A busy week past, but not (for me) a particularly arty one. Most notable has been the media spectacle of our Foreign Minister (Alexander Downer) and Prime Minister (John Howard) appearing before the 'Oil for Food' enquiry into kickbacks of nearly $300 million paid by AWB (Australian Wheat Board) to Saddam Hussein's regime, prior to the invasion.
This has been so exhaustively written about that I hesitate to add to the verbiage. Suffice to say that even the most ardent supporters of our current leaders are disbelieving and somewhat ashamed at the mass breakout of amnesia surrounding this disgraceful matter. I am looking forward to reading the spin that right-of-centre columnists such a Gerard Henderson will put on events next week, but it's interesting that even 'New Right' commentators such as Michael Duffy are starting to (albeit rather gently) question the integrity of the Government, see On with the show for the artful dodgers (SMH 14/4/06).
There is perhaps the first whiff of an important change in the political air, worth noting. Could we even be witnessing the moment when the worm turns? The 'Kids Overboard' affair, Tampa, phantom Iraqi WMDs... in all these familiar cases Ministers and the PM claimed not to have been properly informed by their underlings, and got away with it. They may have been somewhat diminished in the eyes of the Australian people, but election results consistently demonstrated that if people thought they were being lied to, they didn't really care, or that good economic management and low mortgage rates were more important. Or perhaps the 'War on terror' has meant that standards of accountability and probity need not be so exacting? We have reached a point I believe, long passed in the UK and the USA, where the Australian populace in general, in so far as it cares at all, now believes that it is routinely lied to. The Aussie way is to shrug and say "Well, they're pollies, what do you expect?"
In response, I quote Wendell Phillips:
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." (1852)
Benjamin Franklin:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." (1759)
And best of all, James Madison (4th President of the United States): "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." (1788)
Which leads nicely to the newly released movie V for Vendetta. OK, so its a 'Hollywood' movie based on a graphic novel, with some major script flaws, but remarkably timely for all that. Without going into full detail about the Britain it depicts, set in the near future, the important factor is that does not imagine an Orwellian world where people know they are oppressed (yet), but rather one not unlike the present, where the abdication of freedoms is still actively in progress. In this world a combination of nationalist infotainment (think of Bill O'Reilly on US Fox News and it's not so far fetched) and constant, media-manipulated fear of 'terrorists', disease outbreaks, 'degenerates' and so on, keeps the population willingly in thrall to a 'Big Brother' type Chancellor, played with suitable menace by John Hurt. While people in pubs and at home around the TV set mutter "Rubbish... fuckin' liar", they are sufficiently cowed by fear not to do anything. NOT fear of the Government security apparatus per se, but of the bogies that government and a compliant media constantly conjure up. Sound familiar? Of course, all this changes when a character called 'V' (Hugo Weaving), wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, arrives on the scene. All the performances are excellent, and Natalie Portman is, as always, mesmerising. Three and a half stars.
Still on movies, I watched on DVD the underrated A Home At The End Of The World based on Michael Cunningham's book, which I've never read, but may do after seeing this film. Believable performances from Colin Farrell, Dallas Roberts, Sissy Spacek and Robin Wright Penn - it slipped below my radar on release, and I don't recall anyone commenting on it. Given that the film deals with a complex ménage-a-trois between a gay man, a bisexual man, a heterosexual woman and 'their' child, and throw in a dope-smoking mother and HIV, I found myself wondering what all the fuss over Brokeback Mountain was about. This isn't quite as epic or as well directed, but Colin Farrell is as much a straight leading man as 'Heath'n Jake', and the story presents what is in many ways a more contentious issue in a non-judgmental way - whether two men, a woman and a child can be a family. Four stars from me. Margaret?
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