Wherein the state of Terra Australis is called into question regarding its racist tendencies.
Dear Melatonin deficients and proficients!
I blame Madonna actually. No, I do. See, it's this album right here:
Look at it. LOOK AT IT!!! Here is a woman desperately trying to cling to her youth. I don't know if she wants to fallate that leather strap or if she's about lick it and scrub some dirt off my face with it. Either way this album is a testimony to our Western capitalist inability to let age pass us by in a graceful manner (Youth and beauty is, after all, the greatest commodities in the English speaking world).
So here comes Madonna, chicken limbed, and krumping her way to the next hip replacement centre, putting out a record when really she ought to stop and let the next generation have a go. And what happens? Well with her reputation, at the end of the day it doesn't matter that the album is mediocre and cringeworthy, people will buy it. And mediocre sales means that she will still get at least some money.
And every fifty year old entertainer who is passed their prime stood up and took notice.
Enter Daryl Somers:
If Tracy Grimshaw is the Lucifer of Australian TV, the Daryl Somers is Satan.
I've never mentioned him up until now as I was concerned that it would invoke his presence like the 'Candyman'. But alas, having clinged to our TV sets like an STD for two decades and refusing to die while hosting Dancing with the Stars, Daryl Somers has resurged like beubonic plague onto our screens yet again this time with a Hey Hey it's Saturday Remake, with all the original cast whooping it up like it was 1989.
Of course its not actually on Saturday because it would get totally destroyed by Midsomer Murders and the latest Stuart Little movie. So Hey Hey it's Saturday has moved its decrepid zimmer frame haulin' ass to Wednesdays, where it can be the 'highest ranking show' (in comparison to Border Security and Celebrity Masterchef)!
Please excuse me for discussing TV. I don't actually own one. But it was hard to miss what happened because it flooded the internet and therefore entered the youtube and international media really quickly. See, Daryl and his troop of 'hilarious misfits and laugh-a-minute geriatrics' just aren't that aware of information dissemination in the post-millenium age. This whole inter-ma-net-thing-a-mi-bob is all Gen XY craziness and beyond their baby-boomer mindset.
As is their political correctness as we shall see:
OK. So as we can see here we have a major case of Minstrelsy going on here....
Oh wait. Don't you know what Minstrelsy is?
Well, believe it or not, Australians really don't have a great deal of knowledge regarding Minstrelsy. I had to look it up after watching a Rotten Tomatoes Post regarding Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno. But boy am I glad I did. Because a lot of things made a lot of sense then.
But rather than tell you what it is, maybe you could glean an idea of minstrelsy from the following youtube clip:
Minstrelsy: Wikipedia (are they ever wrong?) describes this term as meaning: 'The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface.' Wikipedia then declares this fine tradition of 'blackface' as being: 'the first distinctly American theatrical form.'
Who knew there was a whole genre of this sort of thing? Well, unfortunately for the rest of the world this sort of thing is news for most Australians.
Why is this? Well it comes down to our historical legacy. You see, this is Terra Australis, The Great White Southern Land. We (as in white people, but you knew that because when does a history book ever say we and not mean 'Europeans'?) arrived at this land very recently. Only two hundred and a bit years ago. Then, having killed lots of the original inhabitants and then attempting most vigorously at absorbing the leftovers into our 'collective hive' we are left with a primarily white anglo culture with Indigenous Aboriginals consisting of less than 5% of our population.
Australia's relationship with it indigenous peoples is its greatest shame. It is truly a logistical, beuareaucratic and legal nightmare. But this is a nightmare which has endless repercussions on the human world of suffering over and over again.
Our name is dirt in the UN. Why? Because of the blatant poor living conditions for Indigenous Australians. Whilst we white anglo/celts are kicking back in the first world, our indigenous population is experiencing third world living conditions. AND THEN they get our scorn and condemnation for not 'getting their act together'.
So what's the solution? Well, the previous conservative government created a fabulous policy, (one still in affect to this day with our new liberal government may I add) that was based entirely around race. We call it the 'Nothern Territory Intervention. '
That's right, we in Australia actually have two laws, one set of laws for those of us in main-stream culture, and another if you are living in an Northern Territory Aboriginal Community.
Now, one could argue that the problems faced by Aboriginal Australians are unique to Aboriginal Australians and therefore require specific laws that address these issues. Indeed, as there are rampant issues of domestic abuse against women in the Nothern Territory Aboriginal Communities, fueled by a hideous level of alcoholism one could argue that this was a humanitarian requirement in order to stop abuse against women and children and to stop the cycle of abuse.
