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