Give Me the Meltdown: Rob Thomas’ Controversial Melbourne Comments

Many years ago, I was a young, beginning teacher with very little discretionary income, yet still I shelled out for a CD called Yourself or Someone Like You by Matchbox 20. To give you an idea, that album and Live’s Throwing Copper were what my teenage students at Mulwaree High and I bonded over –but ‘my’ copy of Throwing Copper began life in my brother’s collection and may or may not have mysteriously travelled to Goulburn with me when I moved out. (Sorry, Justin).

I’ve loved every album from MB20 and also from their frontman, Rob Thomas. I have the INXS track where he sang lead; his Christmas single, and his track from the Meet the Robinsons soundtrack, Little Wonders (more on that later). You could say I’m a bit of a fan.

There was a track on Yourself or Someone Like You that always resonated for me: Real World. I love it. I do wish the Real World would stop bothering me. As someone who is an overthinker, it doesn’t happen often. But most of all, I loved the line, “I wonder what it’s like to be the head honcho.” Not because I do–leadership is not something to which I particularly aspire–but because my tiny, erratic, loud Scottish grandfather used the phrase. A lot. He would ring the phone company, or the electricity company, or the local K-Mart, and bark down the phone in his inimitable and almost incomprehensible accent to whatever hapless person answered, “I want to speak to the Head Honcho.”

So, in November 2000 when my Grandpa, Tom, was in hospital for the last time, I was staying at his house when a competition came on the TV. Ring up, answer one simple question, and you could win two tickets to see MB20 in Wollongong, they said. The question was, “Name the frontman of Matchbox 20.” I did. I won. My friend Jody and I went to the concert the night before my Grandpa’s funeral and I said a private, quiet goodbye to him when I heard the head honcho line.

At the concert, I was impressed. I have always loved musicians who wrote their own music: Lennon and McCartney, Andersson & Ulvaeus, Billy Joel, the Finn brothers. (Don’t bother hating on my musical taste; I’m way too old to care). These guys also write their own stuff. Thomas played: guitar, piano, even drums. Part of the set was acoustic, and I was awed. At one point I saw Adam Gaynor (who has since left the band) beckon a security guard, indicating that he wanted to give his plectrum to someone in the audience. I rolled my eyes, expecting it to be some buxom blonde. It wasn’t. It was a kid, about ten years old, there with his Mum and floating on air when he received it. I was impressed. These guys, it seemed, were class acts.

Jody and I were both pregnant with our second babies at the time. I came home from the concert and my husband asked how it was. Two things, I said. From now on, I want to go see these guys whenever they tour. Also, Rob Thomas is a nice name.

Now in my defence, Robert and Thomas were both family names that were already on the short list (along with one other). It just wasn’t a combination we’d put together before. But I had a moment during that concert when I thought, I wouldn’t mind if my son turned out like one of these guys. And so I have an almost-15 year old whose given names are Robert Thomas, in that order. And last week, Live Nation contacted me to say I’d won two tickets and a meet and greet in Sydney with Rob Thomas in Sydney next week, because I shared the story of my boy’s name and said I’d like to introduce him to his namesake. I have been quietly freaking out ever since. Via email, Roslyn reassured me that my worst fears were unlikely to come true: Rob Thomas probably won’t think I’m an unintelligible idiot who can’t string a sentence together; and if he thinks I’m nuts for naming my kid after a pop/rock singer, there’s nothing I can do about it now. But, as I confided to my daughter, my greatest fear really is: what if he turns out to be a jerk, and I’ve named my kid after him?

The love affair with MB2o and RT is ongoing, and has seen me through some tough times. When my Rob was 3 and my daughter was 5, I was diagnosed with choriocarcinoma; a cancer that is rare, aggressive, and thankfully, treatable. I had a clunky blue Discman and my MB20 albums to get me through long lonely nights in the oncology ward, away from my husband and kids. The song 3AM came to have particular significance. So did others. Years later, I was being interviewed on-air at Relay for Life about my cancer experience and Ricardo Bardon, a wonderfully supportive local DJ who was there with our sponsors Power FM, asked me how I got through it. “Well,” I said, “I discovered just how dark my sense of humour is. And I listened to a lot of Matchbox 20.” He raised his eyebrows, so I elaborated, citing lyrics: “I’ve got a disease/down deep inside me.” He laughed. I continued, “I’m not crazy/I’m just a little unwell.”

Let’s see how far we’ve come …

I’ve been in complete remission for more than a decade, but having had a serious illness changes your views on mortality a bit, to the point where I’m no longer scared of it, and I tell the kids what I expect at my funeral. Well, I am the planning queen of the household, I won’t be able to do it, and I want it done right. This makes them a bit uncomfortable, but their father has the memory span of a goldfish (in fact, most days he can’t remember the names of his own goldfish), so there’s not much point telling him. So I’ve told the kids that they are to play “Little Wonders” at my funeral, or I will haunt them. This makes them roll their eyes, complain, and also look at me in sort of amused horror when the song plays on my iPod in the car.

My daughter was once complaining about this to one of my young students whom we sort of semi-adopted, Josh. Josh grinned at me and said, “it’s the perfect song.”

Josh is Koori.

