Syriana

From time to time, high-ranking CIA mandarins will gather around in a bunker in deepest Langley, Virginia and play games about Middle Eastern regime change. They will choose a fictitious country and put it though its hypothetical paces in a series of political, industrial and military ‘what ifs’. The name the CIA chooses for the country in these games is “Syriana”.

Stephen Gaghan chose that name for his second film as director (his first was the little-known thriller Abandon in 2002) and indeed much of the plot of the movie Syriana centres on a change of regime in a fictitious, unnamed Middle Eastern country.

But Syriana is about a lot more than just putative Gulf politics. It is also about Big Oil, Peak Oil, Islamic fundamentalism, suicide bombers, congressional investigations, Washington lobbyists, the CIA, a shadowy “Committee to Liberate Iran”, the relationship between fathers and sons and it somehow also finds time to throw a taut thriller into the mix.

How Gaghan manages to weaves all these complex themes through five interlocking stories in 124 minutes is a work of art in itself. Gaghan won a best screenplay Oscar for Traffic and that film’s director Stephen Soderbergh chips in as executive producer of Syriana to help Gaghan work through the maze of multiple storylines and large casts. The closest thing to a lead character in the ensemble is a gritty, tubby and scruffy CIA operative Bob Barnes. He is played by the normally suave George Clooney (who piled on 35 pounds for the role in the spirit of de Niro in Raging Bull.) Barnes is fast approaching the end of his days in the field and has just one more assignment to complete before he can retire to the sinecure of a cushy desk job. That last role is to assassinate the independently minded Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) so that his more malleable younger brother will ascend the throne in the Gulf state and accede to American interests. These interests are represented by a newly merged oil company called Connex Killen.

The third thread follows the justice department investigation in the circumstances of the merger. It is the job of Connex Killen lawyer Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) to find out about the dirt on the deal before the Justice department does.

The fourth thread follows energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) who is swept up in events when hired by Prince Nasir to advise him on energy policy. The final most poignant thread follows Saleem (Shahid Ahmed) a young dirt-poor Pakistani migrant worker made redundant by the oil company who falls under the influence of a radical Muslim cleric.

Each of these threads has a father-son subplot which, although is rarely essential to the progression of the action, is thrown in to provide much needed warmth to an otherwise cynical story. The CIA operative lies about his work to his teenage son, Prince Nasir is in a Lear-like relationship with his father over the future of his kingdom. The lawyer lives with his alcoholic father. The energy analyst has a family tragedy and the migrant lives in a shantytown with his father far from the rest of his family.

It is the Pakistani migrant’s transformation that provides this film with much of its extraordinary power. He starts as a typical irreligious wise-cracking teenager more interested in football than fatwas. He becomes hardened by a gradual series of events. He loses his job and is threatened with deportation. Soldiers beat him up for no apparent reason. He falls under the influence of a charismatic cleric. The seeds are sown and he becomes a committed Islamic revolutionary. While this transformation is not inevitable, it is entirely feasible and we are not surprised by the outcome. This sympathetic humanising of a radical is likely to be displeasing to many but it shows how disturbingly easily it can happen. This is a rare and brave incursion beyond the usual hollow condemnation into the root causes of terrorism.

But the migrant is not the only pawn in this modern version of what the Victorians called The Great Game. Bob Barnes (played by Clooney who also was an executive producer) was also in this game, more powerful than a pawn perhaps, but still there to be sacrificed. He is the ultimate CIA field agent, an Arabic and Farsi speaking Middle East veteran, who unquestioningly carries out orders for his “thirty billion dollar business.” Bob is less successful as a bureaucrat who simply can’t be trusted to “stay on message”. Back in Washington to debrief on Iran, he is confronted by a forceful Condoleeza Rice-style politician and under pressure blurts out more truth about what is happening there than his bosses would like. He gets one last chance to redeem himself by assassinating Prince Nasir. Bob sets off to Lebanon to accomplish the deed and runs into hassles with Hezbollah and some torturers before his cover is blown. His bosses are anxious to avoid implication that the CIA authorised the hit and quickly proceed to “put some space” between the company and him.

The object of the assassination attempt is the elegant Oxford educated Prince Nasir, eldest son of the Emir, who is prepared to take his country on a collision course with US interests by pushing out the oil company Connex and selling oil to China. Washington powerbroker Dean Whiting (played with nicely understated menace by Christopher Plummer) meets the emir’s younger and more vapid son to plot the overthrow of his elder brother. They want to ensure the younger son becomes emir on the death of his obviously ailing father. He employs the energy analyst Woodward (Damon) to be an adviser. Their relationship is complicated by a Woodward family tragedy that occurs on the Prince’s property. The Prince buys him off and their no holds barred dialogues are riveting viewing. Matt Damon has a Boy Next Door quality that is occasionally irritating but he brings just right amount of intelligence and naivety into this role.

Back in Washington, the most complex thread of the film is battle to confirm the merger of two Oil companies Connex and Killen. Bennett Holiday is the lawyer at the centre of the maelstrom of legal (and illegal) activity. Jeffrey Wright plays the role stoically and his quiet dignity allows him to get results. The audience is drawn into the high political games. We inhale the stench of Washington politics where ‘everyone is innocent until investigated.’ Corruption is uncovered only if it used as a bargaining chip. Who really rules this internecine empire? Is this the legislative or the judicial branch of government? Is it Big Oil or is it their lobbyists? It is the military or the CIA? Who knows, maybe what the film is telling us is that it is all too complicated for any one power to rule. Syriana asks more questions than it answers but very few Hollywood films have asked as many cogent and pressing questions in two short hours.









“The Warning”

Despite their raucous name, Yahoo! are deadly serious,
And Google “does no harm” but wants to rules the earth
where system software makes Microsoft imperious
They’re breaking webs and windows from Patagonia to Perth

Gates hates killer apps from Apple’s great Job
Big Blue’s lotus position: “To be or not to DB2 isn’t tricky”
Join the dotcoms the shape Nasdaq thought a boom not a blob
Or live a hippie Linux life and share your open wiki

Watch them work like a Trojan and spread like a virus
See their spyware leap over your great walls of fire
Clash online with flamers and download movie pirates
or post a chat to bloggers with advertising links for hire

But wherever you meander through life’s tabs and shifts
Remember to be wary of geeks bearing GIFs

Haiku (a short history of the invention of detergent)

Soap flakes left wash grey
Proctor gambled coming Tide
Would turn whites to right

Master and Commander: the opening scenes

1. Introduction.

This analysis discusses the opening sequence of Peter Weir's film "Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World" (2003) in terms of how mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound and editing work together to create meaning for an implied viewer.

The film takes the viewer into the hermetically sealed world of an English man-of-war during the Napoleonic War (unlike the Patrick O’Brian novel which was set in the War of 1812 against the US. Clearly having the French as the enemy was always going to be less problematic and more profitable to American backers). The opening scenes are about setting tempo. Weir takes the audience into the circadian rhythms of life aboard at sea.

The opening four scenes are analysed. Each scene goes closer to the heart of the action by a progression of extreme long shots of the ship, through a tour of the deck, via an incident on board to end up with the close-up reaction to the incident which sets the tone for the film to come.

2. Mise-en-scene.

Mise-en-scene (french for 'putting in scene') is everything that appears in front of the camera. Weir wants to immerse the viewer in the reality of early 19th century sea-faring life. He provides period detail and realistic characterisations using lighting, colour, motifs, realistic costumes, and an attentive management of time and space.

The introductory sequences and titles give way to a tour of the harsh environment below deck. As the camera winds its way through the quarters, the dim lights and low roof render a sense of claustrophobia and unease. Initially the only lighting in the scene is a stark flickering keylight from the lamp of a passing sentry. The audience is drawn into the murkiness of the world below deck. Then a toplight filters from above deck to remind the audience of the world outside.

The sense of impending danger is heightened as the camera passes by two of the ship’s guns in close-up and displays their names to be “Jumping Billy” and “Sudden Death”. The latter name presages the several sudden deaths that occur later in the film.

Weir reminds the audience of the temporal component by using the motif of the hourglass. The hourglass will appear twice again in the film as an indicator of the passing of story time (and beyond this as a symbol of death.) When the hourglass is turned upside down, the bells are rung to signify the end of the shift. Sailors climb up and down the rigging in response to the bellringing. They are totally blacked out by attached shadows because it is not important that the viewer knows who they are. They suffice to be an anonymous metaphor for the rhythm of the ship.

The scene on deck when Mr Hollum is racked with indecision is played out in front of the crew. In the background plane behind the officers Mr Hollum and Mr Calumy, the ship’s crew watch impassively as Hollum prevaricates over the proper course of action in response to ‘the Phantom’. The audience’s attention is drawn to the ship’s carpenter Nagel who is framed strategically at the centre of the group of sailors watching the officers. Hollum’s indecision is exacerbated by a rear shot of the whispering officers seen from Nagel’s point of view. Nagel’s clash with Hollum will become a significant subplot.

