Pelican Vol 83 Edition 1 by UWA Student Guild

VOL 83 EDITION 1

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Contents

pelican T O

One

WELCOME U W A

your

elders

tells

you

truths your university never would b y

A le x

G riffin

WHATEVER

AUSTRALIA VS ENGLAND

H A P P E N E D

BABY

CAIN?

The foreign correspondent is back in Perth. What did she learn? She gives you her final report card

From thirty years in the future the world’s last free press takes a look at the Great GOP Clusterfuck of 2012 by

R ichard F erguson

Y vonne B uresch

H O W

T O

T A K E O V E R T H E

P E L I C A N

The Pelican teaches you how to engineer a power grab with a three-year plan

J osh

C hiat

POLITICS

MUSIC

FILM

BOOKS

ARTS

07 ZEITGEIST

28 THE ESSENTIALS OF PERTH MUSIC

34 ALICE IN INDIA: BOLLYWOOD AND POVERTY

38 PERTH WRITER’S FESTIVAL

44 ARE VIDEO GAMES ART? ARTS ED. PLOPPY SAYS YEAH, KINDA

b y

INSIDE 05 ED/PREZ 06 SPORTS SCIENCE: KIM JONG-IL 18 PSYCHOPATHs In Search of profits 22 WRESTLING REVOLUTION

23 WHAT’S HAPPENING? 26 DATING w/ MARNIE 27 HOW TO 46 HOWL

08 STATE LABOR: ALL Rise the Planet of the Gimps 10 When the world stopped watching western sahara

29 THE MEDICS 30 REVIEWS 32 SOUTHBOUND 2012

36 REVIEWS

40 REVIEWS 42 GOVERNMENT HOUSE: JEREMY MARTENS ON WA’S COLONIAL HISTORY

45 REVIEWS

Contributors

CREDITS Pelican vol 83 edition 1 THE (ZIONIST) TAKEOVER BEGINS Josh Chiat // Editor

Illustrators //

Sub-Editors //

CAMDEN WATTS

Wayne Chandra // Design

Louise Abbott

Richard Ferguson

Alex Pond // Advertising

Grace McKie

Alex Griffin

Camden Watts // Cover Art

Alice Palmer

Lachlan Keeley

Alice Mepham // Film Editor

Kate Prendergast

Tom Reynolds

Alex Griffin // Music Editor

Ena Tulic

Camden Watts has been studying Law/Arts at UWA since 2008. While studying Camden has always paid more attention to drawing; his notes are generally a series of sketches. Back from Nottingham, he has recently acquired the ability to urinate and brush his teeth at the same time.

Lachlan Keeley // Arts Editor

Camden Watts

Ben Sacks // Books Editor Richard Ferguson // Politics Editor

Contributors// Marnie Allen

Patrick Marlborough

Mai Barnes

Alice Mepham

Luke Bartlett

Deblina Mittra

Mark Birchall

Michael O’Brien

Yvonne Buresch

Sean O’Connor

Kevin Chiat

Heather Pagram

Richard Ferguson

Kate Prendergast

Alex Griffin

Tom Reynolds

Brad Griffin

Ben Sacks

Cassandre Hubert

James Spinks

Blair Hurley

Mark Tilly

Lachlan Keeley

Connor Weightman

Zoe Kilbourn

Alex Wolman

The views expressed herein are not the opinions of the UWA Student Guild or Pelican editorial staff, but of the individual writers and artists. We take no responsibility for any perceived offence caused by one of our writers. If you wish to contact us you can send an email to pelican@guild.uwa.edu.au.

If you are interested in Camden’s art don’t hesitate to contact him on pimpwacker@hotmail.com.

say witty things. There are four types of takeover, all of which sound sexual – friendly takeover, hostile takeover, reverse takeover, and my personal favourite, the backflip takeover. In terms of tactics against takeovers, there is the flip over, the lobster trap and the Pac-Man defence – I’ll leave you to figure that one out.

Prezitorial Hi, I’m Matt McKenzie, your new Guild President. Pelican’s theme of the month is Takeover, which is appropriate, as that reflects what’s happening on campus. We’re about to be taken over by a new group of freshers, our education being taken over by New Courses 2012, and I’ve just taken over as Guild President with a fresh team who will be taking the Guild in a new direction in 2012. I also like the theme because I’m a business student, which is apparently unusual for a Guild President. This inspired me to look up Wikipedia for some information about takeovers, so I could

I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome our new fresher overlords as they takeover campus. You’re going to hear a lot about how important it is to be involved on campus and it is absolutely true. If American sitcoms have taught me anything, it’s that university will be the best years of your life, and that it’s all downhill after this. Also, we’re the only uni in WA with a social life, so you should make the most of it. One thing I regret is that I didn’t party enough as a fresher and I’m only really making up for that now. Also, watch out for the Commissioner. I’d also like to touch on the takeover of New Courses 2012. This is the largest change that’s ever happened to education at UWA, and the Admiralty are really excited by it. For me, it means reading lots of reports and attending lots of meetings. For you, it could be a tough transition, and if it is, you need to come and speak to the Guild. We have staff who get paid to help you and students who are elected to represent you, so don’t be afraid to tell us your problems or we’ll be lonely and cry.

societies in order to establish yourself politically if not socially. The good news is that even if your peers don’t quite respect you, your university adores you. The focus around here is on New! New guild! New food! New courses! New ways to waste your major! Neu! Neu! Neu! While the rest of us old folk are thrown into Negativland where our African-American History elective’s points go to swim with other antiquated notions like our university’s long tossed bachelor’s degree in journalism, you guys become the testing ground for the University of Tomorrow, Today!

editorial Hello readers! If you are from the old establishment you know the drill: Welcome to Pelican 2012. We have a great show for you this month: Exciting guests, biting satire, some fart jokes and the most inconsistent live band on the tube, Ermine Coat! If you’re new here, you might not be so familiar with the way things work. As far as the old guard (legacy) of UWA’s student community is concerned, you ‘freshers’ are on the bottom rung of the ladder, needing to work your way up through various faculties, clubs and

This is where the Pelican comes in. In the new system you will be asked to write, discuss and engage with incredibly broad subjects. Some of these will probably, I’m sorry to say, bore you to death. At other times you will feel a yearning to write about a subject cut from the curriculum the year before because the tutorials were becoming costly and nobody was able to find corporate sponsorship – The Politics of Child Labour, specially brought to you by Nike. In times like these, you can always turn to our office; listen to lost Malian funk, drink fine whiskey (ok, black label) and discuss the history of modernist literature. I promise that I’ve learnt more from

Now that I’m sitting in the Guild President’s chair, I’ll tell you a bit about me. Last year I completed the fourth year of an Economics/Arts double degree. I like sport and I like going to bars. I want to change the Guild. I want it to be more relevant to everyday students. That’s why we’ll be doing things differently this year. The Guild will be more accountable, more consultative, less about politics and more about results. We will remember the students who have been forgotten. Today I met with the manager from Rocketfuel – a coffee shop near UWA. You might know I think we should have a Rocketfuel on campus, and we’ve been working on that over summer. I think we have a lot of scope to improve the food on campus and this year, for the first time in decades, we’ll do just that. We’ve met with UWA Security to start making campus safer, and we’ll implement free self defence classes too. We’ve increased funding for clubs. I will personally be meeting all of the Deans and the Chancellery, one by one, so we can keep an eye on new courses. I’m looking forward to spending this year making every change I can to improve UWA for you. I hope the year is successful for us both. M

this office than in my entire (admittedly short) academic life at university. Be mindful of your words of course, because the Zionist takeover has begun. From this point of influence my superiors have asked me to engineer the manipulation of the Australian political system through the UWA Student Guild. Except that our guild has stopped funding the National Union of Students so I’m sorely lacking in ways to infiltrate the Federal Government from here. That changes the course of this whole edition I suppose. I won’t try to indoctrinate you, only provide you with ruminations on certain things taking over the world such as psychopathy, Kim Jong-Il’s golf game, the Republican presidential nominees et al. There’s even an alternative fresher guide in there with advice for if you ever get stuck in a dull conversation about someone’s ATAR. Spitting the truth because we fucking love you. Shalom, Josh

Editorials

editorials

Communist Corner

Politics Zeitgeist:

China Tom Reynolds @tsareynolds

From the daily news to the clothes you wear China has become as omnipresent in our economics as in the national political psyche. This isn’t surprising; the People’s Republic is enormous and predicted to spend the next two decades matching its phenomenally large potential with an equal capacity. China is the world’s most populous country, second largest economy, and third largest state by size. It also has the sixth largest military. As renowned Sinologist and MIT scholar Lucian Pye said, “China is a civilisation masquerading as a nation state”. There is a lot of consternation about China’s rise in the West. Historically, emergent powers have asserted themselves through military conflict. However, there are some fundamentals that suggest that China won’t follow the precedents of other emerging powers. The first is historical. China’s political elite are acutely aware of China’s historical circumstances. China still bears deep scars from the experience of colonial occupation, an experience that has been turned into a national narrative that a weak China is vulnerable to colonial manipulation. However, it will remain in the interest of a still under-developed and vulnerable China to avoid conflict with the West over the next decade. The second is self-perception and Pye’s observation explains why China isn’t seeking mastery over the world. The Mandarin name for China translates as ‘Middle Kingdom’, stemming from a ridiculously ancient belief that China is literally at the centre of the universe. This idea continues to permeate through contemporary Chinese nationalism. While China maintains some contentious territorial claims, they have fixed claims based on perceived legal rights (e.g. Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan) rather than ethnic-nationalism for the most part. One of the myths about China is that it’s a monolithic state pursuing a clear and consistent range of policies. It’s not. To give you an example, China is roughly the length of Australia but uses a single time zone set in Beijing. It’s something borrowed from Stalinist Russia which had to

concede to the reality of covering 11 time zones, but decided to set all the transit times by Moscow’s clocks. This kind of superficial centralism underlines a deep-seated insecurity about the fealty of each nation’s provincial peripheries. The reality is that the Communist Party has more authority over regional administration than the central government in Beijing. It’s totalitarianism but not as we know it. The fact that the formal government only meets once every year is a testament to the level of decentralisation in China. The contrast between the industrialised coastal fringe and the Chinese outback is harsh. Although China has the world’s second largest economy its GDP is about 5 times smaller than the US. Even Shanghai, the most prosperous city in China is predicted to only achieve the 2000 median US income by 2030. Although commendable the levels of wealth, and quality of life, rapidly decline westwards. Raising the rest of the country, and its people, to a standard of living comparable to Shanghai in 2010 could easily soak up the next century’s worth of Chinese economic productivity. In terms of personal wealth, China is stunningly poor. This poverty is a major inhibition against foreign policy adventurism because the Chinese economy is skewered towards exports. Without secure international markets, China faces the danger of both millions of unemployed (China has no unemployment benefits) and disastrous economic contraction. Although China is shifting its economic policies towards domestic consumption, it’s locked into this relationship for the present. As they say, ‘a revolution is just a meal away’ and this is critical to keep in mind. Although there are strong philosophical and historical inhibitions, it’s the bread and butter issue of economics that determines the long term likelihood of conflict. Maintaining a stable and open economic system is essential to the survival of the Communist Party. The social contract that exists between people and party is one of complicity in exchange for increasingly

prosperity. The last time this contract was broken resulted in Tiananmen Square. Although commonly misunderstood as a prodemocracy movement, Tiananmen actually began as a protest against the dismantling of the Maoist economic system. A policy initiative that was paving the way for the current system of massive foreign investment, export-led growth, and the mobilisation of millions out of acute and crippling rural poverty. The government gambled hard and nearly lost, and the experience has deeply ingrained the political thinking of the Party and ensured that it steadfastly maintains the status quo. In the long term, China has two additional challenges. Although it has sustained a phenomenal growth rate, these will inevitably slow as the economy absorbs the remaining labour pool and wages rise, channelling bottom-rung industries into other Third World locales with lower wages. The second is that this labour pool has slowed and is now aging at a rate comparable to the West. In other words, China’s boom will have plateaued by 2030 throwing up another major domestic challenge for a nation with no unemployment insurance or old age pension. Out of necessity, significant government investments are going to have to be directed to maintaining the peace internally by sustaining a more affluent level of living for its plus 1 billion citizens. The Chinese are obsessed with achieving respect from The West for the achievements and modernisation of their society-civilisation and I think this will play a very important role in defining the domestic and foreign policy mood of the next generation. In the long run, there will be economic and strategic conflict between China and its competitors but it seems these are more likely to be localised and compartmentalised affairs rather than a grand strategy. Patience has worked well as a foreign policy, it brought in Macao, Hong Kong and it’s expected to bring in Taiwan. China doesn’t have the opportunity, let alone the desire to conquer their region or the world.

Politics

politics THE BOY SCOUT EARNS A BADGE The Fall of State Labor and the Rise of the Gimps Patrick Marlborough

It’s hard to give a tuppenny fuck about the state opposition. The last decade has seen the ALP fall victim to shallow greed, startling incompetence, petty childhood rivalries and playground power grabs. It is the awkward 14 year-old who murders his own cat and places it at the front door of a girl he likes hoping to win her affection. It is confused. Most disastrously, for a political outfit, it is unforgivably bland. Labor’s slow motion topple over the past decade has made for a frightful display of the inherent malevolence of the unforgivably dull. As someone literally raised in the halls of state parliament by a Labor politician, observing the clusterfuck that is WA Labor is akin to watching Robert Menzies slowly run over my childhood dog. With the ‘beige reign’ of Eric Ripper put to an end, we are given Mark McGowen, the ‘Boy Scout’. The party has convinced itself hat painting over ‘Eggshell’ with ‘Eggshell-lite’ will somehow turn things around. It is the land of bland, but just how did we get here? The unravelling began with Geoff Gallop. Not that Gallop himself made the party eat its own legs, but rather that his reign provided

the atmosphere and structures that would allow the gimps to rise and the hogs to feast. The key players began to position themselves around this time; the most important being Jim McGinty, the most powerful man under both Gallop and Carpenter’s Governments. It is now largely acknowledged that Gallop suffered from clinical depression for most of his term. His weaknesses and insecurities – tragic as they are – allowed the factionalism that has plagued and crippled the ALP. It was Gallop’s obsessive relationship with the Westminster system that would divide the party, he himself once saying that he ran a “government of process”. The bureaucratic doggedness of Gallop frustrated major businesses that were key to the process of state development. This frustration saw the rise of powerful lobbyists. On Labor’s right, infamously, were Brian Burke and Julian Grill, and on the left (and still lobbying) John Haldon. It became a party of powerbrokers. It is worth remembering that Burke and Grill represented Andrew Forrest, BHP, Macquarie Bank and Rio Tinto – groups driven to them by Labor’s slow pace. With Gallop’s resignation the factional warring of the ALP became explicit. McGinty essentially

had the run of the caucus, and began a systematic gutting of the party. Carpenter fundamentally misunderstood the machinery of WA Labor. He had a view on politics, but no view on the party. McGinty however was an old hand – a master of Machiavellian power plays and manipulation – the only bastard who could drive the old croaky car. He successfully purged most of the old right from the party – grudges he had held since the reign of Burke were being settled. The strangely cruel exile of John D’Orazio (now dead) showed the determination of a man who wanted to eliminate all those who ever doubted him. The CCC inquiries cost him 5 ministers, and their $40million investigation (eventually) lead to nothing – all charged were cleared. He then attempted to wrangle the factional fiefdoms: the unions (via Joe Bullock, David Kelly) and the (then) State Secretary Bill Johnston. He made a disastrous decision to parachute 5 candidates into electorates where they had no history. His stupidity was emphasised by his decision to tell Bob Kucera to take a hike because he was too old, (now a beautiful irony as Ripper asked him to run again last year), displaying a gross misunderstanding of local electorates. The party entered the 2008 election like a spastic samurai with a sword in its stomach spilling its guts everywhere, and it was rightfully routed. McGinty’s factional powerplays and feudal paranoia destroyed the party’s ability to function, his incompetence waving in the wind like a flaccid dick, particularly after he left the seat of Fremantle in a complete state of disarray, allowing it to be snatched up by a nobody Green.

