whitlam, Gorton and Curtin were also non-believing abominations.
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THE TURKISH HANGOVER by Samuel J. Cox Since coming to power in 2002, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (the AKP) have introduced unprecedented levels of economic and political stability. However, after eleven years of rule, some constituencies feel that the AKP has not aged well. The government seems to be backtracking on its popular liberal policies, leaving people feeling as disillusioned and as sour as anyone who has had the misfortune of going to Clubba.
adultery, they have lifted the ban on women wearing headscarves at universities, and introduced Television and Internet censorship (blocking pornographic sites and temporarily closing YouTube). They have restricted the sale of alcohol between 10pm and 6am, and banned both sales and consumption from the vicinity of universities, schools and mosques, Imagine the tav being closed. Policies like this make it easy to see why many consider Erdoğan a thief of joy.
The riots began on May 28th when an environmentalist sit-in in Gezi Park, protesting the AKP’s plan to redevelop one of the few remaining green spaces in central Istanbul, was violently evicted by police. The scope of the issues at the centre of the demonstrations has broadened to include the freedom of the press, expression and assembly. They are also protesting against what some feel is the government’s conservative social policies and Prime Minster and leader of the AKP, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s growing authoritarianism. Turkey’s biggest demonstrations in years are now concerned with the nation’s modern identity. That is; whether Turkey should be the progressive, secular, European cosmopolitan state that Kemal Ataturk (the secular reformer, first president, and Father of the Turks) envisaged or the Muslim equivalent of a Christian democracy.
The AKP has also crippled the power of the Turkish army and jailed many of its generals. The army has previously played the role of a secular watchdog, enacting coups if governments showed signs of abandoning secular values. For some, this makes them the first government to face down the army. For others, the army was the guardian of the secular constitution. With the army sapped, they feel it puts the onus upon the people to intercede. The government’s response has been almost unanimously confrontational. Erdoğan has vowed a revised version of the redevelopment will go ahead. At an E.U.-Turkey conference in Istanbul,he declared that ‘those who demand freedom and democracy should also act democratically.’ Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül defended the right to protest, saying that ‘democracy does not mean elections alone.’
Despite the number of protesters nationwide, the AKP still enjoys a tremendous amount of support. As a pro-Western and pro-American party, they have sequentially won three fair elections with increasingly convincing majorities. Currently they possess support from half of Turkey’s population. The economic policies of the AKP have been critical in dramatically reducing inflation and recovering from the 2001 financial crisis and recession. The AKP also initiated formal European Union (E.U.) membership talks in 2005 and have introduced significant improvements that are requirements of E.U. accession. The Western media portrays them as an Islamist party but Erdoğan has said he is committed to secularism. However, he does not think it should be at the expense of Turks who want to openly express their religious beliefs. The AKP’s commitment to developing a pluralistic society where secular and Islamist communities can coexist is, for some, one Jaegerbomb too many.
Erdogan proposes that ‘terror groups’ are driving the protests, which he calls a plot against Turkey by international forces. This is not entirely the implausible claim of a maniacal
Bond villain. After a decade of tortuous E.U. accession courtship, Turkey has been forced to turn east and develop closer trade links with Russia, former Soviet states and Egypt. Turkey possesses one of the world’s largest armies and an economy outperforming the majority of those within the E.U. The thought of a strong Turkey, with close ties with other Middle Eastern countries, could be making some Western nations very nervous. Therefore, it is not ridiculous to claim that this is an attempt to destabilise Turkey.
Imagine the tav being closed. The Turks must now answer the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything: how to cure a political hangover. The protesters lack centralised leadership and are made up of a coalition of groups, so producing one outcome that satisfies the needs of all is difficult. A new political party to challenge the AKP would have to encompass a demographic as diverse as their desires. The protesters want the Prime Minister to resign, but have offered no indication of who would be a suitable replacement. Whether this tragedy concludes with a compromise or with further escalation will likely define the future of Turkish politics.
Evidence of the AKP’s alleged Islamist agenda is everywhere. Education reforms have strengthened Islamic elements and courses. They attempted, but failed, to criminalise
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Turkey is also the homeland of Nazim Hikmet, whose Human Landscapes from my Country is just about the best 450 page poem-novel in the world, so read it right now; composed over the twenty eight years Hikmet served as a political prisoner until 1950, much of it had to be committed to memory until it was finally published in 1967.
PERSIAN PEARLS OF WISDOM: THE THOUGHTS OF MAHMOUD AMHADINEJAD
ON ISRAEL •“Anybody who recognises Israel will burn in the Islamic nations’ fury” • “Some European countries insist on saying that during World War II, Hitler burned millions of Jews and put them in concentration camps... we do not accept this claim.”
• “There is no doubt that the new wave in Palestine will soon wipe off this disgraceful blot from the face of the Islamic world.” •“I am not anti-Semitic” ON AMERICA •“I heard that Osama bin Laden is in Washington DC ... Yes, I did. He’s there. Because he was a previous partner of Mr. Bush.” •“We thank God that our enemies are idiots. We don’t need you. It is you who need the Iranian people “ •“Some segments within the American government orchestrated the attack (9/11) to reverse the declining American economy, and its grips on the Middle East” •“Presidency of a woman in a country that boasts its gunmanship is unlikely.”
ON IRAN •“In Iran, I think nobody loses their job because of making a statement that reflects their opinion. From this point of view, conditions in Iran are far better than in many other places in the world.” • “Iran can recruit hundreds of suicide bombers a day. Suicide is an invincible weapon. Suicide bombers in this land showed us the way, and they enlighten our future.” • “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country ... In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.” • “The world is becoming Ahmadinejad-ised, if you excuse me to make a joke”.
Picture by Alice McCullaugh
On August 3rd, the world will feel a great loss when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gracefully retires from his post as President of Iran. The devilishly handsome psychopath has delighted the international community with his vile, extremist views and provocations of war against pretty much every country on the map. To celebrate his departure; Pelican Magazine, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s no 1. Student magazine presents some of Mahmoud’s pearls of wisdom.
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FILM REVIEWS A Field in England
Upstream Color
Director: Ben Wheatley Starring: Michael Smiley, Reece Shearsmith, Julian Barratt I’m not the first reviewer to make the link between A Field in England and Thomas Hobbes’ great work Leviathan. Both are products of the English Civil War, and watching the plot unfold and the characters endure the hellish environment, one is immediately reminded of Hobbes’ description of the ‘state of nature’ and the description of life – ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’ A group of starving and desperate deserters scurry through a monochrome field, powered by the promise of an ale-house over the next hill. What follows is a hallucination filled nightmarish descent into hysteria, fuelled by black magic, mushrooms, and the promise of treasure. Ben Whitely has created a masterful film of fear and darkness, with stunning cinematography that utilizes the black and white palate expertly. The hallucinogenic strobe scene in this movie is stunning and an awesome spectacle. The cast of five, with a cameo from Julian Barratt all give commanding performances, especially the devilish Irishman O’Neil (Michael Smiley) and the cowering academic Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith). The script is darkly comic, surreal and haunting all at once, managing several laughs while building a disturbing sense of suffocating terror and panic. This film is destined to become a cult classic and is essential viewing. Wade Mccagh
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Okay, Upstream Color is, narrative-wise, a bit confusing. Wilfully so, you might think. Story definitely exists, but is presented in such a fashion that certain cues seem to be missing, and important conclusions need to be drawn on the basis of small and seemingly unexplained segments. Much like (writer, director, actor, editor, etceterarer) Shane Carruth’s first film, Primer (2004), there is no holding hands with the audience, and the film would probably reward (or even require) multiple viewings. I’m not convinced though that once arrived at, the films overall “meaning” would be a particularly satisfying find, for reasons I won’t go into. However, there is a lot to like. The visual style is compelling; the sense of colour, use of close-ups, addiction to fast cuts and all the other devices Carruth likes so much (as such playing out dialogue while showing two characters not-talking) amount to something delicious. The use of music and sound is very strong, particularly if you like ambient/found sounds. The performances are all more than adequate; Amy Seimetz in particular is excellent in a fairly difficult role. Although Upstream Color is something of a challenge, I have a lot of time for films that are at least, interesting, and it was a real treat to see this one on the big screen. Connor Weightman
The We And The I
This Is The End
Director: Michel Gondry Starring: Michael Brodie, Teresa Lynn, Raymond Delgado
Director: Evan Goldberg & Seth Rogen Starring: Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Seth Rogen
Michel Gondry is misunderstood. People decry him for his overt sentimentality and reliance on effects, but that criticism ignores the careful effort that he puts into telling stories with genuine, human characters and social insight. The We and the I takes place over the course of a busride home on the last day of school, but Gondry uses mobile phone footage to show flashbacks and fantasies. He has a great affinity for the amateur auteur aesthetic going back past 2008’s home video love-letter Be Kind Rewind to his video for the Chemical Brothers’ ‘Let Forever Be’. Along with his reverence for home video as an artform, Gondry adores portraying the block life of lower-class inner-city America. We get to hang out with kids who behave like hoodlums without garish over-exaggerations, crack-dealing and hyper-violence. That said, there’s important plot-driving violence and plenty of sexual shame, but dark tones are sparingly used and their rarity among the playfulness of the rest of the film lends these moments weight (key joke- “YOU CAN’T USE THE F WORD IN A POEM”). Unfortunately, the film’s use of amateur local actors backfires since at every stop a character leaves the bus, and the film, leaving behind at the end we’re three or four of the most stilted, unnatural actors all together who can’t quite carry the film to its conclusion; the writer seems to forget how guarded and angsty everyone had been all day and has them just say how they feel. This is a fine, funny and enjoyable film, but everything subtly built up over the last hour and a half were just deflated in the final act. Josh Chiat
Director: Shane Carruth Starring: Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Seisenig
Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, the writing duo behind 2008’s Pineapple Express, reunite here for the post-Apocalyptic satirical comedy This Is The End. With all the characters playing spoof versions of themselves, Jay Baruchel arrives in LA to visit his good friend Seth Rogen, despite hating the Hollywood lifestyle. Baruchel agrees to go to a party at James Franco’s house (where the bulk of the film’s cameos take place), which is abruptly ended by the impending biblical apocalypse. While admittedly the premise sounds like a pretentious circle jerk between all of Judd Apatow’s buddies, you have to admire the approach to self-parody Goldberg and Rogen are going for. Taking a subject as serious as the apocalypse and making it funny is a fitting parallel with how Rogen, Baruchel, Franco and friends take their own images and twist them for the sake of humour. While not exactly groundbreaking, it’s hard to say it’s not effective. Fairly crude, gross and even at times overly violent, it’s exactly the kind of dark comedy you’d expect from the guys behind Pineapple Express. It’s not for everyone, but if you liked the idea when you first heard about it, chances are you’ll be surprised by how well it actually works. Shaughn McCagh
Man of Steel Director: Zack Snyder Starring: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon Man of Steel, the newest Superman reboot, continues director Zack Snyder’s streak of making better trailers than feature films. Besides being weighed down by pacing issues, tonal problems and a love of shit blowing up which borders on gross, , the creative vision of Snyder, screenwriter David Goyer and producer Christopher Nolan seems to amount to a fundamental misreading of the central character. The film isn’t a failure, though; it’s well acted throughout with few weak links. Henry Cavill acquits himself well as Superman, as physically he’s a near perfect fit and plays off the supporting actors well. Props must also go
to him for being what feels like the first action hero in decades to actually have chest hair. Unfortunately it’s the material that hamstrings Cavill, as he’s never given the opportunity to play the mild mannered Clark Kent side of the character nor the chance to be really be Superman, going straight from putting on the suit to being the third act fight protagonist. Amy Adams brings her usual excellence to Lois Lane, and Russell Crowe and Kevin Costner both do good work as Superman’s two fathers, despite how much the changes to Jonathan Kent’s character annoyed me as a Superman purist. (Pretty much all of Superman’s ineffectiveness and alienation seems to be a consequence of the ‘be afraid of everyone’ lesson Jonathan Kent tries to instil in his son.)