Several years back, I wrote my PhD thesis about Indigenous writers and writing, looking specifically at how colonisation and forcing people off country caused social problems, and influenced Indigenous writing. I’ve tried to walk the walk, too; teaching academic literacies to students in the Aboriginal Education and Training Unit in Nowra (a site opposite the Bomaderry Homes), working with the fabulous staff and students at Woolyungah Indigenous Centre whenever I get the chance, teaching into the Djinggi Project, being a “yellafella” volunteer at the National Reconciliation Conference in Wollongong way back in 1999. We’ve blogged about racism in Australian sport, and the power of inappropriate comments. Last month, I was in a class at UNSW when a friend who is an immigrant from Britain said that she couldn’t really understand the link to country, but that she respected it. The lecturer pointed out that many Australians don’t really understand the symbiotic link to country, either, and commented on the current government “plan” to shut down some remote communities. Hang on, I argued, even if we don’t get it, surely we know that this doesn’t work, because they tried this in Cherbourg in Queensland, and Bomaderry in New South Wales, and Moore Rover in Western Australian, and a whole bunch of other places, and it didn’t work then, either. The lecturer looked at me and said, “yes, but most Australians aren’t as well educated as you.”

Gulp.

Back to Rob Thomas. So, for my birthday, my firstborn decided I needed concert tickets. She enlisted her father’s help, because the ticket price was a bit beyond her, and then I further complicated things by insisting on going to Melbourne because none of the NSW concerts were indoors, and we once booked the whole family tickets to Day on the Green at Moss Vale on Valentine’s day (Rob Thomas’ birthday!) and it poured, and my husband said we couldn’t take the kids out in that, and I wept all the way back to Nowra. I’m sure I’ll get over it one day, but I’m still at the point where I’d rather pay for airfares and accommodation than have that happen ever again. So we were at Rod Laver Arena for the first show of the Australian tour. We were there for that comment.

The crazy eyes on me give away the level of excitement

Basically, the story in a nutshell goes: there were technical difficulties. Rob Thomas turned and asked his band if it was all of them, and one of the backing singers clearly said, yes. He then tried to fill for a bit, saying he’d tell a story. He decided to share his cure for jet lag. First, he said, I start drinking as soon as I get on the plane, and I drink until I think I’m Australian. We all laughed. Then, he said, I drink until I think I’m a black Australian. There was a collective gasp. I turned to my daughter in disbelief. This is a guy who sings, “My sisters and my brothers/of every different colour;” a guy who had a clearly multicultural band, whose wife and in-laws are Latina, and someone who advocates for all kinds of human, as well as animal rights (in the picture above, my daughter is wearing an anti- animal cruelty Sidewalk Angels shirt). It seemed out of character. Then he said to someone up the front, “don’t be racist.” He went on to say that after that, he drinks until he thinks he’s a little girl, and then his wife gets worried about him.

Right then, I was worried for him. I couldn’t reconcile it: how could a “drink until I think I’m black” comment be OK, anywhere?

The concert went on, we had a good time, we managed to navigate the vagaries of Melbourne public transport and we got back to our weird little hotel and went to bed. I woke up and the first thing I read on Sunday morning was Rob Thomas’ apology on Facebook.

OK, I thought. Seems sincere. I still don’t get why it would be OK anywhere, or why he thinks it’s only at this point in time, but it seems genuine, and it seems like it’s him (not some PR person). That’s good.

Then people started messaging me: Oh dear. Hope this didn’t ruin your night. And so on. And they were sending links to the media reports of it.

I made the mistake of reading some of the comments under the FB post. There were waaaay too many people saying Aussies have lost their sense of humour; the PC “police” have ruined the world; people should drink a cup of concrete and harden up, no one could/should/would be offended unless there was something wrong with them; Aborigines do drink (seriously?) … and on and on it went.

Read the man’s apology. He’s not saying, “I wish that I didn’t have to be politically correct.” He’s saying, “I’m sorry that I wasn’t politically correct.” Being politically correct is not a bad thing; it’s the same as the great Aussie practice of “giving a stuff.” He was upset that he had caused offence, not complaining about those who took it.

A number of people were obviously thinking along the same lines as me, in terms of, how could that comment be OK anywhere? And a second apology, with a further explanation, was forthcoming.

OK, that makes a little more sense. Again, many commenters missed the point and were telling him that “true Aussies” got what he meant.

Well, no. I’m not sure we did. Once I read the context in the second apology, I was closer to “getting” it, though.

It is very tempting, when you are a “fan,” to excuse even the inexcusable. You only have to consider the etymology of the word to see why this happens: only a fanatic will think that their idol is right, all the time. I am not apologising for or excusing the comment. It was the wrong thing to say.

Rob Thomas has acknowledged that. He’s apologised. He’s said what he’s going to do–educate himself–in order to rectify that.

So: the guy is not, as it turns out, a jerk (one arguably inadvertent jerky comment notwithstanding). If my son grows up to be someone who admits his mistakes, explains them without making excuses for them, apologises, and attempts to make amends, I’ll be a very proud mother. Rob Thomas is still a nice name, and I will still be pretty happy if my son grows up to be a little bit like him … because I want both my kids to take responsibility for their actions, and their mistakes.

P.S.

If you’d like to show support for Indigenous Australians in a tangible way, this mob do great things for students, both in school and at Uni:  AIME Mentoring

And for those who usually donate to Relay, here’s the 2016 link.

Thank you!

 

 

On Clara, and Birds

** This post contains inferred Spoilers, Sweetie: relating to Season 9’s “Face the Raven”**

It’s no secret that I love Doctor Who’s latest (or is she the earliest?) companion, Clara. I’ve blogged about her before, and given conference papers about her in Auckland and California.

What you may not know is that I keep chooks. And one of my quirks is, that because the chooks are my companions, I am technically a Doctor and my sense of humour is sometimes odd, we name them after Doctor Who’s companions.

