The Big Issue Australia #643 – The Rock

DWAYNE JOHNSON ON HIS HEROES

Ed.

643 20 AUG 2021

28.

TKAY MAIDZA

32.

REBECCA HALL

40.

and CWA’S SPONGE CAKE

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Contents

EDITION

643

26 SMALL SCREENS

I Will Survivalist Fleabag’s Sian Clifford was drawn to Two Weeks to Live – about motherdaughter Doomsday preppers – because it’s just so unconventional.

28 MUSIC

Three’s a Charm Singer-songwriter Tkay Maidza is in total control of her sound on Vol. 3 of her hip-hop mixtape trilogy, delivering her most confident EP yet.

32 FILM

12.

Hall of Horrors

“I’m a Lucky S.O.B to Have This Career”

by Lucy Allen

He might be Hollywood’s highest-paid actor, but Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was once a pro wrestler – like his father, grandfather and grandmother before him. contents photo by Getty cover photo by Brian Bowen Smith AUGUST/Raven & Snow

Sometimes you just want to scream! British actor Rebecca Hall reveals why her new horror film The Night House will give you plenty to shriek about.

40 TASTES LIKE HOME

Never-fail Sponge Cake

THE REGULARS

04 Ed’s Letter & Your Say 05 Meet Your Vendor 06 Streetsheet 08 Hearsay & 20 Questions 11 My Word 20 The Big Picture

24 Ricky 25 Fiona 34 Film Reviews 35 Small Screen Reviews 36 Music Reviews 37 Book Reviews

39 Public Service Announcement 43 Puzzles 45 Crossword 46 Click

A light, fluffy sponge with lashings of jam and cream really takes the cake at any celebration. The CWA’s recipe will ensure your bake rises to the occasion.

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

Just for Kicks

LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT

T

urns out, I am rather good at falling. It’s a hidden talent I never expected to uncover in my forties. But one I should’ve suspected all along, given my propensity for being a klutz. You see, in between Melbourne lockdowns 4 and 5, I took up karate, after a friend convinced me to tag along to the dojo with her. And while I might still be fumbling my way through the choreography of basic kicks, blocks and punches, I do have a knack for somersaulting shoulder first into the mat, and springing up again.

It’s not lost on me that this move reflects the year we’re having – that feeling of being upside down and inside‑out all at once – of taking the hits and finding a way back through.

In this edition, author and later-in-life kickboxer Jenny Valentish writes: “I’ve

found that if someone takes up combat sports as an adult, it’s because they’ve felt embattled at some point, and then realise that hitting things hard can turn that feeling around.”

Perhaps combat sports are the jazzercise of our times, as we try to wrestle back a semblance of control in the chaos.

Certainly, our cover star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is the action hero of our times. The charismatic actor is a third‑generation pro wrestler, who’s gone on to become Hollywood’s highest‑paid star, all with an air of humour and good grace. “Professional wrestling is a business that I grew up in, that I’ve loved all of my life and [where I] learned some of my most valuable – very unorthodox – lessons,” he says. “These men were, in essence, my superheroes. They didn’t wear capes when I was a little boy.”

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The Big Issue Story

04

Your Say

The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 25 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a magazine.

With the critical eye of the long‑time magazine junkie that I am, I found that the feature ‘Making a Difference’ (Ed#638) had missed one vital element. None of The Big Issue’s successful endeavours would have been possible if The Big Issue hadn’t succeeded in being the excellent, independent magazine that it is. We admire the vendors, and the causes, but would not keep coming back, or subscribing, if it wasn’t such a reliably good read, with its enjoyable regular columnists (they know who they are!), the moving and powerful vendors’ stories, the rich and varied range of big issues that it tackles, and so much more in each edition, under the leadership of its series of thoughtful editors who have so successfully filled their role as spelled out by former editor Martin Hughes: that his “only purpose was to help create something worth selling”. So, in its 25th birthday year, congratulations to all those who have made and are making this magazine one that its vendors can be proud to sell.

ANNE RING COOGEE I NSW

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work.

• The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 23 locations around the country.

• The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales.

• The Big Issue Education workshops provide school, tertiary and corporate groups with insights into homelessness and disadvantage, and provide work opportunities for people experiencing marginalisation.

CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Anne wins a copy of the CWA’s cookbook From Our Kitchen to Yours.

You can try out their Never-fail Sponge Cake recipe on p40. We’d also love to hear your thoughts, feedback and suggestions: SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor

interview by Peter Simmons photo by Barry Street

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

20 AUG 2021

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE AT QUEENS PLAZA AND WILLIAM STREET, BRISBANE

05

David K

I lived in Brisbane till I was 14 then moved to Coffs Harbour for 12 years.

I worked on the banana farms, then as a surveyor’s assistant. Never had a day off in a year-and-a-half because the boss would pick me up to take me out to work. Then I worked for Baker Bill’s Fine Pies. When they moved, I came back up here to Brisbane. I did construction. I travelled around with the motocross, building and pulling down grandstands.

I’m the father of four girls and one son. I am still with the mother of my four youngest. She lives overseas – we are together but a long way apart. I brought up my first daughter as a single father till she was 17, until my accident.

I knew about The Big Issue when I was driving taxis. You had to start driving at 4am or sometimes you wouldn’t get a car. I was bringing up my daughter, so I couldn’t get there at that time. I was looking for something on the side when I missed out on a taxi, so I started selling the magazine.

Then I had my accident. A car went to overtake me on my scooter and there was a car coming this way and so they had to take me out to avoid a head-on. Seven broken ribs, a broken shoulder, two fractures to the skull, epilepsy and amnesia. I was out cold for a week. I couldn’t recognise any of my visitors, including my daughter. That was 15 years ago. Today, I’m not allowed to drive and I have to keep my feet on the ground. After the accident, I went full-time with The Big Issue.

I’m one of the most known people down by the government building because I say “morning” to everybody there every day when I’m selling. I was told that by a customer. The income from selling The Big Issue does make a difference. I dress a lot better than I would just living off the pension.

Outside The Big Issue I’ve played in the odd pool comp. I was ranked 13 in New South Wales a few years ago. And I won a B-grade competition in snooker, which made me an A-grade player. I played rugby league till I was 22. As a junior, I played halfback for Wynnum Manly, then went to Souths.

I’m a huge Broncos supporter and a big Roars FC fan. And I was one of the first Street Soccer players, starting two weeks from the beginning.

I want to visit my family. I’ve never seen my son and he’s a year and three months – I would have been there for his birth, but then COVID came along.

My memory still isn’t the best but it’s improving. I don’t hold grudges but let bygones be bygones. Hate’s a bad thing – you start hating things and, before you know it, it comes back on you. I believe I’m getting stronger from the accident every day. I’m not letting things hold me be back.

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

Enough Already I wish this COVID-19 would stop.

I miss catching up with my friends and family; my brothers and three sisters, nephews and nieces. But I am enjoying catching up with sleep during this lockdown! I hope everyone does the right thing and stays at home, that way it will be sooner that we can get back to work. When we do get back to work, I hope it isn’t as cold and rainy as it is while I write this.

FRED BUPA DENTAL, GRENFELL ST I ADELAIDE

Tea and Sausages

ZAUG THE ARTIST AND HIS ART

Another Day Is Dawning

06

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

M

y paintings are what keep me alive. They are a place for my creative urges to come out. I’ve done them all my life.

Some people seem to like them. If I’m in pain, I try and make something beautiful, to put the negative energy into a positive energy. I like things that sparkle so I use metallic pens.

Sometimes pencils, sometimes crayons and sometimes paint. I use whatever medium I have. I work on Italian black pastel paper. I find that when I’ve finished a drawing, and look at it later, I don’t remember doing a line. I know that I have been totally in the zone, just trying to keep up with the universe’s creative energies with my feeble hands.

I just find that it makes sense to use that energy. Sometimes I don’t see anything until I turn around and the universe has created something that I’ve had no say in whatsoever.

One of my favourites, Those Early Dawns, could well be a self-portrait.

I just relate to it, to the feeling of being trapped in the world. Often being homeless, you don’t sleep so you’re up at the early dawns. You enjoy waking up watching the sky come to life. It’s a very mystical experience.

ZAUG VARIOUS INNER-CITY SUBURBS I BRISBANE

We’ve had some terrible weather in Perth with a lot of rain, but I’ve still had a good few months. The 25th birthday edition sold very well and I want to thank all my customers for supporting me. I really like my spot down at Elizabeth Quay; people are very kind to me. Special thanks to Brando: the cup of tea and crumbed beef sausage you buy me makes all the difference on a wet and cold day. I am also very happy for my good friend and Big Issue vendor Chris who moved with his family to a new place. It’s further away for me but I will make the trip soon, and I’m looking forward to my first visit there. I hope my WAFL team West Perth Football Club will make the finals this year. Go the Falcons!

STEVE ELIZABETH QUAY I PERTH

Shine Bright The lockdown affected me because I haven’t been able to go to Bendigo to see my daughter. Hopefully, soon, I’ll be able to see her again.

I’m also missing my expressive arts program – I’m missing seeing my friends. During lockdown, I’ve been doing diamond art, walking and chatting to friends on the phone. I really love shopping for diamond art! The end result is really pretty and colourful, and all

up, I’ve done about 24 or 25 pieces.

Sometimes they can take me up to five days, but if I’m not in a hurry I take my time with them. It helps with anxiety and keeps you calm and relaxed, so it’s a really great exercise to do. Twice a week I go for a walk with my worker and my dog Bear. I enjoy doing it; it gets me out of the house and about. We go along the river, it’s really nice along there – calm. Sometimes during the day Rick and I lay down and watch movies, or we just relax and listen to music – a bit of Lee Kernaghan and Slim Dusty, country music. I’ve been to a Lee Kernaghan concert – he’s cute and sexy! I’ve been selling The Big Issue for over two years, and I’m looking forward to coming back and selling magazines after COVID lockdown has stopped.

ALEISHA CNR QUEEN & LONSDALE STS I MELBOURNE

Six of the Best These are my six favourite affirmations. I use them to help keep myself grounded and I share them with my friends if they need a boost.

1.

If there is a will there is a way, nothing is impossible. If you have faith in the destiny you wish to embrace, what’s meant to be will always find its way.

2.

True happiness is not assessed on how wealthy you are, it’s whether you feel content with what you already have – otherwise no matter how rich or poor, you will never find true happiness.

3.

We all have our addictions, it’s how we manage the bad and excel with the good that triggers the success of our future.

4.

Time equals money, but money does not equal time. So in other words, you must invest time to make money, but time spent with someone else is priceless.

These are my two budgies called Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber. They love singing in the mornings and are funny to watch. I love listening to them and watching them as they’re quite mad, running around the cage, hence the names. They have a lovely view from my balcony during the day. I bring them inside at night and cover them up. I have an owl watching over them to frighten away the bigger birds. I love them and they keep me company, as I’m not allowed dogs or cats where I live. If anybody could suggest different names, you can email your suggestions to The Big Issue: submissions@bigissue.org.au.

STEW SANDGATE & NUNDAH MARKETS I BRISBANE

Have no regrets of the past; the past is what makes you you today! Live today for the moment and have high ambitions and hopes for the future.

6.

Hate controls the flow, but love conquers all.

So when you feel like you have lost all hope, remember the love that has gotten you this far.

SIMON SEMAPHORE IGA & HINDMARSH SQUARE I ADELAIDE

20 AUG 2021

Birds of a Feather

5.

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

07

MEET TWEEDLE DUMB AND TWEEDLE DUMBER

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“

Like many Australian birds, sulphur-crested cockatoos are loud and aggressive and often act like a pack of galahs. But they are also incredibly smart, persistent and have adapted brilliantly to living with humans.

Richard Major, from the Australian Museum Research Project, on how cockatoos open garbage bins to get food. Turns out they copy each other – which is why it happens in some places but not others (yet). Oh, and the odd genius cockatoo works it out for themselves, too.

SCIENCE DAILY I US

“We all went through news fatigue, panic fatigue, during the pandemic because we were hoping one day we would wake up and hear something hopeful, and all we got was more insanity.”

Actor Jennifer Aniston on the neverending pandemic bad-news cycle. The actor has cut off people in her life “who have refused or did not disclose” their vaccination status. Friends, no more.

INSTYLE I US

“I don’t know whether to cry, laugh, smile, a lot of emotions.

It’s time to bring an Olympic medal home to our country, Australia, so I can hang it up at Mum and Dad’s house.”