3. Cinematography

Weir sets the scene in time and space with effective use of non-diegetic titles at the start of the film. In a sequence of three literary titles done in the exaggerated 19th century style, they give a sense of time, location and purpose. Immediately the audience knows that the story is set in the Napoleonic War. It knows the name of the ship, the HMS Surprise (and it is her modus operandi), her cargo, her location (“28 guns, 197 souls, N. coast Brazil) and most importantly her enemy, the French privateer the Acheron (named for one of the rivers of the Greek hell Hades, the 'river of woe'.) The audience gets a sense of the film’s purpose from the admiralty orders that will frame the film. Captain Aubrey must intercept the Acheron and ‘sink burn or take her a prize.’

There are two colour schemes in the opening scenes of the film. The ondeck scenes are blue signifying the closeness to the sea and the below-deck scenes are brown-filtered both suggesting the dinginess of below-deck life and also perhaps denoting the importance of the ship’s timber in keeping the crew afloat.

The film begins with birds-eye extreme longshots taken from various angles above and around the ship. The scene ends with a 360 degree tracking shot which takes us from clear water until ship is ominously about to enter a fog bank. The implied message for the audience to cultivate unease and expect danger in coming events.
That unease grows another notch when the audience shares Hollum’s fleeting experience of the Phantom ship with a point-of-view shot from the telescope. The clouds cover the scene so quickly that neither he nor the audience can be totally certain of what they saw. The shot shows effective use of off-screen space to heighten tension and uncertainty.

The on-deck scene also provides a brief close-up of young (13 years old) Midshipman Lord Blakeney. It is a small frontability cue to suggest the focal point he will play later in the piece linking the captain and the doctor in some of their more private moments. As Roger Ebert says “both men reveal their characters in teaching the boy, and that is how best grow to know them” (Ebert, 2005 online.)

The last scene of the opening section takes the viewer on a dizzying series of close-ups which derive their power from the delayed introduction of the two protagonists. Clinking surgical knives spread out on a bloodstained cloth herald the introduction of Dr Maturin. It is immediately followed by the quick motions of someone intently and swiftly twirling a map with their foot while dressing into multi-task fashion, before graphically matching a sword to represent the captain (as it also does on the Acheron) to the earlier shot of the knives which were a metaphor for the doctor. Sure enough, the action immediately switches to the putting on of a belt until the camera pans upwards to reveal the urgent face of the captain, ready to face the next crisis.

Though a steadicam is used for most scenes, the occasional shot with a handheld camera suggest the bobbing motion of a ship.

4. Editing.

Editing is the co-ordination of one shot to the next (Bordwell & Thompson 2004, p.294.) The film starts will a series of establishing shots showing the ship from different angles. After all the titles have been displayed, the audience is plunged into the narrow confines below deck. The tour below is a series of long takes until the abrupt cut to the hourglass and a hand which taps it before turning it upside down to signify the end of a shift.

Immediately following there is a graphic match between the scene of the bellringing and the men climbing the rigging to show the direct consequence of the changing of the shift. The whitish light on the right of the bell is matched by the light from the right of the rigging in the following scene. These small, almost subconscious reminders of each other further immerse the audience in the daily routine of the ship.

The rhythm of the editing changes to suit Weir’s purpose. The pace picks up during the on-deck scene when the phantom ship is spotted. Then in the final scene of the opening, the call to ‘beat to quarters’ (an all hands on deck call) shows a frantic editing pace to match the hectic action aboard ship. A brief cut advances the action to show a drummer beating the call before cutting again to show the frenetic activity below decks.

Weir uses the 180 degree system to ensure consistent eyelines (Bordwell & Thompson 2004, p.312) during the scene while Hollum and Calumy are talking and being watched by the crew. The 180 degree axis is a line between Hollum and Nagel emphasising the looming quarrel between the two. The shots are either over the shoulder from Hollum towards Nagel or a point of view shot from Nagel’s perspective.

5. Sound

All the sound in the opening five minutes is diegetic (ie can be heard by characters in the film.) The key elements are a drumroll, creaking sails, chickens clucking, gulls squawking and some human dialogue.

The drumroll is the single most urgent element on the soundtrack in the five few minutes. It acts as a bridge between the sighting of the phantom and the introduction of the captain. When the captain’s face finally appears on the screen, the drumroll immediately ends and its noise is replaced by a less panicky (but just as industrious) steady hammering. The drumroll, as it is theatre, is a thus a metaphor for the introduction of the lead character.

The wind is the accompanying sound to the initial sequences from above and outside the boat. The howling gale conspires to bring an eerie quality to the proceedings and suggest much foreboding to come.

The mournful quality of the squawking of the seabirds also serves this purpose. It is also has the ‘albatross’ motif, presaging several moments of importance that birds will play in the film such as the accidental shooting of the doctor and the sighting of the Acheron while searching for a flightless cormorant.

The chicken clucking, the first live sounds we hear in the film are a startling sound bridge between the silent tour of the boat and the first human close-up of the ship’s cook. The noise occurs a split second before the viewer can make sense of the accompanying vision thereby adding to the temporary disorientation. The cooks ease the distress both the chickens and the viewers by some gentle clucking of his own ‘come on, come on, it’s alright’.

The dialogue is the final element of the sound. It is a mixture of foreground dialogue between Hollum and Calumy and the background dialogue of orders barked out and the responses of the sailors. The naval language conveys the strong sense of realism and takes the viewer naturistically into the centre of the action.

6. Synergy between the technical codes

The ‘beating the colours’ sequence is a masterpiece of collage between sound, editing, cinematography and mise-en-scene techniques. The tempo has risen in each of the three previous scenes and is now at a crescendo. The diegetic drummer taps out an urgent beat. The drumming will frame the entire scene and gives a sense of energy and purpose to proceedings. The urgency is also enhanced by the quick editing in this sequence. This scene is in direct contrast to the slow pace of the earlier scenes.

Sound and mise-en-scene show orders barked out and quickly obeyed. This crucial scene finishes with the unveiling of the two main characters. Dr Maturin is introduced by the symbolism of a set of surgical knives being placed on a bloody tablecloth. In the audience’s first medium close-up of him, the doctor is staring upwards towards the deck off-scene, perhaps fearful of the potential casualties to come. A rapid cut then switches our attention to introduce Captain Aubrey.

The mise-en-scene combines with staccato editing to paint a swift picture of a man of action. He dresses speedily but with military precision. He deftly flicks the map around with his foot to check his bearings before picking up his symbol of office – the sword. Only after he adjusts his belt and attire does the camera pan upwards to offer the first close-up of his face. This is the cue for the drumroll and the scene to end.

The stage is now set and the captain is ready to take command.




References

Bordwell David, Thompson Kristin 2003, Film art: an introduction (7th edition), McGraw Hill, New York

Ebert, Roger 2006, Review – Master and Commander: the Far side of the world

Master and Commander: The far side of the world, 2003, motion picture, Twentieth Century Fox, Hollywood, Director Peter Weir

Wells and Gibson

A Comparison of HG Wells 'The Time Machine' and William Gibson's 'Hinterland'.

1. Introduction.

The novelist and sociologist H.G. Wells wrote “The Time Machine” in 1895. William Gibson wrote the short story ‘Hinterlands’ which first appeared in the 1985 collection “Burning Chrome”. The intervening ninety years saw huge advances in scientific, communications and technological fields. Einstein discovered relativity. Man landed on the Moon. The industrial age was giving way to the digital era. By the mid 1980s, computers were in everyday use and the internet was emerging from its experimental stage (WorldHistorySite.com, 2005, online.)

Wells predicted hyperspace whereas Gibson predicted cyberspace. He coined the term cyberspace in 1984 to describe the new domain "in his seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer" (Wertheim, 1999, p226).


2. Wells.

The turn of the 20th century was crucialin the development of modern electric media. Debate about how these new technologies would be used were ‘rooted in the group-specific beliefs about how the world could be known’ (Marvin, 1990, p6). Wells was a socialist (Wikipedia, 2005, online) and a Darwinist (Spartacus, 2005, online) and these beliefs informed his writing. In The Time Machine’, the unnamed Time Traveller is able to use non-Euclidian geometry to “controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted” (Wells, 1953, p7.) He builds a time machine out of nickel, ivory and quartz (ibid. p16) and travels 800,000 years in the future. There the Earth is dominated by two races, the indolent Elois and the ‘inhuman and malign’ (ibid. p65) Morlocks. Due to their lack of interest in their environment, the Elois had ‘decayed to a mere beautiful futility’ (ibid. p66.) To Wells, this is a warning of the inevitable evolutionary process of the ‘last surgings of the now purposeless energy of mankind’ (ibid. p39). The time traveller journeys onward to the end of the Earth where only a 'great darkness' (ibid. p94) exists. The story is narrated in the past tense. This gives the fiction its potency and credibility - it 'happened'.

3. Impact of 20th Century advances

The mathematical fantasy of Well’s time machine became physical law when Einstein proved that there was indeed a correlation between space and time. In his special Theory of Relativity in 1905, Einstein asserted that ‘physical processes are independent of the uniformly moving frame of reference in which they take place (Galison, 2003, p16). Under general relativity ‘space has become not just a sea on which matter might sail, but a highly malleable substrate capable of forming complex structures’ (Wertheim, 1999 p181).