About two years ago, we rescued two hens and dubbed them Idris and Clara. I say rescued, because although they were advertised for sale on a local pets/produce swap/sell page, when we got there, they were in the world’s tiniest yard in our area’s worst suburb. When we paid the man, he tried to get them out of their cramped, dark pen, and Idris, in particular, made a very energetic run for it. The man’s naked toddler was chasing after her shouting, and the man was shouting and swearing, so I kind of didn’t blame her. But Idris quickly became known as “the big white one” because she was big, white and it seemed mean to add the descriptors “nasty” and “anti-social.” In hindsight, perhaps Davros or Missy would have suited her better.

Clara, on the other hand, was petite and pretty; a more exotic breed than white leghorn Idris, and despite the previous untold horrors they’d likely both experienced, she had a lovely nature. She was affectionate from Day 1.

Clara on Day 1, having a cuddle

Both birds came to us with scaly mite, so we spent some time treating them and getting them to be nice, healthy girls. They assimilated with their coopmates with minimal fuss, and Clara would (almost) always come when called. Idris never would.

A week or two ago, I noticed that Clara was looking floppy. Her comb had flopped, her tail was drooping, and she’d clearly lost condition. We treated all the girls for mites and worms, and while her two buddies immediately bucked up, she continued to look … well, floppy. I went to shoo her into her coop one evening and she landed on her tummy and sat there, looking shocked. She’d forgotten to put her feet out.

So when I had a day working-from-home, I  figured I’d better give her some quality time while I still could. I coddled her with a warm towel, cuddles, and hand feeding her creamed corn. She loved it, and was even quite enthusiastic about the food. But it was obvious that she was struggling.

I wasn’t home on Wednesday night, so I rang the kids and asked had they checked that the coop was locked. My daughter told me that “Clara was sleeping down the bottom.” She couldn’t even made her way up into the safety of the nesting boxes.

And that’s where I found her on Thursday morning. She looked like she was napping, and as I approached, I was hoping against hope for a different outcome. But no. The inevitable had happened, and even though I was expecting it, it was still hard to accept.

So tonight Doctor Who involved a plotline around Clara, inevitability, and facing a bird. As the distance between human and bird grew ever smaller and the raven shifted into sinister black smoke, I was once again hoping for a different outcome.

Vale, Claras.

 

 

 

 

Gender Flipped Twilight

Open Graves, Open Minds

Following Kaja’s post breaking the news about Beau and Edythe (don’t you just love them already?) I thought I’d post Stephenie Meyer Explains Gender Flipped Twilight from Publisher’s Weekly. Love to hear your views on this. Does Meyer still have her finger on the pulse of middle America or has she flipped along with the gender? Do tell.

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Sport in Australia: What on earth is going on right now?

This week on the ABC’s QandA, Annabel Crabbe noted that if Australian politicians were considering what they said better than our tennis players were, they were doing OK. Tennis fan or not, everyone in the room got the reference.

In good old ‘Straya, sport is so much a part of our culture that politicians and journalists use these kinds of metaphors, university subjects tackle Sport & Popular Culture together, and the coalescence of sport and popular culture in the Australian imagination are discussed in both the mainstream press and in academia. So if we’re going to look at shifting the shape of popular culture, sooner or later, we were going to have to deal with sport on some level. And sure, I was expecting it to be a kids’ book about a soccer-playing werewolf or something, but since I haven’t come across one yet and this is such a big thing in our nation right now (and only likely to get more airtime with the US Open coming up), it seems like it’s time to look at what’s going on.

This past month the media debate about what it’s OK to say and what it’s not OK to say, on and off a sporting field, has been omnipresent. And it’s ongoing. Recently, rising Aussie tennis star Nick Kyrgios “sledged” his opponent Stan Wawrinka by “letting him know” that his rumoured girlfriend Donna Vekic had at some time in the past allegedly made a presumably informed, adult choice to have sex with someone else whom Kyrgios knew – his teammate and friend, fellow Aussie rising star Thanasi Kokkinakis. All four people involved in this saga are current tennis players on the circuit. Realistically, probably none of them wanted this news broadcast by the omnipresent microphones and cameras courtside. But Kyrgios is the only one who had agency in this story breaking. He really stepped outside the bounds of professional behaviour – not to mention basic manners – and has rightly worn the consequences. Matters were not helped  when first Kyrgios’ Mum and then his brother attempted to defend his actions, saying Wawrinka had sledged him first (which is not, frankly, an unbelievable accusation, but doesn’t excuse anything that came afterwards) and then big bro Christos making an unfortunate comment about Vekic, using a pun on Kokkinakais’ nickname and instagram handle @the_kokk1. Kokkinakis was then harassed later in the tournament by an unrelated aggressive opponent who somehow seemed to think that the “Special Ks” were not actually doubles partners, but the same person.

The Special Ks in happier, less controversial times (Davis Cup tie in Perth, September 2014)

Kyrgios is a 20 year old  who has had a meteoric rise up the tennis rankings over the last eighteen months. He is one of the most talented players I can recall seeing in a lifetime of watching tennis. He is also currently trying to navigate the circuit and all its associated media circus and social media pitfalls without a coach or any kind of outside support team who have experience on the circuit. An overprotective family is not quite cutting it.

I call this Nick’s “Mr T” period

Earlier in the month there was another controversy, this one in stark contrast to the soapie-like qualities of the who-slept-with-whom-in-the-tennis-world drama. This was one centred on one of the elder statesmen of Australian sport, former Australian of the Year, Adam Goodes. I don’t watch AFL and don’t intend to start, so I cannot comment on his on-field behaviour or skill. But off the field, he is ambassador for the Racism. It stops with me. campaign, which basically tells folks that when they see or hear racism, they need to point it out and say it’s not OK. He is currently the face of the “Recognise” campaign, which seeks to add acknowledgement of Indigenous Australians to the Constitution’s preamble. He does charity work to improve the lot of Indigenous kids.