A euphoric Patty Mills on the Boomers’ historic bronze medal win at the Tokyo Games. It was the men’s basketball team’s first medal at an Olympics, after coming so close, so often.

THE ROAR I AU

“We are pleased that Mr Spears and his lawyer have today conceded in a filing that he must be removed.”

Pop superstar Britney Spears’ lawyer, Mathew Rosengart, responding to the news that her father will resign as the conservator of her US$60 million estate, admitting that the public battle over her affairs is not in her best interests. Spears is fighting to be free of the toxic conservatorship entirely, and to be in charge of her own affairs.

“We can link extreme weather to climate change in the same way we can link smoking to cancer.”

Freiderike Otto, one of the authors of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has issued the world a “code red”, describing how extreme weather events will increase unless drastic cuts to emissions are made – now.

“It’s like showing you have a conscience. You do it for yourself, and you do it for others. It’s very sensible.”

Sicilian resident Margherita Catenuto on proudly showing a barcode certifying that she’s vaccinated before entering a museum in Rome. Italians have largely embraced their new Green Pass, a health passport for access to many indoor social activities.

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC I US

THE NEW YORK TIMES I US

“I always am baffled that loofahs come from nature. They feel like they’ve been made in a factory but, in fact, it’s just not true. Since I was young, it’s amazed me. More and more I find bathing to be less necessary, at times.”

Actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler) on why regular bathing just doesn’t make scents. Even odder, given he’s flogging a fragrance.

“I go, ‘Okay lady, when I become a successful writer, you will never see one penny from my success. There will be no house for you. There’s no vacation for you, no Elvis Cadillac for Mommy. You get nothing.’”

Director Quentin Tarantino, 58, sure holds a grudge. Despite being worth US$120 million, he’s never shared a “penny” with his mum, after she ridiculed his writing when he was 12.

“If our soccer team, headed by a radical group of Leftist Maniacs, wasn’t woke, they would have won the Gold Medal instead of the Bronze.”

Donald Trump doing what Donald Trump does best, issuing press statements complete with Random Caps, after taking home silver himself in the 2020 US elections.

VANITY FAIR I US

NME I UK

THE GUARDIAN I UK

08

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ABC I AU

20 Questions

by Rachael Wallace

01 In which two sports has Australian

athlete Dylan Alcott won gold at the Paralympics?

02 Which country has a 10-letter name,

but only one vowel in it?

03 Author Ursula K Le Guin attended

Berkeley High School at the same time as which other famous sci-fi writer?

04 True or false: The original name of

Google was BackRub? 05 What is the name of the world’s

hottest chilli?

06 In what year were health warnings

first mandated to appear on all cigarette packets in Australia: a) 1973, b) 1981, c) 1987, or d) 1994?

07 Who is said to be the oldest-known

living land animal?

08 What is an oenophile?

BBC I UK

“I’m really sorry that I hurt the treasure of the gold medallist.”

Nagoya mayor Takashi Kawamura, who just couldn’t help himself when he saw the gold medal of a Japanese softballer – and bit it.

“I think this type of content definitely helps normalise getting vaccinated for COVID/people getting over their fears. For people to see COVID-themed porn videos online, even if they don’t click on it, I think it does spread awareness on COVID, where it makes it more real.”

Adult performer Viva Athena on the new trend toward vaccine porn.

JAPAN TODAY I JP

VICE I US

FOX NEWS I AU

FREQUENTLY OVERHEAR TANTALISING TIDBITS? DON’T WASTE THEM ON YOUR FRIENDS SHARE THEM WITH THE WORLD AT SUBMISSIONS@BIGISSUE.ORG.AU

09 Who was the first Indigenous

Australian to be named Australian of the Year?

10 Which is the only country of the

22 in the Arab world entirely in the Southern Hemisphere?

11 What are the five elements in the

periodic table that have only four letters in their name?

12 Who was the actress who jumped

to her death from the H of the then “Hollywoodland” sign in Los Angeles in 1932?

13 What is the name of the famous

English-language bookstore in Paris?

14 What was the most popular boy’s

name in Australia in 2020: a) Noah, b) James, c) Oliver or d) William?

15 Who holds the world record for the

most words in a hit song?

16 What TV show are Kirstie Allsopp

and Phil Spencer famous for hosting?

17 What are the names of the national

Australian men’s and women’s water polo teams?

18 What is the literal translation of the

Spanish word “burrito”?

19 In which international capital city

would you find the Isle of Dogs?

20 Where was Perkins Paste first

manufactured in 1934?

ANSWERS ON PAGE 43

20 AUG 2021

“I am baffled by the extent to which hybrid working is presented as the ‘new normal’. For many, hybrid working will remain an elusive dream. It may become the new normal for a select, even privileged, group of jobs. This is more than a little reminiscent of the old division of ‘white collar’ and ‘blue collar’ work.”

Michael Smets, from University of Oxford, on how a hybrid work model may be the dream for up to 83 per cent of workers, but the realities may create a two-tiered system.

09

“I’ve been dealing with this (racism) Mum: "What veg do you my whole life, my want with dinner?"

Daughter: "Bacon." mother has, my Mum: "How is bacon a father has and it’s vegetable?" tiring. It hurts...

Daughter: "It doesn’t You hear me have seeds." speak about it year Heard by Jules from after year after Melbourne, in her own kitchen. year… It’s up to you guys to make change... Start those conversations at home, start it with your friends, your families, call out racism when you see it because there’s no room for racism in Australia.”

Wirangu, Kokatha and Guburn man and AFL legend Eddie Betts calls for all Australians to stand against racism.

EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Rowena Lennox @rowena.lennox

O

ur dog died two summers ago and since then I’ve given some of the care I used to give to her to our garden. I garden on land that was taken from the Dharawal people, in a southern suburb of Sydney. We are near the sea but the soil is clay, not sand.

I plant natives from the local council nursery as well as introduced herbs, vegetables, camellias and citrus.

Sometimes I think planting a garden is like inviting aliens home to stay. Some plants thrive so vigorously it’s frightening: one groundcover from the council nursery takes hold, smothers another groundcover, and sends its fronds out of its garden bed to the bed where wallaby grass grows; the snake-like shoots of a “scrambler” vine twine themselves around the low branches of the old bottlebrush as well as the long stalks of the clumping grass nearby; the grass near the scrambler vine produces seed heads that look like barbed wire, which embed themselves in my clothes.

Then there are the ones that don’t thrive. Some sicken and die silently for no apparent reason. Others – a lime tree and a lemon tree – died when I tried to transplant them last winter. I left them standing this spring and summer because I wanted to be sure they were really dead. It would be killing them twice, I thought, to uproot them when there was a chance they might pull through. Their limbs took on a bright-orange hue. I watered them and said sorry to them while their branches became grey and brittle. They didn’t come back. But from the compost around the citrus trees little green shoots started to appear. I could not identify these “volunteers”. As they grew I pulled some out and left some in the soil because I wanted something to live there. Some of the little plants looked like capsicums, some like pumpkin. There were a couple of tomatoes.

I culled the volunteer seedlings again and the pumpkin started to thrive.

2020 ticked over into 2021 and – in the Dharawal calendar – warm, wet Goray’murrai turned into Gadalung Marool, a season that is usually hot and dry. Only this summer, unlike last, there was rain. The pumpkin stalks, leaves and tendrils covered the earth around the dead citrus trees with green. Underneath its bristly leaves pale, smooth butternut pumpkins

were lying on the ground. The pumpkin vine had great timing. It produced two or three pumpkins at a time: enough to pick, admire, give to friends or cook and eat ourselves, but not too many at once. The pumpkin can also multitask. As it produced its early crop, it expanded out of its garden bed, across the path and climbed the adjoining garden bed. Its leaves are gigantic, prickly and sticky. Its curlicue tendrils are strong. It climbed up the roses, engulfed the little orange tree. It stopped at nothing. It could easily take over the world.

Pumpkin, rampant, I thought, picturing our humble, unpedigreed, bastard pumpkin as a heraldic image on a coat of arms, akin to a lion on his hind legs with his front paws raised, his great claws ready to destroy anything in his way. Do lions even stand like that?

Rampant. Now it more often means out of control, unrestrained. It comes from the Old French ramper, which means to crawl up, climb. In heraldry four-footed carnivores are usually depicted as rampant. But I think it is just as apt for a pumpkin vine. To give other plants in our garden space, I threw the pumpkin’s runners back over itself. I cut off the parts of it that had covered the path. Still it gave. More of its delicious pumpkins lay on the soil in the shade of its big leaves. Then it was the end of autumn, when the male kangaroos start to get aggressive. If there were any male kangaroos still living in this place, they would not have to contort their bodies to take that powerful, upright, heraldic “rampant” stance on a coat of arms.

Out my window the pumpkin vine continues to produce pumpkins as well as big, butter-yellow flowers.

Some of its leaves have milky spots on them and are turning yellow and brown at the edges. Some leaves have withered and turned brown and mouldy. But there are still new, bright-green serrated young leaves uncrinkling themselves, and strong runners and curly new tendrils looking for places to go. I watch how the pumpkin vine continues to embrace life with mixed feelings, because I am planning to pull it out this weekend. I will also pull out the dry spiky sticks of the dead citrus trees. Before I plant a young lime tree and a young lemon tree I will dig some more compost into the soil. Who knows who will volunteer next?

Rowena Lennox’s second book, Dingo Bold, about relationships between people and dingoes on Fraser Island/ K’gari, is out now.

11

Rowena Lennox is determined to suck the marrow out of life – and her accidental vegie patch.

20 AUG 2021

Caught Off Gourd

“I’UMCAKY

PHOTO BY GETTY

12

E V A H TO THI S R E E R CA

“

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

L S . O. B

I

was [nicknamed] Dewey, when I was a little baby. I was born in the Bay Area.

Hayward, California, to be exact. I was with my godparents and I was probably, from what I’m told, six months old. And my mom had said to my godmother, “Is his diaper wet?” And she goes, “No, he’s just a little dewy.” For years, when my parents would come around, in front of my girlfriends or friends or anyone [they would say], “Hey, Dewey.” It’s not like, “That’s a powerful name.” Automatically, people were like, “Oh God”.

Professional wrestling is a business that I grew up in, that I’ve loved all of my life and [where I] learned some of my most valuable – while very unorthodox – lessons... These men were, in essence, my superheroes. They didn’t wear capes when I was a little boy. They were men in the professional wrestling world. My dad was a bad dude in the game, and he had a lot of charisma and he had tons of athletic ability. And I will say that of all the actors who we cast [in Young Rock], all of them really, truly embodied these professional wrestlers.

My life, you know, we use these terms wild and crazy…but it was incredibly complicated, and it was incredibly tough growing up. The relationship that I had with my dad was complicated; it was fuelled by tough

love. My dad was kicked out of his house at 13 and he was homeless, so that then shaped the man who then raised me.

And from that complication came an extraordinary life that was full of travel. I lived in 13 different states by the time I was 13 years old. I also lived in New Zealand. There was so much breadth to this life that I had. When I look back on this and I can reflect, the series has really allowed me to appreciate those hard times that much more. You know...we all go through these tough times. And sometimes when we’re going through tough times like this, sometimes when you’re in it, you’re in the bubble. Sometimes when you see somebody else going through it, it just adds a different perspective. It’s almost like you take that kaleidoscope and you just click it a few times and you see something in a different perspective.

[My dad] had this unique ability to always make someone feel good.

And, man, those are the special people out there in the world who just have this unique ability to make you feel good the moment you come in the room. [It’s] an important quality that my dad had. Aside from all the other complicated shit that we dealt with as a father and son.

I’ve celebrated one year of the loss of my dad... He died suddenly. And he’s obviously featured throughout the show, and Joseph Lee [Anderson] did a tremendous job playing my dad. He would have been so proud. Because for the first time, we are showcasing this world that he and

all of his brothers of the ring – those men in the 70s and the 80s – gave their life to. To showcase it through the lens of something that’s positive.

I know it would have meant a lot to my dad. Because a lot of times the world of pro wrestling isn’t always looked at in a positive way, and there’s a lot of positive that we can take out of this.

To be honest with you, my grandfather was one of my heroes, and I thought it was just so cool that he was in a movie [his grandfather Peter Maivia played a Bond villain in 1967’s You Only Live Twice]. How awesome was that? Because we all get enamoured, or at least I did as a kid, of the movies on the big screen. But the truth is I felt early on That’s my grandfather and that other guy – he’s a movie star, but he’s an actor. My grandfather is a tough son of a bitch. My grandfather was trained as a pro wrestler during a time where the training was incredibly difficult… So, my grandfather was a tough, tough guy and…just a big, big heart. Of course, looking back now and having a real affinity for film and filmmaking and actors and certainly, you know, Sean Connery – rest in love – it was very cool.