Politics

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yet frenetic pace, waiting for an opening. The ‘Boy Scout’, as fellow members know him, is now troop leader. Here is where it becomes clear that WA Labor’s sincerity has been brutally sodomised by wild hogs. The Libs are bathing in the riches

McGowan is a hologram. After being in the party for 15 years it is hard to say whether or not he has registered at all with the average voter. It is incredibly difficult to pin down McGowan’s past policy objectives. You could say that he pushed for the railway,

and union internships. It is the new left, Kevin 07, a consortium of ignorant Chifley grave pissers: The rise of the planet of the gimps.

but really he came late to that group of The rise of Ripper was a depressing saga. particular Laborites, late again jumping on a Ripper is intelligent and has a reputation for passing train that he knew was heading for being nice, but he could play the banjo with his the Big Rock Candy Mountain. He may be an cock in the middle of Northbridge and nobody improvement over Eric Ripper, but there is would blink an eye. He doesn’t register – not still that awkward gimpy sense of the kid who with the Libs, not with his own party, and would simultaneously pick his nose and play definitely not with voters. It is hard to believe with his junk at the back of math class about that Ripper was anything but him. His lack of charisma has always a sacrificial lamb, waiting on the altar to be enveloped by McGowan is a hologram. After being in the party dogged him and I would stipulate that it is his main motivation. He has Barnett’s jowls as Ben Wyatt or Peter for 15 years it is hard to say whether or not witnessed characters like Buswell, Tinley prepared for a shot at the he has registered at all with the average voter. Barnett, Burke and Grill his whole leadership. Both men – and presumably life and in the back of his mind the party – must have been aware of burns a lingering question “what the impossibility of winning the next of a boom state, while the ALP has a base do I want?” and the reply came as state election. Ripper was a flack jacket. vote of 29%. It wouldn’t matter if they ate always “for people to like me”. He’s a David black swans at their private school reunions, Unfortunately, Wyatt blew his load way too Brent politician, smacking of desperation and they are sitting on a mountain of gold and early and Tinley is holding himself back an awkward craving for the thing that doesn’t to the untrained eye it appears as if they because of some shady business connections come to him naturally: chutzpah. shat it straight out of their gluttonous arses. and his relatively short political lifespan. They Labor’s inability to effectively attack Barnett’s McGowan has definitely given Labor some are just boys, McGowan is a tween. government is baffling. The Libs run a tight much-needed fresh air but it is hard to see enough ship, but like Labor they have internal For 15 years Mark McGowan has lurked in the him as little more than Ripper 2.0. It is usually flaws. When it comes down to it, it is a twobackground. Over the last decade and a half he disastrous to call an election so far out, man party – Barnett and Buswell. Both are has proven that he is willing to align himself but I just can’t see Labor beating Barnett’s terrific performers with a seemingly strong with whoever he sees as the most powerful – a incumbent oligarchy come their next bout. relationship. Buswell’s Roman perversions factional interloper driven by self-interest. It McGowan may just be another sacrificial lamb, have hamstrung his ability to make a nonhas been a slow and awkward political puberty offered up by the factional warlords as an laughable bid for leadership. They have made for the naval lieutenant, but he has finally offering to the political process, one that will blunders, and will continue to do so. Their weasled his way into the top spot. Under give Tinley and Wyatt time to organise their strength over Labor is their consistency. Gallop he was seriously wounded when he teams and take over. Barnett is still the Scotch College Prefect who was (at first) not offered a ministerial position, played football for Claremont – an archetypal Labor’s current state is caused by a conflict moping in the background as a parliamentary toff (don’t look around your law tute now) who of the soul. The idea of camaraderie has been secretary. However he could sense the winds looks like a bloated 19th Century Aristocrat shunned and is now a vicious concept wielded of change and stuck close to McGinty and waiting in the lobby at an Opera. He spends by factional hacks to play out cowardly Carpenter during their rise. If McGinty was most of his time trying to prove that he is manoeuvres. The missos are now a ruthless Carpenter’s most powerful and ‘efficient’ a better resource minister than Sir Charles mob of branch stackers. Young Labor are full member, McGowan’s was his most trustworthy Court. “People don’t need air conditioning” of belligerent arseholes - including a thorny exally. He was complicit in the blunder with the – Barnett has proven time and again the UWA guild pres - who are driven by a swollen 5 local candidates, a manoeuvre he perhaps disconnect between his beliefs and those of sense of importance. They are generally knew would cripple the party and purge the common man. However, Barnett absolutely loathed by those actually working within the it of its old hangers-on. One of his major rocks this image. He has projected this party offices. A gigantic circle jerk of nepotism weaknesses is his relationship with the trade persona and with an Ayn Rand twist, made it and incompetency has brought the party to her unions – his gaff as Education Minister cost something to aspire to. Grotesque as this is, it knees, creating a narrative of bafflingly stupid him the respect of the Teacher’s Union and has worked. The Libs are the same day in and decisions and people that have alienated the made him an alienating figure in W.A union day out and this registers with voters. They are old laborites/voters while bringing in a new politics. He is in it for the long game, slowly not victim to the veil of vagueness that masks wave of smug Law/Arts graduates who have moving down the riverbed on his stomach, the ALP. dickholed their way through university guilds gliding down the crooks and inlets at a slow

Politics

The Moroccan OCCUPATION Richard Ferguson asks why nobody seems to care about Western Sahara?

Western Sahara, with a mere population of 513,000 people, is a territory with a bloody history. In the dying days of Franco’s Spain, the Madrid Pact of November 1975 forced them to give Western Sahara to Morocco. The native Sahrawi tribe, displeased that no one decided to ask their opinion on the matter, formed the Polisario Front, a paramilitary organisation that aimed to create an independent Sahrawi state. While some analysts may call this the “forgotten conflict”, one would not tell that to a Sahrawi fighter. To them, the battle for independence rages on while the global community tries its best to ignore the problem.

Comic by Ena Tulic

The primary reason for the USA’s inaction has been its close relationship with Morocco, the occupant of Western Sahara. Morocco was the first nation to recognise the USA’s sovereignty in 1776 and the pair have recently developed strong military ties, with the US supplying Morocco with the arms to thwart the Polisario Front. The reason for this support is that the Americans view Morocco as a stable ally in an unstable region. From the Cold War to the War on Terror, Morocco has stood by American interests. Conversely, the Polisario Front has had frayed relations with the US due to its employment of Soviet weaponry in the 1980s and its relationships with US enemy states such as Iran. While the Clinton and Bush Administrations worked on Morrocansupported proposals to give Western Sahara autonomy, the Obama government (while favouring independence over autonomy) has ignored the issue, leaving the region in a state of flux. The USA appears to be looking the other way in order to maintain stability in the Islamic world. With the Arab Spring on the brink of rolling political change, Western Sahara is unlikely to keep the US up at night. Of all the performers in the diplomatic circus, the United Nations are truly the most dedicated when it comes to solving the Western Sahara conundrum.

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The 1991 UN ceasefire agreement gives the peacekeeping force only the power to monitor the situation and not to intervene. This was due to the US’ position, as described in the Congressional Research Service, “that the United States does not seek to impose a solution”.

However, the UN has failed to address the Western Sahara dispute properly. The original UN mission in May 1975, and the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion in the following October that the Sahrawi people wanted independence, has led the UN to support the Polisario Front in most instances. However, the UN has failed to halt Morocco’s actions despite numerous ceasefire agreements and the deployment of a peacekeeping force. The main reason for the UN’s failure is its reliance on the US in every operation it conducts. The 1991 UN ceasefire agreement gives the peacekeeping force only the power to monitor the situation and not to intervene. This was due to the US’ position, as described in the Congressional Research Service, “that the United States does not seek to impose a solution”. US defence policy in the region (supplying Morocco with arms) has contradicted the UN peace mission they claim to support though there is little that the UN can do to change the Americans’ position. There is also the common problem of the ability of UN forces to directly influence nations when they have no mechanism to do so. Without the ability of the peacekeeping force to militarily intervene, it’s unlikely that the Moroccans would be deterred from continuing human rights abuses against the Sahrawi. While The UN is at least trying its best to bring attention to the Western Sahara dispute, awareness is having a minimal effect on action. In international media, Western Sahara has not been considered a hot story for some time. A major

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contribution to the lack of media attention has been the tame visuals of the Western Sahara conflict. The Arab Spring has been a media-friendly event due to the images of large demonstrations in Cairo and Tripoli that are often attended by double the population of Western Sahara. It is also very easy to access these suburban areas whilst it is very costly to travel with crew and recording equipment through the harsh deserts of the Sahara.

The lack of media attention on the Western Sahara is consistent with a general decline in international reporting on African issues. Primarily, the closing of foreign news bureaus has caused this. By 2010, ABC News (US) was left without a bureau in Africa whilst CBS’s 28 foreign correspondents were reduced to five. With news executives considering massive conflicts such as the Congolese Civil War and the Darfur Crisis too unattractive to cover, it is unlikely that anything on the scale of Western Sahara will garner much attention. The Western Sahara situation is getting worse. In a world where people’s lives are dependent on broadcast news ratings and the interests of American diplomats, the Polisario Front is in an impossible position. In general, the plight of the Sahrawi people (and other non-Arabic Africans) has been considered less important than issues more capable of affecting the West. Perhaps the global community should wake up to the Western Sahara nightmare before it is too late.

Politics volume 113 ed 1

Whatever Happened to Baby Cain? Pelican 2042 looks back on the failed GOP Primaries of 2012

words by Richard Ferguson, art by Camden Watts

Thirty years on, the 2012 race for the Republican presidential nomination has since proven that anyone could run for President. Pizza salesmen and evangelical housewives watched in awe as their own rose through the echelons of power, while the GOP establishment looked on in horrow as each of their preferred candidates refused to participate. All the while, President Barack Obama glided towards re-election as the GOP failed to coalesce around one candidate. While the world’s Murdoch-Rinehart run mass media have always ignored this embarrassing period in Republican history, the world’s only liberated press – The Pelican – takes a look at the aftermath of this total clusterfuck.

Mitt Romney

Newt Gingrich

The Mitt Romney 3000 was built in January 2011 by GOP Designs to rival the popular Demodroid Obamatron However, the Romney 3000 proved to be unpopular with consumers due to its incompatibility with the company’s latest Tea Party software. In September 2012, he was put on display at the Ronald Reagan Museum of Failed Technology along with the McCain Mk. II and the iDole.

Newt Gingrich won the nomination but lost the general election in November 2012. He divorced from his third wife, Calista, whilst she was recovering a heart attack, before marrying his fourth wife, Sylvia, in 2013. They divorced in 2019 after she suffered a broken leg. Gingrich died on October 30th 2040 while in divorce proceedings with his wife Georgia, who had recently contracted the common cold.

Rick Santorum

Ron Paul

In August 2012 Rick Santorum gave up politics and studied to become a priest in the Roman Catholic Church. In a political system more accepting of his views he flourished, ultimately becoming the first American to be elected Pope on September 13th 2032. Taking the name of St Urania did not help his Google issues.

Ron Paul won the nomination of the Republican Party in 2016 and went on to defeat Vice-President Biden in November of that year. Sworn in on February 4th 2017, he left office the next day after he disbanded the US Government and sold the assets to a consortium of Chinese investors. Dr Paul is currently serving as Chairman and CEO of America Inc.

Politics volume 113 ed 1

Herman Cain decided to follow the footsteps of his hero Ash Ketchum, whom he quoted in his final campaign speech. In the summer of 2016, he competed in the 23rd Kanto Pokémon League, making it all the way to the Lavender Town Gym with his elite team of six magikarp. Unfortunately, he was later disqualified after allegations of sexual harassment were raised by fourteen separate Nurse Joys.

Herman Cain

Jon Huntsman Jon Huntsman returned to his old diplomatic posting as US Ambassador to China in July 2012. Shortly afterwards he renounced his US Citizenship and became a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party. He is now serving as the Chinese Ambassador to the United States and cooks a mean Szechuan beef.

Tim Pawlenty For the rest of eternity, nobody will ever know who Tim Pawlenty was or that he ran for the GOP Presidential Nomination. Nor would they give a flying fuck if they did know.

Rick Perry

Michelle Bachmann Michelle Bachmann and her husband Marcus returned to their post-gay therapy clinic in Minnesota. In 2014, after a reverse psychology session backfired on Marcus, they decided to abandon Christianity and embrace their inner fagdom. They now run The Nancy Reagan, a popular gay bar for out Republicans in Minneapolis, and are soon to feature in Bruce La Bruce’s latest film, To Hell and Back.

After suffering several memory failures, Rick Perry was diagnosed with dementia. In 2014, he set up The Republicans Emphasising the Awareness of Republican Dementia Super PAC. He is now the group’s Chairman, having led several dementia-related initiatives with the Departments of Commerce, Education and the other one.

The Takeover

ENGLAND AUSTRALIA Foreign correspondent Yvonne Buresch reflects on a year abroad.