take counsel from a priest is confusing, because the filmmakers forget that Superman is better than Christ; pulling a priest of all things to talk to Superman just underlines how threadbare the emotional connections are between him and the rest of the characters.
Tonally the film is very dour, with only a few jokes. Structurally, the flashback structure doesn’t work as well as it did for Goyer in Batman Begins, as Man of Steel commits the same sin as Superman: The Movie, Clark Kent has no agency in his choice to be Superman. He just goes into the Fortress of Solitude and does what Ghost Dad says, and unsurprisingly, a lot of the film’s character moments just don’t feel earned. Man of Steel’s Superman is also missing a social conscience and has to be forced into action by outside forces, and when he does act, it’s only ever through violence. Seeing Superman
I suspect you’re more likely to enjoy Man of Steel if you don’t particularly care about Superman. There are enough good aspects to the film (the acting, the visual effects, the music) to make it a worthwhile watch, but if you’re looking for a better version of the Superman origin story I suggest that you seek out Superman Birthright by Mark Waid and Lenil Francis Yu.
journalist, founder of the The Haçienda nightclub, co-founder of Factory Records, and general purveyor and promoter of the music and the culture of Manchester.
24 Hour Party People (2002) Director: Michael Winterbottom Staring: Steve Coogan, Andy Serkis Many people hate Steve Coogan. I understand that. There’s no such thing a universally loved comedian. But even if you think him unfunny, even a pretentious, arrogant, colossal twat, I cannot recommend you see this film enough, because if you like him, this is Coogan at his absolute best. And if there was ever a role, a character, a script that required excessive pretentiousness, arrogance, and colossal levels of twat, it’s that of Tony Wilson in this film, legendary Grenada Television host and
24HPP is a journey through music and history, specifically from 1970s Manchester punk like the Buzzcocks, on to post-punk and eventually through to ‘Madchester’ and the Happy Mondays, all through the half imagined, half mythical, all subjective perspective of Wilson. It’s a rewarding film for fans of the numerous bands and figures that feature, both in the script and in cameos all over the film. Yet, even for those who aren’t intimately familiar with Joy Division or whose only exposure to Shaun Ryder was that one Gorillaz song, its still a hilarious and interesting film thanks to Coogan’s perfect timing and delivery, a fantastic cast (especially Andy Serkis as producer Martin Hannett) and the gritty, spastic, explosive editing and cinematography. I cannot stress how ahead of its time this film is. The script is brilliant; the entire dialogue is quotable and relentlessly funny, swinging from dark comedy to the ridiculous and
The biggest weakness of the film is its love of disaster porn. The fight scenes between Superman and General Zod are visually spectacular but never take into account the collateral damage being done. Hundreds of thousands of people die and Superman isn’t shown doing anything to try and minimise the damage. Unlike in The Avengers, there isn’t even a snapshot in a montage about the human consequences of the battle.
Kevin Chiat
profane. It’s easy to forget that in 2001, when this was filmed, DVDs had barely entered the mainstream and were still a new technology. Here, Coogan breaks the fourth wall almost every scene to offer commentary on the film as its happening, recounting how the script differs from the actual historical event, pretentiously offering a literary quote and self-consciously trying to justify his actions to the audience (“I’m being post-modern, before it was fashionable”) and at one point stating “This scene didn’t actually make it to the final cut. I’m sure it’ll be on the DVD.” Michael Winterbottom is a talented and prolific director, and this was the third of his films to be nominated for the Palme d’Or. It takes a special kind of self-belief, bordering on arrogance to attempt this project, perfectly exemplified at the end of the film when God appears to Tony Wilson, in the form of Tony Wilson, to tell him he did a good job. Yet, maybe because of the music, maybe because of the myth, and probably because of the talent involved here, the film works. So it goes. Wade McCagh
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RETROSPECTIVE - THE 16TH REVELATION PERTH INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Wade McCagh
The Revelation Perth International Film Festival has been described by Australia’s supreme film authorities, At the Movies Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton as “one of Australia’s best kept secrets.” The 2013 edition, which was the festival’s 16th year, certainly lived up to such praise. Running from 4th to the 14th July, this year’s festival featured over 120 independent films from around the world, many of which had come directly from major festivals such as Berlin, Sundance, Cannes, SXSW, Tribeca, and Venice, and included 50 Australian premieres and 4 world premieres. But Revelation is more than just a collection of films; the festival also featured 30 guests from home and abroad, several workshops and master-classes with filmmakers and artists, a two day film analysis conference, art instillations, and special events such as the always entertaining Revel-8 competition. Revelation was bigger than ever this year, spanning across cinemas in Perth and Fremantle and showing an eclectic range of films and talent sourced from our own backyard right through to the farthest corners of the Earth (by which I mean Iceland). Here are some of the highlights from this year’s Festival. FILMS Burn Opening this year’s festival was Burn: One Year on the Front Lines of the Battle to Save Detroit, a documentary following a team of fire-fighters in the economically crippled arson capital of the world. An intense and unrelenting film that plunges headfirst into the extremes and consequences of budget cutbacks and intense poverty and unemployment, Burn offers a unique and multi-angled perspective on the situation on the ground in Detroit and the people left behind to try to solve its many problems. Shot on handheld DSLR and helmet cams, Burn offers some of the most stunning and exhilarating footage of fire ever captured on film, all set to an excellent soundtrack of Detroit rock, funk, blues, Motown, and techno. (To read more about Burn, see our interview
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with directors Tom Brennan and Brenna Sanchez.) A Field in England Making its Australian premiere, Ben Wheatly’s psychedelic period drama set in the English Civil War and shot in black and white stunned those in attendance at its late night screening. The film is a menacing work of terror, subversion and claustrophobia, enhanced with a small cast and the film taking place almost completely in a titular and seemingly endless field, and comes complete with painting-like tableaux scenes, some excellent dark comedy and dialogue (“It does not at all surprise me that the Devil is an Irishman”) and one of the most visually stunning hallucination sequences you will likely see, this film is a must see.
The devil is an Irishman.
The Deep For those who know him from the great and ahead of its time 101 Reykjavik, to those that will soon see his foray into Hollywood with this year’s coming 2 Guns, Iceland’s Baltasar Kormákur is a director of some talent. His latest work, The Deep, is based on a true story of a fisherman trapped in the freezing Northern ocean after his boat capsizes and his struggle to survive. It’s a film of stunning beauty and expert cinematography; at times it appears almost nature film-like in its capturing of the ocean’s power and seemingly infinite expanse. Already the recipient of several awards, its easy to understand why this film was Iceland’s submission for this year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar. Jail Caesar Possibly the most interesting and unique film in this year’s festival, Jail Caesar is a film which tells the story of the early life of Julius Caesar, using a cast that predominantly consists of inmates from three prisons in
South Africa, Wales, and Canada, as well as a small band of professional actors such as Derek Jacobi and Alice Krige. An intensely raw film with the perennial humming with the noise of prison life in the background and evocative performances from the whole cast, it’s a fascinating if at times difficult work, and its skilful construction and execution is testament to the vision of director Paul Schoolman, who first conceived the idea 30 years ago and had overcome enormous obstacles to get the film made. Pieta Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice last year, Pieta is a dark and disturbing work from veteran South Korean director Kim Ki-duk that follows a debt collector as he extorts poor workers who cannot afford to repay their loans. The film features several Kim trademarks from his earlier works; violence, rape, self-mutilation, animal abuse. It is in no way a pleasant film, the bleak and pathetic lives of the characters shot in almost constant darkness and gritty, sometimes shaky handheld shots creates an atmosphere of despair and grief. It’s a difficult work to classify, breaking out of the cliché of Korean revenge film and becoming an exploration of pain, human relationships and the poverty that many endure in rapid developing South Korea, and it is a fiercely polarising work. If the film has a weak point, its the sometimes over-zealous camera work, zooming constantly during scenes which takes away from the incredible performance of the two lead actors, Lee Jeong-jin and Jo Min-soo. It’s a film that will divide audiences, but it is certainly worth seeing. Gimme the Loot Premiering at SXSW, where it won the 2012 Grand Jury Prize, Gimme the Loot follows two graffiti artists in New York City planning an ambitious stunt at the iconic Citi Field. An adventurous and free-wheeling film that uses the streets and spirit of New York’s inner city to tell its story, Gimme the Loot is a fresh and entertaining film with a young cast that all deliver solid performances and it’s an impressive debut by director Adam Leon.