It was very cool.

My grandmother was one of the first pioneering women in the world of professional wrestling. But all of these men, so successful in what they did, but interestingly enough, they played that role 24 hours a day.

Even if that meant they lived in small apartments. Even if that meant they lived pay cheque to pay cheque.

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by Lucy Allen The Interview People

20 AUG 2021

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is the world’s highest-paid actor thanks to Hollywood blockbusters such as Jumanji and Fast and Furious. But he hasn’t forgotten his time as a pro wrestler. Here he talks about the many inspirations behind his series Young Rock.

PHOTOS BY GETTY

G RO CK CK IN YO UNND A YO UN G RO QU EE NS LA – FI LM ED IN

YOUNG ROCK IS NOW STREAMING ON FOXTEL AND BINGE. JUNGLE CRUISE IS NOW IN CINEMAS AND STREAMING ON DISNEY+.

20 AUG 2021

SO NS : W IT H TH E JO HNNT S IN 20 15 HI S PA RE

At that time, I was still taking, I was still stealing, because I wanted to present myself in a way that truly wasn’t me or that I thought people would want to see, so, you know, we go through all that stuff. And then a few years later…I did not get called up to the NFL. That was a pretty big loss, because when you’re done with your college career, you’re done. You don’t get another shot at it. You can’t come back. And there was no NFL for me. Instead, I went to the CFL [Canadian Football League].

That was a tough time too, because then I was cut from the CFL. And then that’s when I had the infamous seven bucks in my pocket.

I’m a lucky S.O.B to have this career. Never did I ever think I’d be in this position where people are bringing to life people in my life and my loved ones. So, these guys did such a tremendous job. Like Stacey Leilua playing my mom. Really, truly, she is the rock of this entire thing. It all comes down to my mom, who, by the way, she’s still going strong and she’s here. And every time she sees a trailer or any one of these episodes, she starts crying and she’s like, “Don’t take pictures of me ugly crying.” I’m like, “Okay, Mom.” So anyway, I just had to give it up to this cast.

It was important for us to showcase diversity and also, it was important for us to be real and authentic. This is my life and it is who I am. I’m half Samoan and half Black, and [it’s] that combination and considering the families that came together in the world of pro wrestling. Where we have the Iron Sheik from Iran. We have André the Giant from France. We have the Junkyard Dog. We have my dad. We have the Wild Samoans from Samoa. And these are the ones that we just showcase in the pilot, and there’s more to come down the road. We reached out to all of our wrestlers. And the ones who are no longer here with us, reached out to their families and made sure that they knew that they were going to be portrayed in a positive way, because that was important to us, and to be authentic.

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I loved the bad guys of pro wrestling. I love my dad. He was my hero. Never understood that things were actually tougher than they appeared in terms of lifestyle. I never knew. And that’s the blessing that I have with Mom and Dad who never really hit me to what was happening.

[I] clearly had an identity crisis.

I didn’t want to be known as Dwayne when I moved from high school to high school. I called myself Tomas. Girls used to call the house and ask for Tomas and my mom would go, “I’m sorry. There’s no Tomas here.” And I would run, “No, no, no, no, no. That’s me. That’s me.”

I’d get on the phone, “Hey. Yeah, hey, hey. It’s Tomas.” And she would be like, “What are you doing?”

Thirteen is when I started to veer off the tracks and do a lot of things that I shouldn’t have been doing. I started getting arrested at 13 in Hawaii.

And the talk of us leaving Hawaii because times were too hard started coming up, and I was so adamantly against leaving the island at 14. And I fought tooth and nail with my mom and my dad because I did not want to leave, and it was…times were hard for us here and it became harder and harder for us to pay the rent. But I did not want to leave. I really put my foot down, as best as a 14-year-old, punk kid could.

We [got] evicted off the island, so we had no choice but to leave, which I always find is one of the most ironic things in life. It’s when you want something so badly and that thing you want so badly just doesn’t come true, years later you realise that that’s actually the best thing that never happened. So, it allowed us to leave and force us off the island.

I wound up going to Nashville, Tennessee… Then we were forced out of Nashville. That summer I had just turned 15 years old. We thought we were going to make a home in Tennessee. It didn’t work out that way.

Things happen. And then we left for Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. So, within the course of about nine months, I was in three different cities, from Hawaii to Nashville then to Bethlehem. There was a real instability in Bethlehem when we first got there.

A Kick Start THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Despite her fighting spirit and new (mega-jacked) persona, Thai-kickboxing writer Jenny Valentish finds that all posturing melts away in the ring.

Jenny Valentish is a journalist who followed up her addiction memoir, Woman of Substances, with Everything Harder Than Everyone Else, a new take on endurance and extremes.

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@jennyvalentish_public

But to become a fighter – to psych out your opponent, to raise your fist fiercely on promo posters, to dance to your pumping walk-out music – it is necessary to awaken what might be a dormant sense of competition. I’d learned to suppress my childhood competitiveness, and had taught myself not to covet the things my peers wanted, because being pushy was unbecoming. With fighting, competitiveness is sanctioned. And without yet having the talent to back it up, I felt a certain amount of posturing was necessary.

I posted a photo on Facebook of one bout, which ended in a draw. “I would say what I feel about this decision,” I wrote of the picture, in which my hands and my opponent’s are both raised aloft, “but my dad says I sound like Trump.”

One of the fight commentators messaged me.

“Yes, you did win,” he said (thank you, I knew it), “but that’s not the point of an interclub.” I should have been chastened, but being “humble in victory and gracious in defeat” – as professional fighters often say on Instagram – is probably easier if you’ve tasted victory.

I was coasting on sehnsucht, a word that some psychologists apply to the idea of fantastical goals. Sehnsucht is the tone-deaf singer talking

EVERYTHING HARDER THAN EVERYONE ELSE IS OUT NOW.

20 AUG 2021

illustrations by Col McElwaine

Artifice falls away in the ring, as does the rest of the world, and for three rounds it was just me and her, locked into each other’s eyes...

about auditioning for The Voice, or the woman in a disintegrating relationship buying bridal magazines.

Mine was to get on a proper fight bill in my mid-forties with no sporting background.

Suddenly, I was investing all my self-worth into this new “fighter” construct, as well as the most expensive shin guards. I bought an iPhone case that sticks onto gym mirrors, but the more I posted on Instagram – getting a ding of dopamine for every “Beast!” or “Machine!” – the more disconnected I felt. I was shocked that I had emotionally invested everything, as jilted romantics say, into this person I barely knew.

Fighters do often have alter egos. Terminator.

Iceman. Pitbull. Performance expert Todd Herman wrote the book The Alter Ego Effect to promote the benefits of everyone having a secret “heroic self” for a boost in their career or personal life. He personally had a “totem” of glasses that he would put on, which helped him cross the threshold from the “ordinary world” to the “extraordinary world” – as though he was stepping into a phone booth as he pulled them onto his face, Clark Kent-style. He also encourages people to create an origin story and define their superpowers.

Your alter ego may not be obvious to everyone though. After one interclub I listened to the livestream recording, to find out what the commentators had to say. “I just want to mention that Jenny’s 45…so it just goes to show that any time is the right time to start,” one chuckled, ribbing the other about his own inevitable trudge towards my age. No mention of Viking spirit. Or rather, Vikings spirit – since my alter ego was a character from the TV show.

But like maturing through puberty, I think I’ve settled more graciously into my new (mega-jacked) persona. It’s been a couple of years now, and I did eventually get onto a proper fight bill.

As I stood backstage, gaffer-taped into my gloves, I looked down at my legs, which were being rubbed with Thai liniment oil by my corner team. They’d given up their Saturday to be with me, and they’d put aside any personal dramas to keep my mood high. I felt flooded with gratitude, both towards them and towards all the more experienced fighters who had let me spar hard in the lead-up, putting their bodies on the line and offering encouragement. And gratitude also towards my opponent who allowed our fight to happen – even though she went and won.

Artifice falls away in the ring, as does the rest of the world, and for three rounds it was just me and her, locked into each other’s eyes, hearing each other’s ragged breath. Afterwards, there was the usual huge hug, an act that seems so central to this sport. It’s an acknowledgement that, beyond the mind games and the psych-you-out stares, both of us have found the perfect way to challenge ourselves.

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earning to fight is supposed to make a person humble, but for the first two years of training, I was like Veruca Salt in hand wraps.

I took up Muay Thai – Thai kickboxing – as a parallel mission to a book I was writing about why people test their limits, but also to create a sense of victory for myself. In general, I’ve found that if someone takes up combat sports as an adult, it’s because they’ve felt embattled at some point, and then realise that hitting things hard can turn that feeling around.

But while mastery of a sport ought to create a wholesome sense of self-belief, getting good takes years.

In this period, mortification and pride vie confusingly for domination, and your gnarliest opponent is your ego.

Take my first “interclub” – a friendly regional biff that is supposed to demonstrate technique, rather than taking off each other’s heads. I’d caught sight of my opponent just before we went in the ring. Her immaculate fight braids were shiny and bouncy. Ha! That’s going to be the best thing about her performance, my ego scoffed (possibly out loud). Unfortunately, this was not true.

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his past year, in the dark places, I gained a new awareness of my lungs.

For me, anxiety is a familiar gritted jaw, headache and tingles. But in 2020, chest pains sent me to the emergency department. High blood pressure had set off alarms on machines at the GP. Doctor Google and the emergency medical advice line are equally alarming.

Now, another winter, another COVID presser, a night of headache and tension that make the room spin.

Movement helps, exercise helps, so I walk. Spine taut and aching, I walk along trails in remnant bush.

Remnant, remainder, because it wouldn’t bear to think about loss. Focus on what is still here.

Breathe.

I sit and watch the birds, identify them, learn the rainbow bee-eater’s strange call that sounds more like rodent than bird.

The trees respire and so do I. Breathe.

The anxiety symptoms don’t feel like anxiety, they feel like death, though I know they’re not once I’ve identified them, once I know that the headache won’t be treated, that the tension that clasps my throat and squeezes is conjured from air that feels thinner and thinner.

This discomfort, once identified, serves a purpose.

Once upon a time it was there to warn me the woods are full of bears, that one bad fall may end your life, that the food may not be safe to eat. Today, it tells me I live on stolen land. It tells me the environment, the birds, are under threat. It reminds me to watch where I put my hands. To wash them, regular as breathing.

Breathe.

Writing in the ecological newsletter Gen Dread, therapist Dan Rubin describes the “Goldilocks zone” of climate anxiety. “I like to tell people that feeling afraid or anxious or grief or whatever – that’s a sign of wellbeing. That means you’re paying attention. But there might be some dysfunction.”

Feeling anxious through a pandemic is just awareness. It’s the nature of the vessel that we’re travelling in. I consider what anxiety teaches me and discover that at the very least, it teaches me to breathe.

When I returned to study, I was reminded of the discomfort of learning. Learning can feel destabilising, disorienting. Like swimming in the ocean and realising the soft blue shallow shelf opens up into a deep abyss.

Rachel Watts writes about mental health, community and the environment. She lives on Whadjuk Noongar Country. You can find her at wattswrites.com.

20 AUG 2021

Rachel Watts confronts – and survives – the darkness, one long deep breath at a time.

There is so much to learn.

This is also anxiety.

Deep darkness, raw panic, and only the slim thread of knowing it will be over, that there is an “after” on the way. The sun is just below the horizon.

After a night like this, my brain is depleted. It has burnt through adrenalin, feasted on serotonin, sucked out the nutrients of everything I eat. There’s nothing left.

Anxiety is mostly at normal, everyday pandemic levels.

Breathe.

I try to write.

“Anxiety burnt my brain and now there are no words left in there,” I tweet, stalling.

“Have you tried mindfulness?” comes the instant, unpunctuated reply.

Here is a list of things I have tried over the past 10 years: therapy, roller derby, bird-watching, exercise, alcohol, meditation, antidepressants, cartomancy, beta blockers, witchcraft, dog ownership and Valium. Oh, and mindfulness. They all work, sometimes, until they don’t. Despite my best efforts and lived experience of what works, here mid-climate crisis and mid-pandemic, I’m not okay.

And, on some level, that’s okay.

There’s a lesson in that too.

Breathe.

My doctor said that for some people, action is the closest thing to mindfulness that feels natural. Go for a walk, she said. That’s your meditation.

