Comments Off on Faithless Adaptations: A Critique of Little Women (2019)
Adaptations are a tricky business for any filmmaker. Regardless of the text you are adapting, there will be a dedicated fan base for the original source material who will be both the first in the cinema to watch your creation, as well as the ones most eager to tear it apart. I found myself in this position after reading Louisa May Alcott’s coming-of-age novel Little Women.
In typical bildungsroman fashion, Little Women follows sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March from childhood to adulthood. Originally published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869, the story was heavily inspired by the author’s own childhood and family. Since its publication, the novel has been well loved by readers for its honest portrayal of sisterhood, love and self-discovery.
In 2019, the novel was once again adapted into a film by renowned director Greta Gerwig. At the 92nd Academy Awards, Gerwig’s film was nominated for several awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Naturally, I was very excited to watch this so-called masterpiece.
However, I was sorely disappointed. Gerwig made considerable changes to the structure of Alcott’s novel and to her characterisation. While changes are inevitable in transplanting hundreds of pages of writing into two hours of screen time, they have to make sense. If a change is nonsensical, it risks undermining the authenticity of the adaptation and calls into question the adaptor’s understanding and interpretation of the text.
One major change in Gerwig’s Little Women was the decision to alter the timeline of the book. Instead of beginning during the sisters’ adolescence and ending during their adulthood, Gerwig’s film flits between two narratives; the childhood sequences serve as flashbacks to the main adult storyline. This, I believe, renders mute the major themes of the novel: family and growth. As readers, we watch the March sisters grow and develop as the eponymous “little women”. Many of the chapters in Part One of the novel involve the sisters learning moral lessons through their mishaps and misjudgments. For instance, in “A Merry Christmas”, the sisters are exposed to the value of sacrifice. In “Amy’s Valley of Humiliation”, Amy faces the consequences of disobedience and conceit, while in “Jo meets Apollyon”, Jo is shown the importance of patience and self-control. This depiction of personal growth is undercut by bringing the adult storyline to the forefront. The girls’ childhood is not meant to be merely fodder for character development; it is integral to who they are as women. Their familial and sororal bonds are the driving forces behind their entire existence.
In a similar vein, Marmee — the mother of the March sisters — is horribly characterised. During the years of the American Civil War, she is the main caregiver of the girls as her husband is serving as a chaplain for the Union Army. Alcott’s Marmee is the guiding light for both her children and the reader; she epitomises all she preaches. She allows her daughters to make mistakes and then helps them learn from the error of their ways. She teaches them what is important and good and right in a way that makes them (and the reader) want to (or at least try to) obey because they know they will be all the better for it.
Gerwig’s script is written in such a way that Marmee, despite being played by the incredibly talented Laura Dern, fades into the background in every scene instead of being the central force that her daughters gravitate towards. Her dialogue is reduced to backhanded quips at her husband for a reason that is difficult to identify. Perhaps this is Gerwig attempting to add comedy or perhaps it’s her not knowing how to subvert a relationship that is already quite subversive. The marriage between Mr and Mrs March is meant to be one of love, devotion, adoration and equality. Alcott’s Marmee is imbued with agency and wisdom; she is respected by all who meet her. The essence of her role in the family is established in the very first chapter as Marmee reads aloud the letter sent by Mr March: “They all drew to the fire, Mother in the big chair with Beth at her feet, Meg and Amy perched on either arm of the chair, and Jo leaning on the back”. Gerwig seems to believe that Marmee cannot embrace these principles in a film set during the 19th century so she must resort to making sharp retorts to whatever her silly husband says to assert her authority.
The film also makes the mistake of attempting to adapt Little Women in line with contemporary standards of feminism, ignoring the fact that the novel is already subversive for the time period and place in which it was written and set. In one of the film’s early scenes, Jo responds angrily to Friedrich Bhaer, a German professor who is staying at the same boarding house, when he criticises her writing. Jo’s reaction, while stemming from hurt, is illogical. Jo is writing ‘sensationalist’ stories for a newspaper to make money; importantly, she elects for the stories to not be printed under her name. In the novel, she hides this occupation from her mother because “she was doing what she is ashamed to own”. Jo does not need to ask Bhaer his opinion because she shares it already. She eventually quits writing sensationalist stories, musing “I almost wish I hadn’t any conscience, it’s so inconvenient. If I didn’t care about doing right, and didn’t feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I should get on capitally.” The director instead appears to have re-imagined this scene from a “feminist” lens; Jo can write whatever she pleases, Gerwig seems to be saying, and how dare Bhaer judge her when he knows nothing about literature! This representation has no footing when we take into account that in the source text, Jo and Bhaer’s views on the matter are aligned.
Just because Alcott’s novel does not embody that which we perceive as feminism today, does not mean that it is not a subversive representation and examination of womanhood. The sisters were never restricted by their gender, at least not by their parents. They were not forced to conform to societal standards of womanhood. They stayed true to who they were. The novel centres on familial love, it promotes empathy and compassion, it encourages the reader to — like the sisters — to be the best version of themselves. It is very empowering to read a novel about four sisters who love each other dearly and who have a strong maternal figure that cares exclusively for their happiness. Marmee does not need to assert her authority by shaking her head mournfully at her husband’s idiocy, and the “tom-boy” sister does not need to prove her agency by disagreeing with something that she fundamentally agrees with.
Gerwig also struggles to authentically represent the progression of Amy and Laurie’s relationship from childhood friends to two young people in love. In one line, Amy contends that she has always loved Laurie. However, none of the flashbacks in the film even hint at a romantic affection harboured by the young Amy. Similarly, the two seem to be just pushed together and suddenly declare their love for each other. This fails to capture the mutual respect and adoration that develops while the two characters write letters to each other while in Europe. Jo’s rejection of Laurie also fits awkwardly within the narrative, creating an uncomfortable love triangle. After Beth’s death, Jo reveals that if Laurie were to ask her to marry him again she would say yes. She even writes him a letter, but hurriedly removes it from his mailbox after discovering he has married her sister. Here, Gerwig misinterprets the effect Beth’s death has on Jo. The death does not suddenly make Jo realise that she does in fact love Laurie or that she desires to get married. Instead, the loss of her sister opens herself up to experiencing a different kind of love that she has not yet felt.
A novel worthy of an adaptation is naturally loved for what it is, so the question stands: why do filmmakers make these changes? In May, George RR Martin wrote a post on his “Not a Blog” blog, titled “The Adaptation Tango” that appeared to answer this question. He makes excellent observations from the perspective of an author who is no stranger to his work being adapted (and butchered). He states, “Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and ‘make them their own’.” Regardless of who the author is or how great their work is, he says, “there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and ‘improve’ on it.” He finishes with: “They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”
Gerwig’s Little Women has been enjoyed by audiences, and for that I am glad, especially if they felt the same joy as I did reading the novel. Yet, I cannot help but feel that it is almost disrespectful to mischaracterise an author’s creation for your own monetary gain.