WORKSHOP/EVENTS RevCon One thing that sets Revelation above other film festivals is the access and interaction that is possible between members of the public and the filmmakers and artists whose works are shown. This year featured several workshops and master classes that were free to the public and offered a forum for questions and discussions between artist and audience. The directors of Burn were on hand for the ‘Making and Marketing Independent Documentaries’ workshop and spoke candidly about the many challenges their production
Korean revenge film.
faced, the state of the film industry, and the unique distribution path they took to get their film out. Director Paul Schoolman and actress/producer Alice Krige were on hand for the ‘Realising Visions’ session, exploring how they set about making a film as ambitious and challenging as Jail Caesar, and the strategies they employed in filming in prisons and with inmates. This year, Revelation also hosted RevCon Academic, a two-day conference to encourage open academic discussion and
creative argument, and provide an important platform for film discussion and analysis in Australia. The conference explored many ideas and issues such as new modes of distribution and exhibition, movements in international cinema, and many aspects of independent cinema. Sessions such as these, as well as Revelation’s annual ‘State of the Independents’ forum discussion on issues in the world of independent film and what the future of independent film looks like, are rare and stimulating opportunities for the public to interact with experts and gain valuable insight into the world of film.
technologically obsolete yet invaluable piece of technology that kicked off many an aspiring filmmaker’s career. Each year the festival calls for submissions for short films shot on one roll of unedited Super 8 film, around 3 minutes in length, based on a central theme. Filmmakers have to shoot everything sequentially and then send in the film for submission, only to wait until the screening to see what they’ve made. It’s a tension-filled night for those who’ve submitted work, yet the quality and ingenuity of so many films each year is always astonishing and it’s a highly enjoyable night.
Goblin plays Suspiria A highlight of this year’s festival was the screening of acclaimed Italian director Dario Argento’s 1977 classic Suspiria, which featured a live performance of the film’s soundtrack by the original composers, prog rock group Goblin. A supernatural horror film, the cinematic visual styling combined with the ominous atmosphere provided by the film’s soundtrack is a perfect match and the opportunity to see the film with the live accompaniment was a truly spectacular experience.
Of course, there are so many works and other events from this year’s festival that it is simply impossible to cover them all. Revelation is now bigger than ever and continues to grow and expand in ambition and talent, and much of the credit must go to Program Director Jack Sargeant and Chairman Richard Sowada for curating such an impressive program of events and films. I’d also like to extend my personal thanks to Revelation’s great team of staff for what was a logistically difficult and very well run festival. Revelation 16 was a fantastic, highly enjoyable event and I can’t wait to see what the next edition has in store for Perth.
Revel-8 Revel-8 is possibly my favourite event at Revelation every year, in part because it helps keep alive what has fast become a
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PELICAN GUIDE TO MOMA by Kat Gillespie
Bromance The unlikely appearance of Matisse in Perth is a result of the close friendship between New York Museum of Modern Art director Glenn Lowry and Art Gallery of Western Australia director Stefano Carboni. Since his appointment to director of AGWA in 2008, Carboni’s ambitiousness and black book of art world contacts have helped our fair city become host to a series of high profile art events, including the well-received exhibition based around the Peggy Guggenheim in 2011. The MoMA series is the biggest and most expensive blockbuster yet, and furthermore it is exclusive to Western Australia - featuring works that have been exported directly from New York to Perth without visiting other states. A weapon of the patriarchy The exhibition has come under fire from a number of sources, notably art critic Sebastian Smee in The Australian, for its snubbing of female artists. While sultry French women have posed as muses for a large number of the works on show, it is immediately obvious that very few have sat in front of the canvas. Only 9 out of 96 artists in ‘Van Gogh, Dali and Beyond’ are female, and given the collection’s timespan extends to the twenty first century the curators really have no excuse for this. While it is a privilege to view work by the likes of Frida Kahlo and Elizabeth Peyton, it surely wouldn’t have killed the vibe to include a few more women artists. Perhaps a nice Berthe Morisot? -isms In terms of star power, MoMA kicks it old school with the likes of Matisse, van Gogh, Cezanne and Picasso. There are nods to all the important textbook movements such as
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Cubism, Surrealism, Fauvism, Impressionism and Expressionism, and notable crowd pleasers include Klimt’s The Park, Cezanne’s Still Life With Ginger Jar, Sugar Bowl and Oranges and van Gogh’s The Olive Trees. Yet what despite what is an initially misleading exhibition title, the real strength of this collection is to be found in a vast assortment of works created by more contemporary artists – particularly conceptual artists and photographers. The works of the old masters are seemingly placed to help the viewer gain historical perspective, and this is very thoughtfully done.
Perhaps a nice Berthe Morisot? Cat Litter Initially it is difficult to reconcile works like Robert Gober’s Cat Litter, literally a large bag of cat litter sitting unassumingly on the gallery floor next to a defiantly ugly Jeff Koons piece, with the other more nuanced and traditional still life scenes that make up the exhibition. Yet curators have done well to create links between earlier approaches to depicting everyday objects and images (as seen in Picasso’s collagey Violin and Grapes) and the appropriation art of postmodern sculptors such as Gober and Koons. Other worthwhile examples of appropriation art included in the collection are Arman’s I Still Use Brushes and Warhol’s Double Elvis. Whether you can stomach this kind of art or not doesn’t matter – the collection is large and varied enough for the viewer to pick and choose. Highlights The exhibition is divided into three separate rooms for landscapes, still life and portraiture. All three boast some stunning works, the majority of which are seeing Australia for the first time. Worth looking out for is the work of German painter Gerhard Richter,
whose enigmatic approach to self-portrait and landscape painting involves replicating the effect of imperfect, blurred photography. Further highlights include Francis Bacon’s animalistic portrait Number VII and Nicholas Nixon’s photographic series, The Brown Sisters. Lowlights Given his prominence in the MoMA series publicity campaigns, some may be disappointed that there are only a couple of small Salvador Dali pieces in the exhibition. Both seem to flounder in terms of impressiveness when placed alongside so many larger, bolder works. Fans of surrealism will probably find Yves Tanguy’s vast The Furniture of Time of more visual interest. Thank you, Minister for Culture and Arts If you’re thinking of heading along, the Art Gallery of WA is open 10am-5pm every day but Tuesday. Tickets are $17 for students, the mere equivalent of one and a half gourmet burgers. These are some rather pricey artworks sourced from one of the most famous art museums in the world, and the state government has invested millions to bring the MoMA collection from New York City to Perth when it could otherwise have been spending the dosh on stadiums or quays. Hand over the cash and think of Colin Barnett’s cultural legacy.
Picture by Kat Gillespie
The latest in the Art Gallery of WA’s MoMA series, running until December this year, focuses on the continual reinvention of landscape, still life and portraiture by painters and sculptors from the late nineteenth century up until today. The exhibition is entitled ‘Van Gogh, Dali and Beyond’, and it pays to adjust your expectations in preparation for a heavy emphasis on the ‘beyond’. The Starry Night doesn’t make an appearance, and the presence of the old masters is limited to a few thoughtfully scattered works. Nonetheless, this is a massive collection of modern art well worth a leisurely afternoon’s perusal.
Salvador Dali had an intense fear of grasshoppers, germs and assassination. Stories tell that if he felt wasn’t getting enough attention just from walking down the street, he would proffer up a bell and ring it as he walked along the sidewalk so that curious onlookers would stare at him with a mixture of bewilderment and amusement.
DEATH OF A SALESMAN BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY - 4TH MAY by Mason Fleming Black Swan’s adaptation of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman was by all means a faithful one, which is lucky as authenticity may have been the first barrier of entry for many of its potential viewers. One’s enjoyment of Miller’s play will, for the most part, depend on whether they relate to the story’s relatively slow, yet in-depth analysis of family relationships. However, Salesman is much more than an exploration of father-son dynamics. If there’s anything that could be said about the production, it is that director Adam Mitchell and set and lighting designer Trent Suidgeest were the real stars. The way that the gigantic yet almost empty factory-like set was lit up and haze-filled created one of the most eerie and sombre atmospheres one could imagine, which fitted perfectly with Miller’s
gloomy source material. It was ingenious the way the minimalistic set worked as a home, an office, and even a restaurant without much need for the audience’s imagination to kick in, and the way in which Mitchell directed his segues between such scenes was completely seamless.
can be applied to the rest of the casts’ use of accents, as there never seemed to be one distinct accent within the entire family of characters. A worthy mention should be made of Ben O’Toole though, whose portrayal of the ironically named “Happy” Loman was a show stealer.
However, John Stanton provided an inconsistent performance as the central character, Willy Loman. His portrayal of the struggling aged salesman was brilliant in some parts, and he nailed the character’s sense of intentional ignorance and self-doubt. Yet occasionally his words were incredibly hard to understand, due to his forced accent and general lack of projection. Also, occasionally Stanton’s transitions from being quiet and reflective to raging and screaming were quite jarring, making his performance feel slightly less nuanced than it should have been. The same lack of consistency
Black Swan’s Death of a Salesman was an interestingly offbeat take on the classic play, adding an entirely new level of psychosis to an already dark narrative. It was only every now and then that I was pulled out of this well crafted psychotic atmosphere by various directorial inconsistencies. However, such minor issues were definitely not enough to dampen the overall effect of Miller’s brilliant story.
DAY ONE, A HOTEL, EVENING BLACK SWAN STATE THEATRE COMPANY - 15TH JUNE by Kat Gillespie Black Swan may have put on The Importance of Being Earnest earlier this year, but the witty and fast paced Day One, A Hotel, Evening was the most Wildean piece of theatre to grace a Perth stage in a while. Focusing on three couples and their tangled extramarital affairs, Australian playwright Johanna Murray Smith’s witty script deftly switches focus from one bedroom to another as the indiscretions of her characters become more and more hilariously tangled in the minds of her audience. Murray-Smith has instilled in each of her characters a comedic gift, their respective pieces of dialogue becoming snappier and more trenchant as the plot progresses. Most of the Black Swan cast rose to this challenge –
Humphrey Bower in particular executed every move perfectly in his role as the irascible Sam, and Matt Dyktynski was able to show off comic training as Tom. The ladies, however, were less consistent. Roz Hammond was entirely believable and hilarious as the scatty Stella, whose amusingly quixotic tendencies offset the businesslike attitudes of the other characters. Yet Michelle Fornasier’s portrayal of Madeleine, while apparently intended to embody the calculating witty charm of a femme fatale, came across as simply bitchy. Directing and staging were excellent, and a stunningly crafted revolving set combined with meticulous direction by Peter Houghton probably made the play’s dialogue seem more dizzyingly fast paced than it would have otherwise. Less successful were the scattered elements of film noir that inexplicably
infiltrated this production, the silhouetted lighting and jazz infused score jarring with what was ultimately a light hearted and relatable comedy of errors about marital anxieties and the seven-year itch. Although the dark colour palette of the set and costume design created a visually pleasing aesthetic, there was no Bogart or Bacall to place within the milieu. Perhaps the most unwelcome surprise was a sinister twist at the conclusion of the play, which while possessing plenty of shock value was completely incongruous with the farce that preceded it. This aside, Black Swan’s production was a vivacious and amusing take on the work of one of Australia’s most prominent and respected playwrights.