Recognise

His greatest sin, apparently, is that he did an Aboriginal war dance on the field after scoring. In the Indigenous round. You know, the one where a particular fuss is made about Indigenous culture. Cos Lord knows, there’s no precedent for this kind of thing.

He also famously once called security to a 13 year old who called him an ape while he was playing. Security removed the teenager. The police interviewed the teenaged. Goodes was asked if he wanted to press charges and he declined. Ever since, there has been a weird undercurrent in social and even some more mainstream media of “he should apologise for what he did to that little girl.” Peter FitzSimons summed this up so beautifully that I don’t think I need to say anything else; other than, I read the girl’s mother defending her actions with the weirdest argument ever while demanding an apology from Goodes: “She was technically still only 12. I mean, she’d only turned 13 a few days earlier.”

Technically, I don’t think you know what “technically” means. And usually the person who’s done the wrong thing apologises, not the victim. I mean, even Nick Kyrgios has apologised (although Wawrinka has claimed it wasn’t done “properly”).

Anyway, so Adam Goodes was being booed and harassed on the field. In fact, he was harrassed to the point where he said it was impacting his mental health and he had to take a break from the game. Some people say it’s not based on race, because other Indigenous players weren’t being booed; some say they have a right to boo and were booing because they don’t like Goodes (my response to this was, “why do we need to boo in sport, anyway? It’s not done in tennis!” But then Kyrgios was booed in Cincinnati after the sledging incident, so maybe I’m really out of step.). But when you followed most social media posts, it seemed that sooner or later the commenters came back to, “I don’t like him because of what he did to that little girl” (ie pointed out that it is not OK to use a racial slur that suggests Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are sub-human). Which is, of course, about race. And regardless of your “reasons,” when is it OK to bully someone to the point where they can’t actually go to work?

In the midst of all this, I unexpectedly received a message from a former student. Kieran is now in his final year of Engineering; I worked with him at Kip McGrath (now Nowra Tutoring Solutions), when he was studying for his Higher School Certificate. Kieran had been so moved by the Adam Goodes story that he had written a piece about it, and he asked me to have a read and suggest any changes. It was pretty powerful stuff, and didn’t need much input from me. I told him it was too good for a Facebook post and he should try to get it published.

And so, here is Kieran’s piece on The Roar, linked with his permission.

If you have any questions for Kieran about the writing, editing or publishing process involved, pop them in the comments below and we’ll be sure to pass them on. As I said at the time, I am one very proud old Teacher-Lady. I love that I have students who keep in touch and still turn to me for writing or other professional advice years later; I love seeing passion for social justice, and I particularly love when they know that if they combine these two things they’re going to be supported in it.

London Calling: Pop Culture versus High Culture

There has been much excitement in the world of the authors of this humble blog lately – we were  briefly reunited. Dr Roslyn upped and buggered off to the Mother Country a couple of years back, and so all our work has been done online (as opposed to our previous model, which was largely online, but every now and then I’d ring her up and announce, “I can’t write! This isn’t working! I’m too distracted!” and invite myself to her place for a working sleepover, sans kids).

So when I got an email asking me if I’d consider submitting an abstract for a conference in Oxford, the answer was a resounding yes. Oxford! OXFORD! You know, where Lyra and Pan were? Where Tolkien and Lewis studied? Where Alice is set and Harry was shot? That’s only a couple of hours away from where Roslyn is currently living, in a country I’ve always wanted to visit but had never quite made it? That one?

Yes, please.

So, yes, I submitted the abstract. And they accepted it. So off I set for the 13th Inter-Disciplinary Net Monsters and the Monstrous Conference: Monstrous Hungers.

But what to present? Well, with the Wolf Girls getting the band back together, it had to be something wolfy. And since my Day Job is working with students with disabilities (mainly mental health disorders), and Job #2 is training high school teachers how to deal with and engage adolescents, I opted to go with Martin Millar’s Wolf Girl trilogy: about an anxious, depressed, cutting, homeless addict who also happens to be a teenage werewolf.

The itinerary was pretty much skewed to popular, rather than high, culture. We started with a trip to Wimbledon. I am not a believer in “Bucket Lists,” but when I was treated for cancer at the ripe old age of 31, a family decision was made that some things on the “we can do that in retirement” list needed to be moved to the “do it if the opportunity arises” list, and we set off to visit the Australian Open and the Great Ocean Road once my treatment was completed. After that taste of Grand Slam action, I thought I’d like to complete my own Slam (as a spectator) – Wimbledon, the US in New York (hey, it’s New York! – also on the must-see-but-never-been list) and if you’re going to go to three of them, you might as well go to the fourth, even if it is on clay. Plus, Paris. But up until going to visit someone who actually lived in the suburb of Wimbledon, I was still on Step 1.

So I was introduced to the wonders of The Queue, and then the even more wondrous idea that slightly used tickets get handed back in and you can buy a cheap second-hand ticket and actually get onto Centre Court to watch Finals. I still cannot believe that this actually happened.

Continuing the Wimbledon theme, we headed into Wimbledon Common where Roslyn assured me I would find no actual Wombles.

I know a Womble when I see one

Or three …

Continuing the low culture theme, we then set out on a quest to locate Sun Hill.

If the guys were hanging around out the front, that would be even better …

We knew that the studio and Sun Hill set was in Wimbledon. We found out the address (we are researchers, after all). And then we kept seeing police cars as we trudged through the drizzle of an out-of-the-way industrial estate.

A good sign?

