°Australian plenitude, anxiously so
In my current state, which is thankfully and to an extent ghettoised (which is to say, protected from such things), Australia Day - otherwise known as Invasion Day - took a while to filter through. Sydney, of course, is all (to borrow a grim joke) finance capital and race war.
I spent much of the day at farewells for someone who’s visa has run out, noting the number of flags draped across shoulders, worn as various apparel, in the park. Then the pub, more of the same.
Then I see some pictures from someone’s phone taken at the Sly Fox - the pics were of someone doing a thing in blackface. I find this incomprehensible. Really. I wonder why no one who told me about this did anything more than take photos and complain later to eachother. I wonder about the normalisations of violence that make it seem as if to do anything more than complain semi-privately is to create conflict.
Then I read about the pogrom on Manly Beach, and think about all the occasions that, this year, have gone unreported. A fragment from that article:
“It was a mix of hoodlums who had obviously been drinking as well but, to me, there was also an underlying element of racism dressed up as nationalism,” Dr Burridge, a senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney, said. “When they were gathering on the [oceanside] beachfront, that’s when they were screaming out ‘If you’re Aussie and you know it clap your hands’ and ‘If you’re white and you know it clap your hands’.”
This attempt to distinguish racism from nationalism is hilarious, and frighteningly stupid.
So, some reading through the blogspheres:
CrankyOptimist | Slant Eye for The Round Eye | Slackbastard |
Apparently, there were some English tourists at Manly that day, so there was some fallout - and, so, some ostensible “anti-racist” program floated. About how bad “intolerance” is. I’ve no problem with intolerance, and little desire to be tolerated. What I find scary is the extent to which the Australia Day pogrom has become a ritual in these parts.
There was a competition to see how many flags people could swipe. I only scored one, I was told I could by any means necessary, so in my state I opted for bullshit: “Oh, please, can I have one of your flags?” They gave it over. It didn’t burn so much as melt. I can’t say it made me feel much better.
The other thing that looms up in my dim short-term memory is some push to halt “Australia’s population growth” for “environmental reasons”, though I need to search for the relevant articles.
More ace photos taken at the BDO here:
http://flickr.com/photos/dreadfuldan/sets/72157613031992148/
@ndy [February 3, 2009 @ 5:34 pm]
I went to a bbq in Bondi the other day, the first time I had actually gone to the beach in Sydney in about four years. There were rumours there would be a riot, but actually the vibe was very relaxed. I think I heard almost as much portuguese as english on the footpath, but the crowd around the bbq were all anglo. The Brazilians had made their own churasqueiras nearby; bbq on a steel platter is a sin to us, but I was with my anglo mates. Then I put an eggplant on the hot plate. No kidding four people came up looking at this object, asking what it was. “Do you know what is babaganoush?” Blank stares. What did it taste like. “It’s kind of soft, maybe the consistency of a squash.” The guy poked it with a fork.
I felt like I had arrived at some primeval beach with a wristwatch, and the natives were looking at it trying to work out what it might be for…People say that multiculturalism is a food fair, but that’s an overstatement.
TCO [February 9, 2009 @ 12:54 pm]
I’ve been pondering that incident of blackface that you noted up there. This has happened a couple of times in my sphere over the past few years. Once my friend went and challenged the wearer (who was, I kid you not, “dressed up as an Aborigine”) noted that her non-Australian accent disqualified her from commenting. And the rest of us were for all intents and purposes as white and Anglo as can be, which meant the wearer didn’t think we had a case. In that instance, confronting blackface publically seemed a bit futile. In a space like the Sly Fox it might have had more impact. Still, I’m inclined to think that documenting it on camera, and here in this blog entry, has “enough” oppositional value, for the time being. It is still a witnessing that does not allow it to be a wholly normal occurence - not in the name of reducing conflict, but in being strategic with one’s oppositional energies….
ana australiana [February 17, 2009 @ 1:27 pm]
Whoops. That second sentence should read: “Once my friend went and challenged the wearer (who was, I kid you not, “dressed up as an Aborigine”) WHO noted that her non-Australian accent disqualified her from commenting.”
ana australiana [February 17, 2009 @ 1:28 pm]
The last time I came across someone doing blackface (at what was, ostensibly, a night of porn readings), I interrupted what seemed (up until that point) as generalised laughter and enjoyment with a loud “That’s not fucking funny”. Most people stopped laughing after that, or at least looked uncomfortable.
I think it doesn’t take much to interrupt the conformism and depoliticisation that sets in with such things.
In any case, this comes in the midst of some discussion about performance artists and their recourse (in spaces like Gurlesque at times) to racial stereotypes (among other things), though here more usually in the manner of an exoticist primitivism. I’m told this is an issue of longstanding, but I’ve not been in Sydney for long and have trouble understanding why it’s not been sorted as yet.
Part of it is that this stuff is catalogued as art, and the riposte runs along the lines of defending artistic freedom. Which presupposes that the question of freedom for whom and for what - namely, racist shit - has already been settled.
Part of the explanation I’ve had for why these people have not been booed off stages is fearing being singled out as disruptive, conflictual (and oftentimes, individualised or made passive as audience members). So, the distaste is there, it just usually gets shifted to semi-private spaces as chats and letters of complaint, while the racism gets to occupy public space, freely.
There’ve been a few letters, some other stuff written on this in the meantime, a friend (the one who’s visa had run out) who incorporated some crit of this stuff in their performance (and received a lot of support later from people who said they’d been “thinking” along similar lines for a while).
But I don’t see any reason, strategic or otherwise, to exhibit tolerance (if only through acquiescence) toward blackface. If you don’t interrupt it, materially speaking and beyond questions of intention and consciousness, you support it.
s0metim3s [February 17, 2009 @ 4:59 pm]
Well, yes. That all makes sense.
And re racial stereotypes and the like in Sydney queer performance culture: my sense is that debate about this centres around ‘the right to artistic exercises of irony’ as opposed to ‘not performing racist shit’. This tends to lump in performances by say, Yumi Umiumare (from Melbourne, of course!), with, say, blackface at the Sly Fox.
ana australiana [February 18, 2009 @ 3:04 pm]