so long to great old-skool artist
Sadly Ronald Searle died recently aged ninety. Upon reflection I would have to say the most influential artist/cartoonist/illustrator of my formative years. Starting very young, I read the Molesworth books which appealed but also the St Trinian’s which all had a rudimentary schoolyard aesthetic that could relate to . I was impressed by the total anarchy and menacing mischief that always went that extra step. But all his work had an honesty and integrity that resonated. The feathery, blotchy style itself was a contradiction full of energy but at the same time spidery and ethereal. This blog has some good examples as well as a wonderful interview with the champaign drinking rapscallion.
Lois Lane more super… but madder
I thought this was hilarious when I saw it on Tumblr. However, while it depicts Lois as strong (more than Superman’s equal) it’s still innately sexist in that Lois is quite clearly irrational and dangerous (and can only be placated by the prospect of marriage). The message: women do not have the temperament to handle super powers. This comic was published in 1968 and perhaps represents anxiety about the feminist movement that was gaining massive momentum and legitimacy at the time. Would be interesting to compare with that other woman superhero of the era, Wonder Woman. There’s maybe a PHD in there for someone.
Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane #85, August 1968
The Mayflower pilgrims in a modern context
"Promised Land" cover by Christopher Niemann for the Thanksgiving issue of The New Yorker.
I love this cover for the (new) New Yorker
It’s time… for legal gay marriage
For a long time I quietly resisted using the word “partner” when referring to my lawfully wedded, because it didn’t seem to represent the level of commitment and depth that I believe our relationship has – a partner suggests more of a business relationship or someone you happen to be dancing with. I love, and would much prefer to use, good solid Anglo Saxon words like “wife” and “husband” but I felt compelled to use the word partner in general conversation, particularly with anyone I knew to be gay because I noticed that when used the P word with gay friends and acquaintances, there was a subtle change in attitude; a softening, almost a visible sense of relief that I was positioning myself with them rather than (however unintentionally) against them. It’s an empowering feeling, I hope, for both of us but I shouldn’t have to make this (small) sacrifice the terms ‘wife’ and ‘husband’ are meaningful and powerful words and shouldn’t be exclusive to us heteros, although I’m not sure if the distinction (between husband and wife) would be gender based when used in a gay context (two blokes in a relationship both refer to each other as their respective husbands or two women are both each others’ wives) or more role based; one fits the traditional wife’s role the other the husband’s. There are plenty of gay couples where this distinction is very evident, but this is entering another area of contention – maybe a more dangerous one. I should quickly add that there are some hetero couples where the traditional role/gender expectations are reversed.
The laws in this country that outlaw gay marriage are illogical, wrong and hurtful. They are nothing more than pathetic attempt to marginalise (or keep marginalised) gay people by a paranoid loony few. I’m very happy to express my solidarity with this cause by using the expression partner, but I resent the fact that I have to, especially when the ALP is in government and a majority of Australians support the change.
A momentous day
The passage of the Clean Energy Future legislation today will be remembered as a defining point for this nation. Whatever the long term fate of the initiative, it’s a decisive and positive commitment that has broken this country out of years of fudging and procrastination and any attempt to change or repeal it will be difficult and given time – unpopular. Many commentators have said that the population doesn’t understand the carbon debate. I think this is wrong; I think they understand it but don’t want to believe it. They are conflicted and this makes them uncomfortable and angry – they know that they are in the wrong – hence they lash out in childishly irrational and spiteful ways. It’s important that Australia takes a lead in this not just because we are ones that have a lot to lose but we are a rich well educated country that knows better. Denial is not a good long term coping strategy. In years to come (probably not that many) this will be seen as a moral issue of similar significance to the abolition of slavery.