Underpinned by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle - “the more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known” (American Institute of Physics, 2005, online) – the solid Newtonian laws of the Universe were replaced by the ever-shifting ground of quantum mechanics. Wormholes and black holes moved from the realm of fantasy to scientific principle.

Einstein’s mathematics were validated by Edwin Hubble who discovered that multiple galaxies exist and that the universe is expanding. Hubble empirically “discovered the cosmos” (Time, 2005, online). This vast, new universe would become the playground of late 20th century futurists like Gibson.

4. Gibson's Travels

In "Hinterlands", Gibson does not explain how the time-travelling interstellar visitors get here. His central issue is the human response to its consequences. Earth has come in contact with a superior civilisation – “something you don’t wish on your worst enemy” (Gibson, 1985, p89). Astronauts pay a heavy price of death or insanity to bring back great advances for humanity such as the ‘Rosetta Stone for Cancer” (ibid, pp88-89). It is a "cargo cult time for the human race" (ibid. p89). Cargo cults are a “form of symbolic response and expression to the experience of rapid social and cultural change through colonization.” (O’Sullivan et al 1994, p268). Thus Gibson's time travel turns us into insignificant "flies in an airport, hitching rides" (Gibson, 1985 p91). His narrative is a jumpy present tense, broken into timeshifts that disorient the reader.

5. Conclusion

Both Wells and Gibson owe a debt to Plato’s The Republic. In Book VII, the Cave serves as a metaphor for the “shadows of true existence” (Constitution Society, 2005 online) and, by inference, the existence of dimensions beyond human understanding.

Wells' time machine with its saddles and levers is a pre-digital representation of this dimensional metaphor. Gibson works with bonephone implants (1986, p76) and the broadcast frequency of the hydrogen atom (ibid, p79) to deliver a vision of the future that is filled with "swirling multimedia merging and mutating into a consensual hallucination" (Chartrand, 2005 online).

Gibson would probably agree with Wells' description of the future in "A Modern Utopia" as a "thing of the imagination that becomes more fragile with every added circumstance" (Wells. 2004, online)

References

American Institute of Physics, 2005, Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976)

Chartrand, Harry Hiller, 2005. Cultural Economics: Creators, Proprietors and Users

Constitution Society, The Republic by Plato, Book VII

Galison, Peter, 2003, Einstein’s clocks, Poincaré’s maps, Hodder and Stoughton, London

Gibson, William, 1995 (1986), Burning chrome, Voyager, London

Marvin, Carolyn, 1990, When old technologies were new, Oxford University Press, New York

O’Sullivan, T, Hartley J, Saunders, D, Montgomery M, Fiske, J, 1994, Key concepts in communications and cultural studies, Routledge, London

Spartacus Educational, 2005, H.G. Wells

Time Magazine, 2005, Edwin Hubble

Wells, H.G., 1953 (1895), The time machine, Pan, London.

Wells, H.G. (Project Gutenberg), 2004 (1905), A Modern Utopia

Wertheim, Margaret, 1999, The pearly gates of cyberspace, Random House, Sydney.

Wikipedia, 2005, H.G. Wells

WorldHistorySite.Com, 2005, Some dates in the history of cultural technologies

Singularity

When McLuhan wrote that the media was the message, he meant that media tools were extensions of humans (1967 p15). Communications technology tools are extensions of understanding. The question is: can these newer media take on a life of their own independent of their users?

We have been using tools for a long time. Hominids used the earliest handtools in Oldowan, Ethiopia 2.4 million years ago. By contrast, communication tools appeared in very recent times. The first of three major revolutions in this domain was the development of speech 100,000 years ago which gave us shared experience. The second was the development of written language 6,000 years ago which gave us organisational complexity (Fidler 1997 pp 56-71).

The third is a metamorphosis in progress: the revolution from the heuristic measures of analog to the binary precision of digital. Virtual Reality is the holy grail of this numbers game. But, as Gibson and Dibbell warn in their techno-dystopias, life in the city of bits has ambiguous and corruptible ethics. The real-life person relinquishes control and plays second fiddle to the whims of AI. In 1993 Vernor Vinge described this vision of ‘The Singularity’: ‘Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.’

Crackpot theory or Moore’s Law?




Bibliography

Dibbell, Julian, 1998, A rape in cyberspace

Fidler, Roger, 1997, Mediamorphosis, Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Gibson, William, 1995, Burning chrome, Voyager, London

Handprint.com, 1999, Hominid tools

McLuhan, Marshall, 1967, Understanding media: extensions of man, Sphere Books Ltd, London

Mitchell, William, 1995, The city of bits

Vinge, Vernor, 1993, Vernor Vinge on the Singularity

Wikipedia, 2005, Moore’s Law

WorldHistorySite.com, 2003, Some dates in the history of cultural technologies

Wikipedia: a convergent medium

Wikipedia.org is a marriage of convergence between the encyclopedia and the wiki.

How does this relationship work? Roger Fidler defines convergence as ‘the crossing of paths that results in the transformation of each entity as well as the creation of new ones’ (1997 p278). Wikipedia’s entities are a fertile blend of old and new technologies. On one hand is the encyclopedia, a venerable ‘circle of knowledge’ (Britannica Online: article 2027206) known in book form ever since Pliny compiled his Natural History in the first century AD. On the other hand a wiki, a simple, powerful web application that allows users to add content and also allows anyone to update that content.

The converged result is a multi-lingual, free and open knowledge database that has quickly established academic trust and a thriving user base. Its reputation for reliability depends on intolerance of vandalism and adherence to a netiquette of update rules. It is ‘a new kind of democratic communications environment’ (Dizard 1994 p4).

And the future? Does Wikipedia carry the seeds of its own subversion (Marvin 1988 p8)? The challenges may be its continued freedom and the uncertain legal status of digital copyright. As Barlow asks: ‘How does society pay for the distribution of ideas if not by charging for the ideas themselves?’ (1994 p3).

Time, money and law will tell.


References:

Barlow, John Perry, 1994, The economy of ideas

Dizard, Jr. Wilson, 1994, Old media, new media, Longman, New York.

Encyclopaedia Britannica Online

Fidler, Roger, 1997, Mediamorphosis, Pine Forge Press, Thousand Oaks, CA.

Marvin, Carolyn, 1988, When old technologies were new, Oxford University Press, New York

Wikipedia Front Page (English)

Bias in the ABC?

Bias is a cultural affliction and political bias is historically of two flavours, right and left. In Australia the national broadcast, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is at the forefront of the battle of cultural and political bias in Australia. On one side stands its accusers, generally of the political right, arguing that the ABC is guilty of news filtering, poor journalism and hostage to left-wing agendas. On the other side are its defenders on the left arguing for the independence, idealism and bias-free role of the ABC.

The discussion concludes with a brief look at what bias is in terms of television, how the government acts and how the ABC reacts.

The ABC was set up in 1932 as a cultural body but found its political feet through the creation of a news service on the young medium of radio. They presented the first independent challenge to the conservative press ‘as the most powerful shaper of public consciousness and consent in Australia’ (Petersen, 1993, p 259). Ever since then, the ABC has been a major political player, one which attracts passionate supporters and critics alike. The battle lines today are drawn between those on the right who see the ABC in thrall to the left and those on the left who believe the real issue is the right’s desire to seize control of the medium.


The 18th century author and politician Edmund Burke said ‘man acts from adequate motives relative to his interest'.Most Australian right-wing individuals and organizations are convinced that the ABC is not acting relative to their interests and need some sort of ‘correction’. This is despite the official stance of the Howard Government which commissioned the Mansfield Report. That report said  an independent ABC news should remain enshrined in its charter (1997, p9). Nonetheless Howard himself, quoted in an interview with Peter Cole-Adams in July 1996, bemoaned the fact that the ABC “doesn’t have a right-wing Phillip Adams” (Henderson 2005, online).

Greg Sheridan (foreign editor for The Australian) is typical of those who accuse the ABC of systemic bias towards the interests of the left. To him, it is nothing less than a full scale assault on Western-Capitalistic values:
“The ABC’s political culture has a pervasive left-liberal bias. Sometimes the bias is unconscious, the baby-boomer staff in thrall to the tired pseudo-radicalism they acquired as undergraduates decades ago. The central contention of this radicalism is that Western societies are corrupt and oppressive and Western power is to be opposed at every turn” (Sheridan 2005).

The pro-government neo-liberalist think-tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is another vigorous critic of the ABC and its ‘pseudo radical’ news policy. The IPA's Michael Warby claims that ABC sets its own ‘virtuous’ agenda. He argues that the ‘marks of this virtue are its standpoints on republicanism, multiculturalism, pro-immigration, reconciliation, anti global warming and anti-economic rationalism” (Warby 2005)

Gerald Stone (ex-producer of 60 Minutes and SBS board member) argues from a slightly more subtle perspective. He said journalistic practices such as sarcasm in tone of voice or facial inflection are among the techniques that  impose a judgement at the ABC that is ‘large cocooned from the community’s values' (Stone 2005, online).