Not that I am jumping on the 'blame and shame wagon' here. As Jane Elliot of Blue Eyes Brown Eyes fame said (I paraphrase, and she was talking at the time in regards to the first nation peoples of Canada) 'let's take away a people's way of life and then get them to sit around for days on end with nothing to do in neat and tidy reservations in the middle of nowhere and then let's see if they'll turn to alcoholism. Because then we can look down on them.'
But still, a law made by a government justifying an anglo occupation over an indigenous community, restricting porn, alcohol, drugs and other such things, (ironically, a law made from Australia's Capital Territory which has the most flexible laws regarding porn, alcohol and other fun things) makes my skin itch. It just sounds a little too...well, apartheid for my liking. But it's not like we should of expected this. After all, it's not like the Prime Minister involved in the Intervention was an advocate for the White Australian Policy that dominated Australia's immigration for much of the 20th century. ...oh. Oh wait. Oh yeah that's right. In the 70's and 80's he WAS an advocate for Australia's White Australian Policy!
But the point is, that although we have and had such a terrible record with our indigenous population, our relationship with our cultural minorities outside of this example, amongst the anglo waste-lands is (comparitively speaking) pretty happy. I say this as a white-anglo male having lived in Western Sydney for a large period of my life. I've seen multiculturalism flourish and be successful. I've watched Cabramatta's Moon festival in full swing while London declared multiculturalism was a failed experiment, I've seen whole suburbs relishing the end of Ramadan whilst country after country encountered difficulties in dealing with the integration of various 'ethnic minorities'.
Multiculturalism is alive and well in urban Australia. And it's successful. Yes we have blips on the map. Yes, we get some truly astonishing moments of intolerance and nastiness (such as the Cronulla Riots where some people were beat up from both anglo and arabic ethnicities). But then, sometimes, we have riots because the cops are here and we're so GOD DAMNED BORED WITH OUR PATHETIC SUBURBAN EXISTENCE that we'll take any excuse to make a scene. (Don't believe me? This is exactly the 'flash-point' behind the Macquarie Fields Riots!)
But the important p
oint is that none of these major black marks against Australia's name in regards to race relations could possible match up with the sheer day to day business of racism that occurs in Europe and America. A few guys getting beaten up made headlines in Australian news. Think about that. They weren't murdered, nor tortured, nor experiencing wide-scale institutionalised racism that we saw in America in the 1950's.
Why then, do we see Australia as being such a terrible place in regards to racism?
It's simple. Indigenous Australian affairs only became an issue in most people's minds post 1988 when they began to become political and 'sound-byte worthy'. Before that, most people thought of Aboriginals as exotic people with exotic culture and probably left their thinking process at that. And as Aboriginal Australians only make up less than 5% of the population, their suffering really was overshadowed by such issues as overcoming the White Australian Policy, equal rights for women and other such sound-byte whoring topics.
In regards to other cultures, such as the Blackface affair with Hey Hey It's Saturday, it's really very obvious:
We are removed from the majority of the world. Sit an Australian down and tell them about the injustice you feel because you're a Palestinian in Israel, or an African-American in the South of USA or a Kurd in Iraq and I can guarantee that most Australians would look on with disbelief and possibly horror, (but that would depend on how much alcohol they had).
Similarly, sit an Australian down and tell them about the injustices you felt as an Aboriginal at the hands of the government, tell them about your story of suffering as a member of the stolen generation and again, due to our racial ignorance you will experience disbelief and maybe horror.
Australian's are, as a rule, clueless when it comes to dealing with people of other ethnicities and cultures. Well-meaning, but clueless. Expect a great time, but also expect total gaffs in behaviour due to inexperience.
I watched in horror at Hey Hey It's Saturday as they showed a comedy routine that once won a Comedy competition twenty years ago sporting 'blackface' in all its ugly charicaturised glory. And I wanted to hand in my passport at the point when I realised that such old tired TV formats were making a comeback.
But what was really interesting was that both Daryl Somers and Australia's Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, claimed that the act was '[not] meant to be offensive' and was 'only in the spirit of fun'. Well no. The act drew from an offensive cultural source and caricatured the physical characteristics of a different race for comedic effect. That's a racist form of entertainment. But they were unconscious of having done something offensive, so while the motive might be harmless the result was, in fact, not.