Yoga.

Gardening.

Making sourdough.

Watching the rain fall.

Screaming into a chilly, unstarred urban night.

Getting through this with our empathy intact: that’s our meditation.

We’re going to make it.

Surviving a panic attack happens, though it feels like it won’t, and I extract every last drop of hope from my body’s ability to survive. I draw tarot cards and avoid caffeine and try to speak, clearly and slowly, around the vice gripping my throat.

We’re still here.

Some of us find this easier than others. Some of us are luckier than others.

Being here, knowing tomorrow will come: that is a kind of mindfulness.

The weather reader tells you the sun will rise and you choose to trust her.

The sun will rise.

Breathe.

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The Sun Will Rise

series by Alana Holmberg

The Big Picture

Breaking the Ice When photographer Alana Holmberg met the Brighton Icebergers, she found a community as warm as the waters were cold: very.

by Alan Attwood

Alan Attwood is The Big Issue’s former editor and a year-round bay swimmer.

THE “ICEBERGERS”, A GROUP OF COLD-WATER SWIMMERS, HIT PORT PHILLIP BAY ALL YEAR ROUND

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FOR MORE, VISIT ALANAHOLMBERG.COM.

20 AUG 2021

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ate last year, with Melbourne shuttered by an extended COVID-19 lockdown, photographer and visual artist Alana Holmberg heard the call of the sea. She was commissioned by French newspaper Libération to take pictures for its annual lift-out on the theme of oceans. Her subject was winter swimmers – those hardy souls who, all year round, start their days with a dip in Port Phillip Bay. Holmberg – whose great-great-grandfather came from Landskrona, Sweden to central Victoria as a settler during the gold rush in the mid 19th century – was an appropriate choice. Not only is she an acclaimed photographer, winner of the National Photographic Portrait Prize in 2019 for her candid portrait of her heavily pregnant sister Greta, she is also a swimmer.

“I have always enjoyed swimming and felt confident in the ocean,” says Holmberg. “Mostly I’ve done laps in the Brunswick or Fitzroy pools in inner Melbourne, plus a little ocean swimming in Sydney when I lived up in Manly. So I had a little experience behind me, but had never swam more than one kilometre or with any frequency,” she says. “But I’m known for getting in the water regardless of temperature, so my initial feelings about the morning swimmers were curiosity and a sense of intrigue more than ‘They’re crazy!’”

Although lockdown rules permitted exercise, many of the swimmers known as “Icebergers” had found themselves shut out of pools. Holmberg’s commission meant she was also allowed to drive to Brighton, home of postcard-perfect colourful bathing boxes. And so, “for five mornings I drove to Brighton and met the swimmers on the beach at 7.30am. It was such a gift, helping me so much with my mental health and resilience to get through the final weeks of lockdown,” she says. “Very quickly, my understanding of the winter swimmers became less about the physical act of swimming and more about the spiritual, community side of it. For many, it seemed that daily swimming lifted their spirits and became an essential part of their wellbeing. I was quite moved by the experience and tried to photograph the swimmers in a way that highlighted their togetherness.”

Holmberg left her cameras on the sand and dived in herself. “I joined a smaller group of swimmers called the Tough Nutters. Terrible name, wonderful people!

Half the reason I get up and swim is to join them. I feel so supported and welcomed by them, even though they are far better swimmers than me. I hope to make this a regular part of my life; I feel so alert and alive when starting the day in the ocean.”

She has discovered the swimmers’ secret. They may often get incredulous looks from rugged-up morning strollers or dog-walkers, especially when emerging from the water with a pale pink glow on their skin, but as Brighton regular Dee Greenwood says simply, “You always feel better afterwards.”

DEE GREENWOOD ALWAYS FEELS BETTER AFTER A SWIM

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

ALEX MCKENZIE AFTER HIS MORNING SWIM

MIKE GREGORY HAS ALSO SWUM THE ENGLISH CHANNEL SEVERAL TIMES

LIZ PORTER TAKES A DIP AT BRIGHTON BATHS

FIRST BUILT IN 1881, THE SEA BATHS WERE REBUILT IN 1936 XXX AFTER A DEVASTATING STORM

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20 AUG 2021

GETTING READY TO TAKE THE EARLY MORNING PLUNGE AT MELBOURNE’S BRIGHTON BEACH

Ricky

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

We went to sleep fireside with full bellies and spirits.

by Ricky French @frenchricky

Cooking on Country

O

ver the years I’ve written this column in many different places.

I’ve written it on planes, trains and automobiles. I’ve written it in probably half a dozen different countries. I’ve written it on the beach, in backyards, Indian restaurants and in far more campgrounds than I care to admit. But I can confidently say that, until now, I’ve never written this column sitting in a camp chair in a dry creek bed in the middle of Central Australia. The dry part is good. My last computer drowned in pathetic circumstances in a pool of water inside an airport security scanner.

I’ve always intended this column to be a snapshot of the time and place of writing.

The world around us is a fascinating place.

Next to my foot is a charred stick, debris from the bushfires that tore through the West MacDonnell Ranges in Tjoritja National Park, just out of Alice Springs, in the summer of 2019. Also on the ground are fallen bush passionfruit, good enough to eat. Lining the creek banks are plants and bush tucker I don’t know the names of and wouldn’t know what to do with. I’m on Arrernte Country, home of the region’s Indigenous people, whose ancient songlines ring out across these even ancienter mountains.

Today I met David McCormack, an Arrernte man whose family manages the land around Standley Chasm Angkerle Atwatye, a sacred women’s place. For thousands of years, McCormack’s ancestors taught the new generation how to thrive, both physically and spiritually, who to marry, how to dish out retribution for wrongdoing and most definitely how to eat. McCormack crouched down to show the abundance of bush tomato (akatyerre) and pointed to the bloodwood tree and its bush coconut. He showed us holes in the river red gums where his people would wedge witchetty grubs out with sticks. Then he got serious: he took us inside and fired up a PowerPoint presentation.

“Back in the day” were the words he used to describe the tens of thousands of years when women gathered vegetables, roots, herbs, fruits and nuts, and small animals such as snakes and goannas, while men hunted the big ones.

Their system was perfectly adapted to life on Country. They were thriving in an arid desert where the charge on my laptop would easily outlive me if I were left to fend for myself.

I was also lucky enough to speak to caterer, educator, cook and bush tucker champion Rayleen Brown, whose business Kungkas Can Cook brings Indigenous food the recognition and value it deserves. She brought quite a spread to our bush camp. “I’ve spent my whole life learning about bush foods from my family,” she said, laying out a smorgasbord on a table under the night sky.

Brown showed us the wattles of the Central Desert. “The ladies still use the coolamon, do it all by hand. The wind blows the pods out.

Then they put it on a grinding stone or hot coals and roast off the smaller seeds. There’s no machinery involved, it’s not on a farm, it’s just straight off Country, and there’s a beautiful story connected to it.”

The desert people were nomadic and would move with the water. They knew where the soakages were, and they taught early cattlemen how to find them, and thus the pastoralism industry could develop. It was perfectly suited to the land and the spiritual and physical needs of the Arrernte people.

And so under the stars of the outback we ate hummus with roasted wattleseed, saltbush dukka, kangaroo meat, rosella jam, bread made from wattleseed, kurrajong seed, native lemon myrtle, native lemongrass and more. We went to sleep fireside with full bellies and spirits, and woke to a silent campsite, with dingo tracks in the red sand.

Ricky is a writer, musician and professional nomad.

by Fiona Scott-Norman @fscottnorman

PHOTOS BY JAMES BRAUND

A

s an only child to whom sibling rivalry is a spectator sport, I’ve always enjoyed Australia’s capital city bickering. Interstate rivalry is classic large family eye-rolling and shin-kicking under the table. “Oh my god, Melbourne! Stop whingeing.

It’s not my fault you’re not pretty and popular.

Is it Dad?” Cue smile and hair toss. “Stop being mean, Sydney, and I have heaps of books, I mean friends. I hate you.” “Ugh, who cares about either of you. There are other people in this family NOT THAT YOU’D CARE.” Perth storms out, slamming the door, and drives off, pausing only to block everyone on social media.

Great content. Who wouldn’t watch that? TV producers take note of this high-concept pitch.

And, while we’re at it, here’s my other idea: Astrological Big Brother, where everyone in the house has the same sun sign. Guaranteed 12 seasons. Watch Leos compete to outshine one another! See Cancers bake bread, build forts out of sofa cushions and weep photogenically!

Be horrified as Scorpios shag and betray each other, then engage in psychological torture so exquisite that teenage girls take notes. As a Virgo with Virgo rising, I can guarantee our season will bristle with dry one-liners and thinly veiled passive aggression at each others’ idiosyncratic habits: “Big Brother, if Michael yarn bombs one more kitchen appliance I’m going to set fire to his wool.”

State rivalry and astrology are similar in that they’re essentially harmless ways of assembling your identity. Where they differ is that rivalry is real. Every city, state and territory is quietly – or loudly – convinced of its own superiority, and after a couple of bevvies will cheerily rank every other state in order of “not as good as us”. Canberra, reassuringly, is at the bottom of everyone’s list, although we all agree “the National Gallery of Australia is really very good”. One-upmanship and competition between states is a national pastime, the Eurovision of Australia, benign and occasionally waspish, with votes

distributed along lines of ancient feuds, allegiances and (mostly) sporting codes.

At base it’s all been a bit of fun. Goodnatured joshing. Every city is different, each has its charms, and while it can sting to be a long way from the sun (I used to live in Perth, aka the Pluto of our solar system, so I understand why they want to secede every 10 minutes – because literally no-one over east would notice), a hint of interstate pepper just makes us love our home towns more. Keeps us on our toes. Builds civic pride. It’s probably healthy.

Lately, though, oof. With hand on heart, I have concerns at how Victoria and New South Wales have been pitted against each other during the pandemic. How we’re engaged in a dick-measuring contest over whose lockdown is better, bagging each other’s leadership, tearing each other down.

There is real grievance here, real anger, real fear. The Federation looks…shaky, with border closures normalised, each state responsible for its own response to COVID, and, at the moment, all eyes on Sydney as their luck has run out, and we pile on daily with “knowing better” fury.

We must be careful here. Keep our eyes on the big picture. Why aren’t we united in this battle? We’ve all been provoked beyond endurance, and we’re saying things we can’t take back. This is bad. Very bad. Because we don’t have time to funnel our rage towards the wrong targets. COVID’s nothing compared to climate change. The future is coming fast, and it is not going to be pretty. We have to meet it all together.

Let’s focus our rage on something we can all agree on. Oh that’s right, Canberra.

Fiona is a writer and comedian with her sun in Virgo and her heart in Melbourne.

20 AUG 2021

State of Origin

Oh my god, Melbourne! Stop whingeing. It’s not my fault you’re not pretty and popular. Is it Dad?

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Fiona

Fleabag’s Sian Clifford talks mothers, daughters, crossbows – and her new darkly comic action(ish) series Two Weeks to Live.

by Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

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T

o fans of tragicomic British television, Sian Clifford is best known as Claire, the stuffy older sister to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s title character in Fleabag. Now starring in the equally striking Two Weeks to Live, Clifford wades further into the dark comedic depths of familial dysfunction, alongside Game of Thrones’ stalwart Maisie Williams.

Swapping sororal rapport for mother-daughter disorder, Clifford plays Tina, the controlling sole parent to social misfit Kim (Williams). “Tina is protective of her daughter, and I think most mothers probably have that instinct,” says Clifford. “It’s very heightened with [Tina and Kim], though, because they’ve been living in isolation for so long.”

See, this deadly duo are doomsday preppers.

In this wicked and slick six-episode miniseries, twenty-something Kim escapes the rural Scottish enclave where her survivalist mother has kept her off-the-grid since she was six. Heading south on a revenge-driven rumspringa, Kim hunts the man who killed her father years before, and chaotic mishaps ensue. Will Tina – the world’s lowest flying helicopter parent – finally let her

PHOTOS COURTESY NETWORK 10

Sian Clifford

Small Screens

I Will Survivalist

lethal but naive daughter come of age in the big, wide, wildly unpredictable world? Easier said than done.

Of Tina and Kim’s fraught dynamic, Clifford says, “It’s very tempestuous, competitive… Even as Tina desperately tries to let go and give Kim her blessing to be autonomous, she can’t help but manipulate her. She always has an agenda.

“I think Tina would like to pretend that they’re best friends rather than mother and daughter, so she really struggles to find her place within that dynamic, but it’s such an enjoyable one to play.”