Defenders of ABC independence and impartiality are found within its supporter base as well as members of the Labor movement and Fairfax print media. Their argument revolves around the need for a strong, independent ABC in an age of concentrated media ownership and commercial dictates. They also state that there is no empirical proof of bias emerging from either the complaints tribunal or from viewer input.

Media academic Stuart Cunningham refutes the Warby ‘virtuous agenda’ argument by noting  “to even discuss some of the great international issues is to be unacceptably radical according to the Institute for Public Affairs” (Cunningham et al, 1994 p53).

Pru Goward (federal sex discrimination commissioner) pushes the idealistic line when she argues that ‘the ABC is a crucial vehicle for the dissemination of ideas and information that ultimately does affect the lives of all Australians (Goward online).

Errol Simper (The Australian and ex ABC journalist) attacks the motives of the right in their search for bias. He argues that their definition of “fair is an item they want to hear or see. If it’s something they don’t want aired then, by definition, it’s unfair (Simper online, 2005).

David Marr (Sydney Morning Herald journalist and ex-ABC Media Watch presenter) likens the search for bias within ABC to the ‘hunt for the Tassie Tiger’ (Marr 2005, online). Quentin Dempster, the ABC journalist are argues that looking for bias is fruitless: “The ABC Board says there is no systemic bias” (Dempster, 2005, online).

The Age columnist Ross Warneke argues that the right wants to eliminate bias against their side of politics, “the sort of bias that former communications minister Richard Alston railed against after the Iraq war but, generally, failed to prove” (Warneke 2005, online)

Walter Lippman once wrote that stereotypes were "the fortress of our traditions and behind its defenses we can continue to feel ourselves safe in the positions we occupy." (Lippman, 1922, p64). Lippman was
writing about the press in 1922 but his argument holds well for television values.

On the on hand TV is a dumbed-down medium, the “drug of a nation” where humans amuse themselves to death (Postman 1985). Yet as Herman and Chomsky note, TV is also an immensely powerful communications tool in which a propaganda model of systematic lying snd deceptioncan be fed to mass populations (1988, p31-35).

Though the government cannot influence the make-up of journalists in the organisation, it influences power in other ways – primarily through the make-up of the board. Right-wing commentator, Janet Albrechtsen is the latest poacher turned gamekeeper appointed by the Howard Government in 2005 on a five year assignment. She will have a fight on her hands if she wants to effect real culture change – ABC staff have their own elected member of the board of directors so their power is strong for now (although Communications minister Helen Coonan is acting to abolish the position).

Ramona Koval commenced serving her second two-year term in January 2004 and she is a strong voice for continued independence despite having powerful enemies. The Murdoch Sydney Daily Telegraph accused her of working to have Stock Exchange chair Maurice Newman removed from the ABC board. Officially he quit the boarding due to leaks about Newspoll monitoring ABC coverage of pre-election bias. He accused Koval of undermining his position by authorizing the leaks and said that he could no longer work with her. (Daily Telegraph 17 June 2004).

The battle for control may just be commencing in earnest. In the meantime, the Charter sets the official course. Paul Chadwick makes no apology for using an idealistic stance to state that ABC has a role independent of “propaganda, entertainment and advertising” (1996 pp 39-40).

The only certainty ahead is that the ABC news direction will continue to oscillate in the middle of the tug-of-war of political stereotypes that define our traditions.


References

ABC web site, 2005, ABC Board as at February 2005

Chadwick, Paul, 1996, Why the ABC matters to journalism in Australia, no 66 23-35

Cunningham, Stuart, Rowe, David and Miller Toby, 1994 Contemporary Australian Television, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney
http://print.google.com/print?id=rOPplGnWNaQC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=bias&sig=zqjFpLQ6y6f_CZkk_Yl7nsaPe-o

Daily Telegraph, 17 June 2004, “Koval implicated in ABC board resignation”

Franti, Michael, 1991, Television, Drug of the Free by “Disposable Heroes of Hipocrisy” http://www.ocap.ca/songs/televisn.html

Goward, Pru 2001, IPA web site http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/20417/20010605/www.ipa.org.au/Speechesandsubmssns/pgowardABC.html

Henderson, Gerald, 2004, Sydney Morning Herald in http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/21/1087669912760.html?from=storylhs

Herman, Edward S and Chomsky, Noam, 1988 Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon Books, New York

Lippman, Walter, 1922, Public Opinion, Collier & MacMillan, Toronto

Long, Malcolm & Jane Smith, 1996, ‘ABC: Towards 2000’ Media Information Australia, extract in course readings.

Mansfield, Bob, 1997, Challenge of a better ABC: Vol 1. A review of the role and functions of the ABC, Australian Government Publishing Services, Canberra

Marr, David, 2004, Media Watch 14/05/04 quoted in http://friendsoftheabc.org/monitors

Petersen, Neville 1993 News Not Views: The ABC, the press & Politics 1932 – 1947 Hale & Iremonger Sydney

Postman, Neil, 1985, “Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business”. Penguin, London.

Sheridan, Greg, 2005 “Its idiotic to mock the laws that could save us” The Australian 19/09/2005

Simper, Errol, 2005, Political prism on bias, The Australian online

Warby, Michael, 2001, Why bother with balance and accuracy when you have virtue? http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/20417/20010605/www.ipa.org.au/Speechesandsubmssns/mwarbyABC.pdf

Warneke, Ross, 2005, Rewind, The Age online

Bellybutton

Omphalos is the Greek word for navel.

According to the ancient Greeks, Zeus sent out two eagles to fly across the world to meet at its center, the "navel" of the world. Omphalos stones to denote this point were erected in several areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, the most famous of those was at the oracle in Delphi.

The omphalos hypothesis was named after the title of an 1857 book, Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse. In this book Gosse argued that in order for the world to be "functional", God must have created the Earth with mountains, canyons, trees with growth rings, Adam and Eve with hair, fingernails and navels, and that therefore no evidence we can see of the presumed age of the earth and universe can be taken as reliable.

The idea has seen some revival in the twentieth century by some modern creationists, who have extended the argument to light that appears to originate in far-off stars and galaxies, although many other creationists reject this explanation and also cantankerously believe that Adam and Eve had no navels.

Bertrand Russell, influenced by Gosse, discussed the ramifications of such a theory in his 1921 work, The Analysis of Mind, stating:

"There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that 'remembered' a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago."

Jorge Luis Borges, in his 1940 work, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, describes a fictional world in which some essentially follow as a religious belief a philosophy much like Russell's discussion on the logical extreme of Gosse's theory:

"One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time: it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present memory."

Last Thursdayism (sometimes Last Tuesdayism or Last Wednesdayism) is a whimsical version of omphalism. It is the idea that the world was created last Thursday, but with the appearance of age: people's memories, history books, fossils, light already on the way from distant stars, and so forth.

This parody has been taken further, with claims that the Universe was created Last Thursday by Queen Maeve the housecat, who would destroy the world Next Thursday, keeping a Heaven of sorts for those who were nice to cats and damning evildoers to the Hell of the the never-cleaned Eternal Litterbox.

Such navel gazing is probably no more illogical a belief than the complex modelling required to show that the Big Bang created time and space. Though admittedly, we are still eagerly awaiting the mathematical proofs for omphalism and its derivatives.

Chasing Maleny

Welcome to Maleny. Picture postcard country. Locals here say that the hills, forests and views cast a spell over the town. Indeed, the welcome signs by the roadside bid you to ‘discover the magic’. It is a beacon for alternative lifestylers, country people and tourists alike in the balmy sub-tropical air of Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland. It is not a place you’d expect to see a show of force.

But the only ones discovering the magic of Maleny on the morning of 12, July, 2005 were 130 armed police. They stood cross-armed by the creek bridge at the entrance to town. Traffic was blocked in both directions. At this strategic spot, the corporate giants Woolworths had won the right to build a shopping centre. The police were there to allow the development to commence.

They were here to break up Camp Platypus, home of the sixty-strong opposition who had occupied the site for over three weeks. The protesters were outnumbered and were removed without incident. Some were arrested later for sitting down in front of construction trucks. Woolworths had won the final skirmish in a war that previously taken place in hearts and minds of citizens and corporations and in the public view of media.

Steven Lang is a local businessman, part owner of a Maleny book store and author of the novel “An Accidental Terrorist” which won the Queensland Premier’s Award for best unpublished manuscript last year. He says,“what we're objecting to is the intrusion of such a major player - that they are going to dominate the whole nature of the business of the town.”

Lang was one of the leaders of the protest that went all the way to the Land and Environment Court in 2004. But in the courts Woollies won. Though the monotreme was the symbol of the campaign, it was something more monotonous that swung the courts in the developer’s favour – water. Lang is unamused,“the law is an ass in this case. There is a moral failure of the law, because it's not looking after the people it's supposed to be looking after.”

Nevertheless, the decision is final. Ten months later, the Queensland Police Service does its job to ensure the smooth handover of the site. Camp Platypus, sandwiched neatly between the watering holes of the Obi Obi creek and the Maleny pub, was overrun. The building work started that day.