Illustrattion by Camden Watts

For those of you who have not read any of my previous articles, I am currently on exchange at the University of Nottingham. Now that my year here is up and I’m getting ready to come home, I feel I have the authority to make sweeping generalisations about this place. In two English-speaking countries with more or less the same culture the biggest differences between them will inevitably be rather small things. To me, the most glaring point of difference between Australia and England to is the standard of living conditions. Obviously everybody’s experience is different, but I think there are some things that nearly everyone can agree on. Take the weather for example. English weather is infamously bad. Betting on the sky being clear on any given day is a bit like betting on a sumo wrestler to win the 100m sprint. Having said that, it doesn’t often rain here. Not properly. It’s just a kind of misty drizzle which drifts in a vaguely downwards direction – I like to call it mizzle. Mizzle is such an unsatisfying sort of rain. No smell of earth afterward, no washing away of the dust on the windows of cars. It seems like a kind of rain with suppressed urges. Rain which holds itself tightly in check. This lies in stark contrast to the people getting mizzled on. They seem to be in a collective hunt for satisfaction, pursuing it with such relentlessness and aggression that the nighttime city streets are turned into a carnival of girls wearing exactly the opposite of weather-appropriate clothing, hopscotching puke-puddles and rivers of piss. When the sun does come out it seems wrong. A.A. Gill once said that London in the sunshine is like seeing your grandmother in a bikini at the beach; some things just should not be seen in that much

detail. At this time of year the sun never really gets high enough in the sky. It just lurks at the edge and does a little loop at the end without ever going overhead. I like to think the winter sun in England is like a dirty old man in a raincoat doing a furtive walk-by of a sex shop – he knows he’s not really supposed to be there and he doesn’t want to get caught. To make matters worse, the buildings in this part of the country are extremely close together. Terraced housing predominates pretty much all over but the rows of terraces here aren’t more than six or seven metres across the street. At exam time this combines with the books and computer screens to produce god-awful headaches which can only be prevented by taking your eyes for a walk. Getting a reasonable amount of distance between yourself and something to look at is surprisingly hard to achieve. People upon people upon people live on top of one another in every direction: above shops, above pubs, above real estate agencies and wedged in between groceries and Post Offices. They cram people everywhere they can find space. At the university-end of my street there is a collection of student housing high rises which for all the world looks like a group of beehives. They’re peoplehives, nothing less. The Victorians had a theory that poor people were so sick and wretched because they lived in these kinds of peoplehives. The wynds and closes and courts of Victorian London heavily discouraged a crossbreeze and the stench of so many humans all together is not unlike that of a cattleyard. The theory of ‘malaria’, literally ‘bad air’, was taken as the cause of poverty-related sickness, produced by the miasma of exhaled breath that peoplehives emitted. I

can believe that. Though modern medicine and common sense tell me otherwise, it just makes sense. There are so many uglies around here. The suburb of Beeston where I live might quite possibly be the mobility scooter capital of the world, and before the disabled rights people get all up in my face about this I would like to clarify that 99.9999% of them are morbidly obese. Of course I have no proof that the scooters are due to the obesity and not the other way around, but there are a heck of a lot of morbidly obese people waddling around without scooters as well and the one kind of points to the other. In addition, there is the kind of biggummed, snaggle-toothed, bubble-wrap acne, each-eye-points-in-a-different-direction

The Takeover

15 kind of ugly which is very hard to let go unnoticed. I’ve noticed it so often here that I’m starting to think the coal burning power station over the horizon is actually nuclear and has leached waste into the groundwater. You can usually tell if someone is from here and you can always tell if they’re not. It was immediately obvious when the students from London started coming back after the summer – the median attractiveness went up about three hundred points. I met a guy called Tom at a party I was at recently whose home town is Bradford, Yorkshire. Bradford has an extremely close-knit Pakistani population which intermarries, presenting unique opportunities for geneticists. As Tom said, he’s from a place where people come from all over the world to study the inbreeding and he still thinks the locals in Nottingham look funny.

There are TV shows about how fucked up people are here. They don’t try to cover it up or explain it away, they just revel in it like pigs in their own shit. There is a show I secretly love called Supersize vs Superskinny which pits a morbidly obese person and a borderline anorexic person against each other by making them swap diets for a week. It’s horrific and yet strangely reassuring. There are at least half a dozen others in the same vein I can think of off the top of my head, excluding cultural difference-based ones like My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. Never seen a two year old wearing a lime green flamenco dress and false lashes? You’ve obviously never seen ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. The one that really gets me is Embarrassing Bodies, where two doctors in a travelling van go around consulting people on the weird and/or disgusting medical problems they were too embarrassed to take to their family doctor. Why for the love of all that is good and holy would you show something you didn’t want your regular doctor to see to the whole nation on primetime television?! Also numerous (but not quite to the same level) are relocation shows about Australia. They feature British people who are thinking of relocating to Australia and the househunting etc which is involved. These invariably show Australia as some kind of Promised Land and make no mention whatsoever of sharks, sunburn, spiders or snakes. Australia’s role as the proverbial land of milk and honey for the British probably leads them to wonder why they didn’t all go off to the sunny happy place themselves and leave all the convicts here in the mizzle. I really haven’t helped to dispel this idea. I volunteered to represent UWA at the student exchange fair and waxed lyrical about peacocks in the Arts building and dolphins in Matilda Bay. Many a wide-eyed English fresher clutched his UWA pamphlet excitedly after hearing about people turning up to lectures with their hair still wet from the beach and towels in their cars in the carpark.

Once, in the gym, I saw an episode of Come Dine with Me Australia. For those of you unfamiliar with the show’s format, it involves four strangers throwing dinner parties for each other at their own houses and then bitching like maladjusted schoolgirls on the way home. The gym plays all the TVs silently, so as not to interfere with the exhortations of class instructors or the music they have to shout over. I didn’t see the title of the show, but I knew it by its format, and could tell it wasn’t its English sibling by two simple things. The kitchens were bigger – there’s an obligatory shot of each host nattering away overconfidently about what they’re going to prepare, and these hosts were in big kitchens. Also there was a lot of natural light. Tons of it. As previously discussed, the English sun likes to skulk around outside buildings but never really gets the courage to go in so this seemed, quite frankly, a bit weird. I didn’t even know there was an Australian version of the show at that time but I could tell it was Aussie just from the size of the sunfilled houses. That, and the douche with the tribal tattoos. I’m supposed to be packing at the moment but I’m procrastinating by writing this article. I leave in three days. This freaks me out a little because I feel like I’ve only just gotten used to it here. My eyes have become accustomed to the lack of sunlight, resulting in a muted palette. I’m scared of the garish brightness of Australian sunshine after so long. It’ll be like looking from one of Monet’s later Waterlilies to an especially eye-poking Warhol. What I’m most afraid of is not having room to fit all my books in. Op shops here sell them for as low as 50p and I went a bit nuts. However, I’ll console myself with the thought of all the free books I’m going to get as the new books section editor of Pelican. Many thanks to Ben Sacks for caretaking, and I’ll see you all next edition!

Fresher Guide

Pelican’s UWA

FRESHER GUIDE Alex Griffin

SOMETIMES YOU SMELL BLOOD IN THE WATER And sometimes you just know it’s there. At the start of every year, the plural ‘freshers’ strikes boredom into the hearts of most, and wood into the pants of some (hey Lucas), as campus heaves under the weight of unfounded enthusiasm and two thousand kids who think the Large Animal Facility has a fuckin’ rhino or something. To those of you starting here, here’s some advice they don’t give you on O-Day.

Illustrated by Kate Prendergast

STUDENT ADMENSTRUATION Realise quickly that dealing with student administration, whatever branch it may be, is like trying to get answers out of a retarded dog with five heads; conflicting information is given, one of the heads is asleep, and the others are thinking about lunch anyway. It’s advisable to have your shit together at all times. Or to bring a comprehensive petition directly to the bureaucratic headquarters deep inside Golden City of Beijing and hope that you will gain an audience with a high-ranking and kind-hearted apparatchik, who will address your problems with a benevolent sense of Confucian duty. Hopefully this will occur before you are told the degree you’re a semester away from completing no longer exists and the only major your units count towards is Ocular Theology, which won’t exist until 2016.

THE GATES OF LUNCH Eating on campus appears to be changing. Whether or not you give a fuck about Rocketfuel coffee depends on how closely your affections are tied up with corporate seals of quality vis-à-vis the failure of public goods, or a Liberty re-election. Nevertheless, love means telling someone not to eat Chilliz when on the run, and I fuckin’ love you, you big dummy. Ditto Guild fried rice. The kebabs and the noodles are uniformly good fare, though. Reid’s fresh bread-like substances are Highly Recommended In Times Of Need, but you have permission to kick any girl who proclaims the quality of Hackett coffee in an affected accent borrowed from a half-remembered VHS of Breakfast at Tiffany’s squarely in the taco (which is no indictment on the coffee, mind you).

YONDER NEWS FROM BABEL Ever yelled on a roof? I have. It was a good time. Nobody was crying, and Grace had some pretty bad problems so this was an achievement. Someone was singing ‘Purple Rain’ while a single golf ball was dropped onto the roof of a Holden Astra. Good times. The kind of times you think over when you’re buried alive. Maintenance staff aside, the people most likely to yell on a roof at UWA are members of the Socialist Alternative collective. These Menshevik longhairs agitate for an overthrow of the capitalist bourgeois elite through a highly orchestrated and intricately planned approach of distributing A6 flyers at pedestrian bottlenecks outside Reid Library. One can’t blame them for trying, especially when considering the brute fact that the political culture at UWA has degenerated to a level unseen since the infamous sewage standoff of 1927. At the first Guild Council meeting of that miserable year, a vote was tabled to remove all of the plumbing in the Faculty of Engineering. This spiteful motion was in response to the behavior of rogue engineering students during the previous year’s elections, which saw the first pair of grey tube socks elected to sit on council. Despite this event remaining an unsurpassed blow for diversity in UWA politics, the motion to remove the plumbing was passed 7-6, with one cotton-toed abstention. Such spitefulness is only avoided today through a powerful system of checks and balances in the Guild Constitution, as well a dragon named Shenron who is summoned by the Guild President in times of intractable conflict to return balance to the force. In such a barren wilderness of Law/Arts hacks and guild busybodies, it can be refreshing to know that folks like the Socialist Alternative put up at least a show of political passion and urgency; just don’t make eye contact with them, lest you wake up chained to a tree symbolizing white injustice which is symbolically pulped for asylum seeker pamphlets.

Fresher Guide

SABASTIAN THE CRABS One time I felt my senses fail me in a darkened parking lot outside Nedlands. I kept my left hand (the one that betrayed me, trembling constantly) hidden in my pocket as they poured warm, foetid liquor down his writhing throat. I found my textbooks dismembered in barrels that had been used to transport gravy between cafeterias in the late 80s. I heard that Pendulum song we had once danced to in better times flicker out on the transistor as we waited for help. I felt her weight shift beneath me as I plunged deeper, hurtling ceaselessly through noise, ruin and an anti-rape condom. I remembered ash dancing across the rainbow as we cooked the warming meat when all was good and plenty. I saw the best men of my generation vomit faeces into a bliss-eyed woman obliviously midway through her first trimester.

I was a teenage SABAS.

SURPLUS LEFT BRAINS As Ned Collette put it, “something runs afoul of all we learn/and learning isn’t learning when the learning is just to earn”. Not everyone got that memo. We are living in a boom state where one’s worth is measured by their temporal proximity to a position with Fortescue; where most dudes think Mingus is a mining company, and the parents of the girl/boy you’re dating have only one question to prospective children-in-law who aren’t studying engineering; “what are you going to do with that?” For many of you, reading that paragraph perhaps conjured nothing but the tranquil and tangible image of a speedboat resting idly by a private quay. You are the lucky ones. For everyone else, that feeling of fruitless rage and frustration will only be dulled by drugs that you can’t afford. Welcome to the dark night of the soul.

CONSPIRACY, PARALLAX If it strikes you to look it up, you’ll notice that there’s only one bus that passes the business school. To those of you who are convinced (by experience or otherwise) that there are direct channels by which wealth and privilege are perpetuated, it’s possible that the no.97 bus (snaking as it does, briefly and pointlessly, through Subiaco, Shenton Park and Nedlands to the backdoor of the School of Business, where heir/esses come to learn Excel) might be as close as you get to finding a physical manifestation thereof. Also, cf. the entire campus; to paraphrase Kanye West, “UWA doesn’t care about poor people”.

DRIVER RUNTIME ERROR You’re likely to hear a lot of griping amongst non-freshers about how Moodle is better/exactly the same/worse than something called ‘WebCT’. WebCT was a mythical ceilingcat who STOL ALL UR (re: our) 1NT3RNETZ for the last couple of years. It’s gone now, but keep the sacrifices made by those who passed before you in your hearts at all times, as you access your unit materials freely, without twisting your bowel into a knot of rage and confusion not often found in scouting guidebooks like we’ve all been doing for years.

NOBODY CARES ABOUT THAT SHUT UP If you mention your ATAR to someone straight off the bat, go sluice yourself into a blender. I know a girl who went to lunch with a guy who brought it out unprompted with a ‘do me’ grin (he got 92). The point of the graded entry system and deferred HECS payments is to provide equality of opportunity, and the point of UWA (subjectively) is to foster creativity and excellence by dumping a heap of clever pricks in a foetid, tedious Arcadia, hoping something vainly struggles to break the surface of the soil. That’s when the multinationals swoop. Besides, there is no vice worse (okay, frustrating) than hubris, and UWA is producing enough of it already to freeze out Western Power by supplying the entire north of the river with hot air come winter.

FEATHERS DIPPED IN LISTERINE, WRITHING Hope is a flaky concept that bristles when you give it a once-over with any kind of reality, so it’s best to do away with it as quickly as possible. University is a place where illusions are met with uncomprehending reality, poverty with a shrug; hard-ons with fresh, yawning air. One has to figure out what they want, and work to get it. Opportunity knocks, but softly. It’s not a place where you suddenly fall into a group of Blake-reading Nietzsche-quoting filter cigarette toting aesthetes who convert you into a Real Person in a blissful, whirring montage of days, soundtracked by Terry Riley’s Rainbow in Curved Air. This doesn’t mean that you clam up about the future like a rape victim; it just means ditch your unthinking faith in anything significantly wider than yourself. Things take persistence and direction to come to fruition, as well as a heap of self-examination. Challenge every idea that comes to mind, discuss these ideas with others Oh, I think there’s nothing wrong with repetition Oh, I think there’s nothing wrong with repetition Oh, I think there’s nothing wrong with repetition...

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The Takeover

MONEY

MADNE$$ Written and Illustrated by Kate Prendergast

With a sure stride, the next candidate for the executive seat enters the room and settles into the chair before you. Elegantly groomed, his hair is watered and silver shark-tooth cufflinks gleam against the dark of his tailored suit. He’s a tall man, and with his proud chin-tilt you notice that he has also taken care to trim his nose-hair; a nice touch. You’ve had an eye on this one for a while now. In fact, it’s impossible not to notice him. Amongst the other applicants, he shines – those with their limp edges and nervous eyes; the proud, aggressive ones permanently hot under the collar. The jostling multitudes that sneak jealous glances at their rivals like an anxious tic. In contrast, the man sitting before you is charming, socially commanding, relaxed. An individual blessed with a rare touch of savoir-faire, one might say. You’ve heard a rumour circulating about the office that he is the Messiah of Capitalism; a faith suffering a crisis in membership after The Fall of 2008. With your company Tabard’s still licking its wounds, Christ knows you could use a Saviour. As the interview rounds to a triumphant close, you ask him to list his strengths. Without missing a beat he rattles them off. He is ambitious, versatile, and unafraid to take a risk when opportunity beckons. In stressful situations he can maintain a cool head. Watching him, his confidence overwhelms, his articulacy beguiles. You are effectively seduced. Unwittingly, you are just about to hand over an executive position to a psychopath. Previously called “moral insanity”, psychopathy is an innate set of behavioural patterns characterised by the complete absence of conscience. According to Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) – the international diagnostic tool – the prototypical psychopath has glib and superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, is callous, cunning and a pathological liar. Change ‘psychopath’ to ‘politician’ or ‘businessman’, and the symptoms are the same. In a system oiled by unctuousness and fuelled by greed, it is only natural that the ruthless, energetic egotist should scale the heights to claim captaincy. It’s two sides to the same coin. On one side the profit sign, on the other a tyrannical, cash-pilfering autocrat. Statistics support the trend, showing CEOs to be four times more likely to be psychopaths than the general populace.