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BALLET HANGOVER by Marnie Allen It seems that most films about ballet like to hone in on the contrast between the beauty of the ballet dancers on stage and the blood and sweat behind the scenes. But for people like me, who stopped ballet at the age when a professional career would normally begin, the consequences for our bodies are overlooked. I danced for fourteen years in total, five of which I spent studying classical ballet at high school for several hours a day. If I’d continued on dancing I’d be okay, but I didn’t, and now my body can’t adapt into the real world. The first thing you might notice about a former dancer is how revolting their feet are. I started dancing en pointe at age eleven, thanks to my wonderful but terrifying teacher Madame Gundi disregarding the fact that my feet hadn’t finished growing and perhaps
shouldn’t be stuffed into a tiny satin bound block. Secondly you might notice the way a former ballerina stands. Feet slightly turned out, knees angled away from the body, and a big s-shaped dip in the lower spine. It sort of looks like you’ve shat yourself, or have really bad inner-thigh chafing. The dip in the spine is caused by a decline in abdominal muscle maintenance. When you stop dancing it’s hard to find exercise that’s satisfying. Running and gym seem purposeless, with their distinct lack of jovial classical music to accompany you through your exercises. So you eventually lose your sweet abs because the occasional flights of stairs you take or grocery bags you carry just don’t quite measure up to the casual three hours daily ballet you were averaging before. This of course makes your shoulders roll forward and your neck cock in
front of your face; hello acupuncture! The one beneficial habit that a ballerina can maintain is the mother of all hairstyles: the bun. I would constantly be shaving my head were it not for the bun. Sometimes I feel like the bun is my only friend in the world. Bun is good for you! I <3 bun. ANYWAY. The point I am making is that while prima ballerinas do have constantly blistered feet and work extremely hard for average wages in a harsh and competitive industry, at least they still get to look awesome and wear pretty tutus and stuff. You can’t quit ballet, because if you do you’re left with a hungover body that can’t do cool stuff anymore and looks pretty whack in almost every position. I suppose I could just do some sit-ups and stuff, but I prefer to be the victim.
UPCOMING ARTS EVENTS THEATRE Other Desert Cities Black Swan State Theatre Company 20th July – 4th August Key words: Pulitzer prize, The West Wing Hedda The Blue Room 13th August – 31st August Key words: fierce Norwegians The Little Mermaid The Blue Room 20th August – 7th September Key words: bleak seas, unrequited love
Anarchy, Rock and Ink: NYC Political Street Posters 1978-24 Fremantle Arts Centre 27th July – 15th September Key words: anarchy, activism
High Tea at the Maj His Majesty’s Theatre 7th September Key words: Edwardian splendour
Sawdust Sex Paper Mountain 27th July- 11th August Key words: sawdust, sex Van Gogh, Dali and Beyond Art Gallery of WA 22nd June – 2nd December Key words: culture, culture MISC
Little paintings, big stories: Gossip Songs of Western Arnhem Land Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery 29th June – 14th December Key words: UWA, indigenous music Loose Change Menu Moana Project Space 19th July-17th August Key words: flatness, materiality
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Onegin West Australian Ballet 20th September-5th October Key words: Pushkin, Tchaikovsky, tights La Boheme WA Opera Company 29th October- 9th November Key words: rent, tragic illness
Picture by Camden Watts
VISUAL ARTS
SEX, DRUGS AND PARADOXES by Lauren Wiszniewski
Rock and roll is a constant battle to be more ridiculous and outrageous than what’s come before. Wasted and lawless, musicians become so insulated from reality they no longer know what is real or know. Flanked by adoring fans and assistants, they live a life a life of high glamour and gratified demands. As the audiences for their concerts grew over the 60s and 70s, rock stars could command higher prices, luxurious accommodations and to have all their financial and pampering whims satisfied. Van Halen’s standard performance contract contained a provision calling for the band to be provided with a bowl of M&M’s, with all of the brown candies removed. Van Halen once described the purpose of this clause to be a determinant of whether or not the technical specifications of the contract have been thoroughly read. However, the fact remains that if Van Halen ever found any brown M&M’s in their candy bowl at all they would promptly trash the dressing room, kick a hole in the door and according to David Lee cause “twelve thousand dollars’ worth of fun.” Despite disturbing and odd requests (James Brown once asked for two girls under the age of 21 and a lady’s hairdryer) we as a society don’t really judge our musical idols. We find untamed beauty in those that don’t live the same nine to five lives that us simpletons do. Kirk Hammett, lead guitarist of Metallica, once commented that coming off tour was like experiencing
Picture by Lauren Wiszniewski
In the film Almost Famous, Russell, a member of the fictional rock band Stillwater goes to a teenage house party in order to be with people who are “real”. Tripping on acid, Russell climbs onto the roof and screams “I am a golden god!”, illustrating perfectly how rock and roll manufactures a reality that is guaranteed to make people incomplete. To be famous you have to be exciting, dashing, dangerous; maybe even eat a mars bar from Marianne Faithfull’s deranged vagina. Who daydreams about someone who is LITERALLY so fucking AWKWARD and so fucking BORING that they could be your friend’s creepy uncle? Nobody! You want to read about people blowing coke off the belly buttons of hookers, setting themselves on fire and snorting a line of ants off the pavement. Nursing a hangover of societal expectations, our rock and roll heroes are not expected to age beyond the age of nineteen. So they don’t. post-traumatic stress syndrome similar to leaving a war behind and re-entering real life, simply because he now had to “empty the trash”. Memoirs of rock ‘n’ roll legends are best sellers, mostly because we want to live our lives vicariously through our guitar heroes. After reading the Led Zepplin biography Hammer of the Gods, Hammett himself thought “I wanna be like that all the time,” breaking things, screaming and trying to be rock and roll every single night.
Marianne Faithfull’s deranged vagina.
This rock and roll lifestyle ultimately takes its toll with these celebrities unable to be infantilized forever. The 2004 documentary, Some Kind of Monster, forces Metallica to examine their nature and existence as a heavy metal rock band, with a mediation between therapy and celebrity taking shape. Focusing on the glorification of sex, drugs and alcohol in the industry, Phil Towe, the band’s “performance enhancement coach” and acting therapist, comments on how these vices are “symptoms of a desire for relief.” In an environment of instant gratification, fear and insecurities run rampant threatening the lives of all those involved.
Singer James Hetfield is largely absent in the documentary. Instead of being with the band he devotes his time to repairing a marriage destroyed by alcohol. Others cope with the trauma in a different way; Rod Stewart’s solution to his martial and relationship problems is to move on to the next woman, leaving children and whole families behind. He was once quoted as saying, “Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and just give her a house.” In their quest to become bigger than life, rock stars lose touch with what it means to be real. Is society to blame for the slow decay of these musicians’ lives? We watch reality shows that showcase the luxurious extravagance of the stars, we eagerly consume gossip reports on drug-addled antics and we buy the albums that support these artist’s path to self-destruction. In order to be recognised and remembered rock bands compete for our attention. We only pay them attention if they act in a way that complies with our expectations of what rock represents; rebels without a cause. Therefore begins the paradox of rock and roll and becoming what you pretend to be. Russell in Almost Famous instructs a journalist to write that his last words were “I’m on drugs”, revealing how carefully he wants to construct how he’s viewed. This way, as rock stars grow old and their voices become straggled by their not-so-secret vices, we remember them as the beautiful golden gods they were and will always be to us.
LL Cool J’s rider demands included makeout equipment: 24 long stem roses and a small bottle of Johnson & Johnson baby oil. Ladies Love Cool James. Marilyn Manson also apparently wanted a bald, toothless hooker.
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Artists wanted - no training necessery
Ever wanted to be in an art exhibition at a major gallery? Well, now you can! Duck into the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery at UWA for your FREE Duck Postcard Art Book. Make your own art on the ten postcards and drop one off at the Gallery or Guild to be included in our upcoming Duck Postcard exhibition. See the website for more info - lwgallery.uwa.edu.au The Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery and the UWA Student Guild celebrate the University of Western Australia Centenary in 2013.