Of course, Gerwig is not alone in this. Adaptations have been criticised, crucified, and torn to pieces for years past, and will be in years to come. Netflix recently announced that they were adapting Oscar Wilde’s masterpiece, The Picture of Dorian Gray, but instead of remaining true to his queer construction of Basil Hallward and the titular protagonist, the characters are instead to be made siblings. This seems particularly troubling as Wilde was imprisoned for homosexuality, with excerpts of the novel used as evidence to convict him. Emerald Fennell is also set to release her own adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Victorian gothic, Wuthering Heights, although no details on that project have yet been revealed. It appears that as long as the written word remains, the adaptation tango will too keep on going.
Comments Off on Can we please talk about Canberra Avenue now?
Canberra Avenue, the road that runs from central Queanbeyan to Parliament House, has four lanes, a wide median strip, and measures about 45 meters wide from curb to curb. It has a speed limit of 60 kilometres per hour.
But, despite adjoining schools and homes, it has almost no signalised crossings for pedestrians between Manuka and the New South Wales border.
Even when people follow the road rules along Canberra Avenue, it is extremely dangerous, and people have known this for years. At my high school, St Edmund’s College, or Eddies, which is located at 110 Canberra Avenue, it was something of a villain.
When crossing the street around the Eddies campus, you are confronted with various dangers.
Cars are moving much faster than they would elsewhere.
Looking east (away from the City), the road goes up a slight gradient, blocking your view of traffic coming off a giant, fast-moving roundabout.
Looking west (towards the City), tree branches can block your view of traffic coming from the bottom of a hill.
Only recently did the government install a footpath across the median strip.
It is drilled into you by teachers very early on that you are to have absolutely nothing to do with this road.
If a teacher on bus stop duty spotted you trying to cross, they would warn you about how dangerous it is.
In a quote that has become a proverb, dating to the early 2010s, a senior teacher in the school is said to have yelled out, in his rather direct manner, to a student running across the road, “You’re a coward!”
In around Year 9 or 10, my Health and PE teacher, who went to the school himself, used a lesson on peer pressure to tell stories of classmates in Year 11 and 12 who got into horrific car accidents by speeding down Canberra Avenue on a dare after getting their P’s.
Horror stories and accosting aside, people do cross the street. People live there, of course, and even students who don’t have many reasons to. The R2 bus runs from Wentworth Avenue, near the train station. The nearest cafes for Year 11 and 12 students going to lunch or on their free period is on the other side of the street.
Sporadically, the school will lobby the government to implement measures to improve the street’s safety: sternly worded letters, petitions to the Legislative Assembly, and public appeals in the press.
These efforts are usually dismissed as, as transport minister Chris Steel put it in response to a petition launched in 2022, a reduced speed zone for the school and its traffic calming infrastructure would be “incompatible with this road’s arterial function”.
Minister Steel also promised an internal review investigating other potential safety measures, such as a signalised crossing, but it would not seem that much has changed.
The need to implement safety measures on Canberra Avenue takes on a whole new relevance as, last Friday, the worst nightmares of Eddies’ students, staff and alumni became a reality.
Police allege a man sped down Canberra Avenue from Queanbeyan before hitting two teenage students crossing outside Eddies.
I disagree with the ACT government that safety measures around the school would be incompatible with the arterial function of Canberra Avenue, not least because many arterial roads go even further than is usually proposed.
Sydney’s notorious Pennant Hills Road, perhaps the archetypal arterial road in Australia, has a school zone and even has traffic cameras that enforce it.
Canberra Avenue, at least outside Eddies, has neither.
Many arterial roads, even in Canberra, have frequent signalised pedestrian crossings. Literally the next road over, Wentworth Avenue, has such crossings!
Canberra Avenue has none (0) in the vicinity of the school: the nearest is over a kilometre — 1 thousand meters — away.
None of these measures would have prevented a person from acting in the manner police have alleged here: stealing a car and speeding it down a wide avenue.
However, they would certainly have decreased the likelihood that these two boys would have been injured by the alleged offender’s actions.
Imagine if, instead of running for their lives across the already extremely dangerous road, the boys were waiting for a green man at a traffic light.
Imagine if these boys could have jumped out of the way of the speeding green Commodore and in front of a car going slow enough that either it could have stopped or, at least, caused much less severe injuries.
These boys were not given these options.
Can we please talk about them?
Update: After this piece was written, the territory roads minister Tara Cheyne told a press conference that she had asked her directorate for “a briefing […on] any safety treatments that we might be able to implement” on Canberra Avenue.
Whenever we drove to Cooma to visit my grandmother, I would always pester my father to put on Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) for our drive. Something about the tinkling glockenspiel and jolly tones of Papageno’s comical arias was charming, even if I couldn’t understand all the words yet. I would always get upset when we arrived just as the Queen of the Night came on to sing her famous aria. My father would never leave the car running for another mere two minutes to let me listen to the Queen trying to emotionally blackmail her daughter into committing murder.
While watching this opera a few months ago, I registered an interesting theme that was present in it, a theme that is also present in many of the fairy tales and stories so many of us grow up with. Even while basking in pure joy at seeing this beloved opera performed, I recognised the villainisation of strong, independent mother figures — those powerful women with no husband or no man directly in their lives. I noticed how their wickedness is starkened when cast as the dark shadow to their glowing, virtuous daughters or stepdaughters. The Queen is a prime example of this, a paragon of jealousy and vengefulness. Her assigned archetype of antagonist is her eternal punishment for daring to try and keep her daughter, Pamina, out of the clutches of her nemesis Sarastro, the rational and just leader of the enlightened Temple of the Sun cult.
But is the Queen justly cast as jealous and irrationally vengeful, and Sarastro fairly hailed as just, rational and enlightened? It is important to recognise the origins of the opera, which was written by men, and which premiered in 1791 — a very different century in terms of gender equality than that with which we are familiar with. Villainising a woman in a patriarchal worldview would hardly have been blinked at, as shown by the continued acceptance of the villainous nature of the Queen throughout the opera’s history. But how does the trend of strong women being punished manifest not only in this old opera but follow through to also exist in the stories we are so familiar with today? Bear with me, I know opera isn’t everyone’s thing (actually, it isn’t really mine either, and this is the exception), but the Queen and her relationship with her daughter is such a perfect lens through which to view this common theme that is tangled into so many of the stories we are raised on.
