The Return of the Bling

Well it’s been a while but Yacksie is back, seems I buried my head in the sand like a certain type of bird, which is actually a myth by the way.

Coming up, a couple of album reviews including Oust Le Swimming Pool debut album and maybe a youtube channel…….

Yacksie be gone!

Boonie: 52, Ben Cousins: Recount in progress.

Over the two nights last week Australia engaged in one of the most sophisticated brand recovery projects yet seen in Australia’s post-modern era. I am still digesting what I have witnessed. Somehow an “event” of great national and social importance has been conceived, undertaken and seemingly flawlessly pulled off, enchanting a public despite the competing drama of the hung parliament. Leni Riefenstahl: make room in the propaganda pantheon.

The key question here: what the hell is this all about? Ben Cousins likes getting wrecked. His antics caused his family distress and endangered his marketability. Yet only temporarily, it seems he’s certainly making up for it now. This may be negative, but does it really demand national attention? Moreover nothing about this whimsical saga strikes me as particularly strange or extraordinary except that Ben was in the public eye, had a large disposable income to devote to his recreation, and that he chose to use illicit drugs. The obsession with his benders, brought to life through his party videotapes, seems to avoid the fact that the same scene is replicated in bars and house-parties around Australia every weekend, much of it providing an enormous tax stream for the Commonwealth.

Let us change track and consider the ridiculous moralizing that this “documentary” seems to be toying with. How can we contrast Boonie’s status as an Australian sporting icon and VB marketing tool with the picture on offer? Is Boonie’s famous bender any different from what is revealed in Cousins’ tale? Sadly he neglected to tape it for us so we’ll never know. If that’s not failing his responsibility to the Australian public I don’t know what is. The sophisticated strategy employed in Cousins’ marketing/propaganda/documentary exercise plays strongly to deeply held notions of Australian masculinity and social rituals.

Cousins represents the ideal of Australian manhood: fit, skillful, understatedly intelligent, likeable, larrikin, handsome, football god. Had he literally kept his nose clean, or simply stuck to boozing I dare say his story would be remarkably different in a stellar, yet ordinary progression to admired football legend. However, he broke the contract of conservative Australian masculinity. Drugs, unauthorized adultery, homosexuality are not on. (Interestingly common assault, sexual assault, violence against women and questionable sexual practices seem less frowned upon, but that’s another story.)

Having offended against this code Cousins is in damage repair. At the end of his on-field career, he is attempting to ensure his return to the fold and create a lucrative off-field career. His strategy appears to be essentially following the emotional and narrative form of a Christian morality play. He has very successfully created a sense of drama around his human failing, he confesses his sins, repents, cathartic release, rebirth! Good times and a lesson for us all.

The genius of this tack is that it occurs in an environment of complete cynicism, manipulation and corporate sport yet it hides this reality skillfully. The notion that Cousins, a professional sportsperson since seventeen, owes the Australian public anything is an utter delusion. Despite its best efforts to pretend otherwise the AFL is not a national social institution, it is a multimillion dollar entertainment industry. Whilst there can be no doubt that this has been a calamitous experience for Ben and his family, the representation of the calamity should not be mistaken for anything other than a sophisticated revival of the narrative and image of two publicly traded commodities: Ben Cousins and the AFl. Yet going by the ratings over two nights of coverage and the media circus the enterprise seems to be generating many are enjoying the spectacle of this very public and profitable reconciliation.

the Colonial

we are all donkeys now

The United Donkey Party of Australia has just suffered a crippling blow: an endorsement from Mark Latham. Having suffered the Latham kiss we all know what must follow: grim, certain, death. Then again that’s pretty much the same as any other day. I had planned to vote for the Donkey as I have on many previous occasions. However, the thought of hanging out with Latham seems almost worse than legitimizing any of the appalling outfits masquerading as political platforms that have disturbed our peaceful stupor for the last few weeks.

Unlike other observers I will not challenge the ethics of refusal. Just because Latham shows up at your party doesn’t mean it’s not cool, it means you should have hired bouncers. The notion that voting for someone, even in the absence of anything remotely resembling an ethical, worthwhile political activity is upholding a hard won, honourable, amazingly fully sic civil tradition that makes Australia so much better than all those stupid, developing third world outfits which are trying to grip it up and be like us, is completely false. (Not even close poseurs!) Rather such voting is the betrayal of the spirit and act of democracy and it gifts the political process to latter-day Jacobins. So Jacqueline Maley of “The Age”, yes: Mark Latham is an overgrown adolescent, but your grasp of democratic theory is marked by a childlike naïveté. Desperately maintaining that contemporary political parties somehow have strong links to their traditions good or bad is ill-advised. The Liberal party no more reflects the interests of the great white Australian bigot than the Labor party is fighting for the rights of an Australian working class, social justice and all that.