ALBUM REVIEWS Kanye West Yeezus Island Def Jam
8.5
A palate cleanser, a reset, a new chapter for hip hop – Kanye West spies a movement that’s been forming, and changes the game on us anyway. Yeezus has been spoken about as an anti-College Dropout but it’s probably closer to evil twin brother of MBDTF; intricate, perfectionist sound design is tossed out in favour of the raw energy of warped bass, torn drums, tribal beats and base lyrics. I’m uneasy calling the lyrics, which can be pretty damn awful, “intentionally bad” but it feels like the point being made here couldn’t be done without them – Kanye West can do whatever he wants, and right now that means steering hip hop into down a dark industrial trap hole. There are some downsides to Kanye flipping tables again; any sense of greater narrative is all but gone and replaced with his more-so-than-ever all encompassing ego. If MBTDF was a backhanded apology for the Taylor Swift incident, Yeezus is the maniacal celebration of the fact- there are no apologies for the sex, wealth and opulence, the sounds and stories spun by a man driven mad at the top. Comparisons to Death Grips feel not only uneasy but wrong; this isn’t paranoia layered on psychosis, but the embrace, celebration and self-hatred of our times. Simon Donnes Noah & the Whale 7.5 Heart of Nowhere Heart of Nowhere is a bit like talking to a guidance counsellor, who is also Bruce Springsteen. After bringing us down with moans and groans over front man Charlie
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Fink’s breakup with Laura Marling in their first album, and picking us back up again with the poppy Americana of the second, Last Night on Earth, they’ve now gone one further and figuratively pulled on a faded denim jacket to give us an album of coming-of-age anthems and drive tunes. The epic choruses and pounding drums get us toe-tappin’ and thinking about our poor choices in life (“If you can, try and get to know your parents well” – fat chance) but Fink’s soft voice is a bit jarring when you’re expecting the Boss’ deep growl. Accompanying the album is a short film, to be screened at upcoming shows, which sets the album in “teenland” where adolescents are quarantined so they can no longer be a detriment to society. Nice set up, huh. This album feels half like a prayer to the young, and half a consolation to to the frontman, but it succeeds as a good driving soundtrack and a decent point of self-reflection. Caroline Stafford Banda Magda 8.5 Amour, T’es Là? Independent Sometimes you come across music that sounds so unique to your ears you can’t help but fall in love with it. So it was for me when I heard the title track of Banda Magda’s debut album, Amour, T’es Là? Over an irresistibly funky samba groove, bandleader Magda Giannikou’s voice bubbles and froths like champagne as she sings in French about the elusive nature of love. If any music could justifiably be called “world music” it’s Banda Magda’s tasty melange of Brazilian samba and bossa nova, gypsy jazz, Greek dance music, and French pop. The Greek-born Giannikou writes her songs in French, a language perfectly suited to her music. Sometimes
it’s sensuous and cinematic, as on “Ce Soir”, a silky smooth bossa. At other times, it exudes a silly joie de vivre, as on the jazzy “Astéroïde”. All of the songs feature compelling melodies and colourful arrangements that attest to Giannikou’s skills as a composer for film and television (you may have seen her sing with Louis CK on Louis). I’d stop short of saying this album is for everybody, but there’s a good chance it will make you smile. And dance. You should probably check it out. Ben Craig-Wadham The Novocaines 6.5 Freedom Please/’Til Death Self-released These two singles are the first tracks we’ve heard from Perth punk/rock act The Novocaines since the release of their 2011 debut album, Idle Time, and they are a departure from the heavily produced alternative rock sound found on that album, with the band developing a sound that simultaneously references their earlier work and breaks new ground. I view this as a fairly positive development, because, whilst the band’s self- and Perth street press-hyped ‘energetic live shows’ have always been entertaining, their studio recordings have never really lived up to that promise. These new tracks, with their fast pace and screamed vocals seem like evidence that The Novocaines have finally zeroed in what is so enjoyable about their live performances and applied that to their songwriting process. Findng your own sound: it’s soooo easy. As a result ‘Freedom Please’ and ‘Til Death’ are probably two of the best songs The Novocaines have released. I always found
the band’s clean vocals a massive turn off, and they are thankfully largely absent from these tracks. The guitars are fast, low and a little discordant, and in some places hark back to the heavy blues rock of the band’s first EP. On the whole both of these tracks are far less shiny and produced than previous works and they give some real punk cred to a band that has always been about as badass as Eskimo Joe. Whilst this still isn’t exactly the most groundbreaking rock music, these two singles are certainly a step in the right direction. Hugh Manning Josh Pyke 6.5 The Beginning and the End of Everything Ivy League Does Ezra Pound (Ed. Northbridge bar, not the Vorticist) still serve drinks in mason jars? Is that still a trendy thing? As we get older we like to think we get cooler, smarter and wiser. These days Josh Pyke sings from the standpoint of maturity – he sounds like an upbeat motivational speaker telling you “reflections are never the same in the morning”. He universalises a misspent youth with strong and memorable melodies. Yet something still seems off: is it the double-tracked vocals, the wordiness of his words? Maybe it’s the clattering realisation that Pyke is getting his shit together and you’re still drinking your alcohol out of a glass jar. Lauren Wisziewski Liam Singer 9.0 Arc Iris Hidden Shoal Recordings On the day that computers compose the most beautiful music, how will
we know what makes us human? I am not sure whether Liam Singer is actually thematically exploring this notion or simply trying to mimic what it might sound like – in either case, it rules, and I will gladly submit myself to the terrifying software overmind. No, I am making lame robot jokes because Arc Iris has something slightly mechanical-feeling about it, as though each note was placed, each tonal choice made specifically to hit a certain part of my brain; in a way, I’m sure it has. Think Sufjan Stevens but with a more restrained scope; there is wholeness to this record that I haven’t felt in a while, especially in what is essentially experimental pop music. Connor Weightman The Community Chest 9.0 Top of the Hour Gun Fever Local Perth indie stalwart Adam Kermiofski (or Adem K as he is often known) returns with a new project and a brand new album. For the uninitiated, Adem K fronted one of the best bands Perth ever produced in Turnstyle, who were active in the late 90s and wrote some of the catchiest pop tunes during a golden era of Perth music. Top of the Hour is a swirling mix of analog synth, fuzz, catchy choruses, retro-cool imagery and slacker pop reminiscent of Pavement. On the flipside, epic lo-fi moments like the uniquely named “Stipe Crustacea Patch” recall Krautrock acts such as Neu! and Can, as the band melds obscure samples into progressive synth movements. Throughout, the album continues to convey what Adem K’s music has always conveyed: a persistent and infectious sense of joy, completely lacking pretension or insincerity. It’s the frontman’s best work since Turnstyle
Country, and definitely better than winning second prize in a beauty contest. Paul Lindsay Kirin J Callinan 8.0 Embracism Terrible Records While Kirin J Callinan is no longer writing from a female perspective, an examination of gender and sexuality is still central on Embracism, which is a portrayal of the hyper-masculinity still all-pervasive in Australian culture. Callinan has also described it as a “break-up album”, as it departs from the spirituality his girlfriend meant to him. The title track comes closest to conveying the latent aggression of his shirtless live performances: to pulsating bass Kirin howls in his unmistakable Australian drawl lines about measuring up and putting your physical body to the test. It isn’t all industrial anthems though, as on “Chardonnay Sean” where 2 minutes of ambience is interrupted by guitar expertly imitating the sound of the car crash laid bare by the song’s narrative. Ballads like “Landslide” and “Victoria M.” are made particularly moving by gorgeous strings, guitar tones and Callinan’s melancholy baritone. There is tenderness in violence, Callinan asserts, in his repeated command to “embrace” or his erstwhile confession of crying to Springsteen. This is a reminder that music can be catchy without being cheerful; even with his loud, pitch-shifting guitar on the soaring closer ‘Love Delay’, the despondent echo of “we will die alone”. On Embracism, Callinan has formed himself a comfortable niche, thanks largely to his effectiveness and perverse, feral croon. James Munt
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HANGOVER TUNES Hangovers and music go together like a foggy head and a soft pillow. Five Pelican writers tell us about their favourite balms for regret. “Be Safe”- The Cribs (okay this one’s a song, not an album) This song is perfect for a particular specimen of hangover; one that’s both physical and emotional. It features Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth delivering a long, abstract spiel which begins with ‘one of those fucking awful black days where nothing is pleasing and everything that happens is an excuse for anger’ and goes on to perfectly represent whatever negative emotion I might be feeling after the previous night’s stupid decision/awful experience. It fills a self-pitying emotional niche that I would usually turn to selfindulgent post-hardcore for, an option that is denied to me by the complete inappropriateness of self-indulgent post-hardcore for Sunday mornings. It is gentle enough to slip under my headache radar but ticks all of my unhappy boxes. Unfortunately, it seems to be the only good song that The Cribs have ever produced. Hugh Manning Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint - Kronos Quartet/ Pat Metheny When you’re beat, little things start to feel both directionless and devastatingly meaningful. Steve Reich takes little things - comfortably chordal themes, crotchet-and-quaver ostinati, tiny fragments of speech - and spins them into dense fibrous spirals. Reich’s works feel almost organically formless, but following the weave reveals every essential interlocking seam. You can certainly sense the craftsman’s fingers at work in the 1989 release Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint, each individually insignificant thread serving a suddenly urgent purpose in the whole. On paper, Different Trains sounds clichéd, even exploitative - Reich contrasts childhood transamerican train travel with the cattle trains of wartime Europe, heavily editing recorded conversations with black train stewards and Holocaust survivors. On listening, the piece is painfully restrained and allusive, only glancing sideways at tragedy and survivor guilt as it chugs along its locomotive trajectory. Over
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an open-fourth ostinato constantly changing temporal gears, Kronos soloists emerge and imitate the contours of recorded speech. As in any Holocaust account, the commonplace is charged with meaning (“I had a teacher// His hair was plastered completely smooth”). It’s as heart-on-sleeve as an otherwise oblique composer can get, and ideal listening for staring down existential void. The B-side is Pat Metheny’s definitive recording of Electric Counterpoint, a lattice of fourteen overdubbed guitar tracks. Each melodic line is as springy as the steel it’s played upon, and the entire work meshes into a stunningly tight rhythmic fantasy reminiscent of palm-wine and kora music. Zoe Kilbourn On Top of the World The Saddle Club Like chicken soup for the soul, The Saddle Club’s On Top of the World helps to repair, replenish and motivate after an all night bender. Doing away with extra extravagances, tracks are stripped bare and lyrics kept heartbreakingly simple, with special emphasis on feminist empowerment, The Saddle Club emphasise the importance of friendship and accepting your own faults. In order to further enforce these messages the song ‘We Got Style’ is sung by The Saddle Club’s arch- rival Veronica. Containing lyrics such as “where do people buy their clothes, do they find them in a ditch?” Veronica and all those other haters are seen as narcissist beings that you don’t need the next day. “When life is rough and the dark clouds are forming” you need this album playing; reminding you that whatever you did the night before doesn’t matter anymore when the sun rises. Lauren Wisnieweski Harvest - Neil Young My Harvest hangover tradition started in my party hard youth of year twelve where I would abuse all sorts of substances on Saturday night, before peeling my hungover ass out of bed on Sunday afternoon to wallow in self pity with this album blearing loudly. The opening track Out on the Weekend would set the vibe for pity party that’s about to start. I felt like that lonely boy, just wanting to
escape my small country town in order to find my true love. The next song, and title track, leads on with the lyrics “dream up/ dream up/ let me fill your cup/ with the promise of a man” which further exacerbated my lonely teen angst and sexual frustration. For me, Harvest is full of nostalgia and memories of the shitty and confusing time it is to be seventeen. Now when I listen to it I can feel the hangover of my teen years, and am glad that I no longer relate to this album on a personal level. Harvest also takes you on a journey through Neil Young’s hangovers and hang-ups; finding a lady who will make you a goddamn meal and shut up, friends lost to heroin, and regrets of time that slipped away. Let yourself be bathed in the soothing harmonica and banjo with Neil’s sweet voice and try to forget the night that’s passed. Caitlin Frunks Red House Painters – Red House Painters Talking pseudo-scientifically, hangovers are the flipside of endorphins being released into the system before their time – they leave behind a vacuum of numbness and bad, and so while I’m aware that happy hangovers are indeed a thing, I feel like we have to tackle the bigger picture here. Mark Kozelek is one of those perennially morose songwriters, a proto-emo for whom #fwp would have been applied to had that been a thing in 1993. There is something to be said for sincerity, though, and sometimes you just gotta ride out the sadness by putting it in a box with more sadness. The first RHP LP deftly managed the neat trick of combining nonchalant boredom and utter devastation. The guitar playing sounds lazy and archaically saturated in chorus pedals. Meanwhile the vocals meander around, lost and unconvincing. Kozelek knew what he was looking for, though, even if he had to climb atop a contorted pile of sad cliches to get there. I’m not sure it’s possible to be more sedately disgusted with oneself. The album is epitomised by “Katy Song” and its self-pitying unrequited love narrative, replete with actual mentions of broken glass and over-long slowburn outro (fade out and everything): it would be hilarious, if it didn’t send a wrecking ball through my chest every time. Connor Weightman
BOXED LIKE MY WINE by Danica Lamb You always hear the stories about how crack brewers hang anti-drug posters in their meth labs for shits and gigs, in garages where ‘Methnot even once’ slogans watch over the boiling of a bit of benzoylmethylecgonine. While preventative campaigns like this are relatively direct in sending a message, when it comes to alcohol advertising and promotion it is far more elusive in Australia. The outcomes of these campaigns is arguable, but it would be impossible to claim that they’re working for the most part. While projects such as Drinkwise and Rethink Drink barely come to mind when thinking about government campaigns against binge drinking, it’s the trusted residents of Ramsay Street and Summer Bay who seem to wield greater influence. Cans of soft drink, muted Hillsong tunes, multiple layers of clothing and hands kept above the patio tables speak louder to the tween audience than any thirty second clip of a drunk couple caught in the bushes; the characters are more relatable and their lives more similar. It is easy to believe then that these domestic manufactures act as the advertisements for the “real” advertisements. The department of Youth Affairs insists that non-alcoholic beverages are preferable, a mandate that transcends the borders of the ad break with everyone toasting a glass of Diet Coke to Sally’s 18th at the Surf Life Saving Club.