The opera starts when a handsome prince, Tamino, is rescued from a fearful serpent by the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting, who can harness the Queen’s immense power. The Queen then sets Tamino to rescue her daughter, Pamina, from the clutches of the evil man Sarastro, who heads the Temple of the Sun. Tamino embarks on this quest, with the promise of Pamina’s hand in marriage if he succeeds, with his companion Papageno, a cheeky and disobedient bird catcher also indebted to the Queen and her ladies. However, instead of rescuing Pamina, both he and Pamina herself see the “error” of the Queen’s ways and instead convert to join Sarastro in blissful and patriarchal “enlightenment”. Endings to the opera vary, some with the Queen receiving the ultimate punishment of banishment, others with the Queen reluctantly accepting her daughter’s choice and Sarastro’s undeniable wisdom.
The Queen is certainly no hero, as is obvious enough from the aforementioned emotional blackmail of her distressed young daughter. Offering one’s daughter to the first man who can save her is also questionable, though Pamina is conveniently quite pleased with the arrangement. However, the same abhorrence that infests the Queen’s actions does not do the same to her motives. She is a woman who refuses to bow to powerful men in a blatantly misogynistic world, as is evident from the lyrics of multiple arias — not surprising when considering the fact that the opera was written by men for a patriarchal society.
In the middle of the opera, we learn that the Queen’s husband died many years ago and that she refused to then relinquish her power and bow down to Sarastro. Fair enough, why should she? In Sarastro’s opinion: because she’s a woman, of course, and women are irrational and threatening to the values of justice and truthfulness when they have no man for guidance. Pamina, recently traumatised and vulnerable from her mother demanding Sarastro’s cold, dead body, is receptive to this message as he embraces her and tells her the gentle truth as he sees fit. And she enacts this “truth” she had been told, suddenly convinced that the idea of life without her own man, Tamino, is quite unbearable. It is surprising Disney never took up the story, as the Queen has such potential as a wicked stepmother and Pamina is the perfect inspiration for another princess who is given no purpose by the writers other than a prince as a means to happiness.
This corruption of Pamina, then, is the first punishment Sarastro, and as an extension, the librettists, enact against the Queen. Her daughter has fallen into the trap the Queen so desperately wished to keep her from, and the prince she thought she could rely on, a compromise to save her daughter, has likewise been ‘enlightened’ by the sexist, domineering Sarastro. Yet she continues to be punished. Throughout the opera, she becomes a trickster. At the beginning of the opera, she is portrayed as the hero, a mother desperate to get her kidnapped daughter back from a man she doesn’t trust. Yet, by the end, she has become a vicious and jealous woman who is unreceptive to reason. Her initial virtues are cast, then, as nothing but a trick, her name, and as an extension, the name of other women in a plight that refuse to conform, slandered forever.
Yet the punishment that stings the most, of course, is her banishment at the end. The ultimate punishment is a warning of what happens to women who reject the notion of male guidance and prefer to live their own lives and raise their daughters as they see fit. To the modern-day woman, Sarastro’s solemn arias about how women are not to be trusted are rather amusing, and we tease each other in the intermission about being hysterical. But to the Queen, and perhaps any women watching this performance throughout its two-and-a-half century existence, her fate is a cruel reminder of the society in which they live, where the presence of a man in their lives is the only guarantee of survival, where any desire or quest or attempt to live independently or semi-independently of men will be scorned and punished. The Queen’s fate is common in many fairy tales, where the mother figures (often a stepmother) act cruelly but are in a similar position of a dead husband or a second husband to ensure their survival. They are pitted against their daughters, their daughters sweet where they are bitter, gentle where they are harsh, submissive where they are authoritative. Being a woman is a nuanced business, but these dichotomies insinuate that there are only two ways to go about it — be good or be evil — a lie through which male dominance has historically consolidated its grip on humanity. So next time you watch a Disney movie or read a fairytale to a young cousin or sibling, or perhaps even go to the opera (not that the Canberra opera scene is particularly active), lend an extra thought to the wicked mother, and whether she is truly wicked, or merely forced by the writers of the past to be wicked through her actions.
Comments Off on Walking on a Dream: The Disappointment of the Bunda Street Shared Zone
Canberra’s inner north has been my home my whole life; my backyard, Bunda Street.
The street has always been on the frontline of the fight between car-centric road planners, pedestrians, and resilient small businesses. Back in the 70s, Gus Petersilka, the founder of the recently closed Gus’ Cafe, fought with the federal government for the right to have outdoor dining, today a key attraction of the area.
My own memories of Bunda Street include family birthday dinners at long-gone Chinese food establishments like Sammy’s and Hidden Dragon, being stood up at what was to be my first-ever date at Kokomo’s, and many strolls up and down the street, a cup of Via Dolce coffee in hand, after a late weekend brunch.
Last year marked the tenth anniversary of the ACT government’s designation of Bunda Street as a shared zone. Pedestrians were given priority, popular crossing spots were raised to slow cars down, line markings were removed, the bitumen was painted and paved differently from other streets, and the speed limit was reduced to a much safer 20 kilometres per hour.
This comprised the last stage of the ‘City Loop’, a project to create a cycling and walking corridor through the city that avoided busy roads like London Circuit and Cooyong Street. Has this car diet been a success? To anyone who regularly uses the street today, the answer is obviously a resounding no.
Crossing the street as a pedestrian remains unpleasant (and, during peak hours, dangerous) as it was before the renovation. Drivers refuse to yield as they are required to, frequently slamming their brakes just before hitting people — a sin most commonly committed by white cars bearing NSW license plates, in my experience.
The choice to keep a large number of street parking spaces means that using the street for its intended post-renovation purpose — cycling — requires negotiation with cars that randomly stop to take a parking space or pull out without looking or indicating.
Many drivers use it as a rat run from Northbourne Avenue to avoid the stretch of traffic lights on Cooyong Street. This includes many commuters, but whenever there’s a large national event in Canberra, you can bet that an even longer line of cars will inexplicably line up Bunda as a poorly thought-out shortcut.
Bunda Street’s shared zone signage seems more directed at reminding pedestrians of their putative right to cross unimpeded rather than informing drivers of their obligation to slow down to preserve said right. At the intersection with the pedestrianised part of Ainslie Avenue that runs through the Canberra Centre, there’s an unnecessary and confusing set of traffic lights with crossing signals erected before the pedestrianisation that were never removed.
This is not to say that the renovations were entirely pointless. The street is much more pleasant than the dangerous car sewer it replaced. A video of a pro-same-sex marriage march in 2011 shows activists being wedged onto the tight footpaths on either side of the street — a stark contrast from the colourful street-wide protest march against the “bigot bill” a decade later. The shared zone, combined with the Canberra Centre’s recent pedestrianisation of Scotts Crossing, has made Bunda Street even more vibrant and accessible.