Whilst psychopaths are responsible for a disproportionate amount of violent crime, not all fit the Hannibal Lector profile; those unsightly bloodstains on their cashmere turtlenecks are a bore. And one can only tolerate so much lurking around in dark Vauxhall Vivaros into the early hours listening to the inane pattering of late night DJs. Such habits don’t suit the more elegant, bourgeois psychopath. And why bother, when they can make their cold-blooded kills in corporate board rooms? For that matter, why risk the punitive reprisals of rape when they can use their wiles to play the romance game? Psychopaths aren’t crazyso they can’t plead ‘insanity’ for any crime committed. They are perfectly aware of what they are doing; they simply don’t care. Successful psychopaths not only avoid the sanguinary kind of sadism, but also lack the impulsiveness that has sent many of their kind behind bars. Instead, they are a more careful breed, retaining the ability to plan ahead. As Hare points out, there is no hard and fast line between psychopaths and nonpsychopaths. Instead, the condition should be imagined as existing on a continuum, with only those on the extreme end of the scale being diagnosed. The ability to empathise with others, to temporarily transcend self as singular and participate in a shared symbolic reality is one of the crucial traits separating humankind from the beasties. In light of this, there are those who describe the psychopath as a different specimen altogether – an alien wrapped in human skin, coldly observing the world through the portholes of their own eye sockets. Creepy? Yes. But in fact some mental health professionals have theorized the psychopath may indeed constitute a discrete taxon. Say Walsh and Wu: “…Psychopaths are a stable proportion of any population, can be from any segment of society, may constitute a distinct taxonomical class forged by frequencydependent natural selection, and that the muting of the social emotions is the proximate mechanism that enables psychopaths to pursue their self-centred goals without feeling the pangs of guilt.”

Cooperative culture formed part of the environment that gave heart and contour to human nature. For our early ancestors, trust and empathy were evolutionary advantages for various reasons (communal raising of offspring is a good example), with the non-conforming hoarders and cheaters sentenced to death by bananas. The continued, stable presence of psychopaths hints that some of the more devious may have managed to evade punishment. And so with persistence, they continued to steal their sister’s smooth pebbles and blame it on Ugg. Hare himself is extremely liberal-minded in this debate. “I don’t feel comfortable calling it a disease”, he says. “Much of their behaviour, even the neurobiological patterns we observe, could be because they’re using different strategies to get around the world. These strategies don’t have to involve faulty wiring, just different wiring.” To adapt to and exploit their environment, psychopaths are able to skilfully mimic conventional emotional reactions. In fact, under the logic of capitalist culture, we – the unfortunate feeling ones – should be following their fine example if we want to reap similar rewards. This seems to be how Sunbeam CEO Al Dunlap managed to thrive. Darling of Wall Street and cherished “shareholders’ friend”, the brutal business magnate became the 1990’s ‘model of corporate governance’. Through raising the company workforce by 35%, slashing spending costs and closing plants, “Chainsaw Al’s” massacres saw Sunbeam’s share prices rocket 50% two years after taking the helm. His pursuit of profit was not only pitiless, but also unfeasible. Unable to meet quarterly deadlines, the company resorted to falsifying sales figures and inflating earnings. When confronted at a meeting Dunlap put a hand over an employee’s mouth and screamed, “you son of a bitch! If you want to come after me, I’ll come after you twice as hard” at his accuser. Sunbeam quickly disposed of the aggressive fraudster

after that. Whilst Dunlap was fined $500000US and has been effectively barred from business, I doubt the millionaire – retired as he is in his Florida mansion – minds especially. It’s this kind of callous mentality that certified and enabled the invasion into Iraq; that permitted MI6 to abet torture, the rendition of anti-Gadaffi dissidents to Libya. It’s how US oil giant Chevron found it in itself to dump 18 billion gallons of cancer into the Ecuadorian Amazon over thirty years. It’s this pushy negligence that pushed the world into recession. If and when ethics turns a legal eye to such practices, the worst delivered is often a light reprimand, usually palliated by another bonus. To be pragmatic about it, these cases show an advantage in not being able to feel compassion, anxiety or remorse. Think about it: No need to invest in taxing emotions and extra-personal cares that could compromise and complicate your path to success. Suddenly, the ‘maladaptive’ personality traits are realised as classic company strengths; tried, proved and vaunted. Another plus would be the psychopathic immunity to the plague of self-doubt and the torment of inadequacy – the greatest impediments to any of life’s enterprises. I’m still recovering from the guilt of pretending to snort a line of peas at a dinner party and accidentally inhaling one. As I dribbled into the mashed potatoes an ambulance was called, but just after it arrived I sneezed said pea into the host’s eye. And then peed myself laughing. As we writhe in our private agonies, the psychopath slides contently through life like a happy snake. Jesus may bless the meek, but capitalism does not. Consequently, many meek end up as low-key cheese makers, or other manufacturers of dairy products. And you don’t want to end up working on tasty yellow beef recipes for the rest of your days,

do you, my pretty mouse? Even if you do become the big cheese of cheeses. Who needs a conscience anyway? It makes cowards of us all. Hamlet could feign psychosis, but he could not feign psychopathy. And so his enterprises of great pitch and moment apparently lost the name of action. If Hamlet had been a legitimate psychopath, he wouldn’t have spent so long dillydallying and gotten a damn move on with murdering his uncle. Our Great Lugubrious anti-hero would have otherwise been written and remembered as a man of honour and industry. Unsurprisingly, many villains are loosely profiled on psychopaths, from Perfume’s Jean-Baptiste Grenouille to Clockwork Orange’s debonair Alex. The pin-up for political despots is V for Vendetta’s Peter Creedy, mastermind behind the government ruse to unleash a deadly plague on the UK’s own people and so legitimate totalitarian control. What is surprising is that many of the 20th century’s greatest fictional heroes are also psychopathic. Take the classic cultural icon, James Bond. Suave and cocksure, he leaps mercurially about hazardous construction sites, coolly gunning down foes, exhibiting a telling ‘chronic under-arousal of both autonomic and control nervous systems’. Quick to seduce beauties, he doesn’t seem overly concerned when they inevitably perish in an inevitable tragedy (there’s always a prettier one awaiting him in the next instalment anyway). It is curious that a disorder which is far more prevalent in men than women has remarkable similarity to today’s western ideal of masculinity; an ideal coined by Kimmel as ‘marketplace manhood’. It is of course not confined to men, nor does one have to repress their psychopathy provided they have the class and stature to sin in full daylight and escape unharmed. You know how that friendly lecturer went missing? I ate his liver with some jelly beans and a nicely shaken martini.

The Takeover

”

“

Who needs a conscience anyway? It makes cowards of us all. Hamlet could feign psychosis, but he could not feign psychopathy. And so his enterprises of great pitch and moment apparently lost the name of action.

Now that you’re in with the future editor, it’s time to make the next major step: Become a section editor.

By about edition five of your second year you should be signalling your intentions. Still pretend to be unsure about whether you want to be the editor but when asked you should give ambiguous answers so that those involved in the magazine can make their own rumours regarding your intention to apply. At this point you should start having “spontaneous” DnMs with the editor where you talk to him/her about what they would fix at the paper. Remember to build your application substantially off of their interests with one or two variations so that they don’t openly recall the conversations that you had. Once you place this in your application (do it up pretty to impress Memberships Officer Alex Pond), you should be set up to receive an interview.

Second Year: Becoming a section editor In your time away from university, you should start to cultivate an interest in something other than yourself. Music, film, sports, politics, it doesn’t matter. If you can get a basic education off of uTorrent and two weeks worth of Wikipedia articles, you can audition for a supporting role. If you can’t fill any of the pre-existing positions, feel free to invent special areas of various degrees of fancy such as ‘Pokémon’ and ‘Guild Issues’. This should be enough to get you an interview, but it won’t be enough to win you a job. For that you will need a string of recommendations from Very Important People, past and present. A former section editor is a good bet for your reference. They probably already have the trust and respect of the new editor, so you don’t need to earn it through witty comments or expressed knowledge of your topic. Now that you’ve gotten into the inner circle, you are a reliable member of the team. Or so they think. Your job is to provide a surface knowledge of your phantom profession, most easily achieved by copying the views and opinions of a notable scholar in your field. Like music? Study the A-Z of Robert Christgau’s Consumer Guide. Get asked a question about Prince? Recite Christgau’s ‘A’ review of Dirty Mind word for word. Like film? Read up on Roger Ebert’s favourite films and baselessly compare all other movies to them, regardless of style or genre. This kind of knowledge, tossed off in apparently random moments of apoplectic genius, can enlighten your co-workers. Of course, you should always keep your comments focussed on the less experienced members of your staff – you don’t want to be found out. You will need to use your sub-editing to impress the big dogs. When sub-editing you should always profess your praise or disdain for work out loud while

At your interview you should make

every attempt to inhibit your sociopathic tendencies. Sure, every move and decision you’ve made in the past two years has been methodically calculated, but now is the time to prove that your plan is for the interests of the magazine and, to impress the Guild President, the students. Answer all questions in abstract verse that occasionally devolves into mock thoughtful hypothetical questions and when asked about your prior experience, or lack thereof, just lie – your interviewers have neither the resources nor the interest to check.

Third Year: King of the freaks Congratulations! You’ve got it. Your short-term career ambition has been fulfilled, giving you the liberty of a year off your degree and a slave wage honourarium. People outside of the office still give you crap for being involved with the Pelican, though the hours of intellectual labour you put in will all be worth it for the power you’ll feel as king of the freaks. You’ve rearranged your office twice, thinking of how best to replicate the final party in Cannery Row (the poem is pinned to your door). Two months later and the power is wearing off, your section editors are around all the time, using this very guide to usurp you. Now is the time to start doing the one thing that you never learnt how to: Produce a magazine.

The Takeover

marking the page. When editing your main editor, remember to give out effusive praise. Let them know how much you admire their work, though throw in a token criticism from time to time. By finding the balance between suck-up and stern analyst, you too can find yourself in the position next to the throne. Don’t feel too bad about it either – your boss must have done the same thing before you!

This man/woman will be the difference between you becoming a section editor or not. Comment positively on their attractiveness, give praise to their writing and make numerous remarks about their inspirational leadership. The editor in your first year will not be responsible for your rise to the top, so focus your attention on the person who will be your stepping stone to glory.

Revolution Kevin Chiat @kevinchiat

in the

The Takeover

WrestLing For the past ten years, Vince McMahon’s WWE has held a near monopoly over the pro-wrestling industry. The lack of competition has lead to a WWE which has turned stagnant. The company is too reticent to push new stars or change their tired and formulaic shows. Outside of the run between their two major shows, from the Royal Rumble to Wrestlemania, the WWE creative team seems to coast along. There’s the rare bright spot (like CM Punk’s blistering promo last year which led to him leaving the WWE while holding the WWE championship) but for much of the year the WWE just makes for tedious television.

Illustrated by Ena Tulic

Wrestling fans are infamous for bitching about how much they hate the WWE whilst continuing to pour money into the WWE machine. Christian, a darling of the internet wrestling fan community, finally won the World Heavyweight Championship last April after years of being treated as a mid-card act. He lost the belt three days later, however, to main event regular Randy Orton. This set the internet on fire. #IWantChristian trended for days on Twitter with many long-time fans vowing to stop watching the WWE completely. The firestorm inspired by Christian’s loss also set in motion a production which could revolutionise the tired pro-wrestling industry. Jeff Katz, a Hollywood producer best known for working on Snakes on a Plane (and long-time wrestling fan), saw an opportunity to turn fan-rage into something positive. Katz set up a project on crowd funding website Kickstarter under the working title of Wrestling Revolution. The idea: a thirteen episode wrestling show which tells a full three-act story made for online distribution. Katz pitched the show as different from the WWE much like high-end cable television series are different from network shows. A significant portion of the show’s starting costs were raised through Kickstarter.

“

The final title for the show was announced as the Wrestling Retribution Project. The show’s cast is a mix of independent wrestlers and former WWE stars, all playing brand new characters. The WWE is married to a weekly production schedule with no off-season. This means that stories rarely reach a natural conclusion, as there’s always the next show to focus on. Wrestlers want to kill each other one day, then team up six months later. The thirteen episode structure of WRP should mean that character continuity will remain consistent across the whole show. Story details released so far seem promising. Most interestingly, early spoilers reported that WRP features a gay wrestler who doesn’t immediately become a bad guy threatening the audience’s sexuality when he comes out of the closet. Subverting the negative stereotypes traditionally perpetuated in pro-wrestling seems to be a featured aim of WRP. Another character named Ferris Gotch is an Arab-American who doesn’t wear a headdress or speak in a foreign language. He’s just a normal guy who decided to become a wrestler and isn’t looking to take down American supremacy by defeating their patriotic hero. Other story details suggest that WRP is going to be more interested in delving into social commentary than traditional wrestling companies. The Lord of War, a character played by former WWE star MVP, is a returned serviceman who feels betrayed by his country after being sent to fight in Iraq.

Other story details suggest that WRP is going to be more interested in delving into social commentary.

”

This promises a much more nuanced take on an anti-American character than the usual ‘America is evil’ cheap heat. Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of WRP is that Katz is actively working to have his cast members join the Screen Actor’s Guild. Wrestling promoters have in the past been against any form of labour organisation in the industry. Wrestlers are legally classified as independent contractors rather than employees. This means they need to set up their own (extremely expensive) health insurance. If stuntmen are members of SAG then it makes sense for pro-wrestlers, whose job is a mix of acting and stunt work, to be able to join the guild. Being a part of SAG could help ex-wrestlers avoid the difficult post-fame lifestyle many find themselves in (anyone who’s seen The Wrestler will know what I’m talking about). WRP is an exciting project because it promises to bring fresh and exciting ideas into the wrestling business; new production techniques, new character types and new distribution methods. It really has the potential to revolutionise the way the business operates. If, like me, you’re a part of the tribe of frustrated wrestling fans, WRP is a show you’ll really need to check out when it launches later this year. More information on WRP can be found on its official Twitter account @TheWRProject.

CS is a non-for-profit student society based at UWA, Curtin University, ECU and Murdoch, catering to of students with Chinese ethnicity or an interest in Chinese Culture. We endeavour to make the university experience as fun as possible by providing social events with an “Asian Twist”. We set ourselves apart from other clubs through education initiatives, promoting Chinese language, culture and food from the orient. We love to have a good time and socialize too! So join us whether you’re into partying, Chinese culture or interested to learn the language there’s something for everyone!

Why just float through university when you can… •

Get Free Pizza?

•

Make new university mates?

•

Spend time overseas?

•

Network with corporate engineers?

•

Learn skills you can’t get at lectures?

•

Give something back to society?

•

Have something extra to put on your resume?

•

Have some serious fun?

Come to EWB’s FireUp! where you can learn all about the wide range of volunteering activities EWB can offer you! Free Pizza. Tuesday, 6th March. 1pm2pm. Engineering Lecture Theatre 1.

Science Union represents students studying a degree in the Faculty of Life and Physical Science, but everyone is welcome at the events we run throughout the year. This year kicks off with fresher camp and will be shortly followed up by a sundowner where we elect our first year reps. There is already a multitude of parties, quiz nights, fresher-friendly sundowners and networking evenings on the SU calendar. So come down on O-day and become part of our Science Union family.