Maleny was founded on the banks of the Obi Obi Creek. The Aboriginal tribes came here for the bunya feasts once every three years. They celebrated these rare giant fruits of the massive bunya. Ubie Ubie was a Dallambara tribal leader who gave his name to the creek. His name meant ‘Evil Spirits’.

In 1844 Ludwig Leichhardt was on the first of his great journeys of exploration. He provided the first European written reference to the area with a diary entry.
“Here is a little valley, an open plain…a creek fed by the shady gullies of the brushes passes by it”.

The first European settlers were hardy timber cutters who cut through Leichhardt’s shady gullies. They serviced the Gympie Gold Rush boom in 1867. Proud faces next to mighty felled gum trees show the strain of their labours in photographs. But the gold declined and the timber trade declined with it. And so, in the early part of the twentieth century, Maleny became a solid country dairy town. It stayed that way till improved milk refrigeration practises in the sixties made it uneconomical – it was more efficient to let factories make the butter. The farms were sold off cheaply. They were bought up by the next wave of immigrants. The Age of Aquarius had arrived.

The seventies onwards saw a New Age culture descend on the town. With it, the hippies brought their self-help practises and environmental awareness. They set up small businesses. Now there is another wave of immigrants. Cashed up baby boomers attracted to Maleny’s cheaper lifestyle, glorious weather and its proximity to the beach. The growth rate is high. The new burghers do not always have the time for self-help. They want their golden eggs delivered direct from the goose. Enter Woolworths.

Woolworths studied the demographic, they saw the growth and they wanted a piece of the action. The creekside property had been rezoned in the 1990s so it was a valid business site. But they knew they would face resistance. 80% of locals interviewed by Market Facts on 19 July 2005 said they wouldn’t shop there. But none were asked would they shop there, if it was there. Woolworths are counting on the leakage due to natural causes to make a success of the business.

The main street already has a string of independent businesses and one small IGA supermarket. ‘Hometown Proud’ is the motto of this one thousand strong chain of businesses founded in depression era New England. But IGA does not have off street parking. So the grocery business goes elsewhere. Most people go to the beach and shop in Mooloolaba or Caloundra. With Woolworths in town, people will be able to do their shopping without having to miss the Divine Mother Night at the village hall.

But would Woollies want to risk so much customer unhappiness in such a small area? Francis Fukuyama explains why indeed they would. He compares corporations to the collector who is unhappier about the gaps in his collection than is satisfied by those he already owns. That obsession will drive their behaviour. And Woolworths have quite a collection. Their brands include Safeway, Dan Brown, BWS, Dick Smith Electronics, Big W and many others. Fukuyama concludes that the expectations created by economic growth demand that a society-wide rejection of development and technology is not possible. Woolworths’ annual growth for 2005 was 15%. That’s a lot of growth to aim for in a $1.28 billion revenue company.

On the other hand, Woolworths themselves claim that they are merely serving a public need. They will provide jobs and services. They are also morally obliged to their shareholders to develop share value. And Maleny is excellent share value. They were up for the fight. To keep their own hands clean and their reputation squeaky, they used anonymous intermediaries like Hutchison the builders, Uniton the project managers and Cornerstone the property developers to bear the public brunt of that fight. It was Cornerstone Property Ltd that the Caloundra City council and the State Government took to the courts.

And it was there that the water fight started. The question at stake in front of Justice Rackemann was not whether Cornerstone (or Woolies) had the right to build there – thanks to the zoning, that was already a given – but whether it would interfere with the natural flow of water from a watercourse. If they could prove that, then the council and the state government had the right to refer the matter further to the Department of Natural Resources and Mines and Energy.

But they failed to so prove. The judge preferred expert testimony evidence from two hydrologists who said there was no interference over conflicting local evidence that there was. The developers won.

With no further recourse to the law possible, the protesters took to the site. Camp Platypus was the last stand. But as Nietzsche said, that which does not kill us, makes us stronger. It may be too late for Maleny but there will be other developments in other towns. And a legal challenge based on the interference with water is a potential Achilles heel. A referral to the ministry is also an area of extreme sensitivity especially when the federal politicians and their electoral margins become involved.

Steven Lang is no Australian Jose Bové but he doesn’t like what he sees “Woolworths, Coles, McDonalds, all the big corporations are turning county towns into the same sorts of places - into clone towns. And what we want are individual towns. People want to come to somewhere that's different, that’s why they come here. Our income as business people depends on it”.

And those places that don’t want to be clone towns should maybe understand the legal power of water. Maleny, perhaps under the influence of the ghost of Evil Spirits, may already have lost the magic. But the magic itself is still out there. Like the platypus, it is probably in the water.

Australian Sedition Law

The new 'recklessness' provision will be the main impact of the recently strengthened sedition laws,according to the Australian Press Council.

Press Council policy officer Inez Ryan said the new provision may clamp down on secondary reporting.

"The recklessness provision, with its onus of proof on defendants, may dissuade journalists from quoting potentially inflammatory comments," she said.

Ms Ryan said among the provisions of the new sedition law was the introduction of recklessness as an intermediate legal concept between negligence and intent.

"If journalists quote someone as advocating violence, then they or their publishers could be convicted of recklessness even if they do not agree with the sentiments quoted," she said.

The maximum penalty for breaking the new laws has been more than doubled from three to seven years.

Ms Ryan said she did not believe the other provisions of the law would be as damaging.

"I don't believe that journalists will be intimidated into silence as a result of these laws and any government that attempts to prosecute a media organisation for sedition will be buying trouble," she said.

Peter Martinelli, a journalist at the Cairns Post, agreed with Ms Ryan and said it was unlikely that newspapers would be prosecuted under the new terms of the law.

"Journalists will continue to test the boundaries of these laws but the real issue will be one of self-imposed censorship where journalists will toe the line of their employers," he said.

Mr Martinelli said editorial policy on metropolitan newspapers already prevented too much
dissent.

"If there is any impact from the recklessness provision, it may simply be to accelerate an already existing process towards self-censorship in news," he said.

The sedition laws were passed into law on 6 December, 2005 and will be reviewed again in 2006.

The last successful prosecution for sedition in Australia was in 1960 when Department of Native Affairs officer Brian Cooper was charged for urging Papua New Guinea to demand independence from Australia.

Stafford 2007

Stirling Hinchliffe will be the new ALP candidate for the seat of Stafford in the next Queensland state election.

Mr Hinchliffe, a policy and research manager with the Property Council of Australia,
said Labor sitting member Terry Sullivan would not defend the seat he won in the 2001 and 2004 elections.

“Terry had to declare his intention to the caucus in September 2005 and he chose not to continue. I was then nominated unopposed,” Mr Hinchliffe said.

Mr Sullivan won Stafford with a majority of 20 per cent in 2004 and Mr Hinchliffe said he expected a closer contest next time round.

“2004 was a high-water mark for Labor,” he said.

Mr Hinchliffe said his local priorities were improved public transport and taking care of the accommodation needs of Stafford’s aging population.

“Stafford is a real estate ‘hot spot’ and we need to make sure that affordable public housing is available to those who need it most,” he said.

Mr Hinchliffe said the state of the health service was the most serious issue facing Queensland.

‘We need to work closely with Canberra and look at creative schemes such as bonded scholarships to encourage doctors to work for Queensland Health,” he said.

Mr Hinchliffe has impeccable Labor credentials as a member and party staffer for 15 years.

“My grandmother in Rockhampton introduced me to the party,” he said.

The Liberal Party has yet to announce a candidate for Stafford.

Tracy Davis, the Liberal candidate for the neighbouring seat of Aspley, said Mr Hinchliffe might struggle to retain Stafford for Labor.

“Peter Beattie’s popularity is diminishing, the incumbent is standing down and there is a crisis in the health service.

“People are tired of Labor,” she said.

Mr Beattie is obliged to call the election before the end of February 2007.

Fog of War

Errol Morris’s The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara was a 2003 film which won the Oscar for best documentary in that year.

The narrative of The Fog of War covers some of defining moments of American and world history in the middle of the 20th century and Robert Strange McNamara was at the fulcrum of many of these events.

US Secretary of Defense from 1961 to 1967, McNamara says in the film “I lived the Cold War”.

The Fog of War is organised both by the kernel events in McNamara’s life and also by the eleven lessons of the film’s subtitle. Much of the content is an interview between Errol Morris and Robert McNamara but McNamara’s voice dominates. He tells his story direct to camera interspersed with archival material such as TV interviews, telephone recordings, stock footage and news broadcasts.

It is also self-reflexive. The voice of the filmmaker is in the dialogue but is without the self-validating, authoritative tone of traditional documentaries. Errol Morris has made little attempt to hide the technical aspects of his editing. There are obvious jump cuts and some editing suggestions from McNamara have made the final text. This manipulation shows that the film’s voice is not to be found in the technical assemblage. Instead, it is an example of what Kuhn called “a text whose ’truth’ may be judged only by means of extra-textual evidence”. It is the insights into McNamara’s decision-making under great pressure which give it its power. It avoids the trap that Bill Nichols calls “conceptual inadequacy” due to the implied addresser’s ability to place context around his statements.