The territory government has for decades tried to encourage the take-up of active and public transit, but it has often done so with vague and unclear initiatives like “car-free days”, which scare the car-dependent Canberran public into thinking that Chairman Barr is coming for their beloved vehicles.
They would do better at reducing our dependence on cars by making a real effort to make active and public transit as comfortable as driving. The tram provided a fantastic alternative for inner north and Gungahlin residents, but the sharp reduction in suburban bus frequencies that occurred at the same time as the tram has been entirely unhelpful.
My dream for my backyard, at the risk of sounding like a NIMBY (Not In My BackYard), would be for Bunda Street to be closed to car traffic. Not every street needs cars running down it, much less an eat street atop a large underground car park a block away from Canberra’s largest transit interchange.
There is no argument against freeing Bunda Street from the tyranny of the private motor vehicle.
For all the hassle they cause, the number of parking spaces along the street and the revenue they bring in is miniscule. FOI documents last year revealed that the territory government makes (on average) only about $80,000 a year from paid parking on the street while issuing about $250,000 in parking fines. It is the businesses along the street, not the parking spaces, that attract people to come here.
The idea that businesses need unimpeded car access to the street is also bunk. During the annual Multicultural Festival, where the whole street becomes a pleasant car-free marketplace, deliveries to businesses along the street are certainly impacted, but not meaningfully prevented.
A good compromise would be closing the street between Tocumwal Lane (the laneway near Via Dolce) and Genge Street (near Wilma), which would force away the worst of the through-traffic while leaving cyclists, deliveries and other essential traffic largely unimpeded. Retractable bollards could allow vehicle access during emergencies or public events like parades.
Closing Bunda Street to car traffic would be transformative. The street would join the great Australian malls like Pitt Street, Bourke Street, Queen Street, the Rundle Mall and Murray Street as vibrant, people-first spaces. It would be a much safer route for cyclists and pedestrians to roam the city and inner north — a much nicer backyard for Canberrans to gather in.
Comments Off on ‘THE HOUSE’: ANU’S RESIDENTIAL HALLS AS A MICROCOSM OF PARLIAMENTARY ELITISM
‘Is there much of an upstairs-downstairs feel in Parliament House?’
‘Yeah, we’ve got people upstairs who have probably never been down to the basement… if I wanted people to take note, I’d stop delivering coffee and toilet paper.’
These are the words of Sandy McInerney, Logistics Manager of Parliament House’s underground ‘catacombs’, in conversation with Annabel Crabb in her 2017 docuseries The House. Offhand words in one twenty-second conversation of a three-hour documentary series, which amongst all those exploring the glory and intricacies of Parliament’s ‘upstairs’ rooms, were the ones that lingered in my mind.
Parliament is a living, breathing organism of democracy, of high-level thinking, of the most important people in Australia. But McInerney’s words starkly remind us that no well-pressed suit, nor feet on immaculately steamed red and green carpet, exempt our high-calibre Parliamentarians from their human needs.
It does, however, seemingly exempt them from having to fulfil these needs themselves.
Our most important figures simply float through the halls of Parliament unaffected by such lowly considerations as where to buy their next coffee, or whether the toilet will be clean for them to use. They take blissful baths in the upstairs glory of The House, while a hidden workforce who ‘rarely sees the light of day’ weaves its way through an underground road and tunnel network, ensuring the functionality and comfort of Parliament; it’s just part of the job. The structural hierarchy – the dichotomy between the presentable and the obscured, the up and the down, the fore- and background – is built into the building itself, and subsequently built into parliamentary culture. This culture only works to perpetuate complex notions of ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ that pervade public reality: if the physical manifestation of Australian freedom and justice, representing the views and interests of the Australian people, is so plainly hierarchised, how can we expect society’s culture to reflect or embody anything else?
As I watch the flag fly atop Parliament’s glistening roof from just down the street, I contemplate the people I’m surrounded by, studying at Australia’s National University. I’ve met many a person in my eight months on campus who I could confidently say will sit in Parliament in twenty years. ANU graduates ‘go on to become leaders in government.’ I’m decidedly nestled in a culture that is fostering the minds that will fill the rooms of Parliament soon enough, and who similarly have their day-to-day needs managed in a basement that they will likely never lay eyes on.
My realisation, then, was that these future parliamentarians are, given the immense population of fellow first-year students living on campus, living their day-to-day lives now in much the same dynamic.
When I moved to Canberra, one of the biggest shocks to my system was learning that the kitchens, the bathrooms, the dining areas, and everything short of the individual rooms (unless you’re a Johns resident, if I’m to disseminate frivolous rumours) of my residential hall got cleaned not by those that used it, but by cleaning staff who have nothing to do with the dirtying of these spaces. Clogged sinks filled to the brim with ominous soup turned to sparkling silver overnight. Abandoned pots and pans and knives and forks left strewn across benches after the 7pm rush disappeared eventually. Moulding food was swept away when it got too apparent that its owner was probably not coming back for it.
I couldn’t believe it – I’d gone from being a nineteen-year-old who, despite her freeloading at home, had some semblance of responsibility for cleanliness, to a twenty-year-old who could ultimately leave whatever mess she’d like with very limited real consequences, despite likely dirty looks from others trying to use the stoves.
While having cleaning staff in itself is by no means condemnable, it highlights a crucial element of residential hall existence – that there is a certain, in-built element to this lifestyle that places our education and frankly, in many cases, our exercise of privilege in attending university, above our need to take responsibility for our everyday existence. We are being implicitly told that our intelligence and our ability to pay to live on campus – or, more commonly, to be paid for – places us above the need to engage with the mundane aspects of adult living, particularly for those living in catered residences. In this respect, we are young parliamentarians in more ways than being students of politics and law: living as if we are too important to change a toilet roll.
So many of us wouldn’t know the names of the people who mop our floors for us, and no matter how clean we keep our spaces, we therefore play a part in being the upstairs residents who would take most note of our cleaning staff if they stopped filling the paper towel dispensers and wiping the desks we study on. We can beg the question of whether living in residences, being fed and cleaned for, prepares us for the ‘real world’, but the cold truth is that, for many people, it sure does. Their real world will become the professionalised version: a workplace where they are cushioned by assurance that they need not lift a finger to feel cared for and have not since their first day at college. They will not see the insides of a maintenance cupboard nor the basement of whichever sunlit office they work in and will learn that this is what they worked for: to have the less palatable requirements of comfortable existence offloaded onto someone else.
The wake-up call here is not to drop out of college and start a commune, by any means. This lifestyle gives so many people the opportunities to pursue elements of independent living and study that they otherwise never would have dreamt possible. What lingers in my mind, though, is that this way of living is not as natural or normal as it can begin to feel when immersed in the insularity of it all. Hierarchy does not sit well in houses of any description, yet Australia’s most important House has it coursing through its veins; food for discomforting thought.