But then, I'd hazard to guess, neither Julia Gillard nor Daryl Somers have ever heard of Minstrelsy. And that is both a good, and at times, a bad thing.
If Tracy Grimshaw is the Lucifer of Australian TV, the Daryl Somers is Satan.
I've never mentioned him up until now as I was concerned that it would invoke his presence like the 'Candyman'. But alas, having clinged to our TV sets like an STD for two decades and refusing to die while hosting Dancing with the Stars, Daryl Somers has resurged like beubonic plague onto our screens yet again this time with a Hey Hey it's Saturday Remake, with all the original cast whooping it up like it was 1989.
Of course its not actually on Saturday because it would get totally destroyed by Midsomer Murders and the latest Stuart Little movie. So Hey Hey it's Saturday has moved its decrepid zimmer frame haulin' ass to Wednesdays, where it can be the 'highest ranking show' (in comparison to Border Security and Celebrity Masterchef)!
Please excuse me for discussing TV. I don't actually own one. But it was hard to miss what happened because it flooded the internet and therefore entered the youtube and international media really quickly. See, Daryl and his troop of 'hilarious misfits and laugh-a-minute geriatrics' just aren't that aware of information dissemination in the post-millenium age. This whole inter-ma-net-thing-a-mi-bob is all Gen XY craziness and beyond their baby-boomer mindset.
As is their political correctness as we shall see:
OK. So as we can see here we have a major case of Minstrelsy going on here....
Oh wait. Don't you know what Minstrelsy is?
Well, believe it or not, Australians really don't have a great deal of knowledge regarding Minstrelsy. I had to look it up after watching a Rotten Tomatoes Post regarding Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno. But boy am I glad I did. Because a lot of things made a lot of sense then.
But rather than tell you what it is, maybe you could glean an idea of minstrelsy from the following youtube clip:
Minstrelsy: Wikipedia (are they ever wrong?) describes this term as meaning: 'The minstrel show, or minstrelsy, was an American entertainment consisting of comic skits, variety acts, dancing, and music, performed by white people in blackface or, especially after the Civil War, black people in blackface.' Wikipedia then declares this fine tradition of 'blackface' as being: 'the first distinctly American theatrical form.'
Who knew there was a whole genre of this sort of thing? Well, unfortunately for the rest of the world this sort of thing is news for most Australians.
Why is this? Well it comes down to our historical legacy. You see, this is Terra Australis, The Great White Southern Land. We (as in white people, but you knew that because when does a history book ever say we and not mean 'Europeans'?) arrived at this land very recently. Only two hundred and a bit years ago. Then, having killed lots of the original inhabitants and then attempting most vigorously at absorbing the leftovers into our 'collective hive' we are left with a primarily white anglo culture with Indigenous Aboriginals consisting of less than 5% of our population.
Australia's relationship with it indigenous peoples is its greatest shame. It is truly a logistical, beuareaucratic and legal nightmare. But this is a nightmare which has endless repercussions on the human world of suffering over and over again.
Our name is dirt in the UN. Why? Because of the blatant poor living conditions for Indigenous Australians. Whilst we white anglo/celts are kicking back in the first world, our indigenous population is experiencing third world living conditions. AND THEN they get our scorn and condemnation for not 'getting their act together'.
So what's the solution? Well, the previous conservative government created a fabulous policy, (one still in affect to this day with our new liberal government may I add) that was based entirely around race. We call it the 'Nothern Territory Intervention. '
That's right, we in Australia actually have two laws, one set of laws for those of us in main-stream culture, and another if you are living in an Northern Territory Aboriginal Community.
Now, one could argue that the problems faced by Aboriginal Australians are unique to Aboriginal Australians and therefore require specific laws that address these issues. Indeed, as there are rampant issues of domestic abuse against women in the Nothern Territory Aboriginal Communities, fueled by a hideous level of alcoholism one could argue that this was a humanitarian requirement in order to stop abuse against women and children and to stop the cycle of abuse.
Not that I am jumping on the 'blame and shame wagon' here. As Jane Elliot of Blue Eyes Brown Eyes fame said (I paraphrase, and she was talking at the time in regards to the first nation peoples of Canada) 'let's take away a people's way of life and then get them to sit around for days on end with nothing to do in neat and tidy reservations in the middle of nowhere and then let's see if they'll turn to alcoholism. Because then we can look down on them.'