The sound track is often not in synch with the image track. The text continually returns to visual metaphorical motifs (particularly bombs, guns and military preparations) to undermine the political points (eg when President Johnson is shown saying “we seek no wider war” or when McNamara says “we are rational but reason has its limits”). Philip Glass’s urgent pounding score hammers home the brutality of war.

The first event, and the only one out of chronological sequence is the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. This kernel event offers a dramatic start to show how leaders operate under pressure and to show how close the world and its “rational leaders” came to mutually assured destruction. This narrative has satellite events in both senses of the word (the missile site pictures from space drive the narrative forward by accentuating the tension). Due to the embedded events of the two contradictory messages from Khrushchev, there is agonised discussion on how to respond. In a series of enchained events, Tommy Thompson convinces Kennedy to respond to the first “soft” message and the missiles are removed without bloodshed. The danger has passed due to the application of lesson #1 “empathise with your enemy”. In a flashforward to 1992, McNamara meets Castro and realises just how close to the edge they came. The narrative concludes back in 1962 by contrasting Kennedy’s simple statement “we won” with an oppositional reading from General LeMay “won, hell, we should have destroyed them!”

The rest of the narrative is mostly chronological and the pace slows down for the longest segment of the film dealing with Vietnam. This war scarred the American conscience like no other and McNamara was the ultimate insider. Unlike the previous military rulers, the French, for whom Indochina posed no real threat to the political system in the metropole, the US was deeply politically divided by its foray into Vietnam.

The paradigmatic structure of The Fog of War also merits some attention. Firstly there is an example of paradigmatic relation of selection based on location. The empathy (lesson #1) with which the Kennedy administration dealt with the Cuban Missile Crisis is contrasted with the way the Tonkin Gulf incident was handled (lesson #7 “belief and seeing are often wrong”).

There is also a paradigmic role for the American general Curtis LeMay. He appears in both the World War II and the Cuban segments of the text. In World War II, his directness, courage and bombast work successfully in a brutal war. He reduces the bomb abort rate over Germany by placing himself in the lead aeroplane and threatening to court-martial any crew that fails to reach the target site. He also devastates Japan by using incendiary bombs to bomb its wooden cities.

By contrast, he is marginalised in the Cuban episode. He is the embodiment of the myth of American gung-ho attitude and his injunction “let’s destroy Cuba” carries less weight in the uncertainties of the post nuclear world.

Barthes has said that “the Text can be approached, experienced, in reaction to the sign”. Some of The Fog of War’s signification is self-evident, some is requires interpretation. The sheer scope of the narrative and the controversial personalities, actions and ideas it covers allows for plural meanings.

The text assumes certain pre-knowledge of Japan, Cuba, Vietnam and the American political structure. The Fog of War is an example of what Williamson calls a “bearer of different social purposes”. The implied audience are politicians, political scientists, historians and those with an interest in and knowledge of American political, cultural and social hegemony in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As in Brechtian epic theatre, the purpose is to turn the spectator into an observer but also to arouse his or her capacity for action.

The phrase “fog of war” was coined by the nineteenth century Prussian military thinker Carl Von Clausewitz in a reference to the chaos of war while immersed in it. Much of McNamara’s life is spent inside that fog. His recollections are an attempt to view the referent (the events that cause the fog) with the clear daylight clarity of hindsight.

The text also uses iconic, indexical and conventional signs to display meaning. The recurring motif of dominoes falling on a map of South East Asia works in three ways. Firstly it is iconic (the final domino falls on the location of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam), secondly it is indexical (the dominoes are a motivated signifier for the link between Russia, China and Vietnam) and finally it works conventionally (the dominos stand for the theory by which Communism was expected to take root in the surrounding countries if not stopped).

McNamara’s role in the statistical analysis group of the Air Force is also shown by a deft mix of signs. The image track displays maps of Japan, stock footage of aircraft manufacture and statistics of target destruction. His personal responsibility is conveyed by a torrent of numbers and mathematical symbols raining down like bombs on photos of Japanese cities.

The myth and ideology of this film is based around America’s wars of the 20th century. The myth of American infallibility which grew out of their successes in two world wars haunted them in Vietnam. Johnson’s speech “America wins the wars she undertakes” makes a commitment to uphold the myth. McNamara is a sometimes unwilling partner dragged along to make this myth a reality despite the ‘disturbing signs’ coming from the cable. Occasionally, the real author, Morris attempts to puncture the prevailing ethos with his interjections such as “we had attempted to invade you (Cuba)” or by questioning the use of incendiary bombing in World War II and the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. But the preferred reading of the addresser is the pride of serving one’s country, right or wrong.

McNamara himself is singularly lacking in ideology. Though he is a Democratic presidential appointee, he makes very few ideologically based statements throughout the text. He is guided more by practicalities and politics (for example, knowing the best time of day to release bad news) than by any ideological codes.

The story is McNamara’s life but the plot is mostly confined to his relationship to warfare. The text is mainly concerned with the application of warfare and its devastating consequences. The recurring images of bombs, aeroplanes, war boats and destruction provide anchorage for this preferred reading of the text.

Apart from his decision to work for Ford, the kernel events that are shown are all directly related to war. McNamara’s decision to work for the Air Force, his acceptance of the Secretary of Defense role, the Kennedy assassination and the Tonkin Gulf incident all serve to increase the disequilibrium of the narrative which is not resolved until McNamara quits his position. The ceremony of the Order of Freedom medal is the signifier that his role is finished and the narrative can conclude.

The frame of the narrative as a whole mirrors the format of the Cuban Missile Crisis story. Each kernel event deals with a problem of warfare or commerce, and each ends with homily and a lesson.

There is substantial ellipsis for the period after 1968. Almost all of this period is omitted except where it directly relates to events beforehand (ie his subsequent meetings with Castro and the Vietnamese foreign minister). His thirteen year tenure as head of the World Bank is briefly mentioned in the opening segment and appears once again in the closing titles.

Apart from a few questions and interjections from Morris and some other voices on the archival footage, most of the narration is done by McNamara himself. However as Tom Ryan discovered in his interview with Morris, McNamara never liked the lessons of the film’s subtitle. McNamara is quoted by Morris as saying “These are not my lessons; these are your lessons”. The lessons were a function of control of the real author.

Nonetheless McNamara, the diegetic narrator, is the addresser of these lessons. He wants “to develop the lessons and pass them on”. The technical code fudges the gap between narratee, implied and real audience. Morris uses a technical device called the Interrotron that Ebert says “allows Morris and his subjects to look into each other's eyes while also looking directly into the camera lens”. The effect is that McNamara can cut through the constraints of the narratee and the implied audience to look directly into the eyes of his real audience, Kozloff's “flesh-and-blood viewers in their living rooms”.

McNamara is a complex psychologised character. He is a sensitive soul who cries tears for Kennedy and Norman Morrison and yet has no compunction in issuing orders which results in the deaths of hundreds of thousand Japanese and Vietnamese citizens. He knows that Vietnam is a dubious, unwinnable enterprise. Yet he offers no argument to Johnson’s simplistic urgings instead serving the president’s desire to escalate the war in Vietnam.

Most of McNamara’s character traits are drawn by indirect presentation. According to Rimmon-Kenan, indirect presentation “does not mention the trait but displays it and exemplifies it in various ways”. For instance, his attention to detail and ability to draw conclusions by use of metrics is established in many scenes.

There is also a contradiction between McNamara’s ego and his modesty. The school scene where he talks about the Chinese and Japanese students trying to beat “that damn Irishman” is immediately contrasted by a 1960s TV interview in which he is described as “Mr I have all the answers”. McNamara comfortably bats away the questions with a stylish modesty that cloaks his true opinion of himself. He says “I don’t know what I don’t know…” and follows this up immediately with a phatic but telling counter-comment “…and there is much indeed”. He is on much safer ground when he goes on to bury the question with a statistic of how many hours of preparation he puts in for each hour of congressional testimony.

McNamara is a Proppian hero and many of the events of his life follow the fairytale morphology. He absents himself from home, he is addressed by an interdiction (“there is something beyond one’s self”), there is violation of the interdiction (outbreak of war), there is villainy (Japan), and the hero is tested (rising through the ranks at Ford).

The meeting with the Kennedys is pure Propp function IX: “THE HERO IS APPROACHED WITH A REQUEST OR COMMAND”. The request is to become Secretary of Defense. McNamara accepts and begins his actantial role as the subject of various quests to serve his country and keep it from nuclear annihilation. Eventually the hero is led to the object of search (Propp XV) Vietnam.

There are also binary oppositions at work in the text. At the character level there are obvious differences at work in the Manichean opposites of McNamara (pragmatic) against Johnson (patriot) and McNamara (dove) against LeMay (hawk). There are also ideological opposites present: conspicuous consumption (Cadillac) against prudent economics (Falcon), the US (freedom) against Germany/Japan (fascism), and the US (capitalist) against the USSR (communist). Through use of these oppositions, the text builds an “effective narrative apparatus” so beloved of Eco.

McNamara’s media skills are evident in many of the 1960s interview sequences. His phatic exchanges with the media in the pre-title sequence shows the comfortable ease with which he sets the ground rules and establishes the boundaries between politicians and the media they rely on. His question “let me ask the TV, are you ready?” is also a metaphorical question for the implied viewer about to embark on the narrative of his life story.