I was ready to give up but Roslyn (as usual) had done more research than me, and was therefore more confident of an outcome. And we turned the corner and there it was … Sun Hill station. There was much gasping and carrying on from me, and I was there hyperventilating long enough for a security guard to come and advise us we “couldn’t be on site” but to take as many photos as we needed on the way out.

Embarrassingly happy

We also had a trip to the London Eye (which did NOT act as an aerial for Doctor Who, on that occasion), walked all over London including around Westminster Abbey (where David Tennant was NOT playing a conniving politician, on this occasion), took a  Beatles-esque photo on Abbey Road and –another highlight–checked out Mamma Mia in Covent Garden.

But there was one very big, high culture moment … Richard II at Shakespeare’s Globe. Not gonna lie, there was a teary moment when that idea hit home.

Bear in mind, I’m a recovering English teacher

And on to Oxford. The conference was held in Mansfield College and the meals were served in a Harry Potter-esque chapel.

The conference was fascinating and intense and as we’ve already established in Oxford. And afterwards a few of us managed to have our final dinner and drink at The Turf, where former Australian PM Bob Hawke broke the world skolling record and former US President Bill Clinton allegedly did not inhale.

I can’t down a yard glass at all, let alone in that time frame

Ros joined me the day after the conference for some literary nerd Oxford adventures. We checked out Blackwell’s bookshop (where they were celebrating the 150th anniversary of Alice in Wonderland), and went to the Eagle and Child (where Tolkien and Lewis hung out), and also the Marks of Genius exhibition at the Bodleian Library which blew my tiny little mind by having things on display like Tolkien’s hand-drawn cover for the Hobbit; a 13-year-old Jane Austen’s novel, dedicated to her sister, Cassandra; the original hand-written draft of The Wind in the Willows; and two excised pages of Shelley’s Frankenstein, in which Frankenstein and Clerval roam around Oxford.

Free exhibition, people.

If you look closely, you can see my mind *actually* being blown

This trip had it all:  sport and Shakespeare, ABBA and Abbey Road, Wimbledon and Wombles, werewolves and woodentops, sandstone and Shelley. It was the best of pop music, pop culture, literature and drama. Anytime London calls, I reckon I’ll go.

Giles, Stiles, and trips to Sydney … GANZA Mark II

Last time I blogged about the GANZA conference, it took me a very long time to get around to doing it. So pick your collective self up off the floor, dear readers, because this time around I’m getting around to it a scant few days after the 2nd biennial conference, themed “Gothic Spaces: Boundaries, Mergence and Liminalities.”

The conference opened with a plenary session from Professor John Stephens about the Gothic in Children’s literature, which I throroughly enjoyed. Professor Stephens introduced us to the picture book of Cinderella Skeleton, who is my kind of princess. Not content with losing her slipper, in this version the would-be princess loses her entire foot.

The next session I attended included papers from Anna Jackson (continuing the tradition of sitting in awe as you’re in the same room as people you’ve cited), Samuel Finegan, Erin Mercer and Elizabeth Kinder. The topics ranged from ideas about memory and privacy, to incest and rape, to the use of candles and simulacra to mimic urban legends, to the “armed bastards” of Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes. This little snapshot kind of gives you a feel for GANZA: postgrads, early career researchers and experts in the field mingle, and the content covered is broad ranging. Over the course of two days, we discussed the Gothic as it appeared in TV, film, literature, fashion, food, architecture, geography, medicine, disability and more.

My paper this time around was inspired by a conversation with my teenaged daughter, who has finally overcome her resistance to reading/watching “anything Mum works on” because her friends are all into Buffy, The Vampire Diaries and Teen Wolf. In fact, at any given point in time she’s usually more up-to-date than I am, since I tend to binge-watch when I have a looming deadline. Anyway, at some point she came home and in that shocked tone that teenagers use when a parent is right, asked “how I knew” that something I’d said would happen, would happen. I replied: “Because I’m Giles; the watcher from the margins. The teacher” to which she retorted: “and Stiles.” And of course, she was right: Stiles IS the Watcher of Teen Wolf; the token human, the guy who needs to be protected but who has the knowledge and research skills to develop the plans. Only he’s not an adult British tweed wearing bloke with a massive distrust of computers, so how do they keep him in the margins? By adding a series of illnesses and disabilities, of course. As the wolves are managing and embracing their “condition” of lycanthropy, Stiles is shown repeatedly to be weak, sick, incurably human. Or as he puts it, because he’s every bit as into pop culture as we are: he’s always Robin to Scott-the-teen-alpha’s Batman.

Day 2 saw the second plenary, this time from Professor Paul Giles. It focussed on the “Antipodean Gothic;” happily, something that felt more homely than unhomely to me (Roslyn and I both did our PhDs under the supervision of Professor Gerry Turcotte. If you type “Australian Gothic” into Google, the first two entries that pop up were both authored by him). This was followed by more fantastic panel sessions.

After the conference’s close and packing away the conference rooms, we headed off to the Hero of Waterloo in the Rocks for a Gothic trivia night and ghost tour. Unfortunately those of us who were actually carrying everything needed for said quiz hopped into a cab with Sydney’s worst taxi driver, who told us he had never heard of the Hero of Waterloo (Sydney’s oldest pub and a stop on the famous Rocks ghost tour) and didn’t know of Fort Street (!) when we helpfully gave him the street address instead. He then asked us (from Auckland, Newcastle and Nowra) for directions. What ensued was a whacky and needlessly long and expensive trek through Sydney with directions coming from a passenger’s iPhone that was on 1% battery. When I realised that nothing in the cab worked – not the GPS, not the clock, and I’m willing to bet that there was something odd with the meter, given that the ride home was about half the price–we began to speculate that perhaps we had slipped into some kind of fantastic wormhole ourselves. Finally we pulled up just past the pub in a screech of brakes, to be greeted by a lot of anxious quiz-goers who were wondering if they had gone to the wrong place.