In fact, the BAFTA-winning and Emmy-nominated actor was drawn to the role precisely because she’d never seen a character quite like this rugged, ruthless mum. “I’d seen men play those kinds of outdoorsy types,” says Clifford. “I loved Leave No Trace with Ben Foster, and Captain Fantastic with Viggo Mortensen, so it was exciting to embody what that might look like.” In Tina’s case, it’s beanies and gloves, raincoats and crossbows, as she “thrives on being cut off from the world,” save for a few key survivalist texts (Home Alone 2, Terminator 2, Braveheart) on VHS. Initially forced into hiding, Tina’s ongoing isolation – clocking in at 17 years and counting in geographic and emotional exile – is at least partly self-imposed and, moreover, fuelled by murky moral intents. As Clifford puts it, “It’s her way of keeping Kim safe, but also herself.” Like Rapunzel’s misguided matriarch, Tina intends to keep her daughter cloistered forever. “That’s why it’s so terrifying when Kim runs away,” she says. “As a unit, they’re completely disconnected from the world as we know it. Inevitably, that creates a lot of conflict when they re-enter it.”

The show’s premise draws obvious (though unintended) comparison to life under COVID-19, rife with lockdowns, isolation, danger in the outside world.

“There are definitely parallels!” says Clifford. “Initially when [the pandemic] happened, when it was really difficult to get food, I suppose I did go into a sort of survivalist mode. It wasn’t a feeling I’d ever experienced before, that’s for sure, where you just have to make do – and also where you fear for people’s lives.

“You suddenly become incredibly practical – or I did, at least. But I also noticed how that extended beyond myself and into my community, wanting to take care of one another,” she says. “That’s something I hope we take with us beyond this moment. So it may be an aspect of the show that resonates in a different way now, that we could never have anticipated during filming.”

Clifford says the Two Weeks to Live shoot was, in a word, “intense”. “Like all productions, there was less time than we inevitably needed, so it was really down to the efficiency of the team,” she explains. “We spent the same amount of time filming this as we did Fleabag, but Fleabag of course doesn’t have any of the action sequences.”

Having studied performance at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Clifford was ready for the role’s

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It doesn’t fit cleanly into a genre, which is the stuff I love the most.

O R D, O T C L IF F S IA N F L E A B AG A P IT E FROM L F A

emotional heavy lifting. However, the life skills required to play a survivalist were a tad more challenging to master. “There were lots of practical things I had to learn as Tina, which brought me great joy because I was terrible at all of them,” she says. “In my opening scene, I am painting. That was pretty hilarious.

“I’m weirdly amazing at archery…but I’ve never fired a crossbow, not even in this. I just held it. Actually, there are some excellent outtakes of me trying to just place the arrow onto the crossbow. I think we did about 50 takes.

They’ve made it look ridiculously swift in the edit.”

With its snappy pace and a soundtrack that slaps, the show’s bold style announces itself from the get-go.

Title cards blast place names in large block letters à la Waller-Bridge’s other hit, Killing Eve – a series that feels like Two Weeks to Live’s older, globetrotting cousin. As meticulous fight scenes are punctuated with comedic dialogue, deployed by a charmingly dorky cast, the show proves to be more Shaun of the Dead than Terms of Endearment, stemming from the ever-growing crime‑thriller-action-comedy family tree.

Now that Clifford’s had a taste of weapons, stunts and salty language, would she be game to play a full-blown, big-screen action hero? “I think all actors are versatile by nature,” she says. “We want to play melancholy poets, but we also want to be superheroes. Ideally you want to play characters that have elements of all those things.

“That’s another thing I loved about this project,” she adds. “It doesn’t fit cleanly into a genre, which is the stuff I love the most: the stuff that makes people uncomfortable if you try and say it’s a comedy.

“I think there’s a new genre emerging, or a new form of comedy we have to embrace,” says Clifford. “It’s a reflection of where we’re at in terms of our humanity.”

TWO WEEKS TO LIVE IS NOW STREAMING ON PARAMOUNT+.

Music

Tkay Maidza

Three’s a Charm Completing her hip-hop mixtape trilogy, Harare-born, Adelaide-raised rapper Tkay Maidza is staking her claim on the City of Angels.

by Jared Richards @jrdjms

Jared Richards is an arts and music critic who has written for The Guardian, Junkee, Swampland and more.

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n the cover of Last Year Was Weird, Vol. 3 – the final instalment of an EP trilogy spanning three years – Tkay Maidza evokes hunting god Diana in a post‑apocalyptic setting. Created by digital artist Hugo Richel, the CGI Tkay stands atop a military jeep in the middle of a hillside of flowers, posed with a bow and arrow. After listening to the record for the first time, the message is clear: no matter her surroundings, she won’t miss.

Maidza has repeatedly described Last Year Was Weird as sounding like flipping through radio stations, given the continual switches between trap,

LAST YEAR WAS WEIRD, VOL. 3 IS OUT NOW.

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super hands-on. When I uploaded ‘Brontosaurus’, I had someone make the artwork for me. I didn’t like it, so I found a picture of a dinosaur and distorted it.

I remember being told that was not a good idea, like, ‘Why did you do that?!’

“Along the way, I thought, Maybe I’m not supposed to be doing anything, and I think that’s where I got lost. After a while I just didn’t really like anything, because I didn’t feel connected to it.

I would say there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a part of your project.”

While Maidza is perhaps a little too harsh when looking back, it’s clear that Tkay wasn’t completely Tkay. Hence, Last Year Was Weird to shake off the energy and reconnect. On Vol. 1, you can hear Maidza exploring new ideas without pushing them, perhaps a little too indebted to SZA’s warm, hazy Ctrl.

Listening back, it lacks the confidence of Vol. 2 or 3.

“The first one, it sounds like a testing ground for me,” Maidza says. “I knew what I wanted to do, but in that era it was more like, ‘Oh, this is so new and I’ve never sounded like this’. But it’s cool to listen back because there’s so many cool ideas. I was on the right path.”

Confidence is only part of the equation. Last year, Maidza signed to 4AD, home to alternative darlings past (Cocteau Twins, Pixies, The Breeders) and present (Big Thief, Jenny Hval, U.S. Girls). The difference in resources and creative control allowed Maidza and Last Year Was Weird producer Dan Farber to follow their wildest ideas. “I trust him to show me things and places that I don’t know in terms of writing songs,” she says. “And then he also has a trust in me to be like, ‘She might say something crazy, but it’s probably gonna work.’”

Maidza’s next step is a US tour – supporting Emotional Oranges in addition to her own already sold‑out solo shows in New York and Los Angeles.

“Obviously I want it to be a step up,” she says. “[And the tour] is going to feel like I’m starting again. With all this new music out, it’s almost like a different artist, and sound. And people are welcoming it, as well. There’s less convincing to do.”

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When you get older, you’re not the same person.

drill, R&B, neo soul, house and alt-pop.

The most impressive shifts, though, are those in Maidza’s delivery. Vol. 3 is the most assured of the three EPs; an unpredictable 22 minutes that show the 25-year‑old’s versatility across genres, flows and postures.

On lead single ‘Kim’, Maidza contends for 2021’s hardest rapper; her brag, ‘Bitch, I’m Kim’ (the music video paying homage to the power of three Kims: Possible, Lil’ and Kardashian) pushing against a pulsating metallic beat, as if they’re clanging to get out of her way. Other highlights include ‘Eden’, a dreamy 70s piano-rap odyssey where Maidza’s voice is rich and improvisational, creating her own dream world; and ‘High Beams’, where her delivery changes so often there could be four artists, not one, on the track.

Notably absent across the EPs are the neon tones of EDM. The mixtapes were intended as a reset from the hits that made the Harare-born, Adelaide-raised (and, as of January this year, LA-based) artist a regular across Triple J playlists and Australian music festivals since uploading her first track ‘Brontosaurus’ to Unearthed in 2013.

“I feel like a new artist, if anything,” says Maidza. “If I see someone mention ‘Brontosaurus’ then I know this person is still holding onto the [old] idea of me.

“The truth of it is: when you get older, you’re not the same person. Everyone grows up, so you have to allow artists to grow as well. They’re like, ‘Don’t change’ and it’s like, ‘What? How would you like it if someone said that to you?’”

Maidza was 17 when ‘Brontosaurus’ blew up and, with her parents’ approval, she left behind an architecture degree to go full-throttle with music. Soon signed to Universal, she steadily released a set of high-octane electro-rap tracks and an EP before her 2016 album, Tkay. With 15 producers over 14 tracks, it felt both over‑engineered and thin, Maidza’s spark dulled by on‑trend tropical EDM and generic drops. “[If I could tell my younger self anything], I’d probably say, ‘The questions you’re asking are not crazy’,” she says. “And it’s okay to be

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Miles Allinson XXX XXX Books

Moonage Daydream From ashrams to climate change and Terminator 2, Miles Allinson’s ambitious novel blurs the line between fact and fiction to explore the story of an absent father.

by Doug Wallen @wallendoug

Doug Wallen is a freelance writer and editor based in Victoria.

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fter finishing his debut novel, Miles Allinson scooped up a trio of literary prizes, including the Victorian Premier’s Unpublished Manuscript Award. But the success of Fever of Animals (2015) didn’t make it any easier to write a follow-up.

“I spent four years figuring out how to not write the same book,” admits the Melbourne author. Even then, he got feedback from editors and friends that his next novel didn’t quite work, leading him to rewrite it “pretty drastically” over another two years. The tail end of that extended gestation process coincided not only with lockdown, but also with parenting his young daughter.

“Lots of it was written sitting in the car out the front of the kindergarten,” says Allinson, “because I promised my daughter I wouldn’t go home.” That’s a striking image, given just how much In Moonland dwells on parenthood – and in particular absent fathers.

The novel begins with new dad Joe embarking on a quest to track down his late father Vincent’s scattered friends and ex-flames to get a firmer idea of the elusive man, whose death in a high-speed car crash may have been intentional. Joe is confounded by his dad’s abundant contradictions, describing him as “that dodgy gambler…that bastard” before adding: “But he was also perfect. A lovely giant. So kind and funny. So good with children, so generous.”

in voice and mode. “I’m quite an impatient reader, so I often yearn for a change of perspective. I always get excited when there’s some sort of section break and the chance to begin again.”

As for the book’s bleak image of the future, where Australia is largely unlivable due to climate change, it’s not presented as some distant dystopia but more like the logical extension of an immediate threat. “It wasn’t like I imagined anything too radical,” the author says.

“I actually wanted it to be a pretty low-key future world. I didn’t want to make the futurism of it too overwhelming.”

So we witness self-driving electric cars, heat-doomed ghost towns and a shabby caravan park where displaced people gather to see out their remaining years, even if the soil is mostly too dry to support the food they hope to grow. Joe cites several sci-fi movies, from Terminator 2 and Interstellar to both Blade Runner films, as he narrates the story – but it’s more to underscore a sense of dislocation than to forge a firm parallel with In Moonland’s melancholic, yet potentially hopeful, final act. Even the book’s title is more of a subtle guide than an extraterrestrial emblem, with passing connections to the first moon landing and Melbourne’s Moonee Valley.

And just as Allinson didn’t want to go full sci-fi, nor did he want to write about his own father – who died in 2007 – from a strictly fictional perspective, either,

something he experimented with in Fever of Animals too. While his father never went to India, many of his father’s friends did, and Allinson travelled there while researching the new book.

Further blurring the lines between fact and fiction is the book’s inclusion of real-life religious community Rajneeshpuram, which relocated from India to Oregon before becoming embroiled in multiple assassination plots. (It’s now the subject of the Netflix documentary series Wild Wild Country.)

Allinson even interviewed his father’s old friends, just like Joe does in the book, and at one point he considered writing a fictional biography of his father. That proved too unwieldy and problematic, but the multi-faceted intersection of fact and fabrication remains in the finished work. Even as his first book centred on a surrealist painter who may or may not be fictitious, his next novel – tentatively about a biographer profiling an AFL player – should also play freely with what’s true and not.

“Fiction takes its power from mystery, and the mystery of what human beings are, even to themselves,” says Allinson. “I think that can be quite a productive space.”

IN MOONLAND IS OUT 31 AUGUST.

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Joe becomes so fixated on this mission that he neglects his own newborn daughter and her mother.

When he finally decides to drop everything and travel to India, where his father was a member of a controversial ashram, the novel shifts to follow Vincent’s tumultuous time overseas, grappling with masculinity and spirituality alike. After that quasi‑origin story, the perspective shifts again, this time to a stream‑of‑consciousness section narrated in discursive and unreliable style by Vincent’s best friend.