be playing a game of seven, eleven doubles on a Sunday night than watching the latest episode of 60 minutes. However, fact that this topic is so prevalent on our screens is indicative of the dissatisfaction of the community towards us and our swag. Sure, ‘one in two Australians between 15-17 will get drunk and do something they later regret’ but where are the statistics for people aged 30-50? They certainly aren’t immune to the allure of intoxication. The only difference is that my wine comes out of a box and theirs a bottle. While I share my fruity lexia on a bus between Varsity and Caps, they gladly finish a whole bottle to themselves. The level of hypocrisy is nonsensical. At the end of the day, it seems to be all in an effort to shelter and forewarn the younger members of our society against drinking so they don’t progress to the stages we’re currently reaching as a generation. All we’re giving them however is abstinent TV role models, creating parents that disapprove of binge drinking and limited government influence through campaigns.
their peers are drinking excessive amounts, so they then drink excessive amounts in order to blend-in, compete or just prove that they’re capable. With rates of one in four teenagers experiencing bullying its no surprise that many of us attempt to ‘fit in’ or gain acceptance through our standard drink consumption rates. By Neighbours and Home and Away providing no substantial benchmark on what normal drinking levels are among youths, the tweens that often tune into these dramas have no real references. In opposition, James Van Der Beek’s Dawson’s Creek and the teen dramas just like it have created ‘social norms’ within the US that target binge drinking as a cultural issue. They don’t stigmatise alcohol as a evil but instead encourage moderation instead of abstention, promote parental involvement instead of disapproval, emphasize responsible drinking as a sign of maturity and, most importantly, exhibit that alcohol isn’t an excuse for unsociable behaviour and that the consequences will ensuewhether it be a hang over or losing your V plates to a reformed alcoholic (I’m looking at you Michelle Williams).
The flaw is that it simply isn’t working. In making a comparison with the US, 22% of American teens binge drank on a monthly basis, while 33% of Australians did in 2011. The basic suggestion is that Australian teens think
What Australian adolescents need instead of a lecture and a can of Solo is a realistic expectation of what alcohol can do, how best to approach it and what to do when it fucks you over.
This dynamic exists because the community doesn’t want to acknowledge why most of us wake up with hangovers any given day. Take Perth Now, for example (even though I’d rather not). They voice the typical opinions of the community, stating that Northbridge is perpetually ‘finally’ reclaimed from ‘drunks’ and their ‘punch-ups’. God forbid Alf visit Black Betty’s on a Saturday night; he has a 64% chance of being involved in alcohol-related crime, according to PN. Similarly, television ‘exposé’ attempts such as Today Tonight and A Current Affair regularly turn to teenage alcoholism in a slow news week. Today Tonight has aired, on average, two stories related to binge drinking adolescents every month for the last twelve months. These undercover operations, crackdowns and hyperbolising statistics have an alienating effect on young people and the general community. It is undeniable that being part of this subculture is ridiculously fun though. I would rather
In 2004 Alf discovers he has another long-lost child when he is reunited with his terminally ill former girlfriend, Viv Standish. The revelation leads Alf to realise local bad boy Eric Dalby, whom he loathes, is his grandson. After a difficult start the two build a relationship. The following year, Alf is reunited with yet another long-lost family member when his daughter Roo introduces him to Martha, the daughter she gave up for adoption in 1988.
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HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY by Kenneth Woo
To the surprise of no one, turns out it is impossible to live off the grid. Let us start with the mobile (smart) phone. It is arguably the primary device that we use to interact with the Internet and the world; hence, also the easiest tool used to track us. Personally, I thought just changing your SIM card would easily confound the evil government trackers, but a quick search showed how wrong I was. Almost every smart phone in existence now has an IMEI number printed on it, a number that allows governments and companies to trace the phone to any location in the world. Does anyone still remember the controversy back in 2011 when it was revealed that the iPhones were tracking the location of their users? It’s still a thing. So how do you enjoy the connectivity of a phone but prevent people from tracking you? There is a website where you can buy a disposable phone and number for USD$75 (with FREE SHIPPING). Unfortunately it works only in the United States but the concept behind the Burner Kit is to put secure and anonymous phones in the hands of those who want to vanish from society. The phone works for 30 days and after that, you can simply toss the phone away. While the company would happily accept credit cards as payment, their preferred transaction method is bitcoins. A quick search shows that for us
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Australians, we have to settle for an app called Hushed, which operates on the same principles of anonymous phone service but through an app and your smartphone. Not as private as a completely disposable phone, but it’s a start, I reckon. Another way to drastically reduce your presence on the Internet is to simply begin deactivating all email accounts. Services such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail regularly scan your content to create advertisements that are tailored to what is in your inbox. Some people say it is best to just scrap them entirely and instead use disposable accounts for your emailing needs. Websites such as Maildrop and Mailinator provide you with email accounts that can simply be disposed of when you are done with them. Perhaps the greatest thing that plugs us into the grid is our social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter. Permanently deleting your social media accounts like Facebook is…for a lack of a better term, extremely difficult. Due to the pervasiveness of Facebook and Google on the Internet, removing your presence is extremely challenging, as any accidental login into your accounts would immediately cancel whatever deletion process you started. A quick search online would reveal multiple sites that offer advice on deleting your digital footprint; there are also websites that will help you do it for a certain fee. It is easier said than done of course, if you don’t want to be tracked by Google then you have to stop using Google (something that is incredibly difficult). But if you are set on vanishing from the Internet, there are certain steps you can take. 1) Map your presence online. Open a word document and write down every single social media website you subscribe to, whatever website accounts, usernames and emails you use. 2)Once you’ve got a list drawn up, start cleaning it up, locking down any stray social
Picture by Lauren Wiszniewski
Regardless of your ethical position on the matter, it’s in vogue now to talk about Edward Snowden and the information he leaked to the world which revealed a pervasive “bigbrother” style data-gathering network in the United States. A cursory glance on many news aggregation sites show a constant stream of news about the fallout from PRISM and the fate of Edward Snowden. Instead of feeling indignation from the revelations of wholesale government spying (for fun I enjoy googling ways to try and join extremist movements. Results: unsuccessful), my mind began to ponder on a question that seemed to be emerging out of this mess. Is it possible to completely unplug yourself from the grid? Can you essentially erase your digital footprint and vanish from the world? Considering the extent the Internet and technology has permeated our society, it seems to be an almost impossible task.
media posts you have set for the public or even those photos of your drunken escapades (remember employers now facebook potential employees). 3)If possible, delete your social media accounts. If that is not an option then I guess you better think before you post. DO YOU WANT THOSE PICTURES OF YOU DRINKING SHOTS OUT OF SOMEONE’S MOUTH TO STAY FOREVER ON THE INTERNETZ? I started writing this article with the intent on finding out whether you can live off the grid. Pushing aside the idea of simply packing up and staying on a farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere, it seems rather difficult to completely cut your links to the Internet. Google and Facebook are literally everywhere you go and there is no escaping the need for a cellphone and email. Let’s all just accept the fact we will be monitored and eventually charged for high-treason for typing out something that can be misinterpreted as “I want to blow up the Bell Tower”. (Ed. Blowing up a bell-shaped balloon on a tower?)
Google Maps has collected more than enough data to fill every CD produced in 1995; that’s a lot of Pearl Jam albums.
E3 On June 11 – 13, the Los Angeles Convention Centre was home to the biggest edition yet of what is the largest gaming convention of them all; E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo). The centre of attention this year was the massive feud between Microsoft and Sony, as they engage in a cutthroat war to win support from consumers over their respective nextgen consoles (the Xbox One and PlayStation 4). While those two battled it out, Nintendo silently backed away from schoolyard brawl and decided to play it pretty safe. So what did Microsoft bring to the fight? You ask just about any thirteen year old boy swept up by the craze of Xbox hatred all over the internet, and they’ll probably tell you “absolutely nothing”. This seems quite far from the truth though. Of course, the gigantic alwaysonline elephant in the room at Microsoft’s press conference was the severely negative public reception to their previous announcements; that the Xbox One would have to be connected online at least once a day, would require an extra fee for playing used games, and would have a camera attached that would always have to be plugged in and turned on. It seems Microsoft decided that the best way to tackle the issue would be to completely side-step around it, and they did so by semi-gloating that their press conference was going to be “all about the games” (which in turn made it nothing about the burning questions everybody had about the Xbox One system).