The University Dramatic Society is proud to announce that auditions for our upcoming musical Cruise will be taking place in the Music Department, 5th - 7th of March. UDS productions are ambitious, original, and great fun. We offer the full gauntlet: a great social scene, great mates, and a truly enriching course of extracurricular activity. We’re currently looking for anyone with a passion for the dramatic arts, so if you’re looking for a great way to meet people and get involved on campus this semester, head on down and audition! For more information see: http://universitydramaticsociety.com/auditions/

Hi all, so welcome back to UWA! The Singapore Students Society (SSS) has had a facelift. Come on down to our Oday Stall on 24 February to renew or sign up as a member. We’ve got an upcoming Freshie’s BBQ on Tuesday, 6 March 2012 at Matilda Bay, drop by to savour free food heart-warmingly prepared by your lovely SSS committee, meet other fellow Singaporeans or play a game of Frisbee. If you are interested in joining our committee, check out our website for more information: www.sssuwa. wordpress.com . We hope to see you at Oday!

UWAnime will once again be hosting a Fresher Welcome screening event this year! Held in the UWAnime Clubroom (Cameron Hall) on Friday 2nd March from 1pm – 5pm; come down for the 2012 committee’s anime picks, as well as free pizza for members! There is also a chance to sign up for the first of UWAnime’s biannual video games tournaments while you are there. Still want more? Stay updated by subscribing to us at www.uwanime.org for all the latest events throughout the year!

Described by the West Australian as ‘one of Perth’s best kept musical secrets’, the Winthrop Singers are UWA’s premier vocal ensemble. The choir consists of 26 auditioned undergraduates under the direction of Dr Nicholas Bannan, and is open to students of all faculties. Come and hear us sing evensong every Thursday at 6pm in the chapel of St George’s College, as well as at regular concert engagements at UWA and further afield. If you’re interested in joining us, write to nicholas.bannan@uwa.edu.au or winthropsingers@guild.uwa.edu.au. You can follow us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/UWA. WinthropSingers

The UWA Greens is an on-campus group for UWA students. Our aims are to: •

Promote Greens policies and campaigns on campus;

•

Promote awareness of social justice, environmental and peace issues;

•

Work co-operatively to support other likeminded groups on campus;

•

Provide a connection between UWA students and the Greens political processes.

Our email list keeps members informed of Greens events, both on and off campus, as well as providing a forum for discussion. Visit our stall on O-Day and have a chat. Alternatively email Chilla.bulbeck@adelaide.edu.au or anthonyblond@gmail.com

Interested in Politics? Keen to learn more about student, local, state, federal and international political topics? Do you want to make politics sexy? Then the UWA Politics Club is the Club For You! If you would like to become a member or get involved then please email us at politics.club.uwa@gmail. com or find us on Facebook. Be sure to join us at our inaugural Harold Holt Beach Sun-dorwn-er at Cottesloe Beach on Thursday 8 March from 4pm onwards. BBQ and soft drinks provided. Look for the banner. Also check out our club publication State Magazine. And remember, make politics sexy!

A.S.I.A Club is one of the largest non-profit clubs running between UWA, Curtin and Murdoch! 2012 is a year of change, and boy does A.S.I.A has some surprises in store for you all! So come down to our O’Day stall on Friday 24th Feb and to our fresher BBQ on the Tuesday of the first week of Uni to find out more about our club and meet our lovely committee for 2012!

This month Blackstone invites you to: Frolic in the fountain at the Courtyard Show (4 March); Meet fellow freshers and Blackstone at the Fresher Camp (9-11 March); Join the Women in the Law Mentor Scheme which kick starts with the Breakfast Launch (23 March); Find out about volunteering opportunities within the community at the Blackstone Volunteering Launch (6 March, 12-1pm); Find out how to get FREE access to the Blackstone careers handbook and university survival guide at the Lawbook: Blackstone’s Careers Handbook Launch (13 March 1-2pm) and explore further career opportunities at WA’s largest Careers Fair (30 March; 1pm – 4.30pm:).

What’s Happening?

The UWA Triathlon Club provides coaches and a great social environment for triathletes from beginners to pros. Triathlon is a fantastic sport for those wanting to improve their endurance and discipline, and while we take these seriously we also have fun when training and racing together. We support the Breast Cancer Council and donated $1000 to them from our last fundraising event. We have (almost) daily training sessions which can be paid for on per session, month, or season basis. Fees are HALF PRICE for UWA students! For more info: Charles.Biddle@ststephens.wa.edu.au

What’s Happening on Campus?

Name of Club / Organisation

Stall B36 A23

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Students (ATSIS) African Student Union

A28

AIESEC UWA

A39 B21 A13

ALVA (Architecture\ Amnesty International UWA Archaeological Society of Western Australia (Archsoc)

A48

Arnott's Brand Experience

B46 B60 B29 B09 A05 A74 P30 A38 B87 P20 B61

Name of Club / Organisation

Stall A43 P32 B45 A26 A55 A27 P16

Influencers City Church International Paintball Group International Students Services JapSSOC - Japanese Studies Society Jim Beam on Campus KAOS UWA German Club Kitesurfing Association of UWA

Asian Students in Australia (A.S.I.A) Athletics AUJS (Australasian Union of Jewish Students) AusIMM Australia China Youth Association (ACYA) Australia Red Cross Blood Service Australian Electoral Commission Australian Institute of International Affairs Australian University Games (Sport) Australian Youth Climate Coalition (Perth) Badminton

B35

Korean Cultural Club

B68 B26 P28

Lawn Bowls & Surfing Leisure Lipton Ice Tea

A37

Malaysian Student Union

B85 B86

Martial Arts1 (Aikido / Karate/ Savate/ Kobudo) Martial Arts2 (Judo/ Kendo/ Taekwon-Do)

A08

Mensa Australia

A41 A50

Music Students' Society (MSS) Nescafe 3in1

B70

Netball

P06

Bankwest

B65 B62 A25

Baseball / Softball Basketball / Touch Bhakti Yoga Club

B22 B53 P17 B82

Oaktree Foundation WA Officeworks One Degree Nepal Outdoor (Rockclimbing / Paddling / Abseiling / Windsurfing)

A78

Bible-Presbyterian Church of WA

B31

Overseas Christian Fellowship

B48 B73 A66 A03 A51 B30 A24 A64 A72 P02 A44 P03 A04 P21 A62 A60 B08 B74 P13 B23 A85 B49 B41 B06 B13 A31 B38 A58 A56 P12 A77 P14 B84 A06 B67 A84 A02 A86 P33 B64 P26 P27 B71 A69 P01 A52 B69 B18

Blackstone Society Boat (Rowing) Campus Connect iPhone App Cantonese Students Association Captain Stirling Chinese Society (CS) Chinese Students' and Scholars' Association Circuit Sunday Association Citibank City Network Church Coca-Cola Zero Commonwealth Bank Computer Science Students' Club (CSSC) Conservation Council of WA Cottesloe Outrigger Club CPA Australia CPEC (Chemical and Process Engineering Club) Cricket Department of Commerce DESI Students Society DonateLife WA ECOMS Education Council Electronic Music Appreciation Society (EMAS) Engineers Without Borders Enterprise And Consulting Society Environment Department Event Cinemas - Cinebuzz Students Ezyplus International Money Transfers Fair Work Ombudsman Faith Presbyterian Church Feminist Action Network Fencing Finance Association of Western Australia (FAWA) Football (Aussie Rules) Fremantle headspace Friends of Palestine WA Generation One Gideons Golf / Ten Pin Bowling Guild Membership Activation Station Guild Volunteering and Relay@UWA Handball / Dodgeball Health Students Society (HSS) Hellenic University Student Society (HUSS) Hip-E Club Hockey Indonesian Students Society

P10 B39

Passion Pelican Magazine

A34

Perth International

A18 A67 B37 P24 B04 B43 A61

Perth Undergraduate Choral Society Physical Education Students Association (PESA) Prosh Protect the Kimberley Psycho's (UWA Psychology Club) Queer Department RACWA Free2go

A82

Red Frogs

P15 B36 B12 B63 B25 B83 P31 A63 P19 B28 P04

Refugee Rights Action Network (RRAN) Residential Students' Department Robogals Perth Rugby SABAS - The Sausage And Bun Appreciation Society Sailing Samaritans Crisis Line SARC - Respectful Relationships Save The Children - UWA Branch Singapore Students Society Sizzler

A10

SNAGS (Students of Natural and Agricultural Sciences)

B24 B76 A09 B40 B27 P23 B72 A59 A80 A42 A46 A81 A79 A29 A76 B55 B56 B79 B80 P29 A54 P08 A53 P18 A57

Sober? Soccer Socialist Alternative Societies Council (SOC) Public Affairs Council (PAC) Solid Gold SPINRPHEX and WAALHIIBE Rural Health Club Squash / Tennis St George Bank St Matthew's Unichurch STA Travel Student Flights Nedlands Student Life Students for Christ Students In Free Enterprise UWA (SIFE) Suncorp Bank Sustainable Development Sustainable Development - Transport Swimming Table Tennis The Australian Newspaper The Byrnleigh Hotel The Claremont Hotel & Club Bay View The Deen The Greens (WA) Inc The Newport Hotel

Name of Club / Organisation

Stall B10 A45 A19 B58 B52 A71 B57 B77 B81 A07 B75 A01 A21 A32 A47 A17 B15 A16 A20 B02 A87 P22 B50 B07 A15 B33 B34 B32 A40 A75 B20 P09 B01 A33 A30 B05 B03 A12 A11 B47 B44 A73 A88 A36 B51 B88 B59 P05 A65 B11 A22 B16 A49 B54 B66 A83 A68 B78 A70 B42 P25 A14 B19

The Society of Petroleum Engineers UWA Student Chapter The Spaceship The University Computer Club The West Australian The Western Australian Medical Students' Society Timezone Transperth - Public Transit Authority Triathlon Ultimate (Frisbee) UN Youth UWA Underwater (Scuba Diving) Uni Camp For Kids Unigames University Catholic Society University Dental Students' Society University Dramatic Society (UDS) University Engineers' Club (UEC) University Motorcycle Club University Science Fiction Association University Writers Club (UWC) UPS - Undergraduate Physics Society Urban Bushland Council UWA Arts Union UWA Association of International Petroleum Negotiators Student Club UWA Atheist & Skeptic Society UWA Bahai Society UWA Be With Buddha Society UWA Christian Union UWA Debating Union UWA Duke of Edinburgh's Club UWA French Club UWA Jazz Club (UWAJC) UWA Juggling Club UWA Labor Club UWA Liberal Club UWA Motorsport UWA Nerf Combat Association (UWANCA) UWA Pantomime Society UWA Philosophy Club UWA Politics Club UWA Postgraduate Students' Association (PSA) UWA Red Cross Club UWA Resistance UWA Rotaract UWA Science Union UWA Sports - Social Sports UWA Sports Fitness Centre UWA Study Abroad Office UWA Tertiary Alcohol Project UWA Young Engineers Club UWAnime UWASCA - The College of Saint Basil the Great vividwireless Pty Ltd Vodafone Volleyball WA AIDS Council WA Roller Derby Water Polo Weir's Kitchen Welfare Department Women's Department Western Earth Carers Woolnough Society Young UN Women

A35

Zoology Club

A: Inner Circle B: Outer Circle P: Promenade Discounts for Guild Members

REID LIBRARY MATHS toilets B17

B18

B19

B20

B21

B14

B33 B35

B13

A10

B07 B08 B09 B10

A09 A08 A07

B42

A05

A31

A04

B45

A30

B85 B84 B83 B82

A75 A74 A73 A72 A71 A70 A69

B81

A53

A52

A51

P10

A68

B80 B78 B77 B76

ENGINEERING BUILDING

B71

B70

B69

B68

B67

B66

B65

B64

B58

B63

Sports Demo Area

CHECK POINT & EQUIPMENT ISSUING AREA Recycling Station

B48

P03

B49

P04

B50

P05

B51

P06

B52

P07

B53

P08

B54

P09

P11 P12 P13 P14

P15 P16

P17 P18 P19 P20

P23

A67 A66 A65 A64 A63 A62 A61 A60 A59 A58 A57 A56 A55 A54

B72

P02

P21

B79

B73

B47

P22

B62

B74

P01

ENTRY 4

A50

SPORTS BEND B75

B46

Promenade

B86

A35 A36 A37 A38 A39 A40 A41 A42 A43 A44 A45 A46 A47 A48 A49

B87

Help keep O-Day green, please use recycling bins

SOCIAL SCIENCES BUILDING

ENTRY 3

OAK LAWN CONCERT

A03 A02

first aid

A34

A01

A33

A76 A77 A78 A79 A80 A81 A82 A83 A84 A85 A86 A87 A88

A32

B01

B44

A29

A06

B43

B02 B03 B04 B05 B06

B41

A28

JAMES OVAL

ENTRY 1

(old Economics & commerce)

B40

A27

B88

cricket pavilion

B39

A26

ENTRY 2

LAW

B38

A11 A12 A13 A14 A15 A16 A17 A18 A19 A20 A21 A22 A23 A24

A25

B37

B11

B36

B12

B34

CLUB CORNER

Map

B22 B23 B24 B25 B26 B27 B28 B29 B30 B31 B32

B15

B16

B61

B60

B59

P24

B57

Toilets

P25

B56

B55

P26

membership activation sTation

P27

P28

VILLAGE WALK P31

P30

Enter prize draw here

GUILD VILLAGE

FOOD, TOILETS, ATMS & Lost Property

Weekly Tuesday Markets

P29

Dating With Marnie

Dating Advice for Indentured 19 Year-olds with Marnie Allen For eons, the dating columnists of the world have been talking shite about flowers, chocolates, Valentine’s Day and true love. Now, Marnie Allen arises from the sewers to give the young ones some tough loving.

Dear Marnie I recently slept with a guy who is already in a long-term relationship. I don’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings, but I really want to continue sleeping with him. Am I in the wrong? Yours sincerely Roberta Dear Roberta I’m a firm believer that being the “other woman” is a rite of passage. Cheating is cool. Monogamous couples will attempt unsuccessfully to recapture those long lost feelings of heat and lust by engaging in clandestine erotic entanglements in semi-public places like a bathroom at a party or the Pelican Office but deep down we all know that the world would be a better place if everyone lived by the mantra “cheat and be cheated on”. To borrow a phrase from one of my favourite singer/ songwriters, Hot Rod, “Baby don’t take it personal, when I go and fuck these hoes. Let’s talk about the word fuck for a second; I make love to you”. Roberta, you could be one of those hoes! I say go for it, and if you start to feel even a twinge of guilt just remind yourself that one day you’ll probably get cheated on too, or at least contract syphilis. Good luck!

Illustrated by Ena Tulic

Dear Marnie My girlfriend and I have finally decided to sleep with one another after a few months of dating. I want it to be really special but not too cheesy or anything. Can you give me some advice on how to make it a night to remember? From Peter Dear Peter It’s time to bring the R word back. No, not romance. Realism. There’s nothing better than receiving a healthy jolt of reality while in the frenzied throes of lovemaking. Egyptian cotton sheets and scented candles are so passé. Modern women want to go to bed with a man who fires off

a text message during foreplay or reminds himself out loud to buy bin liners. One thing I like to do for my husband Patrick is list each item of food I ingested throughout the day while tenderly caressing his lily-white man bosom. Meta-modern ironic romance is here to stay and I suggest that you get on board. Leave your shoes on. Make her take off her own bra. If you suddenly desire a piece of toast, push her aside and go and make one. It’s real, it’s raw and it will make her yours forever.