The wake-up call is, instead, to thank your cleaners, next time you see them; they are the people who underpin the lifestyle we’re lucky enough to lead, and there will never come a fictitiously constructed hierarchy that changes that.
On the night of the 1st of September, a category 2 cyclone hit Melbourne. I was alone in my parent’s house, lying high and awake in my childhood bed. Checking my notes app the next day, I noticed that I’d written something.
“It’s two forty-five in the morning. I’m alone in my childhood home, and I’m a little scared.”
I used to love storms. I still do, at least on an intellectual level. There’s something empowering about the natural world, and the quiet strength of our buildings withstanding a battering. But it’s been three years since I was in Melbourne for a proper storm, and I’m not used to them anymore. Melbourne isn’t entirely home anymore.
The storm, and my reaction to it, cemented a realisation that’s been dawning on me for some time; I’m getting older. I’m not the same Henry as I was in first year. When I first moved to Canberra, I was a fresh-faced (albeit hirsute) eighteen-year-old. There were endless streams of new people to meet, and I had complete freedom for the first time in my life. As these years went on, Canberra became home. Daley Road became home. I don’t know when Canberra became home, though I know that it is. But now, I’m about to turn twenty-one, and I’m preparing to leave this leafy home. Moving out of Daley Road feels like I’m moving into a new phase. I’m on the precipice of adulthood, and I’d be lying if that wasn’t daunting.
Canberra is a transitory place. Most of us never plan to stay here forever, though many of us will. As students in Canberra, we live a quasi-nomadic life. Our friends are from all over, and there’s endless trips to someone’s hometown that can be made. Since moving to Canberra, I’ve spent more time in Sydney than I ever thought I would. I’ve become familiar with a smorgasbord of small towns —places I didn’t even know existed when I decided to leave Melbourne.
Just like Canberra, being college-age is transitory. For the past three years, my identity has been in constant flux. Every possible experience is handed to you on a platter. I’ve attended talks at embassies immediately after coordinating some of the Engineering School’s brightest minds to make a bong. That’s the beauty of early adulthood. It’s a period of constant discovery. Of constant change, excitement, and experimentation. There’s a reason you don’t see many 40 year olds packing into the forests near Pialligo for a doof. After a while, the chaos becomes disorienting. I’m aware it’s bizarre that I’m writing this sentence but nevertheless, I’m getting old.
Adulthood excites me. A while back, I had a conversation with one of my best friends. Being from Melbourne, we’re both rarities in our Sydneysider friendship group. Driving along Hoddle Street in Melbourne, on our way to a day of unnecessarily expensive sandwiches and thrifting in Fitzroy, he asked me whether I’d rather get older or get younger and redo my childhood. I generally avoid existential crises before lunchtime, but this dilemma gripped me.
I didn’t have a good answer at the time, but I can now confidently say that adulthood excites me more than youth. Stability is more thrilling to me than chaos. I think that makes me boring and I think that’s what scares me the most. I was asked once if I’d prefer to be happy or interesting. At the time I said interesting. But I can’t stand by that answer anymore. I would rather be happy and simple.
The tragedy of youth is that it ends. We can only be interesting for so long, at some point, normalcy comes knocking. What is daunting to me now is that I know I’ll open the door. As I attend my last college events, as I go to house inspections and fill out rental applications, as I apply for APS and paralegal jobs, as I leave hospo behind, I am walking down the corridor. I don’t know if I’m ready to open the door, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll have to turn the knob anyway.
Comments Off on What arts degrees are really costing us
Upon making the ever-predictable switch from the flashy PPE degree to the humble Bachelor of Arts at the end of my first semester of university, the typical reaction — after a cursory glance at my outfit, followed by a quip that I ‘look more like an Arts student anyway’ — was that of good-natured derision: ‘studying unemployment, then?’. After all, as one jokes, I may as well have taken several tens of thousands of dollars and tossed them in the creek. The disdain towards arts degrees as endeavours of childish passion or directionless experimentation is one which I have internalised since learning of their existence and the attitudes they elicit, and one which has been perpetuated for generations. The idea that the BA is professionally futile sits smugly in the minds of Australians, young and old, not budging for any desperate attempts by arts students (myself included, of course) made to polish its colloquial reputation. They’re unemployable, plain and simple!
Adding fuel to the fire for the status of arts degrees is the ever-looming rise in their prices, a lingering hangover from the Coalition government’s 2021 implementation of the ‘Job Ready Graduates’ (JRG) scheme, which increased student contribution to humanities degrees by 113 percent. 2024 is the first year that the average arts degree costs a student over $50,000. The scheme has been subject to heavy criticism by Australian universities but nevertheless forced the tightening of their budgetary belts to respond to the withdrawal of government funding to the humanities. Close to home, several Bachelor programs such as Development Studies and Middle East and Asian Studies have been struck off the ANU’s degree offerings in light of the changes.
The JRG scheme has, however, proven a failure, with the subsidisation of ‘in-demand’ non-humanities degrees making negligible changes to interest in the arts. The Labor government is soon set to reflect in new policy a need to reconstruct the scheme and its fee arrangements ‘before it causes long-term and entrenched damage to Australian higher education’, according to education minister Jason Clare.
However, the impacts have already been felt. Pre-existing notions of arts degrees as futile, unemployable ventures have snowballed, with their emergent association with financial irresponsibility and privileged pretension. All this against the backdrop of the cost-of-living crisis and persistent HECS-HELP indexation has led to the warped image of the BA as being accessible exclusively to those cushioned by wealth and guarantees of stability.
This image is not innocuous, and threatens not only a new arts student’s fragile ego but the essence of the study of humanities itself. Studies of politics, literature, history, anthropology, development and sociology rely inherently on diversity of perspective and challenge the structures that govern human interaction to foster the critical thinking skills required to maintain it. For as long as arts degrees are believed, understandably, to be lying behind significant social and financial barriers, the arts degree will fall victim to the fatal flaw of any area of study: homogeneity.
ANU’s status as the university with the lowest proportion of low-income students in the country makes this all the more apparent. The mere fact that the typical ice-breaker question in the first tutorial of Introduction to Philosophy was which inordinately expensive residential hall each of us resided at was evidence enough that diversity of background and perspective is, for the most part, not the forte of the arts cohort. The reality remains that for many prospective students from low socio-economic backgrounds, these expensive courses are cast as a rich kids’ playground, where ideas from well-funded high school philosophy classes are recycled and jargon is revered. Admittedly, epiphenomenal consciousness can have even the most avid wordsmith’s eyes rolling. Still, it is the critical thinking skills that humanities courses seek to attune that are the victims of the stereotype of pretentiousness that surrounds them.