Semi-gloating In all fairness, Microsoft did live up to their promise of having a conference full of impressive looking games, and this seems to be a point that most people on the Xbox One hate bandwagon seem to be glossing over. A real highlight was the reveal of Forza 5, a new addition to Microsoft’s staple racing series. What made Forza 5 so vital to the presentation was that it, in a sense, provided a level of justification for Microsoft’s “always-online” decision. They showed that the game will be able to analyse and save your driving style, upload it to the online cloud, and then use it as an AI controlled player in somebody else’s offline game. This mechanic was created to
make it that every time you race in the game (regardless of whether it’s against the computer or not) it will always feel like you are racing a real person. This is a mechanic that is only properly available if the Xbox One console maintains a constant connection to the internet, which proves how Microsoft’s controversial decision might have actually been a leap forward for the better. It’s important to note that a few weeks after E3, Microsoft decided to pull the plug on the requirement for the Xbox One to need an internet connection. While this move was in response to fan uproar, it still feels like a shame. It seem that Microsoft were trying to push gaming technology further, yet were unable to due to an excessive amount of unwarranted hatred. The other exclusives that Microsoft brought to the E3 table were also pretty impressive. Dead Rising 3, for example, showed off the pure power capabilities of the new system, while games like Project Sparks showed the its creative potential. And of course, Microsoft had to shoehorn a Halo title into the conference somewhere, so they showed a short CGI cinematic and a title that simply said “Halo”. The problem I found with this “announcement” was that it was just so vague; it told us nothing about the game it was announcing, except for the fact it was a Halo game. You couldn’t be blamed for thinking Sony were playing it fairly safely during the first half of their conference (which consisted of mainly showing off sequels to existing franchises), but then came Sony’s absolute kick in the balls to Microsoft. Firstly, with their announcement of Drive Club; a Forza competitor that comes completely free to all those subscribed to PlayStation Plus. Secondly, Sony announced their console would be $50 cheaper than the
Picture by Lauren Wiszniewski
by Mason Fleming
Xbox One and that the PlayStation 4 would not need to be kept online, giving users freedom to share their games as they please. It was these announcements some of the biggest cheers of any press conference reveal at E3, with most of them presumably coming from Sony’s sinister marketing team. It shows that Sony’s tactic in the E3 schoolyard brawl was not to knock out their competitor directly, but rather to rally all the other schoolkids (the media, and therefore consumers) together to bully them into such a weak emotional state that they would no longer be able to even fight. All you have to do is look at the amount of pre-orders Sony’s Playstation 4 is getting in comparison to the Xbox One, or at Microsoft’s hurried backtracking from their always-online model, to see that Sony’s tactic worked like a charm.
Before each Xbox One controller is shipped, each button on it will be pressed two million times for quality control- that’s seven years of use. And just in case you don’t think Microsoft cares about you, the new Xbox will be able to discern your heartbeat and your mood. What a bro.
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CULTURE REVIEWS Animal Crossing: New Leaf 3DS Nintendo
The Last of Us PS3 Naughty Dog Entertainment
Lachlan Palamara
Mason Rothwell
The latest instalment of the charming life simulator comes to the 3DS with more features than before, but still contains the fun the series is known for. New Leaf operates a little differently than the previous instalments, since you play as the town’s mayor, creating edicts, building parks, campsites, bridges and even a cafe. There are new stores in which you can change your hair, design shoes, shop for house accessories and more, but it still plays like the previous instalments and is simple and easy to pick up. You’ll never be short of things to do in your village, when you can fish, catch bugs, find fossils, design clothes, go to the museum, upgrade your house and so much more; though seeming mundane, these tasks keep definitely you entertained. The online extenson allows you to visit your friends towns, and play minigames such as fishing competitions and hide-and-seek to win exclusive prizes for you and your town. Animal Crossing can be a game you play for hours on end, or just pick up and play for 10 minutes, but you’ll always end up being hooked in your own little world.
Naughty Dog’s latest IP The Last Of Us is one of the most intelligently crafted games of the seventh console generation, representing a major departure for Naughty Dog, breaking their policy of releasing only one IP per console generation. What makes The Last Of Us unique is how deeply it cuts the player emotionally. The player takes control of Joel, a middle-aged survivor, and must escort 14 year old Ellie through the dangerous wasteland of a zombie apocalypse. The game’s minimalist soundtrack and active AI allow the interaction between the player and Ellie to both help and hinder – at times saving Ellie, other times being saved by her. For a game so emotionally focused, the gameplay remains solid, with tight controls, weapon customisation, and a great potential for strategy – rarely does the game force you to play it in a way that isn’t your own, and instead allows you to think strategically and use stealth or force as you will. In the end, the game’s strongest point remains the bond between Joel and Ellie, and the strength of its storytelling. When it’s over, fighting hordes of zombies becomes unmemorable, and instead you’ll simply be struck at the depth, humanity and complexity of the bonds between the main characters.
Whitlam: The Power and the Passion (2013) Director: Paul Clarke Wade McCagh The story of Gough Whitlam, a polarising Labor prime minster with an ambitious set of policy reforms and an unwillingness to compromise that led to his spectacular removal is probably more relevant than ever in the light of Australia’s recent political history. So, it was immensely frustrating to watch this ABC produced documentary so thoroughly waste and squander some brilliant and candid insight into the subject from those who were there with poor production values and dreadful narration. Lines such as “an Orpheus in a bogan underworld” less than 30 seconds in pave the way for a horrid run of awful commentary, and combined with some of the worse re-enactments you will ever see make it extremely difficult to take the documentary seriously. Not to mention the three songs they obviously thought could be jammed in crudely whenever they needed to establish mood and setting. For those with an interest in the subject and the people, I still must recommend this film, which is redeemed only by the wide range of terrific interview subjects. If there was a way to cut out everything but the interviews (which is highlighted by the 20 minutes of DVD extras of unedited interviews on various topics), one could more fully enjoy things like Bob Carr waxing lyrical about his admiration for Gough, Bob Hawke’s shrewd observations, John Howard and Malcolm Frasier’s surprisingly balanced and erudite knowledge about his strengths and weaknesses, and the always brilliant Barry Jones. It’s a shame such great raw material was butchered so wastefully.
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WRITING THE NEW FRONTIER Substance abuse, whether recreational or dependent, is often thought to be just the unproductive vice of young people and adult bums who refuse to contribute to society. But it’s forgotten that drugs have been a source of divine inspiration for as long as man has been putting things in his body that he probably shouldn’t. Globalisation after WW2 not only brought a new awareness of different cultures to the Western world, but also new drugs from which to draw spiritual and creative experiences. This was utilised by a group of American writers that would form the Beat Generation and, later, New Journalism. The Beat Generation could be said to have kicked off this spirit of creativity in the 1950s. Their interest in drugs was intellectual, metaphysical and at times epicurean, drawing on Native American, South American and Eastern cultures, as well as Western scientific advances. Marijuana, Benzedrine, morphine, peyote, ayahuasca, and later LSD were experimented with. This gave writers fresh insights into the human condition, and liberated them from the conservative industrial Western society that had only brought war. It could be said that by plunging oneself into an uninhibited frame of consciousness, the writer is able to observe the world uniquely and truthfully as well as allowing for a more free approach to the act of writing itself. Beat literature is as such characterised by free verse, uncensored, gritty and personal accounts, colloquial language, experiments with form, and appropriation of beliefs, mythologies and culture. William Burroughs, pen-named William Lee, was one of the first Beats. A strong-minded youth who attended Harvard to study English, anthropology and later medicine, Burroughs was rejected from serving in WW2 and left his studies due to a heroin addiction. As a keen writer Burroughs did not allow his talent to waste, and published his first novel, Junky, in 1953. You cannot look past the similarities to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, and given a fortyyear head start, Burroughs managed to do a better job. I would much sooner recommend this original confessional classic, which doesn’t glorify heroin addiction in the slightest, but navigates Burrough’s inner conflict between giving up and giving in, as well as painting an unflinching portrait of the American underworld in the 1940s.
Burroughs’ writing was in part aided by his friendship with prominent writer Allen Ginsberg, who as a part of the original circle of Beat poets (even making an appearance in On the Road as “Carlo Marx”) shared an interest in the use of drugs to deepen perception and spirituality. Poems such as ‘Laughing Gas’, ‘Mescaline’ and ‘Lysergic Acid’ describe drug experiences that for the readers at the time were a territory totally unchartered. Ginsberg and Burrough’s relationship is best documented in The Yagé Letters (published 1963), which chronologically follows Junky. Set in South America, this book is inspired by the drug ayahuasca, which is a preparation of jungle plants, containing DMT, used in traditional ceremonies by Amazon Peruvians. The Letters are part-anthropology, part-mysticism, and explore the deconstruction of time, space, and identity through the psychedelic experience. Beat literature, in all its narcotic splendour, evolved in the 1960s into New Journalism, one of the most well known literary movements to embrace the chemical muse. The event of synthetic drugs such as LSD and speed encouraged writers to push further at the frontiers of creativity, consciousness, and morality. This contributed to newfound indigenous and ecological consciousness, sexual liberation, anti-censorship, pacifism, antimaterialism and psychedelic music. A lot was going on in America and New Journalists took it upon themselves to experience it all firsthand and write with a strong sense of self-awareness. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, written by Tom Wolfe in 1968, features a few familiar literary figures, including Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Neal Cassady (the inspiration for Dean Moriarty in On the Road), Allen Ginsberg and Hunter S. Thompson. It seems Kesey’s bus of Merry Pranksters epitomises the whole psychedelic movement: they are present when Haight-Ashbury takes off, when the Hells Angels are at large, and when the Vietnam Day Committee assembles. Once you’re “on the bus” you won’t want to get off, as you roll through the highlights of the 1960’s on marijuana, speed, and a whole lot of LSD, into a kaleidoscopic ego death. Nobody told the Beatles that Kesey did this magical mystery tour first. Finally, you cannot enter the world of drug literature without coming across Hunter S. Thompson’s iconic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published 1972. Firstly, read the book; it’s a great film for sure but the message can
Picture by Alice Palmer
by Jessica Cockerill
be lost amidst the vibrant visual pleasures. Secondly, Fear and Loathing is more than just a fantasy binge: it is the hangover of the drug revolution, the epilogue of the Beats and the hippies. Thompson’s novel reviews the era with a cynicism that is aware of the loss of its roots, once the whole thing became hip and essentially collided with the consumerism it once fought against. The man himself describes “all those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit…a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody... or at least some force - is tending the light at the end of the tunnel.” Thompson’s work reflects Jack Kerouac’s fears: once commercialised, the whole movement lost touch with the original spiritual and intellectual intent of drug use for creative purposes. I would recommend any of the aforementioned books to those with a wish to understand the use of drugs in literature better. In contemporary society drug use is seen as counter-productive and destructive, possibly because mass production has lead only to their recreational or divergent use. But as the Beats and the New Journalists reveal, the right chemical and the right era have, at times, met with strong, artistic minds to traverse the frontiers of the creative impulse.