But still, a law made by a government justifying an anglo occupation over an indigenous community, restricting porn, alcohol, drugs and other such things, (ironically, a law made from Australia's Capital Territory which has the most flexible laws regarding porn, alcohol and other fun things) makes my skin itch. It just sounds a little too...well, apartheid for my liking. But it's not like we should of expected this. After all, it's not like the Prime Minister involved in the Intervention was an advocate for the White Australian Policy that dominated Australia's immigration for much of the 20th century. ...oh. Oh wait. Oh yeah that's right. In the 70's and 80's he WAS an advocate for Australia's White Australian Policy!
But the point is, that although we have and had such a terrible record with our indigenous population, our relationship with our cultural minorities outside of this example, amongst the anglo waste-lands is (comparitively speaking) pretty happy. I say this as a white-anglo male having lived in Western Sydney for a large period of my life. I've seen multiculturalism flourish and be successful. I've watched Cabramatta's Moon festival in full swing while London declared multiculturalism was a failed experiment, I've seen whole suburbs relishing the end of Ramadan whilst country after country encountered difficulties in dealing with the integration of various 'ethnic minorities'.
Multiculturalism is alive and well in urban Australia. And it's successful. Yes we have blips on the map. Yes, we get some truly astonishing moments of intolerance and nastiness (such as the Cronulla Riots where some people were beat up from both anglo and arabic ethnicities). But then, sometimes, we have riots because the cops are here and we're so GOD DAMNED BORED WITH OUR PATHETIC SUBURBAN EXISTENCE that we'll take any excuse to make a scene. (Don't believe me? This is exactly the 'flash-point' behind the Macquarie Fields Riots!)
But the important p
oint is that none of these major black marks against Australia's name in regards to race relations could possible match up with the sheer day to day business of racism that occurs in Europe and America. A few guys getting beaten up made headlines in Australian news. Think about that. They weren't murdered, nor tortured, nor experiencing wide-scale institutionalised racism that we saw in America in the 1950's.Why then, do we see Australia as being such a terrible place in regards to racism?
It's simple. Indigenous Australian affairs only became an issue in most people's minds post 1988 when they began to become political and 'sound-byte worthy'. Before that, most people thought of Aboriginals as exotic people with exotic culture and probably left their thinking process at that. And as Aboriginal Australians only make up less than 5% of the population, their suffering really was overshadowed by such issues as overcoming the White Australian Policy, equal rights for women and other such sound-byte whoring topics.
In regards to other cultures, such as the Blackface affair with Hey Hey It's Saturday, it's really very obvious:
Australians are naive.
We are removed from the majority of the world. Sit an Australian down and tell them about the injustice you feel because you're a Palestinian in Israel, or an African-American in the South of USA or a Kurd in Iraq and I can guarantee that most Australians would look on with disbelief and possibly horror, (but that would depend on how much alcohol they had).
Similarly, sit an Australian down and tell them about the injustices you felt as an Aboriginal at the hands of the government, tell them about your story of suffering as a member of the stolen generation and again, due to our racial ignorance you will experience disbelief and maybe horror.
Australian's are, as a rule, clueless when it comes to dealing with people of other ethnicities and cultures. Well-meaning, but clueless. Expect a great time, but also expect total gaffs in behaviour due to inexperience.
I watched in horror at Hey Hey It's Saturday as they showed a comedy routine that once won a Comedy competition twenty years ago sporting 'blackface' in all its ugly charicaturised glory. And I wanted to hand in my passport at the point when I realised that such old tired TV formats were making a comeback.
But what was really interesting was that both Daryl Somers and Australia's Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, claimed that the act was '[not] meant to be offensive' and was 'only in the spirit of fun'. Well no. The act drew from an offensive cultural source and caricatured the physical characteristics of a different race for comedic effect. That's a racist form of entertainment. But they were unconscious of having done something offensive, so while the motive might be harmless the result was, in fact, not.
But then, I'd hazard to guess, neither Julia Gillard nor Daryl Somers have ever heard of Minstrelsy. And that is both a good, and at times, a bad thing.
I'm not sure how I landed here but I rather like it; it's like the seedy side of Victorianism--
ReplyDeleteNice. I'll try to come back sometime.
My dear Jake,
ReplyDeleteHow nice of you to drop in. And not enough people call me seedy so I'll take that as a compliment!