The book then finishes in the future, with Joe’s now adult daughter visiting him for the first time in years, fully aware of his own nagging inconsistencies.

This ambitious structure holds together surprisingly well, thanks to Allinson’s tender, illuminating treatment of recurring themes like individuality, mortality and personal failings. While certain details might seem superfluous, like the background static of Brexit and Trump during Joe’s initial quest, nothing is entirely incidental. As Joe interviews the aging hippies of his father’s inner circle, the appeal of communes and collectives in 1970s Australia doesn’t seem so distant from today’s cults of personality in politics and pop culture.

“I like the idea that you’re a bit shocked by each transition,” says Allinson of the book’s sudden shifts

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I’m quite an impatient reader, so I often yearn for a change of perspective. I always get excited when there’s some sort of section break and the chance to begin again.

XXX Hall of Horrors

Film

Rebecca Hall

XXXxxx XXXxxx

Rebecca Hall stars in The by XXX XXX Night House – a very different kind of horror film – where @xxx the woman alone in the house XXX wants the ghost to find her.

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by Claire Cao @clairexinwen

PHOTO BY

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Claire Cao is a writer from Western Sydney, who has been published in Filmmaker, Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, SBS Voices and more.

PHOTO BY MOLLY CRANNA

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ebecca Hall can’t resist a challenge.

Since her star-making role in Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), the British actor has established herself as one of Hollywood’s most dexterous, tackling everything from popcorn blockbusters like Godzilla vs Kong (2021), in which she plays the giant ape’s scientist carer, to the grim real-life story of an American news anchor who took her life on air (Christine, 2016).

Throughout this varied career, what shines through is Hall’s adeptness at playing intense and erudite women who are often put through the wringer.

It’s no surprise she’s been lauded for her performance XX X in The Night House, a new psychological horror film from American director David Bruckner. Although Hall admits that she’s “not a diehard horror fan,” she was enticed by her character Beth, the film’s oddball protagonist.

“She’s quite peculiar in a way,” she laughs. “I love that there was a sort of standard ghost story trope of a woman alone in a house… But it isn’t really a damsel-in-distress narrative because she is very willing to be scared. She wants to have an encounter with the ghost, and she runs headfirst towards it saying, ‘Come and get me!’”

The film opens with Beth arriving home from the funeral of her architect husband, Owen, whom she abruptly lost to suicide. Now alone in the vast New York lake house that Owen built, Beth begins to receive phantasmic visions of a twin house across the shore, occupied by shadowy figures.

Far from being paralysed by the unknown, the widow goes searching for answers, and engineers uncomfortable confrontations – with friends, people from Owen’s past and the apparitions hidden inside her home.

“What is scarier than watching someone alone in a house being terrorised? Arguably, watching someone who wants to be terrorised,” says Hall.

Beth is driven by grief – a theme commonly explored in horror movies, from classics like Don’t Look Now (1973) through to The Babadook (2014) and Hereditary (2018). Hall considers the genre “good terrain to explore things that we have a hard time talking about,” due to its inherently heightened emotions, especially in those films that “deal with the immediate aftermath” of a tragedy.

The Night House inhabits this brief but vital moment in time. “There’s this space after the funeral, when you’re just at home and you haven’t quite accepted it yet – and there’s denial and there’s anger. It’s very unusual,” she says.

Also unusual, The Night House doesn’t rely on the familiar creaky haunted house hallmarks – the titular building is clean, minimalist and filled with light.

Instead, Bruckner achieves his scares through precise calibrations that screw with the audience’s perception of space, shifting the straightforward floorplan into a Borgesian nightmare.

When I tell Hall about the vertigo I experienced during the last act, she laughs. “The experience you have as a

viewer is not dissimilar to the experience I had as an actor. We shot the earlier stuff in a real house, and then at a certain point we went to a soundstage where the insides of certain rooms were recreated…but ever so slightly bigger and different. I was thrown – it was very disorienting, in a good way!”

Beyond the physical challenges of sprinting through a labyrinthine set, the role was also emotionally demanding. Faced with the insidious mysteries of her marriage – Beth finds occult books and pictures of other women – she oscillates between tears, outbursts and fatalistic humour.

Over the past 15 years, Hall has also worked in theatre and Broadway, and with an array of heavyweight film directors including Christopher Nolan, Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg. But playing Beth “required more stamina than a lot of things that I’ve ever done in my career,” she says. “It was like, keep going, keep going, keep holding it, move to the next scene: it was constant.

But I am a sucker for a challenge – I will always take the hard road when it comes to these things.”

It isn’t really a damsel-indistress narrative because she’s very willing to be scared.

This year, she experienced a new challenge: premiering her directorial debut, Passing, an adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1929 novella about the practice of light-skinned African-Americans choosing to “pass” as white to escape oppression (due to be released on Netflix later this year), and another story that digs deep into the contradictions and complexities of its characters. This is the quality that drew Hall to The Night House, which she considers “a psychological journey” first and foremost.

“Given my predilection for taking a challenge, it’s sometimes difficult to find something where I really get to push myself,” she tells me. “I like to go into things feeling like I have no idea if I can actually achieve it.”

But in horror, which Hall dubs “extreme sports for human behaviour,” she has found the perfect nexus to push her boundaries. “There is a combination that is unique to horror that involves a lot of intuitive physical challenges and emotional challenges that you don’t always get.

“It’s extremity, it’s humans in extreme circumstances.”

THE NIGHT HOUSE IS OUT NOW.

Film Reviews

Annabel Brady-Brown Film Editor @annnabelbb

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hat is it about Adam Driver that makes him so damn watchable?

For any doubters, Annette – the new wild and wonderful rock opera from Holy Motors director Leos Carax, created with the avant‑prankster band Sparks – sees Driver turn his star wattage up to 11, and then keep on going. Few Hollywood leading men exert this sort of maximalist, thrillingly uncontrollable presence today. Witnessing him on screen feels like experiencing for the first time the scene in Carax’s The Lovers on the Bridge (1991, now streaming on SBS Movies) in which Juliette Binoche and Denis Lavant steal a police speedboat and waterski down the Seine while Bastille Day fireworks explode in the sky above; basically he’s a perfect match for the French director’s feverish storytelling.

This time round, the classic boy-meets-girl set-up finds its evil twin in a musical melodrama. Driver plays Henry, an edgy alt-comedian in a gremlin‑green dressing-gown, whose romance with a world-feted soprano, Ann (played by Marion Cotillard), ends in tragedy. Carax harnesses Driver’s feral energy to push Annette to outlandish, discomfiting heights, probing the murky realms of male violence and entitlement. The film is like nothing else in the cinema right now, a rush of pleasure and pain in equal measure, both baffling and beautiful to behold. Oh and Driver also sings (well enough!). ABB

IN THE DRIVER SEAT

NO SUDDEN MOVE 

Division runs through every street in 1950s Detroit. Mob turf wars and shady business dealings split the city in two. Caught in the middle is a pair of small-time crooks, Ronald (Benicio Del Toro) and Curtis (Don Cheadle), as Logan Lucky director Steven Soderbergh returns to the crime/thriller territory – bringing with him an impressive ensemble of actors, rounded out by genre legend Ray Liotta and up-and-comer Julia Fox. What begins as a run of the mill stick-up job for Curtis and Ronald escalates into high-stakes thievery – the bigger the jackpot, the more people want the duo dead – but Soderbergh struggles to maintain the tension. The pair double-, tripleand quadruple-cross each other at every opportunity, as the otherwise entertaining film leans heavily on archetypes. A shame, because buried in No Sudden Move lies a provoking commentary on how the authorities pull people apart; but we’re given a collection of clichés, robbing us of what could’ve been. BRUCE KOUSSABA CODA

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 | (APPLE TV+)

It’s difficult to not be won over by CODA, a gently expansive coming-of-age drama that picked up Sundance’s top prizes earlier this year. The grooves in Sian Heder’s film are well-worn: high school outcast Ruby (Emilia Jones) must choose between her small-town fishing family and big-city musical dreams while navigating a burgeoning crush and a best friend jonesing for her brother. Amid the tropes, though, there’s surprising nuance; Ruby is a Child of Deaf Adults (whose acronym lends the film its title), and the only hearing member of her family, played by an all-deaf cast. As their fishing enterprise picks up steam, the tension between Ruby’s role – as daughter, as translator – and her ambitions reaches a crescendo, made all the more heart-rending by the specificity of Heder’s tale.

“There are plenty of pretty voices with nothing to say,” Ruby’s vocal tutor preaches. Like a great cover of a much-loved classic, CODA has a good deal to say, even if it’s familiar. MICHAEL SUN

RESPECT 

Liesl Tommy’s Respect is the latest underwhelming music biopic, a dull and reductive look at the formative years of Aretha Franklin. Chronicling her upbringing as a powerful minister’s daughter to her superstar status in the early 70s, the film’s at its best when exploring Franklin’s struggle to wrest control away from her father and first husband early in her career. But her complicated and extraordinary life is so often sanded down to poles of trauma and triumph, with a script full of rote one-liners about music-making and inner demons that don’t reveal anything. Jennifer Hudson, while an excellent singer and competent actress, lacks Franklin’s charisma and vocal power (then again, who really could reach the heights of such a singular talent?). The film ends with the recording of Amazing Grace, Franklin’s incredible live gospel album. Long-lost footage of that performance was finally released in 2018 as a feature. Why watch a faithful yet sub-par recreation when the transcendent original is right there?

ISABELLA TRIMBOLI

Small Screen Reviews

Aimee Knight Small Screens Editor @siraimeeknight

THE NEWSREADER  | ABC TV + IVIEW

LA GARÇONNE

 | DVD + VOD

 | SBS ON DEMAND

Ever wondered what a love story would look like if utterly devoid of romance? If so, Billie Piper’s directorial debut has you covered.

Starring Piper (Secret Diary of a Call Girl) and Leo Bill (Taboo) as self-destructive lovers Mandy and Pete, Rare Beasts bristles with nihilistic turmoil, examining identity and society with wry, no-holds-barred scrutiny.

Scenes trend inevitably to comedic bedlam, and dates, weddings, family visits and work meetings all unravel with an organised chaos.

Adding to the feeling of general mayhem is a frenzy of side characters, including Mandy’s nervy son Larch (Toby Woolf), and her estranged parents Marion and Vic (Kerry Fox and David Thewlis). Piper gives a paradoxical performance that marries sensitivity with impenetrability, her unreadable face squirming perpetually between smile and grimace. Though the surreal, scatter-shot approach with which the film explores its big themes of love and insecurity lends it a sense of superficiality, Rare Beasts’ unrelenting and sometimes revealing search for human truths is a highly entertaining jaunt. VALERIE NG

In 1920s Paris, ex-hospital medic Louise Kerlac (Laura Smet) witnesses the murder of a friend by police officers who frame her for the crime. To prove her innocence, she disguises herself as her own brother, Antoine (Tom Hygreck), becomes a police detective, and investigates the murder. It’s an intriguing, Twelfth Night-esque premise that, thankfully, doesn’t rely on exaggerated gender stereotypes or transphobia to tell its story, focusing instead on the freedom that comes from playing with gender. Louise soon finds herself concocting a second undercover identity, “Gisele” – a highly feminine role she adopts when visiting nightclubs. These dual identities effectively demonstrate how all gender is a performance, including Louise’s own womanhood. Smet embodies both roles confidently, though it can be hard to believe she fits in as Antoine so quickly – her hair is kept unusually long compared to the masculine styles of the time, and she’s still wearing make-up. Though La Garçonne is fun viewing, it never quite makes itself compelling enough to be a must-see. IVANA BREHAS

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lose-up on stainless steel blades slicing through berries and yoghurt in slow motion. As red flesh is ravaged, its crimson streaks soften to millennial pink – a more palatable shade of capitalist indulgence. But this is no ordinary smoothie. This is wellness as destruction, evisceration, punishment. This is Tranquillum.

Based on the 2018 novel by Australian author Liane Moriarty, the satirical miniseries Nine Perfect Strangers cuts to the quick of the so-called “wellness” industry like a hot knife slices through snake oil. Set in the luxe health resort Tranquillum House (Byron Bay passing for California, sort of, until Bobby Cannavale takes a leak on a Moreton Bay fig), its titular richies indulge in forest bathing and intermittent fasting as administered by the disarmingly chill staff. Chief among them is Masha Dmitrichenko, a high-flying CEO turned self-styled healer, played with unnerving virtue by Nicole Kidman. Draped in cream linen, silently materialising in guests’ rooms, she’s like a spectral bedsheet influencer – or, as downhearted romance writer Frances (Melissa McCarthy, perfectly cynical and solemn) puts it, “a mystical Eastern Bloc unicorn”. Of course, everyone at Tranquillum is gestating a secret.