Homogeneity is the new black. Modern politics parallels modern life: all interests, tastes, moral and ethical frameworks must be catered for. This however, is difficult. Much better is simply to grant the appearance of choice. Appearances are what confront the modern consumer at every turn, yet most of what is on offer is actually the same crap with a diverse array of sweeteners, condiments, patterns, colours and meaningless options. In this setting choice is reduced to a momentary delusion that allows one to persist with the series of delusions that facilitate modern life. This is also why appealing to swing voters is now the main game of Australian politics. How can it be surprising that the great unwashed in the western suburbs, reared on diets of takeaway, tied to their cars, seemingly unaware or uninterested in any agenda beyond more material wealth, are bought off with empty contracts come election time? On the flip side perhaps these are actually the smartest of all. Perhaps they have simply cast off any pretentions, lofty ideals, and vain hopes of sophisticated politics. They simply recognise their inner donkey and nose out who has the best carrots.

the Colonial

Review with Cocoa

It seems that Channel Seven has had another attempt at polluting the public sphere and subjecting us to television that is well below standard. Australia’s Strictest Parents is a wild ride through the experience of two rebellious teenagers from the city as they are plunged into the “outback” and made to shovel shit and shear sheep. The narrative structure follows rather a mundane formula; teenager is naughty, said teenager is sent to outback, farmer and wife attempt to reform teenager, teenager is once again naughty, farmer punishes teenager, teenager receives letter from parent, teenager begins to enjoy shovelling shit and shearing sheep and is reformed. On the latest episode, Nathan is described as a ‘17 year old who has lost his way’, he has dropped out of school and been picked up by the police, he also enjoys long walks on the beach and martinis. Adriana, the other juvenile delinquent, is described as “a girl who is used to getting what she wants”, look out Adriana, there aren’t any malls to hang around and shout and spit at strangers in the outback! Both examples look as though they have fallen into a bath of peroxide with some of the blonde bleach obviously leaking onto their brains. Not all is lost however, in the other corner we have the Ironside family, a proud bunch of devout Christians led by dad, Mark. The Ironside’s live on a life with a main of hard work with a side of good morals. Access to music and the internet is restricted and only Christian television is to be watched on the idiot box. If this family can’t set these kids straight, nothing will. What follows is cringe worthy, I will admit for a short period I closed my eyes, blocked my ears and shouted “there’s no place like home” while rocking in a disturbed manner.

The panacea for these children’s’ woes seems to be as follows. If you are a spoilt brat from the suburbs who has everything you could want, including hair dye, and yet still insist on behaving like a baboon with rabies who enjoys smoking and wearing an i-pod, you will be punished by being followed around by a film crew while you inflict further pain by throwing your proverbial baboon poo at an outback, farming family. At one point Nathan, perhaps the worst of the two, steals the family’s car and drives off into the sunset. Mark, a tough farmer, walks about in the dirt, spitting, muttering and finally rings the police. Nathan eventually turns the car around and comes back where the punishment begins, or does it? Nathan’s punishment consists of Mark and his wife explaining to Nathan what stealing is and that in fact, driving off in someone else’s car is just that. Nathan has the very complex argument that his act of defiance was not stealing, but was ‘just taking’. Mark explains that Nathan is lucky that the local police station is manned by a scarecrow in a police uniform and thus cannot pick up a phone. All of this leads to Nathan apologising and then shovelling dog poo from under the cages where the family’s fifteen dogs are kept (animal cruelty? The dogs that is, not Nathan). Nathan is sent back to the city with a new lease on life, he now only listens to his i-pod when he is not yelling at his mother.

In essence such a shoddy show instils the good, wholesome, family values we need in such a topsy turvy world. Here are six lessons Cocoa has learnt from Australia’s Strictest Parents;

1. If you have a naughty child, send them to the outback where someone else can deal with the problem.

2. Punishment is not the answer, simply hug your child until they can no longer breath and they slip into a coma.

3. Driving off in someone else’s car is stealing and not ‘just taking’.

4. If your parents attempt to express how they feel about you in the form of written word, you will break down crying and emerge from a cocoon of obscenity to become a beautiful butterfly of understanding and sensitivity.

5. All naughty teenagers should be kept in cages in a similar vain to those in which Mark kept his fifteen dogs.

6. Mainstream music and the internet are to blame for all our youths’ woes. I have a feeling the Frankfurt School theorists would have something to say about that, however, from now on I am only listening to birds singing and watching panda bears giving birth....just to be sure.

Ciao, Cocoa