The development of literacy, critical analysis and communication skills — emboldening the idea that more than one solution to a problem exists and that subjectivity holds value — are the arts degree’s overt strengths and those its defenders eagerly spout. However, as far as their usefulness is concerned, for every prospective student who refrains from pursuing tertiary education by virtue of its financial impossibility, the quality of these skills diminishes.
Suppose there are not wide ranges of perspectives and criticism in the classrooms of these courses. In that case, they will never truly serve to develop the ‘adaptability and ability to help shape change’ proclaimed by our university as the degree’s purpose. What’s more, at a time when artificial intelligence has thrown the replicability status of human critical thinking and retrospection into question, to hike the prices of the courses designed to foster them such that they are confined to the realm of academic indulgence, rather than the accessible mainstream, is irresponsible. It only acts to give arts degrees unique futility.
In a time where HECS no longer universally cushions young people’s tertiary education decisions and university education maintains its culture of exclusivity, a costly course thought to be undertaken by those with the assurance of employability and financial stability is ‘useless’ insofar as it remains restricted and stained by elitism. Change to the JRG scheme is imperative; job readiness is never achieved through punishing students’ pursuit of passion, but by opening opportunities to bring invaluable diversity of attitude and perspective to the classrooms, training the future (very employable, thank you very much) professionals of Australia.
Comments Off on ANU Arts Revue: Sending Brian Back to Kansas
Arts Revue opens with a joke. Not a skit, a single joke. The keyboard player gets up, walks to centre stage, and announces that he’s going to tell a joke that’s ‘okay to say’, because he heard it on the radio.
“How does a pornstar get paid?
Income.”
(Get it, because it sounds like in-cum?)
It wasn’t a bad joke – it was fine, it got a laugh – but we were left confused. Who was this guy, who didn’t appear in a single skit after his one joke? Why was this the opener? Were they stalling while they sorted out technical issues? Did he just really want to be a part of it, while also playing his keyboard?
Arts Revue left all of these questions unanswered, but it gave us a great show to make up for it. The just-fine pornstar joke is thankfully followed by an excellent ‘Life is a Highway’ parody, ‘Life is a Parkes Way’, full of jokes about the perils of driving in Canberra. This was the first of many solid parodies. A special shoutout to ‘Love is an Open Door/There’s Vomit on the Floor’, an ode to a scenario many a Senior Resident has faced on a Thursday night, and a long but funny and oddly heartwarming skit where the Phantom of the Opera joins the Backstreet Boys. Though these were all good, the highlight had to be the number about society keeping Miss Piggy and Kermit apart. The costuming – a frog suit, a dress and a cheap wig – was exactly what you’d expect, and Georgia Mcculloch’s performance as Kermit was especially moving. From Kermit to Brian Schmidt’s American accent to the practised cadence of a newsreader, Mcculloch’s unique talent for impressions – ie. ‘doing funny voices’ – meant she never once broke character.
If a powerful, poignant anthem about the enduring power of frog-pig sex doesn’t sound like your kind of thing, then Arts Revue provided plenty of ANU-related comedy for the average revue enjoyer. A breakup between ANU and Schmidt, where his Nobel Prize is the other woman, captured the heartbreak of Schmidt’s departure. Even the Devil himself, accompanied by a grovelling minion he had an insane amount of sexual tension with, visited to announce his plans for a new and improved ANU. These ranged from not-that-bad-maybe-an-improvement-actually (sinking Wamburun into the depths of Hell) to downright evil (quadruple-factor authentication for every sign-on).
Not all of the skits were this good. A few were just drawn-out puns. A woman goes to the doctor about a lump on her arm; it’s Taylor Cyst, a cyst that plays Taylor Swift songs. Bird watchers make jokes about seeing nice pairs of tits. The latter does get points for walking right up to my co-writer and implying they had thrush, though. Excellent audience participation, almost as good as the bit where they turned off all the lights and ran a guided meditation, lulling us all into a false sense of security so that they could steal our belongings. Thankfully everything was returned after the show – no need to press charges.
Charlie Joyce Thompson deserves a special mention for bringing an extra laugh to every skit he starred in. His delivery, accents, acting and improv were fantastic and he had us keeling over, whether he was playing Miss Piggy or a South African High Court judge.
We saw Arts Revue on the opening night, so we were ready to forgive any tech issues. Which is good, because there were a fair few of them: lights going up randomly during scenes that were supposed to be dark (at least we think so), Taylor Swift playing during the devil’s speech and the wrong Powerpoint playing during a student presentation skit – somehow, this last one was still kind of funny.
Nonetheless, Arts Revue proved a funny, well-coordinated, well-acted performance. Its strengths were its actors and its parodies and musical numbers, each one somehow better than the last. It ended with a bang: a parody of ‘I’m Just Ken’ to the tune of “I’m Just Brian” and mashed up with even more Backstreet Boys. A fantastic way to the end night, and a charming and funny end to the revue season.
Comments Off on Interview with ANU alum, director and producer of The Giants, Rachael Antony
Few figures have had as powerful an impact on the course of Australian history as Bob Brown.
Currently showing in cinemas, The Giants is a feature length biopic directed and produced by ANU alumn Rachael Antony, exploring the life and accomplishments of Bob Brown alongside a stunning portrayal of the history of the Tasmanian forest and landscape. The documentary reveals his journey from doctor in Tasmania, to eventual leader of the first Greens party, and hero of the Australian environmentalism movement.
The Giants skilfully traces the achievements of Bob Brown as champion and protector of the Tasmanian forest and Franklin River, beautifully interwoven with the lifecycle and stories of the forest itself. While much of Bob’s life has been subject of public interest and knowledge, The Giants takes viewers behind the curtain. The film explores Bob’s private world and the important figures who have continually supported him behind the scenes. Showing the parallel life stories of Bob and the forest he treasured, side by side, The Giants invites viewers to come to know the trees as Bob did; wise custodians of the land and complex beings with their own history to tell.
Seeking to both entertain and educate, The Giants explores the horrors of clear felling and logging that plague the Tasmanian forest. While tracing the journey of Brown’s courageous fight to save both the trees and the Franklin River, viewers are reminded of the willing ignorance of political figures against whom Bob fought, showing (as if Australians needed further reminding) the sheer greed and recklessness of private interest and political parties’ historic, blatant disregard for Australia’s natural treasures. This destruction continues to this day. I suggest readers check out the Bob Brown Foundation Instagram to follow the journey of Lenny who is currently attached in protest to a cable logger, protecting the forest around her from logging, which is a critical habitat for Swift parrots.
Breathtaking drone shots, archival footage, and intriguing animations work together to create a stunning cinemascape for viewers, bringing the trees to life and immersing viewers in the world that Bob fought so hard to protect. For aspiring activists, those interested in the origins of Australian politics, or any lover of the natural world, The Giants is a worthwhile watch.