The eight-part series, dropping weekly on Prime Video, further solidifies the KidmanDavid E Kelley partnership that birthed Big Little Lies and The Undoing. Notably, its themes of affluence, privilege and emotional repression mirror those in recent sleeper hit The White Lotus (Binge). Must be something in the smoothie. AK

20 AUG 2021

RARE BEASTS

WARNING: THIS STRANGER IS DANGER

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From Morning Wars to Bombshell, newsroom dramas have made a comeback – but is anyone really paying attention? While it’s destined to be confused with Sorkin dud The Newsroom, ABC TV’s The Newsreader offers a few compelling reasons to tune in. The six-part miniseries takes place in a handsome rendition of 1986, reframing news events – from the AIDS crisis to Lindy Chamberlain – through the intricate operations of a TV network. Embattled news anchor Helen Norville (Anna Torv, Mindhunter) and journalist Dale Jennings (Sam Reid, Belle) ground the show with their endearing romance, amid relentless professional turmoil. The high-wire act of live TV is dazzling to watch from behind the scenes, but such energy is rarely matched by the show’s perfunctory plotting. The Newsreader also reeks of smug hindsight, outfitting Torv’s wealthy, white newscaster with modern progressive values as she seeks to spotlight the social injustices of her time. But where exactly is the line between depicting and exploiting real-life tragedy?

The characters don’t particularly care, and neither does the show. JAMIE TRAM

Music Reviews

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Isabella Trimboli Music Editor

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ast year, 19-year-old musician Billie Eilish caused a storm when she changed her famous black and fluoro green locks to bottle blonde. This transformation saw the teen star moving into a new, more mature era, but also signalled a new look for a new release cycle.

Produced by her long-time sole collaborator, brother Finneas, Happier Than Ever sees the pair dialling down the industrial spookiness of her blockbuster debut When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?, and exploring trip hop and jazz. While some of the record does venture into “generic chill cafe playlist” territory, there are still moments that surprise. ‘GOLDWING’ begins like a celestial church hymn until pulsating beats subsume the song. ‘I Didn’t Change My Number’ sees Eilish pushing her breathy vocals into more soulful territory, with a delivery that sometimes recalls Amy Winehouse. ‘Oxytocin’ is a gloomy, carnal club track. ‘NDA’ is a piercing, claustrophobic song of having a “pretty boy” sign a non-disclosure agreement: “30 under 30 for another year/I can barely go outside, I think I hate it here,” she sings.

The posturing and teenage petulance of her previous records has cleared, with Eilish releasing her most self-reflective and personal work to date. Much of the record sees Eilish describing how much fame and celebrity is a total bummer. She sings of dealing with “deranged” strangers, the creepy media discourse about her teenage body and the male gaze. “You have opinions about my opinions,” she states on ‘Not My Responsibility’, sounding pretty exhausted. IT

OVE RJOYED : BILL IE EILI SH

@itrimboli

F*CK LOVE 3+: OVER YOU THE KID LAROI 

The Kamilaroi rapper The Kid LAROI has transcended the Australian hip-hop scene to become a global superstar. In 2020, he dropped a US Top 10 mixtape, F*CK LOVE, mostly chronicling the emotional turmoil of youthful relationships, Gen Z anxiety and digitalage ennui. Confusingly, the teen has since issued two (well, two-and-a-half) deluxe versions. This is the latest configuration, with 13 new songs, some having previously leaked. LAROI’s style is melodic emo trap, paralleling that of his mentor Juice WRLD. The big hit here is the bouncy synth-pop ‘STAY’ with pal Justin Bieber. His poppiest moment yet, ‘STAY’’s sheen is courtesy of co-producers Charlie Puth and Norwegian DJ Cashmere Cat. But LAROI also offers street cuts like ‘DON’T LEAVE ME’ – basically a hard flex with Chicago drill rappers Lil Durk and G Herbo. In the epic banger ‘I DON’T KNOW’, he acknowledges his inner-Sydney roots, namechecking Waterloo’s postcode. CYCLONE WEHNER

DEADLANDS SHINING BIRD 

Shining Bird’s third record is certainly an ambitious one – the band shying away from traditional arrangements in favour of free-flowing jams that span up to 12 minutes.

Recorded live, the coastal NSW group enlisted acclaimed producer Tim Whitten (The Go-Betweens, Midnight Oil), whose range allows the band to lean into their pop and experimental sides simultaneously, improvising while meticulously layering each sonic element to great effect. Perhaps for this reason lead singer and songwriter Dane Taylor takes a backseat, spinning his earnest narratives in a languid and often unassuming manner, though his writing remains as captivating as ever. ‘No Country for Dreaming’ is by far his best performance, particularly given how well the saxophone on the track complements his sombre, world-weary vocals.

Certain sections of the album do become repetitive, but when ‘Strange Land’ and the transcendent closer ‘Who Are We’ change the album’s course, the journey to get there is entirely worth it. HOLLY PEREIRA

I FEEL BETTER BUT I DON’T FEEL GOOD ALICE SKYE 

Wergaia and Wemba Wemba songwriter Alice Skye plumbs the depths of insecurity and anxiety on her second album I Feel Better But I Don’t Feel Good. The 26-yearold Melbourne-based musician first made waves with Friends With Feelings (2018), her debut album full of earnest and austere piano songs. On her latest release, she pairs her crystalline voice with more diverse textures, including moody guitars and sombre synths, best realised in the lovelorn ballad ‘Party Tricks’. The album is almost like intercepting an interior monologue; we follow Skye as her frustration with real life leads to daydreams of exile (indie-pop single ‘Grand Ideas’), to fears about letting a lover inside her head (‘Browser History’), and questioning of her own emotions (“Am I lonely or do I really love you?” she asks on ‘Everything Is Great’). Other highlights include the jangle-guitar track ‘The Moon, the Sun’ and record closer, the breathy piano ballad ‘Wurega Djalin’. ISABELLA TRIMBOLI

Book Reviews

Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

F

rom the discomfort of my own home I buy dresses, look up recipes, do online surveys,” writes New Zealand millennial Zarah Butcher‑McGunnigle in her work of fiction Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life. “I woke up to complete a survey to get free food but I didn’t qualify. I don’t qualify for any of these surveys.”

It’s a novella told in fragments, and it’s unassuming – only 70 or so pages – with a portrait of the writer on the front cover, lying in bed in a floral dress. Her face is out of frame, but you can tell that she’s staring at a desiree potato. “I think I should have fallen in love again by now,” she writes. “I put on a choker before eating dinner alone in my room.” It’s dark and funny and speaks to loneliness, boredom and waiting for your life to begin. Sound familiar? Yeah, I didn’t think so…

I’m a little twitchier than I usually would be, a little more listless, and I’m finding things written in a style reflective of this headspace to be an incredible salve. Short sentences, vivid imagery counterbalanced with a sense of ambiguity, or futility. Laughing at a world that does not always make much sense. “Even though I think a lot of things are low-key hellish,” writes McGunnigle in her author’s note, “I also think most things are funny and absurd, and it’s important to be able to see the humour in everyday mundane situations.” This is a book for right now. MF

Following on from her acclaimed first memoir I Choose Elena, in which Osbourne-Crowley explored trauma and its effects on the body, My Body Keeps Your Secrets is a widely researched and deeply moving account of both Osbourne-Crowley’s own heart-rending story of rape, sexual assault and lived experience of wider structural misogyny, as well as similar accounts from a range of women, non-binary and trans people from across the globe.

She explores the trauma that these bodies hold onto after others perpetrate shameful acts upon them, and bears witness to the dangers of inhabiting bodies that are not male. Osbourne-Crowley explores the life-altering and often dangerous after-effects on bodies that are controlled, curated and contained to hide that shame – keeping secrets that so often can’t be told.

Boldly written, My Body Keeps Your Secrets is at times confronting, but at its powerful heart it is about reclamation, defiance and refusing to be silenced.

MANDY BEAUMONT SMALL JOYS OF REAL LIFE ALLEE RICHARDS 

Eva’s first meeting with Pat, the man who changes her life, is “unremarkable”.

Allee Richards’ first novel, Small Joys of Real Life, hinges on what happens next. Pat dies only weeks later, and Eva decides to keep their child. Shortlisted for both the Richell Prize for Emerging Writers and the Victorian Premier’s Award for an Unpublished Manuscript, Richards’ work is a nuanced and empathetic chronicle of contemporary life and friendship for a close-knit group in their late twenties living in Melbourne. At times, Eva’s decision to carry the pregnancy through is quite incomprehensible, and her selfabsorption can be grating, though it’s a fitting characterisation of a particular life stage, staring down the barrel of what it means to be a fully-fledged adult, with all the disappointment, broken promises and uncertainty it entails. The friendships, and the bodily frankness with which Richards describes sex, pregnancy and daily life, deliver prose that is both vibrant and unselfconscious. DASHA MAIOROVA

WINTER IN SOKCHO ELISA SHUA DUSAPIN 

This brooding novella by Franco-Korean author Elisa Shua Dusapin is a thought-provoking tale of a young woman struggling to find herself in modern-day South Korea. Set in Sokcho, a seaside tourist town near the North Korean border, the unnamed heroine is a French-Korean university graduate working in a rundown guesthouse and stuck in a stagnant relationship. Enter the mysterious Gerrand, a French comic artist looking for inspiration for his next work. With steadily rising tension and masterful showdon’t-tell writing, Dusapin draws the reader into the inner world of her protagonist: a troubled young woman who becomes fixated on Gerrand’s drawings, outlines of a woman in ink. The book is full of vivid, local detail but this is no K-pop love story. Dusapin’s Sokcho has been “left to rot” since the Korean War, its people “living in limbo, in a winter that never ends”. What can thrive in such a setting? Winter in Sokcho is a quality debut that will keep you guessing, right to the end.

EMMA SLEATH

20 AUG 2021



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MY BODY KEEPS YOUR SECRETS LUCIA OSBOURNE-CROWLEY

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

Take 10 minutes to read a book. I did this the other day. One minute I was irritably trying to tackle my giant and never-ending to-do list and 10 minutes (OH OKAY HALF AN HOUR BECAUSE I CHEATED) later and I’m roaring with laughter at a funny Irish memoir about a boy with 11 siblings driving a minibus to choir

practice. How wonderful, to be transported across time and space inside a tiny slice of a day that was otherwise threatening to overwhelm me.

Take 10 minutes to sing or dance. Yes, I am aware that with my book-reading, singing and dancing suggestions I am sounding very much like the creative arts nerd I am, but even the worst dancer (that’s me) can’t help themselves when their favourite song comes on. Put on your favourite song.

Take 10 minutes to move. See, it’s not all theatre over here. Go for a run. Do some star jumps. What’s your favourite way to move through the universe? Pick that.

Take 10 minutes to stop being defensive. True, I might have felt transformed by 10 minutes lying on the couch instead of tripping over chairs in the kitchen. But instead of refusing to do something new or different like, heaven forbid, becoming a yoga person, I tried something new that other people had told me would help and it did help. Who knew? Well, lots of people. I just thought I knew better. You think you know better too. You do.

I promise. Maybe not about yoga but about how to cook a roast or pack a dishwasher or something. Try this. Let go! For 10 minutes! You never know what might happen.

Talk to someone. My friend is a new parent. Her barista is often the only adult she sees for the entire day.

She wonders if he knows this. He is very nice to her and they have started swapping knitting patterns. No, this is not a rom-com. You never know, though – you could be someone’s only person in their whole day. Take those 10 minutes and do with them what you can.

I was a much better person after those 10 minutes of yoga and meditation. I know all of you actual yoga people are screaming, “That is not real yoga!” at me from your candle-scented wellness spaces but maybe you could channel that anger, hmm? May I suggest you take 10 minutes?

Public Service Announcement: 10-minute segments of time aren’t long. Take some for yourself.

Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The second season of her radio series, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.

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T

he other day I did something you would not normally catch me doing. I was quite stressed and very frustrated and most annoyed and having an entirely disappointing time that was manifesting itself as a latent rage I was in danger of unleashing on an innocent third party – like the annoying little stool that I so often trip over backwards, in the kitchen, because people keep dragging it there for reasons I could not tell you… And then I stopped.