another wall…
Part of my "wall series"
Me and Steve Jobs
Of course I never met the guy and he certainly wouldn’t have heard of me. But I was strangely affected when I heard the news of his death – similar, bizarrely, to hearing about the death of Michael Jackson and Princess Diana. He was a figure that has been around in the background of my life for since the eighties. My first computer was an Apple iiC which had a 128 KB of RAM compared to my current iMac (probably the iiC’s direct decendent) which chugs along on 4 GB (over 4 million KB) of RAM but this is hardly the top of the range model and is already over four years old. The iiC had no hard drive and ran everything from 5¼-inch floppy disc drive that could store just 140 KB of data. You were endlessly swapping discs to boot the computer, run applications and save work. After that I was tempted over to the dark side (I had a clunky XT running DOS and then a Pentium in the early days Windows) because I was convinced that market forces would ultimately destroy the viability of Macs and the inferior PC would win out – although it struck me as being inherently unfair that Windows should ride to victory on the back of an Apple innovation; the “windows” environment. But thankfully my scepticism or perhaps general cynicism (and that of many others) has not panned out – largely thanks to the unbounded passion and vision of Steve Jobs who just kept coming up with ideas while at the same time ruthlessly depreciating older technologies – starting with the floppy discs but ending with sophisticated proprietorial software such as Flash (which some of us miss). I would even argue that he made music CDs redundant by building ripping capabilities into iTunes to make it a bit less profitable to release music on CD. But it is this uncompromising hard headedness combined with a responsiveness and intellect that can see the possibilities for technology, that has changed our lives. I haven’t always agreed with him; particularly in the last couple of years when he has seemed to side against the democratic principles of the internet by denigrating blogging in favour of “editorial oversight” in his “I don’t want America to descend to a nation of bloggers” address and then sided with Rupert Murdoch to launch the internet venture The Daily. This corporate conversion took place when he was the CEO of what would very soon become the world largest corporation. The fact that he got the company to such a position is extraordinary but he did it by making technology accessible and meaningful.
the nine eleven piece…
I was lucky enough to sleep through the world trade centre attacks and spend perhaps an extra nine or ten hours in that lost age of relative innocence. We had a one year old at the time and sleep was something you took when you could. This too was a different age: pre twitter and believe it or not pre Facebook. The internet was not the totally pervasive force in our house as it is today - we still had to dial in to get a connection. Most of our news came from the television, radio and newspapers and it was not all that up to the minute.
The first hint I had of the events that were unfolding was on going to collect milk and newspapers from the local milk bar at 8:00 am. I was struck by the display bill of the Herald Sun (Rupert’s metro daily in this town) outside which showed a curiously blurry and undefined photo of a building with smoke billowing out of it (I think it was taken off the television) and the text read “War on America”. It looked strangely unimpressive and obscure and didn’t make sense.
The inside of our milk bar is a timeless place. Always dark and cool, shelves staked with cans and produce, fridges quietly humming and a little bell at the top of the door that tinkles every time it opens. At the time the shop was run by a Cambodian family who were Buddhist. I noticed the owner talking to a local I knew in hushed tones; his face ashen. I picked up the paper and squinted at it trying to make sense of yet more blurry vague photos of buildings and smoke. The editions must have been put together and the paper hastily rearranged in the early ours of the morning as the first images were coming in on the television. My mind scrambled to make sense of it.
“This is very bad many people die”, said the owner solemnly shaking his head in disbelief. “What happened…?” I mumbled. “Don’t you know…? the local exclaims, slightly amazed . He was probably up all night watching. He started to run through his own commentary; hi-jacked planes, the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon and the suspects al-Qaeda and someone called Osama Bin Laden. These last two items meant nothing to me at that moment – I was still in my own time warp. At last he gave up. “Just go home and turn on the television”. I did as I was told. Like many millions of televisions around the world, the one in our living room was now locked into the stream electronic images that was coming out of US America. The images was accompanied by a constant patter of voices trying to explain and make sense of the images – most of them didn’t have a clue. I remember, as we watched amazing amateur footage taken by someone running down the stairs and out through the lobby of the buildings that were about to collapse, one Aussie breakfast show host remarked that these are images that they will remember for the rest of their lives – well der!!! They’ll probably live with me for the rest of my life and I was 1600 kilometres away. The images frequently went to repeats of planes smashing into the buildings. The first time I saw this image I was sickened by the callous brutality and scale of the outrage and everything that I heard afterwards about the events just reinforced this sense of monstrous perversity.
For days afterwards the same images kept being repeated again and again. The news media was having convulsive spasms it couldn’t shake. My child’s favourite shows Bananas in Pyjamas and Playschool were suspended – I began to think permanently and I was beginning to worry that the images were being burnt into her memory – thankfully they haven’t been. But as this was happening the commentary was beginning to find its narrative thread: the world as we knew it had changed forever and western values and ideals were under attack (if not the physical western world itself).