Dear Marnie Sometimes I think I might be at risk of becoming a sexual deviant. ‘Normal’ sex doesn’t appeal to me at all and I’m scared to explore anything with other people in case it freaks them out. Help! Yours truly Barbara

Dear Barbara Pornography can be a liberating outlet for those of us whose sexual leanings fall on the fringes of ethical conduct, general hygiene and the laws of the universe. We can vicariously experience the life of the sexual deviant that we long to be. Nothing is off limits. You can be that Oriental schoolgirl with an exaggerated bust whose every orifice is penetrated by an enormous tentacled sea-beast. You can be a virginal prairie girl who gets ploughed on a tree stump by a ruggedly handsome lumberjack, or a middle aged woman exuding an aura of former attractiveness who experiences a sexual awakening with Hector the Colombian stable-hand. Pornography is the visual accompaniment to Mills and Boon novels, only with more obvious bigotry. Thwart your dormant sexual predation by experiencing it virtually and the world will be a safer place.

Dear Marnie I’ve just started seeing someone and things are getting serious but I have some trust issues and have been holding back. How can I move forward confidently in the relationship? Yours sincerely Henry Dear Henry There are always a few things you should be aware of before venturing into a new relationship. It was only after three years of being Mrs Patrick Marlborough that I discovered he has an illegitimate Chilean son named Dubolt who works in a factory and whose mother is a whore. I made the best of the situation and used Dubolt’s existence as an excuse to further delay consummating my marriage. But if you’re not as opportunistic as myself then I suggest you find out as much as possible about this boy or girl before taking it to the next level. Aside from the obvious deal-breakers such as webbed feet, veganism, pubic lice and interest in student politics, there are a few sneaky traits that tend to go unnoticed during the initial phase of the relationship. So take my advice and stalk them like a motherfucker. Search their bins, take urine samples, plant a homing device on their body. Surveillance is the key to a loving and lasting relationship. Just remember to never lower your standards for anyone, unless you can use their flaws as leverage to gain expensive gifts and informal slavery.

How to

Workin’ Like a Boss:

how to own your job Tom ‘T Bone’ Reynolds @tsareynolds “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley of ties that bound man to his natural superiors, and left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash payment.” – Karl Marx

Having a job sucks. Even Marx knew this. He thought utopia (“Communism”) was a world of automated factories manufacturing all our needs and wants while humanity would collectively sip Mai Tais and play beach volleyball all day. Or whatever the 19th Century German equivalent was – maybe eating sausages and occupying France. I’m not entirely sure. Sadly, until the Chinese figure out how to replace their child labourers with indentured robo-children, this won’t be happening anytime soon. In the meantime, all us chumps are still obliged to work for those callous cash payments Marx fretted over. Spending most of your life toiling for The Man is a fairly bleak existential prospect. Long-term unemployment is certainly an option. Sadly it eventually, inevitably, leads to being legally obliged to spend your days in someone else’s office, answering job-skill questions like “what sports do you enjoy” and “what are your hobbies” while sending out resumes every day (true story). The reality is – with the exception of becoming

The great thing about toilet breaks – whether

have in the workplace is resilience: Don’t let the

they’re to let out a stifled scream of frustration

bastards get you down. Have a sense of humour,

or to just poop (possibly both), is that nobody

befriend your colleagues (or regular customers),

will ever call you out on the time it takes you to

and if all else fails visit the marketing department

complete a bowel movement. True story:

and try a line of blow.

a friend told me of a co-worker who used to set his alarm for 30 minutes and have a nap on the

Find A Mentor: So you’re young, you’re kind of

john everyday.

dumb about the job (trust me, you are) and you’re probably working the bottom rung. But perhaps

Run Errands: Always be vague. If you’ve got

you’re enthusiastic about the work (or getting a

a single letter to post insist you need to go to

better job). You need a corporate sugar-daddy.

an actual post-office. If you’re running low on

You need a mentor. Find yourself a benign and

whiteout take a trip to Office Works. If you

semi-competent co-worker. Be upfront about

need to pick up a document, head out around

your ambitions. If they’re willing and able to

lunchtime and grab a bite on the way. Likewise

help you you’ve just landed on the travellator

get crafty with your meetings. Leaving the office

to promotion. A mentor can’t take you all the

at four is an obvious ruse to leave work early –

way but they can offer you their experience and

but leaving at two implies you’ve been caught up

advice as you tread the rocky path upwards

in serious business all afternoon.

towards higher corporate ground.

Know Your Rights: People will constantly try to

Free Merchandise: Everyone from boner-inducing

screw you over. In office jargon these cubicle-

Viagra to Cornetto ice-creams have branded

restrained demons are called “managers”, “the

merchandise. Corporate merchandise now ranges

boss”, “co-workers” or “customers”. One moment

from the humble pen and notepad combo to

you’re doing your job, the next you’re being

more elaborate goodies like customized USBs and

rapaciously shafted. If you work in an office

chic little desktop calendars. Never turn down an

always document important business (if it’s not

office freebie. Likewise, while one should never

written down, it never happened). If you do fall

go hog-wild it’s an accepted convention in most

foul of a fascist in a tie make sure you know your

Illegitimi non carborundum: With the exception

workplaces that stationery has a habit of ending

rights – call wageline, find out who your union is

of slavery, customer service must be the

up in lounge rooms of employees. Just saying.

and shoot them an email, or talk with someone in

homeless or a corpse – you will be obliged to take employment for most of your life. And let’s be honest, Abbott is one policy aneurysm away from suggesting we turn our dead into a gas-bloated floating barrage to stop the boats. Since you’re going to have to anyway, you might as well get Illustrated by Louise Abbott

the checkout queue. The greatest asset you can

the most out of your pre-corpse barrage job.

greatest labour crime ever perpetrated (I’m fairly confident Marx would agree). Humans are stupid, aggressive, dull, and selfish animals – and that’s before they start calling IT Support or joining

Human Resources. Strategic Shitting: The workplace toilet is the refuge for the lazy, the sleepy, the depressed

And just remember, at the end of the day, you

and the horny. It’s true. The workplace wank is a

can always quit!

common if unspoken custom amongst many men.

SLEEPY GEORGE HARRISON I’m inclined to pretend that Empire of the Sun are a bad dream I had after combining jello shots, Pirates of the Caribbean and David Guetta. Despite this, it’s worthwhile throwing the light back on Luke Steele’s previous band, The Sleepy Jackson. Their/his 2003 debut, Lovers, was decent and sometimes brilliant; cf. the amazing ‘Two Dancers’, which still sneaks into the corners of all of my more hopeful daydreams. The follow up, Personality, filters the sprawl of Lovers into a something much more specific – either it’s ELO trying to be the Beach Boys in 1967, or the Beach Boys in 1977 trying to be ELO. Even if it’s not Pet Sounds, it is good, gummy company for Out of the Blue.

Music

KIM SALMON… …is a dude and a half – you have to be to give Thurston Moore an aesthetic kick up the arse (via Blood Red River) and to keep making records as ravenous and generally fantastic for the three decades hence. Like Nick Cave set off the leash and less concerned with his navel, Salmon negotiates his guitar, his grizzle and his uniformly excellent rhythm section through swampy, malcontent songs drippin’ with distortion. Start anywhere and you’ll get the idea imprinted forcefully on your face, though I’d recommend anything he did with the Surrealists first.

FLIPPING CHANNELS Retrospectively, The Victims seem to have been the preeminent Perth punk band of the class of ‘77, and Television Addict b/w I’m Flipped Out Over You is one of the greatest punk singles. ‘Television Addict’ is one of those songs that couldn’t actually have its balls on the table anymore than already it does, and the b-side ratchets things up into double time. Thrilling stuff.

BYE If your curiosity has been piqued by this, you can grab more obscurities over at perthmusicblog. com, or by hanging out at The Bird and waiting for someone over thirty to come in.

Fresh out of Cairns, The Medics have been turning heads with their grandiose, expansive rock sound. When I spoke to Andrew the day before the Brisbane Big Day Out, his excitement was clear, as the guys enjoyed some downtime prior to months of solid touring.

THEY SURE AIN’T NO SCRUBS Brad Griffin talks the business of being a buzz band with Andrew Thompson of The Medics.

Andrew admitted that the swelling interest surrounding the band since last year’s This Boat We Call Love EP dropped had changed things for the band. “We haven’t really adjusted to it; we just get thrown stuff and try to take it as it comes. It’s a lot crazier now than when we first went on tour.” Despite their newly busy schedule, the band’s bigger profile means much of the heavier lifting of touring is now out of their hands. “We can concentrate on the music side of things now, instead of putting tours together, because we’ve got all of these people helping us out, which is great.” When it comes to The Medics’ live show, Thompson describes it as intense. “There’s a lot of energy; I think it’s definitely better than the recorded experience. Charles throws his bass up in the air and climbs everywhere, the drummer loses his shit. We play to ourselves, and it just comes.” As Andrew

notes, a lot of different elements go into shaping the distinctive Medics sound. “It’s really broad, we try and draw our inspiration from things outside of music as well, but we’ve been influenced by the Mars Volta, Sigur Ros, At the Drive-In and Kanye West. I think if anyone listens to our music hard enough, they’ll pull something totally different out of it to the person next to them.” Having been unearthed by Triple J, The Medics were swiftly catapulted onto the national festival circuit; however, not all of these performances have been treasured, Thompson went on to explain. “We played at the V8 Supercars, but that was really just a big bunch of bogans and V8 cars. Groovin’ The Moo was good though, it was more of a boutique event. We got a good crowd.” If things weren’t hectic enough, the band’s debut album is expected to be released by the end of July after a series of frustrating delays. “We had to take the emotion out of releasing an album and play it sensibly, since we didn’t want to release it when we were doing these festivals since we wouldn’t be able to tour around it.” With youth, talent and a busy work ethic, the Medics look to be on the verge of becoming the next big thing.

Music Reviews

The Weeknd

Leonard Cohen

Lana Del Rey

First Aid Kit

Echoes of Silence

Old Ideas

Born to Die

The Lion’s Roar

Self-released

Columbia

Interscope

Witchita Recordings

A lot of people dislike the sound of contemporary RnB. They view it as hiphop’s gay counterpart that for some reason happens to be all about having sex with women (and occasionally respecting them as well. Who’d a thunk it?). Thankfully those people, along with the white indie-rock masses that just found out black people make music unironically, have found their token RnB guy in Abel Tesfaye a.k.a. The Weeknd.

Considering that Leonard Cohen’s decision to leave the monastery and return to life as a working musician was down more to money woes than a restless muse, Old Ideas (his first LP in eight years) comes as a surprise. However, it succeeds on the same terms as his recent concert tours by giving the audience exactly what they want: Cohen as the modest, wisecracking mystic.

Self-described as a gangster Nancy Sinatra, Lana Del Rey’s music is dramatic stuff, driven by hip-hop drums, sweeping strings, and her own enigmatic vocals. ‘Video Games’ was probably the best song I heard in 2011; there was something about it that instantly shouted ‘classic’, a feeling closely echoed in its flipside ‘Blue Jeans’. I wasn’t the only one who thought so, as the second half of 2011 saw the hype-train that was Lana Del Rey continue giddily along with the release of two more similarly fantastic songs (‘Born to Die’ and ‘Off to the Races’). These four tracks open Born to Die in the best way possible, suggesting that the album might deliver on the promise of these previously released tracks. For the most part, it does.

First Aid Kit is comprised of siblings Johanna and Klara Söderberg. Their second album, The Lion’s Roar, nods towards American country and folk influences. Unfortunately the concept – an Americana album made by two young Swedes – is more interesting than the music, which relies on beguiling vocals and the embellishment of producer Mike Mogis to obscure largely bromidic songwriting. Yet, even the arrangements are on occasion gratingly simplistic. Similarly, the harmonies are beautifully modulated but ultimately uninspired, and the phrasing is often clunky and awkward, detracting from otherwise agreeable melodies.

The third album that he’s released in a year, Echoes of Silence feels as though it leans too heavily on the cultivation of the “dark” persona that attracted this market in the first place. There’s too many power chords and too many heavily accented virtual snare hits – a string of production choices and canned lyrics (e.g. “are you ready for the fall”) that don’t favour Tesfaye’s choir-boy tenor, which remains an unusually light and narrow voice for a male RnB singer. Still, the self-consciously brooding tone of Echoes of Silence doesn’t completely distract from the inventiveness of the soundscape and Tesfaye’s songwriting. Harmonies echo in and out of each speaker, vocals get screwed until they aren’t recognisably human, there’s a keyboard patch in the mix that sounds like a steel drum being played under water. There’s an interpolation of France Gall’s ‘Laisse Tomber Les Filles’ on a song that just accepts Gall’s rejection and charge of male promiscuity and offers a tame “why not” in response. The way it’s delivered it seems honest. Hell, it might not even be a gimmick.

Josh Chiat

7.0

One could easily think ‘cash-in’, but Cohen’s songwriting is more than up to the game; this is the best set he’s put together since 1984’s I’m Your Man. Tempos are set to a crawl, allowing songs like ‘Going Home’ and ‘Crazy To Love You’ to proceed with singular grace and clarity. Fortunately for the songs, he’s ditched his recent preference for karaokean arrangements in favour of a lush, acoustic palette more in keeping with the hymnal tone of his melodies, meaning the record goes down with the smooth professionalism you’d expect from a band with a full-time Spanish guitarist. Old Ideas is an appropriate title, as Cohen is still talking about sex, death and the spirit, but his perspective has changed. He’s no longer got his tail up; instead, he’s watching, chuckling, and preparing to turn away for the last time. His tremendous knack for a platitude still remains, but the details are gone. One has to be content, though; a prophet’s job is to refine his message over time, not to complicate it, and this record humbly and simply reiterates his central themes of desire, acceptance and humor. Even if that means Old Ideas slips from the beatific to the soporific from time to time, it’s still impossible to dismiss.

Alex Griffin

7.0

However, the mid section of the album fails badly. Tracks like ‘Diet Mtn Dew’ and the clichéd 80s ballad ‘Dark Paradise’ come off as half-baked and ill-formed in comparison, and the rerecorded version of ‘National Anthem’ is robbed of the glorious upbeat feel it had as a demo. Fortunately, Del Rey redeems herself after this dismal streak with the brilliant ‘Radio’. ’Summertime Sadness’, which may be my favorite Lana track to date, continues this revival in quality. Despite some flat spots, Born to Die remains a strong record. Though much has been written about Del Rey, this is an album you need to listen to without prejudice. If you can ignore the hype and focus on the quality of the songs, you’ll find plenty to love here.

Sean O’Connor

7.5

Though the name First Aid Kit connotes a sense of sterile functionality, the lyrics – especially when paired with swelling strings or burgeoning pedal steel – tend to be effusively sentimental, which comes across as hackneyed. Lyrics like “Oh, the bitter winds are comin’ in” are indicative of a certain lack of imagination, but the tales of bleak domesticity and middle-aged desperation in songs like ‘This Old Routine’ seem particularly contrived, given how young the two sisters are (18 and 21). This betrays the sense that the record is little more than an attempt not just to emulate, but to imitate the American country music icons they pay homage to in ‘Emmylou’ (“I’ll be your Emmylou, and I’ll be your June, if you’ll be my Gram and my Johnny, too”). Even the closing jamboree ‘King of the World’, which features mariachi horns, mandolins, handclaps and Conor Oberst, sounds more like an outtake from Cassadaga than anything distinctive from the band. First Aid Kit have been touted for displaying maturity and wisdom beyond their years, but this supposed substance seems a little flimsy considering just how derivative The Lion’s Roar is.