I sat down with Rachel to chat about making The Giants, the inspiration behind the film, and why more people should put Tasmania on their travel lists.
To start off with, I’d love to know a little bit about you and your background, and how you came to be directing and producing this documentary?
Long story short, I studied in Canberra. I studied anthropology and politics. And even though I didn’t work in either of those fields, I found that they were really quite helpful because I think both anthropology and politics ask you to question your assumptions and to ask questions of the status quo, and that’s really the starting point of any storytelling, I think. Later I studied journalism at RMIT. So I started out as a writer, and then I guess as time has evolved, and video has evolved, I’ve branched into different mediums and worked in TV and online video.
Originally the idea was to get people off screens and get them engaged into events, but based around the screens, I guess. So one of the things that came out of that was we wanted to do this big event for the anniversary of Cathy Freeman’s win at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. So we want to do that in 2020, and then what happened was everybody loved this idea, but we couldn’t get any money. Then we ended up getting some funding from ABC to make a documentary and that was the best possible thing that could have happened because September 2020, everybody was locked down, stuck at home watching television. Yeah. So that’s how that came about.
So then once we finished Freeman, I guess we were thinking about telling stories about people whose stories are bigger than themselves. Because I think, while people can be fascinating individually, the stories that they tell in terms of the way that their life is, and the messages, the bigger that is, the more compelling it is.
We were thinking about other people who we felt were really interesting and to be honest, really only one name came up and that was Bob Brown.
I think one thing that we were quite concerned about was the messages we’re getting about climate change. We have a kid ourselves, so we have this very tangible link to the next generation. Which is not to say that we wouldn’t have cared otherwise, because we did. Then of course, with the bushfires, what we saw was a massive amount of our native forests destroyed. And then soon after that, you know, while native animals were being pushed to the brink of extinction, we saw state logging operations coming in and conduct salvage logging, so removing old dead trees from the forest that – if they had just been left – would have served as habitat because various species of birds or possums can live in dead trees, and it gets them off the ground away from predators.
At this point, we just felt this was taking things too far, humans will never have enough. We’ll never say ‘no, we’re done now’. It’s always about more, things are really out of balance. We thought ‘this is crazy’, and around the same time we have been getting really inspired by some of the reading we had been doing. So we’ve been reading the Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard, and they’re making us start thinking differently about forests and trees and also realising how crucial they were.
We made this film pretty quickly, so it’s hard to remember exactly how it all came together. But what we came up with was telling the story of Bob Brown, intertwined with the life of trees. The reason we did that is because we felt that by embedding the forest into the film from the outset, it sort of explained Bob’s worldview and why he’s worked so hard to save these forests and why we should all care about this as well. We also wanted to show the majesty and beauty of these places. Keeping in mind that, you know, Australia is one of the few places left on earth that does have primary forest. In Europe, they basically have no primary forest. So this is a very long story, but um, an answer to your question ‘how did it end up producing directing?’ well, a whole lot of life events.
One of my favourite parts of the film was the way it wove together Bob’s personal life with the hidden story of the trees and embedded his story within the story of the forest. I got the impression of so much richness and depth to Bob’s life. How did you decide which aspects of Bob’s personal life you were going to kind of focus on?
So we decided we would tell the story of Bob, intertwine it with a life of trees, everybody said that was a good idea. Nobody said ‘you’re crazy, how are you going to put Bob’s life into 45 minutes and the trees into 45 minutes?’ And so the answer to that is, we didn’t.
The film was at an hour and fifty three minutes, we could not get it any shorter. Our first cut was three hours, and we hadn’t even finished making the film. So to answer that, we really had to be quite brutal. I guess, because we had intertwined the life of trees, we had meeting points for both. So that gave us a trajectory, from you know, seedling, childhood, to sapling, maturity, and grandfather elder, if you like.
So we knew where we were going, then we needed to figure out which things to put in, which not. In the end, we had to get rid of a lot of stuff that’s actually pretty fascinating. Bob tried to pass gun control in Tasmania, years before Port Arthur happened and both Liberal and Labour parties shot it down, figuratively speaking. We didn’t put in the fact that he and another bunch of environmentalists were sued for $20 million by the Gunns wood chipping company in Tasmania.
We didn’t put in the fact that Bob once took out a mortgage to pay the ransom of an Australian pirate who had been kidnapped in Somalia.
So I know this is so much more, so what we had to do is this broad brushstroke story that connected as much as possible with those key convictions. He talks about optimism, he talks about defiance and he talks about compassion. So we found those stories, the ones that told those stories most strongly, or pointed into the direction of the forest, are the ones that we went to. So it was really quite a heartbreaking process. Also, obviously Paul [Bob’s partner] is a central character, but I’m sure if you’ve seen the films, you know that at every step there’s this amazing woman, right in there, doing exactly the same thing, he doesn’t do it alone. Each one of those women has a whole backstory. Basically we could have made a mini series, but we didn’t, we’ve made a film. So yeah, so the answer is, we just took the bits that told the story the best, and then we had to kill our darlings, so to speak.
Obviously we were always going to talk about his relationship with Paul, and then that became a slightly bigger part of the story, because while we always wanted to present that essentially as a love story, obviously it was complicated by the legal and social context of the time, so we needed to provide some background to that. So we have Paul, who was involved in gay law reform in Tasmania, tell that story about the movement that was headed up by people like Rodney Croome. So that did become a little bit bigger, but I think it also became stronger because of it.
When you were envisioning the documentary, how were you hoping people would feel walking away from it? Was there something in particular that you wanted people to feel or be influenced towards?
We felt Bob was an interesting character because he’s a baby boomer, but his interest in his message is so contemporary. We felt that a lot of the dialogue around climate change has pitted one generation against the other: the generation that’s old and has benefited from everything and stuffed it up for the younger generation. And a lot of that is true, but not entirely true. We felt that the best way to tackle these issues was in a cross generational way, whether it’s on action or voting, or whatever it is. We thought that Bob, because he’s an older person, but he speaks to younger audiences, we felt that he was potentially a unifying person in some ways. What we wanted people to feel was wonder and marvel for our forest and our natural heritage, which is so extraordinary. Most Australians know about the Redwoods, but I don’t think many people know about the Eucalyptus regnans. People would be horrified if they thought ‘oh, you would just pulp the redwoods for toilet paper’, but that’s apparently okay in Australia!
But it’s not, because 70% to 80% of people want native logging stopped, they just don’t understand what it really entails. People think it’s been used to make fine furniture, but it’s not, only 2% is used for long term wood products, 60% of it is left on the forest floors, and it’s set on fire. It transforms from a carbon storage facility of a forest to carbon emissions. It’s just insanity.