However, in reality, the world changes forever, all the time, by millions of small incremental steps that are barely perceivable from a distance. Everyday there are countless act of brazen cruelty and ruthless violence – much of it that we don’t hear about. But the thing that really changed the world, for the worse, was the USA and its friends total overreaction to the outrage. It lost its cool and in so doing played right into the hands of the terrorists. This is succinctly and clearly outlined in Hugh White’s article which I recommend. Hopefully now, ten years after the attacks, we can move on.
My father who was, for most of his working life, an engineer who specialised in cardboard packaging, was uniquely aware of the unique strengths and characteristics of cardboard and its unrecognised potential. In my infant years, in the days before baby capsules, I was transported in the family car in a cardboard box. At our kids’ parties he would design and make unique cardboard toys and games. He proposed designs for cardboard highway crash-barriers that would be safer and more cost effective than the metal ones. He would have been very pleased that renowned Japanese architect Shigeru Ban has designed a replacement cathedral for Christchurch out of cardboard. Unfortunately it is only slated as temporary although I’m sure there is the technology to make it more permanent. Of course the perceived symbolic significance of a cathedral made of cardboard might be a bit much for some. Still Kiwis are pragmatic and often take a delight in the quirky.
Great to see the A frame coming back... what next... fondues and kaftans...?
London Smouldering
A few years after the Brixton riots, I lived in the neighbouring suburb of Stockwell and got to know Brixton really well - I thought that it was wonderful. There was an irreverent exuberance about the place that you didn’t find in other parts of London or the UK. It was I thought, at the time, a genuinely friendly place but at the same time there was an edgy sadness or rawness – a sense of mutual self protection. It was mostly black but I didn’t feel out of place – I felt strangely safe there. When I was out of work for a couple of weeks a kindly woman at the local DHSS got me “signed on” and one Wednesday morning at a specified time I found myself queuing with my UB40 in one of a number of lines (organised alphabetically) to front up to one of many trestle tables to sign on. The following Saturday morning a gyro (post office cheque) dropped through the letter box in the front door (yes they had mail delivery on Saturdays – very civilised, I thought) it was maybe 30 pounds I probably didn’t need or deserve but I was grateful. I didn’t need to sign on again. Later, I worked for some months at Ealing studios. At the time the famous studio complex was operated by the BBC as their drama centre. The surrounding suburb was the perfect example of real British middle class – a comfortable, orderly, self contained, slightly dozy metropolitan village at the end of the Tube line. So it is amazing to me that the riots struck that High Street.
Every morning I would walk out of the station at Ealing Broadway past the shopping strip and down a beautiful treelined avenue to the white boom gate and nod at the commissionaire in the guard box who had long since stopped checking my ID card. It was hard work and once within the compound I didn’t leave until I finished work – every week or so we would go to the Red Lion for a few pints – one of those quaint tiny English pubs built for midgets that was always crowded and smoke filled. Often I worked late and after 9.00 I was shouted a black taxi to take me home (as opposed to mini-cabs which were used for everything else in the budget conscious Beeb). The taxi drivers all took the exact same route – the “knowledge” must have dictated the optimal route – it went wound up going down Kensington Road (where, having not eaten, I would normally get the cab to wait while a ran in and picked up a chicken burger from Kentucky Fried Chicken) then through Green Park past the front of Buckingham Palace (I would check to see if the royal standard was flying. I imagined HRM, might be having a cup of cocoa behind the heavy curtains in one of those front rooms, completely unaware that barely 100 meters away a tired and slightly deranged Aussie film editor was zooming past in a black cab eating KFC. Then it was on down to Victoria Street – past New Scotland Yard, past Westminster Abbey, the houses of Parliament and across Westminster Bridge and from there it was about a kilometre back to the hood. It felt strange straddling these different worlds. It seemed so incongruous but all strangely connected – all part of the unique British system.
What to many was shocking and disturbing about the riots was that it broke out in so many places almost simultaneously and that it reached into safe suburbs like Ealing – it would have seemed like this was just be the beginning of something ongoing and bigger again and suggested that the magically incongruous unity of life in Britain was a fiction. What shocked and perhaps offended many of us lefties was the how blatantly amoral and opportunistic the rioters seemed to be. It wasn’t politically motivated. It wasn’t class warfare. It was aspirational rioting, or you could say a very brazen and callous strain of consumerism or capitalism. It’s hard to reconcile this with the England I knew… or thought I knew. The best writing on this event comes from our very own Tom Hyland who puts it all in an interesting historic perspective.