Mai Barnes

5.5

The Take Over

Music Reviews

LIVE

Cate Le Bon

Enter Shikari

Thee Oh Sees

The Art Bears

CYRK

A Flash Flood Of Colour

The Bakery

The World As It Is Today (released in 1981)

The Control Group

Ambush Reality

January 20, 2012

Re Recordings

Cate le Bon is a Welsh singer-songwriter, and CYRK is her second album. If you’re having any preconceptions of what a Welsh female singer-songwriter sounds like, scratch them – this sounds more like Pavement than Joanna Newsom. Featuring a full band from start to finish, CYRK is loud, angular and kinda clunky, in a good way.

Enter Shikari’s third album, A Flash Flood Of Colour, is exactly that; an eclectic mix of punishing breakdowns, soaring choruses and wobbling bass lines which somehow gel together to live up to the hype it has been receiving in hardcore circles.

Thee Oh Sees are a little like scrambled eggs on toast; initially satisfying but lethargically dull if you make them a consistent part of your diet. When there is so much sonic diversity travelling across the Pacific to us from the States this year, why should you spend $40 on Thee Oh Sees? The dishonest answer is their perfect stage symmetry (w/ sneaky keyboardist cleavage), but the truthful answer is the less pronounced vocal harmonies between Brigid Dawson and yelping front man John Dwyer. The addition of the whimsical female vocal to the Bakery soundscape helped to add a silver lining to an otherwise disappointing and typically high-energy male-dominated garage rock performance. Live, the Thee Oh Sees summed up everything wrong about Pitchfork Media’s strong support of those San Francisco-based groups who offer up little more than loud, attractively recorded whimsy. At times, Pitchfork’s judgements place unquantifiable amounts of praise upon the shoulders of the producer of the record, which tends to disproportionately inflate expectations around the raw musicianship and songwriting of the band members themselves. There was of course nothing terrible about the Oh Sees performance, as all of the expected elements were there, including some fine harmonies and pounding rhythms. Yet, their set-list lacked the diversity that is fundamental to the success of a band drawing from a discography that includes more than a dozen records, as the band confined themselves to loud, repetitive rave-ups. These free-range Californian eggs are burnt.

The idea of the bloody overthrow of capitalism is fairly passé for most of us intellectual middle-class types. The only thing that could make me riot would be a shortage of Evian at Fresh Provisions to make ice blocks with, and even then my rage would be pretty impotent (I’d probably just buy some free range granola instead). Capitalism, for all its distant flaws, isn’t worth the bother to remove, is it? The Art Bears, however, are not inclined to agree, and The World as It Is Today is a brutal indictment of the system and a prophecy of its downfall.

The key component here is le Bon’s vocals. She sings about quaint alienation and sadness, with a particular attention to physicality. Her delivery is deadpan, lending the sense that she isn’t so much taking part in the songs as watching them from afar (despite her insistent use of the first-person). Where she excels is her conjuring of a slew of off-kilter yet unexpectedly catchy vocal melodies, which tend to reappear in one’s brain days later without warning, before embedding themselves there indefinitely. This is also a very to-the-point record. Most songs clock in under three minutes thirty, and the whole album takes just 35. This only seems surprising due to the very pedestrian nature of the music, which (aside from trotting opener ‘Falcon Eyed’) never seems to be going anywhere in a hurry. Rather than pace, it’s more the result of le Bon’s refusal to let any fragment of music wear itself out – vocals are still given breathing space by instrumental sections, verses are still followed by choruses – while maintaining a certain economy and compactness. The only problem with CYRK is that it feels slightly undercooked and not fully realised; not the worst problem an album can have.

Connor Weightman

8.0

AFFOC shows the band continuing to grow away from the post-hardcore sound of their debut Take To The Skies, while also furthering the experimentation with dance and electronica that resonated through their breakthrough album, Common Dreads. The impeccably mixed 11 track LP picks from a wider range of electronic elements and is no doubt the strongest effort yet from the English lads. AFFOC has a varied feel, ranging from the heavy hitting ‘Sssnakepit’, which features a heavy syncopated breakdown and aggressive vocal passages, to the soft and slow album closer ‘Constellations’. Standout tracks include ‘Hello Tyrannosaurus, Meet Tyrannacide’ which harks back to their debut album, and ‘Gandhi Mate, Gandhi’, which is their most experimental track to date. Chris Batten conjures some amazing sub-bass lines through his setup (which looks more like a NASA launch system than a bass rig), complimenting Rou Reynolds’ manic programming. The album tackles the usual subject matter, as frontman Reynolds screams about the ‘oppression of the man by the corporations’, in usually very literal terms. As he only occasionally resorts to thin metaphor, the lyrics tend towards cliché, but considering the targets of his anger are oil companies and war profiteers, perhaps this delivery works best. AFFOC delivers a sonic punch to the ear canal and is a refreshing change from the usual blandness of synth-core, a genre this album escapes from.

Michael O’Brien

Fresh from making Marxist improv chamber music with Henry Cow, Fred Frith and Chris Cutler foment a twitchy, anxious cloud of militaristic dervishes and Brechtian cabaret, where knotty progressions and drones smash their heads against anything that moves. Above that blood-grey din, Dagmar Krause warbles and coos fire and brimstone with her immaculate Teutonic diction, adopting the voices of characters such as Investment Capital to demonstrate the inherent cruelty of capitalism. “Out of town/my work takes me out of town/I empty villages/I burn their houses down” goes the very first line of the album, and it only gets bleaker therein; cf. the visceral horror of ‘Freedom’. This is not fun or easy music, but a revolution isn’t all sunshine, brotherhood and bread. Machines have got to be smashed, and kulaks have got to be trod underfoot. When it comes to records that evoke the terror, violence and passion of a takeover (while also providing an exegesis of the injustices that lead to such an event) there are few that could be more emphatic than The World As It Is Today.

Luke Bartlett

8.0

Alex Griffin

Music

SOUTHBOUND Reviewed not Reported The way that Australian festivals get booked strikes me as incredibly strange. If you add the sum of all the different artists across all of our summer festivals, you come to approach the whole bloc of artists at marquee American festivals like Lollapalooza, Coachella or Bonnaroo. Allowing for the fact that essentially the same artists play at all the major festivals in America, you’re likely to pay over a thousand dollars more here to see the same acts as you are in America. The reason that identical acts tend to play festivals all around the world and Australia over the course of one summer could be explained away by stating that the promoters are the same, or the same artists are offered in packages, or that some artists simply tour at particular times. Whatever the case, the total booking of the summer festivals seems to be a by-product of laziness and crowd-sourcing.

Don’t assume straight away I’m some sort of bitter curmudgeon without the sense to enjoy a large event that has been undertaken at someone else’s expense for my own benefit. I managed to see every act that played on the two main stages and enjoyed watching about half of them; more artists than I believe most people there would have seen play, and the good stuff was often great.

GOOD THINGS

The best two sets of the festival are the only presentations of RnB and Weirdo-Pop respectively at Southbound 2012 – a minority share of the bill that falls unsurprisingly in line with Triple J’s general playlist spread. The reason for Aloe Blacc’s appearance at the festival is obvious; ‘I Need A Dollar’ became one of the break-out hits of 2011 more than a year after it was originally released. From David Chitty’s perspective it was all over the Goddamn radio.

David Chitty, head of Southbound organisers Sunset Events, said in an interview a couple of years back that he was primarily interested in artists that he had heard about through tour ads, or ones that he had heard on the radio. Consider this for a moment – the man responsible for organising one of Western Australia’s largest musical events is a casual music fan.

Aloe Blacc Now that Blacc’s Good Things has found a wider listener base than the RnB/Stones Throw nerds that supported him when he played Good Vibes in early 2011, his shows have become more streamlined, less spontaneous and incredibly focused on the trad-soul of Good Things at the expense of all material from the sparse electronic RnB of his eclectic, superior debut Shine Through.

I’m not saying that there’s anything necessarily wrong with that; anyone who can front the money and the legwork earns the right to stage such a large event. Yet, the lack of adventure and originality in the line-up – seemingly copied verbatim from Triple J’s 2011 most played list – seemed to draw out a crowd that generally permeates the festival environment: a swarm of wooing gnats and self-proclaimed festival junkies with the ability to love “all the musics, all the time” with little to no discrimination between good and bad.

Regardless, he still rips through a set of technically brilliant and highly energetic performances that channel Sam Cooke, Donny Hathaway, Harold Faltemeyer and most of all Al Green (many of the stage moves come straight from The Reverend’s catalogue). Each band member’s performance is infused with character and personality (even before the show, the brass/ wind section played a memorable freestyle over ‘Otis’) and while the largest audience response is reserved for ‘I Need A Dollar’, Blacc’s voice is on

top form, drawing a growing string of enthusiastic festival goers into singalongs to his lesser known tracks. High marks. Dan Deacon Dan Deacon, one of the few artists here to set up his own equipment (indicating the actual level of independence to be found at Southbound), performs a short set of world music rips played through a DIY bizarro pop filter. Dan and his band are open about their influences as well – one of the standout tracks is called ‘Konono Rip-Off #1’. Even with the high quality of the songs performed, Deacon’s real triumph comes in his adaptation of the limitations of the stage into an advantage – two drummers maintain a loose polyrhythm, real marimbas and mbiras are replaced by synthesizers emulating them, speaker feedback becomes an integral part of the show – as Deacon charms the crowd into participating. Though there were only about fifty people in the tent specifically to see him, many more joined in Deacon’s organisation of interpretive dance and ecstatic childish play. He gets cut off early to set up for the next band, but I could have stayed for another half hour; easily the most fun set of the festival. Kimbra Kimbra’s electro-pop mess is the closest the bill comes to a second RnB artist. She performs with understated Baduizms (a jazz-tinged soul-focused soprano, commanding jerky movements) with the propensity to regularly push her voice into a rough growl or upwards into a tight Barbara Stephens squeal (not that she’d know who that is). Also impressive is her rhythm section, which shuffles between rock back-beats and terse AfroPop shuffles. She’s been booked here because she’s one of the big new things in the J crowd, though she peaks with a cover of Bobby Brown’s ‘Every Little Step I Take’, showing that she’s far more fascinating live than on her indie baiting

studio recordings. She has already well surpassed the man whose hit single gave her her greatest exposure (Gotye, cough). Tim Finn A Finn or a Kelly is always liable to show up at one of these things, a symbol of the old guard of Aussie Rock (though, like Kimbra, he’s a Kiwi). Finn and his band play like you would imagine your dad and his friends if they had a band – it’s pretty low on visceral excitement. Not that it matters, as they play Finn’s deep catalogue of hits in high spirits including ‘Six Months on a Leaky Boat’, one of the first songs I can remember that taught me how weird pop songwriting could be. Unknown Mortal Orchestra These guys just love Magical Mystery Tour. They must. Liquid Swords as well, probably. Breakbeats and distorted guitar wails cover reverb washed vocals from hipsters in a psychedelic throwback that pisses all over the recent turn to self-indulgence from Perth’s Tame Impala and their copy-cats. UMO even save the blog hit (‘Ffunny Friends’) for last, a chance to vibe more than pulse (unless you were a group of about five eighteen year olds singing every word, bro-ing out next to me). Streamlining the Festival Firstly, there are no “Southbound patented cash vouchers” this year, only real money from real ATMs. I lost fifty bucks on one of those vouchers last year. Secondly the two main stage set-up makes everything easier to get to, while the over18 limit on this year’s festival means festivalgoers can take drinks wherever they went, which is a good thing. CSS CSS enjoy being here, they want to be here, they want you to enjoy being here. Their show is pure sexuality – girls with guitars, girls with synths, blokes relegated to the rhythm section. They are openly playing a form of disco (partly punkinspired). They want to get undressed and see you dance. And halfway through the second day of a festival you should repay their energy by going nuts.

BAD THINGS Fleet Foxes Think Crosby, Stills and Nash played interminably slow, except the harmonies are flat, the songs all sound the same, and for some fucking reason they let Graham Nash write all the guitar parts. What makes it worse is that a string of like-minded acts (The Head in the Heart, Gossling, Josh Pyke) are there as sort of abstract Fleet Foxes support acts for the festival. Is this what became big on JJJ while I wasn’t paying attention? Dear God. Haven’t I seen all these bands here, last year? Notorious wankers/mainstays The Vines, John Butler Trio, The Jezabels, The Naked and Famous etc. are at all of these things. Two of them are here because their music has been in booze or car ads, the other two have long overstayed their always unpleasant welcome. Fuck off Craig Nicholls, you manufactured post-Strokes prick. You too, John Butler: the man that made the blues banal for an entire generation of Australians. Gutting Hip Hop The best set involving any hip hop at all comes from DJ YODA – who is phenomenal, a mix of pop culture references (“I drink your Milkshake” from There Will Be Blood, the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme song) and brilliant scratch-laden remixes (his ‘Otis Remix’ comes to mind). Otherwise it’s pretty slim; Young MC plays in the club, not on either of the stages, while Drapht (who is no superstar headliner) and Kadyelle (also in the club) are the only local reps. I thought we all agreed that rap was legitimate a decade ago? Maybe Sunset Events will think harder about getting a legitimate top-level international rapper a la Public Enemy in 2011. Bureaucracy It’s a shame that it has to end on this. Still, it has to be said that Southbound is heavily affected by its ridiculous pass-out policy (“you may not take your car into the festival. You leave now, you leave forever. You should instead get on a shuttle bus, though we don’t really have space for you”). No-one has told the info desk what’s really going on, drinks tickets (now a festival staple) are still a stupid idea and the website tells campers to drive down the wrong road to get into the festival. Smarten up Chitters!

Crystal Castles: The Disco band of choice for faux-punks.

Fleet Foxes: One of many good mid-day naps.

The Kooks: Pop for people that didn’t grow up when they turned eighteen.