McNamara’s disarming honesty when discussing possible war crimes in World War II is contrasted by his refusal to confront his personal responsibility in Vietnam. He avoids questions of responsibility of Vietnam and concludes, when prompted by Morris, that he would rather be “damned if he doesn’t” answer the questions.

In the final sequences, McNamara wears the seatbelt he helped to introduce and drives his car out the film in a form of metonymy. Here is a man at the centre of great power in one of the most controversial periods of modern history and yet the implied audience remains in the dark about how he feels despite the eleven “lessons”.

It is a puzzling and open ending to the narrative of a puzzling character, Robert Strange McNamara.

images of Australia media concerns 1905

In 1905, Australia had existed as a federation for four years. Two of the major publications of the era, the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Bulletin had stark differences about the merits of the proposed Empire Day to be celebrated for the first time in May that year. Though the Age and the Bulletin disagreed on this point, they were both informed by the question of London’s dominance on local policy and culture and the sense of the vulnerability felt by Australia due to its isolation as a Western nation at the bottom of Asia.

Australia celebrated the beginning of the 20th century by joining its six competing colonies into a new federation on 1 January 1901. Despite the auspiciousness of the date, it has struggled to establish itself as a celebratory anniversary of Australia’s nationality. Other dates such as 26 January and 25 April have competed for this definition, as Australia searched for an appropriate date to honour what Walter called a “sense of ceremony”. In 1902 the Earl of Meath (founder of such auspicious scout-like organisations such as the Fresh Air League and the Lad’s Drill Association) had proposed a day of celebration throughout the empire. By 1905, imperialists were promoting this new event as a more important festival than federation day and demanding it be made a national holiday. This was not a wholly uncontested view and the Bulletin championed the fight against Empire Day in the cause of more independence from Britain.

In 1905 Britain was at the height of her imperial powers. The Pax Britannica was becoming threatened by Wilhelm’s aggressive military policies in Germany and the growing US economic power. However it was easy for the Age to glorify the Empire’s achievements and the great reign of Victoria which had recently ended in a “long glow of invigorating sunlight.” It saw Australia as basking in the reflected glory of that sunlight. They wanted Empire Day to be a conscious strengthening of imperial links.

The Bulletin didn’t see this dual loyalty in the same light. They saw imperialism as a pejorative label representing the Boer War, the Chinese slave-trade and the Japanese Alliance all of which were anathema to “white Australian ideals.” Britain had expected to win the Boer War (1899-1902) quickly but the formidable fighting qualities of the Afrikaners had raised serious doubts about Britain’s conventional might. However it was the Chinese and Japanese threats which were of most interest to the Bulletin.

The Chinese were not a new problem. The came to the gold fields of Victoria in 1855-1856 when the diggers' income was sinking to unskilled manual workers. Because the Chinese were prepared to work for small wages and would do jobs that the locals would not, there were fears that Australian working men would lose their work to an Asian ‘invasion.’ The Bulletin played up to these fears by appealing to racial purity and a fostering of native Australian industries.

The Japanese presented an even greater threat to Australian interests, according to the Bulletin. The Meiji Restoration of the 1860s had transformed Japan from a feudal structure to an emerging world power. By 1905 it was strong enough to inflict a shattering defeat on the Russians in Port Arthur. Britain had signed an alliance with Japan in 1902 as a means of checking Russian expansion in the Pacific. However as part of the terms of the alliance, Britain withdrew its sea power from Asian waters leaving the Japanese navy to dominate raising fears in Australia compounded by race.

The racial factor expressed as the Yellow Peril was common to both the Bulletin and the Age pieces. Although they sharply disagreed on the role of Britain in Australia’s future, neither was averse to the social Darwinism then in vogue. In 1893, Dr Charles H. Pearson’s hugely influential book "National Life and Character" had warned that “the ‘lower’ would overtake the ‘higher’ races.” Australia was a lonely outpost of the “higher race” on the edge of Asia and needed to keep the “white blood pure” (the Bulletin) and keep out the “mingled marriage bonds” (The Age.)

The White Australia Policy, designed to prevent the influx of coloured races, is not mentioned by name in either the Age or Bulletin but had been in place since the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. The policy was not universally applauded. Geoffrey Blainey argues the Act was an anomaly of geography and a majority of northern white Australians wanted cheap coloured labour but the south (where all six state capitals were based) did not. Thus racial unity was achieved at the cost of the development of the north of Australia. The constituency of the Age represented conservative Melbourne interests while Bulletin pushed a radical labour movement agenda.

What was of economic concern to the Age was the continued prosperity of Australia under the aegis of the Empire. It was crucial Australia should continue to reap the benefits of a worldwide common market with a revenue of £260,000,000 in 1905. The Bulletin saw only one-way exchange and described Australian industry being exploited as a “satrapy of London.” It said Australian lifestyles were undermined by the cheap wages Asian “coolies” were prepared to work for. It used the mystique of bush legend to great effect in its appeal to the vigour of Australian inhabitants to staunch the flow of Asian immigrants.

The difference in perspective of the Age and Bulletin pieces turned on the way Australia’s role in the Empire wa developing. What to the Age was a “crimson thread of friendship” was to the Bulletin a “mostly nigger empire.” The Age was launched during the gold rush era and became an immense influence in Melbourne selling 120,000 copies a day by the 1890s and exercised great political power. It was not going to rock the imperial boat. The Bulletin’s mix of radicalism and xenophobia was an attractive mix to a different social set. They were preaching a new form of nationalism that did not rely on Britain for its inspiration.

It would have to wait another ten years for the events at Anzac Cove to turn that inspiration into a totem.

Tyrannies

Geoffrey Blainey is an Australian historian and a major player in the so-called 'history wars'. These were ideological battles fought between historians and other academics over the bloody nature of the white domination of Australia.

The focus has been on whether Aboriginals were massacred in great numbers or not. Traditionally, left-wing historians such as Manning Clark have postulated that atrocities against blacks were systemic and widespread.

More recently revisionists from the other side of politics, spearheaded by Keith Windschuttle have disputed this view and by a careful (and some would say selective) re-examination of primary source material believe that the evidence of these massacres has been grossly exaggerated.

Blainey was a forerunner of this camp and it was he who coined the phrase 'black armband view of history' to describe historians who were writing critical Australian history 'while wearing a black armband' of grieving or shame.

Despite this controversy, there is no doubt that Blainey is an accomplished historian.

Woolly Days is reading 'Tyranny of Distance' about how the story of modern Australia is primarily one of the conquering of the problems of distance, both distance internally and distance to the rest of the world. The book was first published in 1966 and since then the book title has become a common phrase in the language.

Britain claimed the entire continent by virtue of what Blainey called 'limpet ports' thinly spread across the continent. Factors such as the rise of whaling, the discovery of gold and the profitability of wool contributed to the slow but steady growth of the country.

In the 1850s, sailing ships took the great circle route to get goldseekers to Australia in record time. The route was speedy but dangerous taking ships well below 50 latitude in the Southern Ocean. The route went down the Atlantic before turning east at Tristan da Cunha, beating a path through the Kergeulen and McDonald islands before landing in Melbourne.

The return passage used the prevailing winds of the roaring forties and fifties (with hardly any land mass to slow them down) to push through the South Pacific through the treacherous Cape Horn (named for the dutch city of Hoorn)and back north to Britain via the Atlantic.

Even with the advent of steam and the opening of the Suez canal in 1869, the great circle route kept its advantages due to the prevailing winds. It is also a shorter a route than it looks with maps based on Mercator projections.

It wasn't until steamboats could carry all their own coal and avoid the costly stops in many ports that the Suez route finally took sway. The other major advantage it had was the avoidance of Cape Horn and its dangerous weather and enormous seas in the narrow 500km channel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Nothing much was to change in the passage to Australia until the rise of commercial air travel in the 1950s and 60s.

Now only cruise ships ply the Suez route and the Great Circle Run is empty of human traffic and is left to the whales.

Shipshape

Poor crazy calm
Comes clear out of the gulf
And the harmony that hymns behind it
Suez root canal
Truthy grin
and a hand grenade lobbed into the henhouse
here lies harrygator handily helping out
the rate of rats and the right of mice
might challenge the phalanx
deep thinking pool hustlers
rodin’s thoughts
bright brigadiers beyond keydom
attaboy the terrorist
heaving hades’ harem
and hiding all hallowed haloes
who would undermilk
to protect an economy
than open the latch to lax tax
creepers dot their i’s
and place their tees
elbow their way into green pastures
with the aid of a greasy spoon
and a pass-the-parasol in the sol y sombre
wife fronts panting under
places where Paracelsus
in minus forty celcius
far from heights meet and greets
levi stress and gutta percha
paucity of princes and open pincers
sores, soy and sana’a kat
st kitts and ben, family men
gweedore jerseys,
shame rocky shame
salmons of knowledge
mesquito coast
barren joey throws off his cape
feckless fear freaks out the door
el zorro and El Vincente Fox
19 and 21 century collides
and the refusees and refugeniks
rumple still skin
of the borders’ cauliflowers
where pictures of evil and presidents adorn fragrant frames
no pack drill no names
but a feast of forms
and one iota of data
zills of friction in the limousine
cries of foul in the Levantine
miss worldly one voice turning seventeen
whither the shoppers drop
while caught on the hop
between penthouse sale and bargain basement
and blanket authority
to rob Manchester of its city
united in sleepover
megamerchants and superstore me
the cuckold clans
in Kandahar and Kazakhstan
can cascade to endless akbar
cheering semi automatic housefire
and a god made great by commie chant
and breastbeat without priestly cant
no operator needed on
a direct line to heaven

Tsunami

The wavelength of a tsunami can be up to 800km long. They travel at speeds of 800kph. Which means you might have to wait an hour for a second seismic shift. If you are on the beach and the sea suddenly withdraws, it can only mean one thing. Head for the hills – and stay there.