There were some pretty big hints as to its location.

Anyway, all that drama aside, we had a lovely quiz which was very tight and involved quite minimal smartphone-based cheating. We then headed into the depths of hell rather warm basement and cellar and were treated to a quick history of how publicans past used to drug likely souls, shove them down a trapdoor and then push them out a tunnel and onto a boat while they were still out to it. Our host had one of those lively lilting Irish accents that helps you suspend disbelief–I would have cheerfully listened to him recite the Periodic Table of Elements, I think. The tunnel and trapdoor have long since been “made safe” but there are still shackles in the sandstone that used to be used as a kind of holding bay on busy nights. There’s also apparently a ghost, the late wife of a former publication who shoved her down the trapdoor during an argument and snapped her neck in the process. So be careful about those petty arguments with your spouse, people, especially if shanghai-ing strangers is an entry in your significant other’s CV.

Sadly, we didn’t see any ghosts, but that could be because I didn’t think through my wardrobe choices and turned up wearing my favourite Ghostbusters T-shirt. Sorry, guys.

The BBQ Line

I went to my high school reunion this past weekend. As I’ve noted elsewhere in cyberspace, I went to school in Lithgow, and that’s kind of like the real world equivalent of Old Lima Heights in Glee (I once had a rather senior academic tell me I was “quite impressive,” right after he asked where I’d gone to school. The “~for someone from Lithgow” was kind of left hanging, unspoken, in the air between us. Um, thank you, but no. There are some bloody funny, bloody smart people in any school with 1200 enrolments, and water finds its own level).

You may say that I’m a freak show …

The other thing I should flag before we go any further, is that almost no-one used their real name in Lithgow, so when I use derivatives of people surnames here, they’re not pseudonyms. They’re what I actually call these people, to their faces, except in front of members of their immediate family. So, having had nowhere near enough sleep but being in a reflective mood, I’d like to share a couple of the best pop-culture related moments of the evening.

First up, I caught up with a very dear mate I actually haven’t seen since, oh, about two months after we left school, which would be about when we all buggered off to various institutions of learning or work. I asked Shep what he’s doing now and he mumbled something about it being boring. I teased – does it have a job title? What’s on his payslip? And he prevaricated. He said has a job title but it doesn’t describe what he does. And I told him he needs a BBQ line. The “BBQ line” will be familiar to PhD candidates. You spend ages coming up with some lexically dense abstract that describes your project in terms that will make academics nod their heads sagely and say things like, “Hmmm, I think that might have legs.” But then you need a totally different, accessible, short line that you can use at the family barbecue in order to explain exactly how you are wasting your life spending your study time. Preferably before the relative with the tongs nods off and the snags get burned beyond recognition.

I reminded him that he’d recommended that I read Raymond E. Feist’s Magician. This was my first “adult” foray into the Fantasy genre. Sure, I’d read Narnia and Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising sequence and Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time–and I loved them!—but I had kind of compartmentalised them as kids’ books. So here we were in Year 12 and I was being my complete stresshead self and he suggests I bugger off into an alternate world for a bit.

So I did.

And then I went to Uni and took Richard Harland‘s Fantasy subject where I was introduced to the wonders of Anne McCaffrey. (One of my classmates was the wonderful Adina West, by the way, if you’d like to check out some contemporary Australian Fantasy of the blood-drinking or shapeshifting persuasion).

And now, as I explained to my friend, one of the things I get to do is write about Fantasy.

And that’s my BBQ line. And for a moment we just stood there, grinning. Because it is kind of cool to realise that a conversation in a shared study period can actually lead somewhere totally unexpected.

Later in the evening, I was standing next to Shep’s best mate, Del. Actually, I was standing next to Del for much of the evening. He has an uncanny knack of finding the funny in everything and sometimes it’s borderline inappropriate, but because he’s always been supportive and incredibly kind, I let him get away with it. So at one point he’s in conversation with the other EngLit PhD from our year, who also happens to be a highly successful YA author. And they’re talking books. Oh yes, I was at the nerds’ table, and I’m owning that. I loved every minute of it. Anyway, so Del says how he read Feist’s Magician and that started him reading a whole bunch of Fantasy stuff. And so there was more grinning, and by now I’m thinking Shep should be getting some kind of commission from Feist’s publisher.

(And both lads, bless them, asked where they could find out more about what I’d published. You should find links scattered through this blog, fellas. We’re all about the shameless self-promotion, here. Plus, I’ve got half-a-dozen signed copies on my shelf at work, ready for sale, because I didn’t want to store them at mine and Ros moved halfway across the world so I’ve got her sale copies, too. Just sayin.’ No pressure).

Still later, I had a very earnest conversation with my mate Phoopie about the strengths of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, while our rather sober (in both senses of the word) friend Ols stood behind us rolling his eyes at said earnestness.

I spent a lot of time in the library, too.

We didn’t spend the whole night talking books or cult TV, and I won’t regale you with all the you-had-to-be-there jokes. But I did feel as though I was on Graham Norton’s couch for a while there. Specifically, the night he had Bill Murray on. The conversation was smart and funny and self-deprecating and I really hope I don’t have to wait another twenty-something years for the next burst.

But on the long drive back yesterday, I was thinking about my BBQ line. And if I focus on that, it really does seem like I have the coolest job in the world. But lately I haven’t been feeling it. Some of my teaching is incredibly cool, too. I work with the most disadvantaged students in the Uni, and while I would be lying if I said that I was always able to make a difference, when I do see progress, it’s spectacularly rewarding. So this week, I am going to try to focus on the BBQ line, rather than the mire of the day-to-day, and see if I’m less of a stresshead by escaping that way. Failing that, I’m going to escape into a Fantasy novel.