So we want people to feel a wonderment about the forest, but we also wanted them to feel hopeful and galvanised, if that’s possible. We didn’t want to make a depressing documentary. We can’t watch depressing documentaries and definitely can’t spend two and a half years making one. So while some of the subject material was challenging, I think overall it’s a hopeful film, and I think overall, Bob is a hopeful person and you do need hope right now.
We just need to stay focused on the idea that if we are hopeful and if we act, then change will come. And as Bob says, it was a long campaign to save the Franklin, eighteen months before it was saved, it looked like it was doomed. So eighteen months isn’t a long time, it’s not even two years. So what we think is, let’s talk about native forest logging now and let’s finish it now. Because if we’ve got money for submarines and football stadiums and tax cuts for very rich people, then we have money to stop this industry that’s costing us money and to make meaningful action on climate change.
There’s some absolutely stunning shots of the Tasmanian landscape throughout the film. How did you balance trying to get those shots with trying not to disturb or harm the ecosystems and wildlife where you were filming?
We worked with a team called The Tree Projects in Tasmania. They’re professional tree climbers, and they helped to rig cameras high up into the canopy. So the opening shot that you see is not a drone camera. We showed the forest in a number of ways. One was using cameras, one was using drones, and one was 3D scanning of the forest working with an organisation called TerraLuma, at University of Tasmania. Then sending the data to Alex Le Guillou who’s a French animator, and he turned it into point cloud animation. The animation you see in the film is actually an actual tree. So what we did was actually cast three trees like you would do three characters. Eucalyptus regnans, which are amongst the tallest plants from the world; Huon pines, one of the oldest lived and myrtle beech in the Tarkine, which is one the most diversity rich trees. One of the people we spoke to described it as a ‘great barrier reef of trees’ because it’s covered in lichen and algae and stuff. Very interesting trees. So in answer to your question, for instance that tree in the Tarkine, it’s just inside an area near a clear fell. So basically, the Bob Brown foundation stopped them logging it, otherwise it wouldn’t have been there. They’re really taking direct action, using whatever means they have to protect the Tarkine and to protect native forest in Tasmania, as are, you know, groups across Australia. And it’s really thanks to their direct action that we could film that tree, because literally, it’s next in line.
Speaking about some of the other groups that are operating in Australia, while you were making this documentary, I think it was at the same time that Blockade Australia was taking action that was very reminiscent of Bob’s methods, these really direct, not aggressive, but impactful stages of a protest. How do you kind of feel about that? Did it give you any similar hope, reflecting on those young people doing such similar work to what Bob did during his life?
I didn’t think specifically about Blockade Australia, but, obviously, we’re all very well aware of the school strikes and all those other environmental grassroots movements, and also youth movements. At the time, I remember just before COVID-19, when there were these massive street protests, and there was debate over whether kids should be on the street or not, and my personal feeling was always to say “when there’s kids on the street, it’s a symptom that adults haven’t stepped up and done their job, so this is the only means left to them.” They can’t vote, they don’t have other means of power. So for me, it was really a symptom of adult failure. I guess we wanted to contribute to that.
I think that when you think about climate environmentalism, it’s very easy to feel overwhelmed. But ultimately, everybody can do something.
When I interviewed Christine Milne, she said something very interesting, which was that environmental movements need everyone, they need people to protest, sometimes they need people to get arrested, but they also need graphic designers or web people. Ultimately, the world just needs people who can just have an environmental frame of mind.
Maybe you can’t protest, but maybe if you’re in health or education or departments, you often have within yourself the power to ask questions to make changes, and these can add up to quite a lot. I think when you look at Bob Brown and all he’s achieved in his life, him being one person alone, but making that decision is just really the fundamental start.
Something I really loved about the film was how it wove archival footage of the protests on the Franklin together with recent footage of Bob Brown. What was the process like of finding that footage?
It was really massive because Bob Brown has basically put on fifty years of activism, so he’s been in the public eye for that time. So, we had an extraordinary amount of material to work with, but that was also the problem as well, because there was so much to work through so we did a number of things. We got a lot of news, archived from the ABC, and probably most of what you see of the Franklin is that, but the more recent Franklin footage was sourced from other places.
One of the reasons why we showed modern footage of the Franklin is that the older footage, I think, fails to capture the beauty because it feels a bit faded and it doesn’t quite have the aesthetic quality of contemporary footage. So we wanted to really show, ‘actually this is how it looks and it is really spectacular’. Also access from the National Library of Australia, they have Bob Brown’s personal archive there, which is again, massive amounts of boxes, and we were able to go through that to get childhood photos and reports, and letters and get up the idea of who was crucially important in his personal life, and then there are a number of documentaries as well that we could source material from. So, let us say that we have an archive producer who basically has this spreadsheet from hell, so it’s a huge job.
When you were going through the process of filming, you said it was over two and a half years. Was there a particular memorable or special moment either with Bob Brown or maybe just with the trees, that stands out to you from your time making the film?
Well, so when I say two and a half years, that’s not filming, that’s doing everything so you know, producing, scripting, and post production everything. We did the shoot in Liffey, at Bob’s farmhouse and it was really, I guess, interesting, because he had talked about this house as like this companion and this friend. So it was interesting to go there and see how it was, and suddenly just to be struck by the warmth of that environment and how beautiful it is. Because you’ve got the farmhouse, you’ve got the mountains, you’ve got the river and all the elements are in place, and I feel like there’s something in that landscape that really balances Bob’s idea, which is like you’ve got this little human space, which is the hut, but there’s space for nature all around it. And that for me sort of encompasses the way he looks at the world. We should take up a little bit of space but let everything else flourish.
What’s interesting is the Tarkine where we filmed, it’s really 30km away from Cradle Mountain National Park, which is one of the biggest tourism draw cards in Tasmania. So you could literally go there and just drive along [to the Tarkine], and that would be like the perfect tourism adventure, but it’s just being logged and Tanya Plibersek is yet to rule on whether that forest will become a toxic waste dump for a Chinese mining company. So really, the more people who go to the Tarkine and talk about it, the better, because this is an absolutely astonishing rainforest and the Bob Brown Foundation has this encampment out there sometimes and you can go and meet people and find out about the place.
When you stand in that forest, it’s weird, it’s like you’re not standing on ground. You’re standing on this sort of spongy surface. It’s like millions of years of organic matter beneath your feet and it’s so quiet, it’s just really unworldly. So I really encourage people to go there, as Bob says, the Tarkine is a very arresting place.
THE GIANTS is now screening at Palace Electric Canberra, find all screenings: https://www.thegiantsfilm.com
There will be a National Day of Action for Native Forests – including Canberra on August 19. Details here: https://defendthegiants.org/events/
Few figures have had as powerful an impact on the course of Australian history as Bob Brown.