However it is distinctly possible you may not have enough time to evacuate like the poor buggers who lived in Lisbon in 1755. The town was reduced to rubble in six minutes thanks to a sea earthquake that generated waves of 17m (or 55 feet high in the old money).

So why does the earth behave so badly at times? Why does it need to belch on occasion? According to the Modified Mercalli Scale (which measures intensity at a particular location based on observed effects unlike the Richter scale which measures magnitude), a force 9 will cause significant damage to well designed buildings though it is not certain how the sea affects this observation.

Its probably safe to say you don’t want to be on the beach when it happens. The cause is when two parts of the earth move suddenly in relation to each other along a fault line.

The epicentre is a point upon the land (or bottom of the sea) directly above the focal point of the collision. When stretched rocks snap, there is a sudden release of energy and it spreads out in waves. Shock waves travel out from the focus speeding up depending on the density of the material around them.

It is happening all the time at fault lines that mark off the boundary between the continental plates but usually the battle takes the path of least resistance which results in boring old friction. Occasionally a tendon stretched too far will snap and will release massive amounts of energy which vibrates back and forth. Rising lava under a volcano can do the same thing but is only a minor culprit compared to earthquakes. Science still has no idea why deep earthquakes (700km or lower) occur.

The whiteness of those waves crashing through the western hotels of Phuket in the December 2004 tsunami was visually awesome and will share with 9/11 iconology the ability of news bite pictures to define a new kind of terrorism.

Nature’s own remedy shuddering through the rocks by blasting 8.9 Eichter’s of earthquake and then let the sea do the dirty work for us.

Every so often the banality of time is interfered with by a swift kick to the tectonic plates. America’s coasts will be paranoid. What if this happened off Japan or Iceland (both having equally lively geology)? This would be Jerry Bruckheimer’s ultimate fantasy realised, waves tumbling over the statue of liberty for once without the aid of a computer graphic interface.

Alphonse Kerr

Alphonse Kerr was a minor, now forgotten, French writer of the 19th century.

Julian Barnes salutes him on two counts. Firstly as the gentleman who gave us the phrase ‘plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose’ and secondly for his obscure link to two of the century’s most famous novels on adultery ‘Madame Bovary’ and ‘Anna Karenina’. By the way, the female ‘a’ at the end of Karenin-a is added or omitted depending on which version of the novel you read and whether the editors approve of the Russian habit of adding ‘a’ to female surnames. Personally I go with it, after all who has ever heard of Kournikov or Navratilov?

Back to Alphonse and the Russian novel Karenin(a). M. Kerr features some eight to ten pages from the end of the book. Prince Sherbatsky quotes him by name:

‘Alphonse Kerr put it very well’ he exclaimed, ‘before the war with Prussia when he wrote: You say the war is absolutely necessary? Very Well! He who advocates war – off with him in a special advance legion to lead the first onslaught, the first attack!’

As for the link to Bovary, he was embroiled in Flaubert’s personal life. Louise Colet (Flaubert’s mistress) stabbed Kerr in the back, though not fatally. Colet had stabbed Kerr because he had insinuated in a newspaper article Colet’s pension and her unborn child (she was 8 months pregnant at the time) were both the responsibility of Victor Cousin, a high government official.

The insinuation was accurate and Kerr did not appear to be unduly upset by the attack. Despite his own injury, he sent the distressed Collet home in a taxicab and he eventually framed the kitchen knife used in the attack with the label “Given to me by Mme Colet….in the back”.

Kerr eventually retired to become a keen flower grower and even if his works are forgotten, he keeps his place in botanical history with a species of bamboo named for him in the name of Bambosa Glaucescens Alphonse Kerr (pictured above).

Koyaanisqatsi

Koyaanisqatsi is a Hopi Indian word with a very specific meaning.

Actually it has several very specific meanings. It can be ‘crazy life’ or ‘life out of balance’ or more wordy still ‘life that needs to change from its current way of living’.

Godfrey Reggio's 1983 film of that name is a wordless, plotless montage of images scored by Philip Glass’s magpie music (pilfering from every source imaginable.) The film has been described as ‘beautiful but pointless.’ I think that ‘beautiful and besides the point’ describes it better.

It is the change in perspective that gives the film its power. A nuclear explosion in the form of a mushroom cloud is seen from a small desert cactus. We see the pavement view of a rising moon which is suddenly eclipsed by an office building. These images testify to the distorted power of the piece. It offers the planet holistically and then deconstructs it through natural and manmade totems each image adding to the overall unsettling of the whole.

The film raises as many questions as it answers. As Roger Ebert says "It has been hailed as a vast and sorrowful vision, but to what end? If the people in all those cars on all those expressways are indeed living crazy lives, their problem is not the expressway (which is all that makes life in L.A. manageable) but perhaps social facts such as unemployment, crime, racism, drug abuse and illiteracy -- issues so complicated that a return to nature seems like an elitist joke at their expense."

If it is an 'elitist joke' as Ebert contests, Woolly Days is not sure if anyone has seen the funny side of it.

Clumsy, Flimsy, Whimsy

The World Trade Centre probably deserved to be destroyed, if only for its starring role in the hideous 1976 remake of King Kong.

In the original 1933 classic by Cooper and Schroedsack, the monstrous monkey carries Fay Wray to the top of the then world’s largest building the Empire State.

By the midseventies it had been eclipsed by the WTC and sheer consideration of records meant that the supersized simian had to carry Jessica Lange to the top of one of the towers.

There being two towers to choose from, it was possible for Kong (lovingly clutching Lange in a hugely hairy paw) to leap from one tower to the other.

He is eventually killed by helicopter gunships and falls off the building but not before gently pushing the heroine to safety. She miraculously appears by the dead ape’s side barely moments later at the base of the towers. Perhaps she survived the jump. Execrable. Al Queeda are merely guardians of good taste.

Peter Jackson went back to source material for his inspiration and took Kong and the heroine (Australian Naomi Watts as the screamstress) back to the Empire State in a dazzling display of CGI. Cynics noted the air force reacts quicker in the 1930s to this Noo York skyscraper drama than they did in September 2001.

Despite the impressive graphics, Jackson takes his usual inordinate time to reach a conclusion and the audience has to squirm through 180 minutes of turgid torture to get to squashed apefruit conclusion.

I think it's time to place a moratorium on Kong and declare him a protected species. No more Hollywood extinction jobs on him for at least 100 years or until the Kongs are repatriated in the wild.

And let's work on getting Kong sized bananas growing on his island so that there is no need for him to show his carnivorous side.

Hocus Pocus and other doggerel

Duncan Fallowell in his book ‘To Noto: or London to Sicily in a Ford’ mentions that hocus pocus is a term of Protestant scorn.

He says it is a contraction of Hoc Est Corpus meum by which Roman Catholics understood a literal transubstantiation. That is the doctrine by which the whole substance of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist are consecrated.

However Woolly Day's dog-eared but trusty Collins English dictionary disagrees and describes the etymology of hocus pocus (trickery, chicanery, mystifying jargon or an incantation used by conjurers or magicians when performing tricks) as being perhaps a dog Latin formation invented by jugglers.

Although they preface the explanation with ‘perhaps’, there is no reference to the religion of the jugglers and it is unlikely to be caused by ‘Protestant scorn’. Need to investigate this further. For now, onwards, never say no to Noto. Chicane, by the way, is a 17th century French word for ‘quibble’.

Meanwhile, on matters completely different, WD was in the pub the other night (the Brunswick Tavern in New Farm to be precise), and said in favour of some forgotten naïve adventure ‘the world is full of useless incredulity, not enough people believe’.

The remark was flippant but had a point. Belief is a potent force. It requires suspension of disbelief, that most natural of defensive positions. Belief is active not passive and is a very useful catalyst for getting things done.

The trick is finding the right thing to believe in so actions are infused with great moral force, something intrinsically right that informs, ennobles and emboldens day-to-day adventures.

It is also highly infectious. One committed person can move metaphorical mountains, hitherto inert and apathetic, around him or her. The true believer is ‘the light on the hill’. Ambitions, aspirations and a broad vision are astonishing antidotes to the path of mediocrity.

Safety is abjured and brilliance, however fleeting, becomes tantalisingly possible.