* This post is dedicated to the memory of our library mate, Ben R. We wish you were at the nerds’ table with us this weekend.

My Brilliant, Undead Career

I’m supposed to working on a book manuscript right now. Instead, I’m procrastinating. My “day job” involves working with University students to improve their academic learning and literacy. That’s right, I teach people to write, and then try to actively avoid writing myself, sometimes by doing things like blogging. Which is, you know, actually writing. The irony is palpable.

There’s a curious tension between such a teaching-focused role and my research, which has become increasingly focused on pop culture over the years. A lot of people don’t get it. But as I’ve argued repeatedly, you can’t teach students unless you engage them. If all they want to talk about is Game of Thrones, fine; use that as an analogy to discuss politics and power, or medieval social strata, or the use of mise-en-scene, or whatever else you can twist it to fit. It’s easier to do that and capture their attention than it is to stamp your foot and demand that they stop distracting you from your pre-established lesson plan whose brilliance they are clearly missing. As Roslyn and I have said repeatedly, popular cultures does matter, because anything with which students–and society more generally–engages, influences the thinking of those students and that society.

So when I was approached by the Centre for Student Engagement at my Uni to present a lunchtime workshop on how to “Ace that Essay!,” I saw an opportunity. Let’s rethink this, I said. Let’s rename it. That idea of an essay having a “body”? Let’s use it. Let’s carve up the corpse of some of my old writing drafts and see how the bits get stitched together to make something of Frankensteinian beauty.

Perhaps they were scared of me, because they agreed.

I’m sure there are some who see my research as completely removed from my teaching.  Most people are too polite to actually roll their eyes and say, “She’s in her office doing her own thing, again,” but I suspect there might be some who still think it. But then again, most people don’t see my one to one appointments with my students.

I work mainly with at-risk students. Students with disabilities, Indigenous students, and Mature Age students returning to study after years or decades outside of formal classrooms. Some of them come into my office very cautiously. Others come in seething with resentment, because they think they’ve been identified as somehow lacking and sent for some kind of remediation. But it’s a very rare student who doesn’t comment on the Doctor Who, The Big Bang Theory, The Vampire Diaries or X-Files paraphernalia on the walls. Or the rows and rows of vampire and werewolf-themed books and DVDs. Or even the occasional Twilight-themed card or decorating item, because Roslyn and I like to buy each other hilariously kitsch gifts whenever we can.

It gets them talking. Pop culture is a great leveller.

So, when faced with a group of students in Week 1–number unknown, faculties and fields of study unknown, and whether or not they are in first year or perhaps a bit further along unknown–I could go with a boring, generic: “An essay has an Introduction, a Body and a Conclusion ….” model.

Or, I could talk about Spike from Buffy as a progenitor for Damon in The Vampire Diaries … and about what turns that from a vaguely interesting observation to an academic argument. Or how Buffy’s other British friend, Giles, has influenced Stiles in the new Teen Wolf … and where do we find the evidence or examples that make this the kind of argument someone might want to read? Or how werewolves are just code for adolescence, really — so look at this paragraph about that idea, and tell me where the topic sentence is and how you would go about creating one that has some depth. And we can talk about how to manage 128 versions of the same document, because sometimes, that’s what it takes. Even for academics. People who say they just wrote one draft an hour before it was due? Good for them, but find out what kind of mark they got before you follow their lead, because personally, I’m just not that brilliant, and I’m not sure I’ve met anyone else who is, either.

And so, in the words of the original and obnoxious Stiles, we’re going to make this something monstrous. We’re going to carve up the cadavers of my writing about weres and shifters and vamps and all kinds of things that go bump in the night, because Barthes may be right about the author being dead, but the writing has a life of its own.

 

But do we, Stiles? What about the vampires? And the zombies?

Or it will do, if I stop procrastinating!

 

 

 

 

Calling all Pop Culture Types …

PopCAANZ, the Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand, is holding its annual conference at the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Hobart, Tasmania (June 18-20).This year, the conference coincides with the Dark Mofo exhibition at MONA.

The Call for Papers is out now. I’m particularly keen to hear from people who are interested in presenting on representations of Disability in Popular Culture, but you’ll also find panels on TV, Film, Manga, Toys, Fashion, Food and the Gothic, to name just some of the strands.

Twitter: Shifting the Shape of Political Culture?

The following is an edited and expanded version of a piece I submitted to Mama Mia.

I am one of those strange people who really enjoys election campaigns. My first work experience was with a local newspaper, and although I ultimately headed through high school teaching and into academia instead, there’s a part of me that really just wants to be Annabel Crabb. Social media affords me an opportunity to occasionally publish political comment on a very small scale—tweeting during Q and A on a Monday night, recirculating things on Facebook and Twitter, engaging in polite debate with friends when I do. (I apologise to anyone who actually looks at our Twitter links on this page and expects to find tweets about, you know, shapeshifting. The election campaign has another 4 weeks to run).

And not necessarily like-minded friends, either. After all, if you are all in agreement, you can’t call it debate. Or democracy. If you read this blog, you’ll already know that I’ve done some analysis of the impact of social media controversies on popular culture—notably, how allegations of Stephen Moffat being misogynistic on Doctor Who played out across Twitter. I never really expected to be finding out about misogyny on Twitter firsthand, but this week, that seems to be what happened.