I stopped everything I was rushing to do. I decided, in this moment, that nobody would miss me for 10 minutes, that taking 10 minutes out of a day that was already going so badly would not matter. Nothing was on fire. Nobody was in danger. I could walk away for 10 minutes and come back into the stool-tripping disaster day and nothing would be lost.

What I did next – that thing I did that you wouldn’t usually catch me doing – is the kind of thing I have been advised to do MY ENTIRE LIFE by every health and wellness article I’ve ever accidentally started reading.

And I never do it. Literally. Cannot once think of a time I have done it. This time? For some reason I decided I would. I decided to take 10 minutes for myself and concentrate on my breathing and – here’s the real shocker – do some yoga. I KNOW! I KNOW! BUT STOP! Before you think I am in a social category I most definitely do not deserve to be imagined into, I am not a yoga person. I have this app on my phone. It sometimes taunts me with mindful reminders, but that’s all it does. Its entire job is to draw my attention to the version of me that I am not.

But this time? This time I lined up a 10-minute yoga and meditation thing and I did what the obnoxious little app told me.

But here’s the really ridiculous news: it worked.

Public Service Announcement: take 10 minutes.

Ten minutes is nothing. Take it.

20 AUG 2021

A Stretch in Time

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

40

PHOTOS FOOD PHOTO

BY XXX

BY CATH MUSCAT

Tastes Like Home Country Women’s Association

Makes two 20cm cakes 4 eggs, separated Small pinch of salt ¾ cup (165g) caster sugar 1 teaspoon pure vanilla essence ¾ cup (90g) cornflour 1 large tablespoon custard powder 1 teaspoon cream of tartar ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method Preheat oven to 175°C. Beat egg whites and salt until soft peaks form, then gradually beat in caster sugar. Beat well until very thick, stiff peaks form. Gently fold in egg yolks and vanilla.

Add twice-sifted dry ingredients, then gently fold them through the egg mixture until combined.

Turn evenly into two well-greased sandwich tins, 21cm x 6cm deep. Bake in the middle of the oven for 20-25 minutes, or until the sides of the cake have shrunk a little from the side of the tins.

Turn out to cool, then slice through and fill with cream and jam, to make two individual layered cakes, or one big cake with four layers.

Ice or decorate the top as required; our cake is topped with strawberry halves and dusted with icing sugar.

SHARE

VARIATION For a chocolate sponge, add 2 tablespoons cocoa powder to dry ingredients.

PLAN TO BAKE THIS SPONGE AT HOME? TAG US WITH YOUR CREATION! @BIGISSUEAUSTRALIA #TASTESLIKEHOME

CWA says…

W

hat recipe says home to members of the Country Women’s Association? It has to be the sponge!

Almost every CWA branch has a sponge baker – whether it’s the never-fail plain sponge baked in a round tin, a ginger fluff with its characteristic colour and flavour, or a honey roll that begins as a flat rectangle and finishes as a rolled log.

The sponge is the signature dish for all of our special events.

The branch birthday cake is usually a sponge, while some branches will celebrate the birthday of a member with a sponge cake for afternoon tea or supper.

Let us tell you about a few of our sponge makers to illustrate the importance of the sponge for members within their own homes and local communities, and at their local CWA. Doreen is 93 and has been making sponges for at least 80 years. Her sponge recently won best entry at her group’s craft and cookery exhibition. Doreen has entered every one of the 66 annual exhibitions and still cooks sponges regularly for her extended family.

Marilyn makes sponges of every shape and flavour. Her husband John used to say jokingly, “If you think I might leave just make me a passionfruit sponge.”

The most requested items at Rose’s CWA branch are sandwiches and ginger fluff sponges. The tables are spread with cloths of green and gold, the colours of the CWA in Victoria. Sandwiches on long white plates are placed down the middle of the table, and dotted at intervals on either side are round glass plates holding golden fluff sponges filled with rich whipped cream. Visitors and staff always comment on the sponges and regulars remind Rose that they attend just to eat a slice of her sponge.

Pam (pictured), deputy president of the CWA in Victoria, has a special treat for her branch members at their Christmas meeting.

She makes a honey roll covered in melted chocolate that is fashioned into a Christmas log. Her showpiece is completed with a little robin sitting on a chocolate twig – this little robin came from England with Pam’s mum, many years ago. When the log is cut the white rings of cream contrast beautifully with the chocolate.

The never-fail sponge exemplifies that we never fail to do our best, we never fail to learn and teach, and we never fail to care for others.

FROM OUR KITCHEN TO YOURS BY THE COUNTRY WOMEN’S ASSOCATION OF VICTORIA IS OUT NOW.

20 AUG 2021

Ingredients

PA M IS FA MO US FO R AS HE R CH RISTM LO G SP ON GE

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Never-fail Sponge Cake

Puzzles

ANSWERS PAGE 43.

By Lingo!

by Lee Murray leemurray.id.au NICKNAME

CLUES 5 letters Back end of a boat Disease in dogs Less mad Pungent flavours Yells 6 letters Bestows European language Flower’s pollen container Heraldic white Secret___, spies 7 letters Metals that attract Spruce (up) 8 letters Clothing

T

F

A

S N R

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.

7 4 5

G E M 3

6

3

8

4 7 1 6 9 3 7

8

6 5 7 3 9 9 7 3 8 3 4 5 9

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD PAGE 43 ACROSS 1 Rob Lowe 5 Capable 9 Vaccinate 10 Overt 11 Non-stop 12 Thinker 13 Send 14 Depreciate 16 Ameliorate 19 Utes 21 Beguile 22 Solvent 24 Aroma 25 Evildoers 26 Dilutes 27 Gorilla

DOWN 1 Raven 2 Bacon and egg roll 3 Opiate 4 Example 5 Creator 6 Province 7 Breakfast cereal 8 Extorters 13 Starboard 15 Vigilant 17 Reefers 18 Tasting 20 Glider 23 Tesla

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis 2 Kyrgyzstan 3 Philip K Dick 4 True 5 Carolina Reaper 6 a) 1973 7 189-yearold Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise 8 A wine connoisseur 9 Lionel Rose in 1968 10 Comoros 11 Neon, iron, zinc, gold, lead 12 Peg Entwistle 13 Shakespeare and Company 14 c) Oliver 15 Eminem for ‘Rap God’ (1560 words in six minutes and four seconds) 16 Location, Location, Location 17 Sharks (m), Stingers (w) 18 Little donkey 19 London 20 Surry Hills, Sydney

20 AUG 2021

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues?

Every answer must include the central letter.

Plus, which word uses all nine letters?

by puzzler.com

43

Word Builder

Aussies love to give each other nicknames, but you might not know that nickname has itself been renamed. Back in the 1300s, your family and friends might have given you an additional name that only they could call you: an eke name (literally an “also name”). Over the next couple of centuries, we started to hear (and pronounce) an eke name as a neke name, moving the “n” in “an” over to the beginning of the next word. Fast forward to now, and we know it as a nickname. The original eke (from the Old English eaca “increase”) survives only in expressions such as to eke out a living, “to stretch every cent as far as it will go”.

Crossword

by Steve Knight

Quick Clues

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME. ANSWERS PAGE 43.

3

4

5

9

6

7

8

10

11

12

13

14 15

16

17

18

DOWN

19 20

21

24

22

23

25

26

27

Cryptic Clues DOWN

1 Blue gown covering actor (3,4) 5 Practised, being fit for national team selection? (7) 9 Abandon boxing action occasionally producing jab

1 Intravenous sample is black (5) 2 Blend canola, grog, bananas – ideal for breakfast

(9)

(5) 25 Guys in black hats and Levis rode roughshod (9) 26 Makes weak cap the wrong way with 19ac (7) 27 A.I. roll-out following backing from Hong Kong, perhaps? (7)

1 Bird (5) 2 Breakfast food (5,3,3,4) 3 Sedating drug (6) 4 Illustration (7) 5 Inventor (7) 6 Territory or region (8) 7 Corn flakes, for example (9,6) 8 Blackmailers (9) 13 Nautical term (9) 15 Watchful (8) 17 Cannabis cigarettes (7) 18 Sampling (7) 20 Light aircraft (6) 23 Electric car brand (5)

Solutions

ACROSS

10 Patent Trevor’s unfinished cycles (5) 11 No Poles are No.1 all the time (3-4) 12 She studies the details by tattoo artist? (7) 13 Forward pass finishing final (4) 14 Drop date after devouring crepe I ordered (10) 16 Better speak out after toxic email (10) 19 Minutest mint wrapping left in working vehicles (4) 21 Describe Australia’s charm? (7) 22 Crack unit occasionally in the black (7) 24 Smell a rat overtly manipulating Australia’s leaders

ACROSS

1 American actor (3,4) 5 Competent (7) 9 Immunise (9) 10 Undisguised (5) 11 Continuous (3-4) 12 Theorist (7) 13 Forward (4) 14 Reduce in value (10) 16 Improve (10) 19 Working vehicles (4) 21 Enchant (7) 22 Financially secure (7) 24 Fragrance (5) 25 Criminals (9) 26 Waters down (7) 27 Large ape (7)

(5,3,3,4) 3 Downer’s top aide sacked after losing $500 (6) 4 Model used to be plus-size? (7) 5 Almighty boost to reactor’s core? (7) 6 Shaved since attending show at the State (8) 7 Supply Baker St cafe with real muesli, perhaps (9,6) 8 They blackmail former Turtle on air (9) 13 Leading directors are right (9) 15 No.6 left giant covering on the ball (8) 17 Queen’s after trouble-free joints (7) 18 Thanks old policemen for trying (7) 20 Crazy girl collects detachable wings for light aircraft (6) 23 Initially THE electric stylish luxury automobile!

(5)

SUDOKU PAGE 43

7 9 8 2 3 4 5 6 1

4 1 5 8 7 6 2 9 3

2 6 3 1 9 5 8 4 7

3 5 1 6 4 7 9 2 8

9 2 4 5 1 8 7 3 6

6 8 7 9 2 3 1 5 4

1 7 6 3 5 9 4 8 2

8 4 9 7 6 2 3 1 5

5 3 2 4 8 1 6 7 9

Puzzle by websudoku.com

WORD BUILDER PAGE 45 5 Stern Mange Saner Tangs Rants 6 Grants German Stamen Argent 7 Agents Magnets Smarten 8 Garments 9 Fragments

20 AUG 2021

2

45

1

Click MAY 1933

Marlene Dietrich

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

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THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

Y

ou can get arrested for not wearing pants – on this day Marlene Dietrich was prepared to be arrested for wearing them. As we see, she was making it quite clear who wears the pants.

Dietrich blasted into fame playing a cabaret singer in The Blue Angel (1930), then was cast in Morocco (1930), in which she dressed in men’s clothing – pants, a tux – and kissed a woman, setting the filmic archetype of the femme fatale, with her own twist. That fashion choice became synonymous with her name, and she wore a spectacular white pantsuit on the SS Europa, sailing from America to France. It came to the attention of the Paris police, who let it be known she would be arrested if she dared do so in Paris.

Yes, it was illegal for women to wear pants in Paris, had been since 1800, and was invoked in 1930 against a controversial athlete, Violette Morris. Pantalons – or pants – had been a fashion statement of female revolutionaries in the 1790s, who were known as sansculottes, culottes being the silk breeches (as opposed to pants) worn by the aristocracy. Overnight that fashion statement was turned into a fashion crime. The law had the consequence of restricting jobs open to women.

Dietrich was not having a bar of it, and pointedly wore pants, accompanied on her left by her husband, Rudolf Sieber. She was a woman of principle – she declared Hitler “an idiot” in a propaganda interview broadcast into Germany, continuing: “Boys, don’t sacrifice yourselves. The war is crap.” She donated a fortune to help refugees escape, sold war bonds to raise money for arms, and entertained hundreds of thousands of troops.

Quite a woman. Her love life was no less allencompassing: lovers apparently included JFK (no big deal really), George Bernard Shaw, Errol Flynn, John Wayne, Erich Maria Remarque, Frank Sinatra…and that’s only while batting right-handed. Left-handed: writer Mercedes de Acosta, actors Claudette Colbert and Dolores del Río, and it seems singer Edith Piaf.

A star of the screen in the 30s, 40s and 50s, she then morphed into the cabaret star she had first portrayed.

That came to an end in Sydney 1975 when she fell off a stage, aged 73. The rest of her life was spent in Paris, where she died in 1992, aged 90.

Only in 2013 was the pants law declared incompatible with the constitution – but it remains on the books.

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18 JUNE 2020