In between cutting off his own pinky, selling his typewriter for heroin and shooting his wife dead, Burroughs needed a physician a lot, and his doctor’s name was Harvey Carcass. Gnarly
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BOOK REVIEWS The Shadow Year, Hannah Richell. The Shadow Year explores the fallout of our mistakes and the consequences of our decisions. Alternating between the past and the present, Richell skilfully weaves together the lives of different characters and their relation to one another. Focusing on the character of Lila, the novel exposes secret after secret until everything spills out. Recovering from the loss of her premature baby, Lila arrives at an abandoned cottage bequeathed to her by an unknown benefactor. In an attempt to heal her soul she spends her time renovating the cottage, hiding from her grief and the pain that city life gave her. Noticing that the last inhabitants left quickly and suddenly, Lila begins to question what happened all those years ago. Slowly both her and the cottage’s story unfolds, beginning to overlap as the reader begins to discover who Lila really is. The complexity of human nature is a central theme in the novel, as are the ideas of Thoreau and in particular his writings in Walden. To live in the natural world wholly and completely is a naïve dream that will never be possible as long as people manipulate others for their own means. Hauntingly tragic, the novel reminds we cannot always trust the ones we love and that we must ultimately take control of our lives. Best bit: The beautiful characterisation of the landscape. Worst bit: A somewhat anti-climatic ending. Read it with: a copy of Walden in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other. 7/10 Lauren Wiszniewski actually has a copy of Walden on her bookshelf. The Quarry Iain Banks Banks’ final work, published weeks after his passing from cancer, is a mixture of poignancy, frustration
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and British Sitcom. A teenage outsider, the protagonist Kit is perfectly self-assured in his intelligence and incapability to engage in normal communication. He suffers terribly from Holden Caulfield syndrome, and his only redeeming factor is his manner of care for his father, who is dying from cancer. Banks allegedly did not know he himself had cancer until the work was almost completed. It’s this twanging, echoing fact that rings throughout the whole work and makes even the cheerful moments just a little bit bitter. The prose is passable and there are some lovely little chunks of insight, but none of it feels real, the characters and the house reading a little too much like caricatures. Best bit: Cocaine sesh with the old uni buddies Worst bit: Kit trying to have sex with his aunt and failing miserably Read it with: Irish coffee and a salt shaker full of Charlie. 6/10 Simon Donnes is a reprobate who can’t separate his fake memories from his real ones, but often forgets the fact.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane Neil Gaiman With this book, Neil Gaiman solidifies himself as the preeminent fantasy writer of our time (IMO). In 248 pages, he manages to create a world containing truth, beauty, kindness and intense sadness - a world that only he is capable of creating. You will meet characters in the book that stretch from all-powerful beings who existed at creation to a little boy who was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is a book I will gush about to anyone who ask me what good books have I read so far. This book can be read in one sitting. It’s a short book, and while you wish you could stretch it out, it simply isn’t possible. You will be dragged into a world where the magic and unknown collides with our reality. Make no mistake, there are dark moments in this book, and this is very
much a fairy tale meant for adults, not kids. The book demands to be consumed immediately and you have no choice but to comply. In fact, why are you reading this review? Go to your nearest bookshop and buy a copy now. Best bit: Meeting the Hempstock Ladies. Worst bit: Why is it so short? Read it with: a sense of awe. 15/10 [Kenneth says: “Yes, it’s that good”] Kenneth Woo wrote this on a plane on its way to Sydney. Hopefully it doesn’t explode in mid-air.
Heist Robert Schofield Within the first chapter, you get what you’ve come for. The heist in Heist doesn’t waste any time in getting started - and why should it? Here’s a novel set in Kalgoorlie and Perth, the sort of towns that don’t waste any time in getting things done. I picked up this book for review because I was excited at the prospect of reading another book set in my favourite Australian city but was disappointed when it turned out to be about as exciting as working for Rio Tinto. The book unfortunately reads just like a Hollywood blockbuster set in Western Australia – only worse. Our protagonist, ‘Ford’, is left practically alone at his mining site while the rest of the crew attend a piss-up at the bookies in nearby Kalgoorlie. In an unexpected twist, it is revealed the heist has come from within and it’s left to Ford to make it right. While the book is classified as fiction (rightly so, nothing exciting happens in WA, right?), Ford is obviously inspired by the author Schofield’s own unexciting life. Both are non-miners from the United Kingdom who moved into mining in Perth because they couldn’t find work elsewhere. As such, Heist might just be what Schofield wishes his life were like. Heist leaves a lot to be desired for those who enjoy Australian fiction and I would recommend staying away unless you’re really keen on reading something set in WA’s great north.
Best bit: Western Australian Fiction. Worst bit: Ford’s antisocial/edgy/2deep4u personality that lands him the role as protagonist. Read it with: Beers in hand to ensure the novel is enjoyed in its most pure form: as an Australian ‘Die Hard’, but in the desert. 5/10 Michael Morrissey is an Education and Arts student who is attracted to Julia Gillard. Dead Ever After Charlaine Harris The Sookie Stackhouse Adventures finally come to their lethal conclusion in Dead Ever After. Much of the popularity of this series can be attributed to its suspense, sexiness, and surprises, which have engaged the reader at each and every turn. However, Dead Ever After can only be described as solemn and slap-dash. As usual, Sookie is in deep trouble from the get-go, and her enemies begin to crawl out of the woodwork. To her delight, though, all the “supes” from her adventures, come from far and wide to lend their talents in her aid. Harris is more than adept at portraying this storyline, describing every sight, scent, sound, taste and touch with visceral clarity. However, it seems she has run out of ideas on how to keep the reader excited, or even how to give the series the triumphant end it deserves. Best Bit: Sookie’s last-minute but unexpected change in her love life. Worst Bit: Constant references back to older characters without any reminder information. I can’t remember that many people! Read it with: A cold glass of iced tea, because everyone in Louisiana seems to be real thirsty in this book.
The Heist Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg Evanovich has lured me into a false sense of belief about the quality of men in the world. Contrary to her writing, they don’t all have gorgeous smiles, hefty bank accounts or exquisitely dreamy eyes. Similarly, none find a woman’s ability to polish off a piece of chocolate cake in a few seconds as deliciously erotic as she makes things out to be. The contribution of Lee Goldburg, best known for his creation of the obsessive compulsive detective Monk, must have been minimal, as Evanovich’s style floods over you while reading The Heist. The characters are replicas of most, if not all, I have experienced in her previous novels; tough girl who carries a gun and likes to eat unhealthily is unbearably in love with an intelligent, unavailable, hotpiece-o’-ass man. From there, through the avenues of the justice system and fighting bad guys, the two will inevitably experience an enthralling build-up of sexual tension, hook up, and then go back to acting like nothing happened (spoiler alert). In conclusion, girl ends up alone with chocolate/donuts/pizza/ fried chicken. The sentences are unbearably easy to follow and the small cliffhangers easy to predict. The novel completely satisfies everything a middle-aged woman wants in a novel. Extensive and bland descriptions of settings and appearances, a strong emphasis on the importance of family, a humorous ‘older woman’ character who provides anecdotes about her divorce and how much she hates her ex-husband, easy-to-follow switching of perspectives and large font size. (Ed- I’ll take it to my gyno appointment) Best Bit: The respite it provided from study
Mindy Budgor is a Jewish girl with something to prove and a few pounds to lose. Lost and directionless, she decides to volunteer in Africa, helping to build schools and hospitals in the Masai Mara. Upon discovering that women cannot become warriors, Budgor takes on a new mission to break down the patriarchy and sexism that exists in this isolated and old-fashioned tribe. Well, sort of, since in reality she doesn’t like being told “no” and she needs something good on her resume. Budgor constantly complains throughout Warrior Princess about her hunger, weight, her parent’s disappointment in her and her constant failures. Coming off more princess than warrior, she constantly remarks for her need for chocolate and how despite “not (being) here to find a boyfriend…it was fact that many of these men were beautiful.” Feeling unloved by the world she cries out for attention by meddling with other people’s lives. Written in the same tone of a bad chick lit novel, this autobiography is non-engaging and cringe-worthy. Budgor remains selfabsorbed and her values unchanged throughout. While she has set in motion improvements for the rights of women in these communities, she does so in a manner that is most beneficial to her. Her only redeeming factor is the fascinating insight she offers of the Masai culture. Yet her faults ultimately take precedence, and like the end of any long journey, you are glad when you finally make it to the end. Best bit: An exploration of Masai tribe traditions
Worst bit: Page-long descriptions of beaches
Worst bit: “That was definitely a snake,” I said, my voice shaking.
Read it with: A fishbowl margarita
Read it with: A forget-me-now.
6/10 Candice Lamb is the girl in the law library that is always told to be quiet, even in the talking area.
Warrior Princess Mindy Budgor
3/10 Danica Lamb’s life mirrors that of a romantic comedy. Just without any romance and a lot of laughing at her own jokes.
Lauren Wiszniewski really needs a drink.
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Avant Leadership Tour 2013 Committed to continuous education
23 -29 August 2013
Date: Friday 23rd August Time: 5.30-8.00pm Presentation 8.00-9.00pm Networking (Refreshments provided) Venue: University of WA To learn more or register visit avant.org.au/120-years Dr Gerald Hickson is a professor at Vanderbilt University and an internationally recognised speaker on the impact of disruptive behaviours on achieving the best possible patient outcomes.
Dr Gerald Hickson
Download a free QR Code Reader from the App Store or Android Market, then scan the code with your phone.
Join US Expert Dr Gerald Hickson at his presentation on disruptive behaviours Avant, Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading MDO, is celebrating 120 years of protecting and supporting Australian doctors and healthcare practitioners. To mark the occasion, Avant is hosting a free seminar for medical students and healthcare professionals in Perth.
1800 128 268 avant.org.au/120-years
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To learn more or register visit avant.org.au/120-years.