On Tuesday night, I came across the clip of Tony Abbott discussing the attributes of Liberal candidate Fiona Scott in Lindsay. The link to the clip came from @mamamia. For those who don’t know, Mama Mia.com is generally recognised as the go-to place for Australian women’s opinions on, well, just about everything, and has one of the largest Twitter followings in Australia. So kind of a big and influential audience.

I retweeted the link, adding my own comment to the beginning of the tweet: “Oh dear.” That was it.  A response came almost immediately:

@KMcMahonColeman @Mamamia now it is unfashionable to say someone has sex appeal

I replied that I thought it would be smarter politics to discuss competence, rather than looks, when recommending a candidate to locals. I actually believe that should apply to both genders and all jobs. Well, most jobs. I grant that looks might be relevant if you’re a model, for instance. But as an elected political representative? Not so much.  The sexism, in this instance, is implied, because I can’t for the life of me remember anyone ever suggesting we should vote for a male politician because he’s sexy. But I maintain that the standard of thinking about attributes, track records and policies should be applied across the board when deciding for whom to vote, regardless of gender.

But apparently my reply, measured though I thought it was, only incensed my correspondent. He got gender specific, and he got personal:

@KMcMahonColeman @Mamamia he made a throw away jibe and the bitter twisted feminist [sic] are upset how ugly you lot must be inside

OK, so at this point, I’m truly puzzled. It was a throwaway line, yes, and quite frankly, I think that’s pretty much how I responded to it. “Oh dear” is hardly savage or hard-hitting—I didn’t even use the full 140 characters Twitter allows.

Secondly, I’m not convinced that Mr Abbott made a “jibe”; I rather suspect that Mr Abbott meant the comment in a complimentary manner. But still, a minor gaffe, mildly humorous, not the crime of the century and unlikely to derail his election campaign.

I’d characterise the “bitter twisted feminist” thing as a jibe, though. As it happens, I am a feminist, although I did not declare myself to be one to this Tweep. I’m not quite sure why that must necessarily mean I’m bitter, though. Or why my insides might be uglier than anyone else’s.

But here’s the bit I really don’t get: what was this guy trying to achieve? A quick look at his Twitter account showed that he’s pro-Liberal and anti-Labor. A quick look at mine and you’d probably be able to quickly deduce that I’m left-leaning. OK, so we’re probably going to disagree on a number of issues. I’d prefer to do so politely, though. And the Liberal party has been trying for a long time to deal with what has become widely known in popular parlance as “Tony’s women problem.” There’s a well established belief that the Opposition Leader and likely next PM, Mr Abbott, is very conservative when it comes to gender politics, started, in part, by a number of public comments made some years ago. To be fair, a lot of conservative men of a certain age are; and the subset of men raised Catholic, I’d suggest, probably more so. I say this with some confidence, as the daughter of one.

Since the former PM, Julia Gillard, gave her famous misogyny speech in Parliament late last year, countless column inches have been devoted to arguing about the differences between sexism and misogyny. In a world where context is everything, this video went viral with the context excised. Mr Abbott had referred to a male MP as a misogynist after he sent what were evidently supposed to be flirty text messages to another guy likening female genitalia to mussels in brine. The tone of the texts was, in fact, misogynistic. And they were so explicit and demeaning that they could not be shown on the evening news, despite being the lead news story. Mr Abbott, in pointing this out, was not being misogynistic or even sexist. And yet he copped it, based on previous public comments he’d made. Don’t get me wrong, some of the public comments he’s made about women and their capacities absolutely floor me — but I fundamentally don’t “get” why this was the moment to address them.

For the record, the argument put forward by members of the Coalition that “Mr Abbott can’t hate women because he’s surrounded by them,” while completely twee, is probably accurate. It is perfectly plausible for men of older generations to be simultaneously proud and somewhat puzzled by the professional successes of their wives and daughters. A little bit of ingrained sexism because of how you were raised doesn’t necessarily equate to blanket hatred. But that doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to point it out, either.

I also think it has to be acknowledged that Mr Abbott has been trying hard to address the issue of his “woman problem.” He’s been more measured in his comments about women since he became Opposition Leader. He’s talked about his wife’s work outside the home and how it contributed to society. But all of this will be for nought if he has supporters like my friend on Twitter, who hurl this kind of vitriol around the Internet. What he published, which essentialised all female dissonant voices as feminist, ugly and bitter, certainly seemed hateful and yes, misogynistic. By including @Mamamia in all of his replies, this keyboard warrior has published his nasty messages to a large, predominantly female, Australian readership on Twitter. Now, the way democracy works is, you need more than 50% of the vote in order to win. So hurling abuse at women who disagree with you is probably not the best strategy when you’re trying to get your guy elected.

At this point, I started to feel sorry for Mr Abbott. I’m sure he and his team would much prefer not to have this guy “helping” their cause in such a manner.  So I alerted him to the conversation:

@TonyAbbottMHR, how do you feel about your warrior [Twitter handle removed] hurling abuse at “bitter” and “ugly” voting feminists like me and @Mamamia? – 13 Aug

There was another instant response, thought not from Mr Abbott:

@KMcMahonColeman @TonyAbbottMHR @Mamamia Give us a break the only thing [sic] ugly are you lousy feminist [sic] screaming about nothing

OK, so apparently now we’re all shrill and vacuous as well.

We’ve all wondered how political leaders will effectively manage election campaigns with the advent of the 24 hours news cycle and social media playing increasingly large roles. I think we’ve always assumed that it was a matter for the politicians themselves, managing their online personas and the increased vulnerability that comes with increased coverage and comment. But suddenly I find myself wondering instead what they will do about the challenge of managing rogue supporters who may be inadvertently doing their cause more harm than good.