Music

Reviewed in Pictures

Film

FILM

A spoonful of Bollywood helps the Poverty go down Alice Mepham The floor is littered with all kinds of debris of both the synthetic and human variety. Dusty roads turn into impossibly narrow alleys which funnel into pokey little by-lanes. All of these eventually converge upon a truly filthy river. One can only deduce that it was once a waterway by peering through the colourful mesh of plastic refuse that surely starved any existing aquatic life-forms of oxygen decades ago. I am in Dharavi: Asia’s largest slum. It’s a desperately depressing place; 1 million people squeezed into 1.75 sq km. It is perhaps the most visually confronting thing I have come across in my travels. But as always, our impression of a place relies on so much more than appearances. As the old adage goes: never judge a book by its cover. Clichéd as it is, it holds true: appearances really are deceiving. There’s a great dischord between what lays before my eyes and what I feel inside. I don’t feel miserable, or helpless and thank God, I don’t feel voyeuristic. This emotional dissonance is all down to the people here, some of the most welcoming and heart-warming I have ever come across. They are farmers making the switch from the countryside to the ‘big smoke’ (A tailor-made

description for a city like Mumbai). They are political refugees from all over the sub-continent; orphaned children with nowhere else to go. Dalits, or untouchables, who even in a supposedly post-caste nation still find themselves socially frozen out. Disenfranchised and down-trodden, this motley-crue, of disparate peoples are the slum-dwellers. Mumbai’s non-people all converging upon this little patch of land in search of an elusive better life. With Danny Boyle films being the exception, most don’t find it. Unless, that is, it’s projected in front of their eyes. Bollywood! They’re absolutely nuts for it here. Theatrical posters adorn almost every room you catch a glimpse of, Bhangara music emanates from every radio and when the television set isn’t fixed on the other national pass-time, cricket, you can almost guarantee that it’ll be blaring on the silver screen. It’s pure escapist joy and it pervades not only every corner of the slum but the entire nation itself. Even as I’m typing this very article in metropolitan Bangalore I can hear the collective shreiks of awe and the unmistakable roar of a sporting crowd emanating from the local cricket ground. I’m informed by the hotel concierge that the match eliciting such an uproarious response is a charity

game featuring Bollywood’s biggest stars. A marriage of the nation’s two great loves. Let’s go back a bit. It’s 5.30 am, I’m on the local bus and we’re all packed in like sardines. Workingclass Tamil men surround me, all making the daily schlep to the largest local town to engage, I infer from their dress, in manual labour. I imagine the stony faces I would witness back in Australia at such an unbearably early hour and heading towards such an unrewarding destination. This public bus, however, is more akin to one of the ubiquitous Perth party buses that specialise in transporting hordes of hens/stag night revellers to a fruitful night of partying/eating kebabs/glassing cunts. At least, in the sense that the interior is incredibly gaudy and the music is set to an insufferable decibel level. In place of LMFAO, David Guetta and Skrillex is some insanely upbeat Punjabi music lifted, I am told by a fellow commuter, from a classic Bollywood film. Instead of being perturbed by this, as a group of 100 working-class Australian men would no doubt be, they embrace it. They wobble their tired heads in unison to the beat of the drum, smile as they recognise each individual track and generally bask in the ambience of nostalgia.

But even that notion is flawed. Unquestionably they are a film-loving people here. And so they should be, considering that Bollywood is the largest film industry in the world. It puts Hollywood to shame with over 1000 films produced domestically each year, while many more are filmed and financed abroad for Indian audiences. Furthermore, production houses are increasingly embracing ‘art house’ films, with socially and politically relevant features emerging on an unprecedented scale. Whilst I suspect the success of Slumdog Millionaire may be one of the driving forces behind this shift, this growing trend should really come as no surprise. India’s first motion picture Panaroma of Calcutta screened in 1899. If they weren’t exactly late to the cinematic party, why should they be far behind now? (That is, so long as it doesn’t contain anything too explicit or gritty; censorship is still very much in vogue.) Production scales aside, I would go so far as to say that their love-affair with, and understanding of, cinema goes far deeper than the average Australian. You can enter into a Bollywood-centric discussion with nearly anybody, from street-kid to security guard, and I can almost guarantee you that it will be a far more engrossing conversation than you will typically find at home. Some will loudly bemoan the increasingly glamourised state of contemporary Bollywood. Others will gladly tell you who the upcoming starlets are to keep an eye out for. Elsewhere the young men will hotly debate who the industry’s most dashing male lead is. That one’s a title of unparalleled importance. Aside from the national cricket team, the cinematic heir apparent dictates contemporary style and attitude on an almost unimaginable scale. Whichever way the conversation unfolds, it’s always passionate. Consequently, you can’t help but think there must be something more to these films than meets the eye in order to evoke such a strong sense of attachment. The most obvious reason may be that the class system is still rife in India. Alongside having the world’s biggest film industry, India has the dubious honour of being one the world’s most inequitable societies. Although the contemporary Indian government, as outlined in the nation’s constitution, does not recognise the caste system, many of it’s citizens still do; particularly those in rural areas. The ongoing effects of the social system can not be underestimated. To varying degrees your marriage and employment prospects are informed by your birth. While the

In a world where your social standing is still largely determined by your birth, why wouldn’t you find refuge in an easily accessible fantasy-world? It’s not that unlike your own. You my not find an exact representation of yourself but, spontaneous singing and dancing aside, most seem to focus on the journey of the central protagonist towards a better life. When you find yourself continually confronted by the day-to-day realities of poverty how can that image not be comforting? Hell, with a bit of luck, that could be you. However, even Bollywood, the great cinematic democracy, upholds a fairly conservative worldview. For instance, the industry’s films still seem to conform to traditional notions of beauty. Essentially every lead actor has an ostensibly lighter complexion than most. A physical characterisitc that not only points to the growing influence of the west, but is also associated with the higher castes. There is a vast distinction between the masses and those whom they aspire to become. That said, it is not my intention to diagnose the entire population of India with some sort of film-fueled delusion. Nor am I not arrogant enough to claim this as the answer to the puzzling question of Bollywood. It’s just that every time I try to rationalise, this is what I arrive at. Maybe Bollywood is simply impenetrable to an outsider. Any person’s tastes and preferences are invariably informed by their upbringing and surroundings. Personally, I was raised on a diet of British comedy and Sergio Leone films, whereas I assume most Indians weren’t. Shit, up until a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t have told you who Shah Rukh Khan was. (I’m still not quite sure that I could pick him out of line-up, not that most of you could either...). Perhaps, my cinematic education has rendered me incapable of appreciating these films in the same way that the native audience does. I can accept that. But as a creature of insatiable curiosity, I still need to pick it apart. I’m entirely certain that I’ll revisit this cultural theory in retrospect, with some new light shed and completely rework it. A month entrenched in one country does not magically make you an anthropologist; I’m aware of that. The only thing that I’m really sure of is this: Like the rest of the country’s quirks, both big and small, I find Bollywood utterly fascinating. I needed to share it, even if I could only scratch the surface, as both my personal experience and my editor demanded it. Namaste!

Film

government has made proactive strides to counter this – in an effort to improve the lot of the Dalits the government reserves a considerable number of public-sector positions for them – the jobs offered to Dalits are relatively menial and in the private sector attitudes remain hostile.

This universal fixation puzzles me. From an outsider’s perspective, the films look absolutely ludicrous and awkwardly hammy. Sure, even I can admit that they look fun and visually stunning, but to consume this type of film so ravenously would be unthinkable for any self-respecting film lover, right?

Film Reviews

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Director David Fincher Starring Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, Stellan Skarsgaard.

There’s just one thing that directors do to their films that really, truly irritates me – and while I occasionally do feel able to relate to David Stratton’s violent allergic reaction towards the use of hand-held cameras as an excuse for ‘aristic’ cinematography, at least directors like Von Trier generally try and use this style in contrast to other scenes that are shot in more conventional styles. I think this contrast is present in every film by Von Trier that I have seen, except for maybe Idioterne. Though if you were able to find me one person who thought that Von Trier has better cinematography than say, Haneke, you would have found a person who is completely and irrevocably wrong. This thing that annoys me so much is when directors think it is a good idea for the characters in their film – that is set in a foreign location – to speak in English, but with accents. And this happens in this film, unfortunately. All the supporting characters are very obviously Swedish, because this is a film that is very obviously set in Sweden, and is based on a book that was written by a very obviously Swedish author. You might have hoped that Fincher was better than this, but apparently not. I mean, I understand that the film was shot the film in Sweden and it might make sense to take advantage of the casting agents there, but you have two options here: either have everyone pretend to be Swedish, or nobody. Don’t force your entire cast to pretend to be Swedes while Daniel Craig sits there drinking coffee and being all British-ey. Oh, by the way, the film is pretty good. The title sequence is fucking great. Rooney Mara is good, too. As good as Noomi Rapace ever was at standing around wearing makeup and goofy hair for a few hours. Maybe Rooney can star in the next Sherlock Holmes movie, too! Yay.

Lachlan Keeley

8.0

HUGO

J. Edgar

Director Martin Scorsese

Director Clint Eastwood

Starring Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley.

Starring Leonardo di Caprio, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench, Naomi Watts.

Scorsese’s latest offering is so meta (a film about the love of film) that it eclipses the story of Hugo as a children’s fantasy adventure. Thankfully, it is done with relative skill and beauty. Hugo follows a young orphan boy (Asa Butterfield) who lives in the hidden labyrinth of a Parisian railway station in the 1930s. While trying to uncover the mystery of his father’s last project, an automaton, he finds himself becoming obsessed with the machine and the man who created it, Georges Méliès (Ben Kingsley). As the story unfolds, the film develops into a bit of a lesson in film history. Scorsese celebrates a lost era of fantastic and ingenuous film-making. What is so easily achieved through CGI these days required inspired artistic intuition in the early days of cinema. Hugo shows remarkable pieces of original footage from the turn of the century. As the movie progresses however, the whole deifying of film-makers gets slightly tedious and obvious. Happily, as with most of Scorsese’s films, the cinematography is beautiful and makes up for the film’s, at times, less-than-riveting dialogue. Watching the little quirks of the railway station’s inhabitants through Hugo’s eyes as he peers through hidden grates is amusing, but also shows the intricacy of the set design. Hugo is one of the few movies that actually benefits from being designed for 3D. A beautifully executed movie sure to delight cinephiles, cleverly packaged as a children’s fantasy story.

Deblina Mittra

7.0

Richard Nixon famously said on the death of J. Edgar Hoover: “That old cocksucker.” To which Clint Eastwood has responded, “Well, was he?” Yes, the beds in this biopic aren’t limited to the ones Reds are hiding under. Hoover’s life was so bound up in his leadership of the FBI and its predecessor that it only allowed for a pitifully limited social circle, scrutinised here alongside his highly contemptible investigative practices. Here we have the public face of Hoover as told by Hoover – replete with self-deception and censorship – balanced with the envisaged neuroticism and eroticism of his very private life. We follow the development of a young, fit Hoover (Leonardo di Caprio) – as passionately dedicated to scientific crime fighting as he is to crushing Commies – into the tyrant we all know and love. Hoover served as director of the FBI under eight presidents; Eastwood covers the necessary chronological ground expertly. We see a beautiful transition from the subdued sepias and greys of the twenties to the starker indigos and reds of sixties America. Eastwood’s special effects team handle aging perfectly, as do his actors. Particularly notable is Armie Hammer as right-hand man and love interest Clyde Tolson, flawless both as suave graduate and tottering old man. Scripting, from the man behind Milk, is mostly whipsmart with only a couple of sentimental touches. Although the rumours of Hoover’s mafia connections aren’t explored in this film, his unethical dealings, ruthless reservation of power, and racism certainly are. Hoover isn’t pleasant, but he’s human, and di Caprio treats the role with poise, restraint, and pitchperfect delivery. Eastwood’s cinematography is both lush and efficient, which makes for high quality if not revolutionary viewing.

Zoe Kilbourn

7.5

Film Reviews

My Week With Marilyn Director Simon Curtis Starring Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh.

The Artist

Young Adult

Director Michael Hazanavicius

Director Jason Reitman

Starring Jean Dujardin, Berence Bujo, James Cromwell, John Goodman.

Starring Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson.

Anyone fond of Marilyn Monroe knows that there is already a plethora of films about her life. My Week With Marilyn is a British take on the actress which is at times engrossing and at others purely self-indulgent.

It is rare to see a film that makes one smile to the point that only plastic surgery can rectify it. The Artist is a simple film that utilises a classic mixture of old-fashioned cinematic skills and the right amount of love to make a brilliant motion picture.

The film follows a week long affair between the Hollywood diva and a lowly assistant-director named Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne). Adapted from Clark’s own account, the film revolves around them as they shoot the 1956 film The Prince and the Showgirl at Pinewood studios England.

Jean Dujardin as George Valentin, masters every muscle to create two distinct characters; a charismatic public persona and a private soul who is afraid to open his mouth. Berence Bujo is brilliant as Peppy Miller, an actress who flourishes with the dawn of the talkie era. In every scene, Bujo captures the exuberance of that golden age with a strict choreography to display which mood she is in. Also, watch out for delicious cameos from John Goodman and James Cromwell as Valentin’s boss and his loyal chauffeur respectively.

Michelle Williams is captivating as Monroe. She captures her mannerisms, her beauty and her playfulness almost flawlessly. The film boasts a stellar cast for its supporting roles, including Dame Judi Dench, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Watson, all of whom turn in performances living up to their considerable reputations. Williams’ brilliance is soured by a script which ignores the more interesting characters in the film, such as Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier, in favour of the almost trivial Clark. As a protagonist he is forgettable, and director Simon Curtis has squandered an opportunity to explore the emotional depth of Monroe in the film’s more intimate scenes. The time that Monroe and Clark spend alone together rarely reveals much above the shallow pretense of the plot, with expendable one-note dialogue. That said, Williams and her cast-mates offer some incredibly rich performances, which counteract the lack of new or genuine insight into one of the most famous women of all time.

Mark Birchall

6.0

Hazanavicius triumphs in re-creating the silent era through simple cinematic techniques. He re-creates a pre-colour world that revels in all the imperfections of cinematography at the time. The mixture of a classical orchestral soundtrack with weathered picture quality takes one back to an era without CGI and HD. His use of close-ups of mouths throughout the entire film emphasises the difficulties of focusing on speech to truly gain insight into humanity. I applaud his decision not to show on-screen affection between the romantic leads; staying true to the era’s moral conventions. I highly suggest people see The Artist and take heed of how old-fashioned films can still tell the most important stories.

Richard Ferguson

9.5

Directed by Jason Reitman and written by his Juno collaborator Diablo Cody, Young Adult is a fascinating character study of a grown woman fixated on her prom queen glory days. Mavis, brilliantly played by Charlize Theron is the ghostwriter of a Gossip Girl like young-adult series who returns to her hometown to try to win back her now married ex-boyfriend. Mavis has massive flaws. She’s constantly hungover and a trashy reality show connoisseur. She’s manipulative and condescending. Mavis feels like a real person rather than the caricature she could’ve been (see Bad Teacher for the opposite example.) Mavis is an unpleasant character but also a very human one. Elsewhere, Patton Oswalt gives a great performance as Matt, the high-school classmate Mavis remembers only as “Hatecrime Guy”. The relationship that develops between the pair, where the former prom queen finds herself as an outcast with the figure painting geek, is strangely poignant. Patrick Wilson is also strong as the happily married high school sweetheart who’s moved on with his life in a way Mavis can’t. The direction is assured and doesn’t get in the way of Cody’s strong script. Cody eschews the tweeness and stylised dialogue of Juno for a dark, funny and focused character study. The smart script and Theron’s terrific performance makes Young Adult one of the strongest black comedies in a long time.

Kevin Chiat

7.5

Books

books WHO’S COMING TO THE PERTH WRITERS FESTIVAL? Zoe Kilbourn introduces you to the names and faces of WA’s premier literary event

It’s always been contested that the pen is mightier than the sword. But is the pen mightier than a Blitzkrieg of imperialist multimedia forces? Gentlemen, we are at war here – a tacit cold war fought on ideological and spiritual grounds. And we, the literary public, are under attack. You may have heard the term “Reading Revolution” thrown around before, but what you haven’t been told is that we are fighting a revolution. Our

enemies, the directors of popular media, form a veritable Axis of Evil. How else could you describe the kind of people who want to bring back Young Talent Time? We are witnessing a televisual takeover, threatening every one of us with a humdrum Huxley-esque existence. But this weekend (23-26 February) you can take part in the rebellion as the wordsmiths of the world unite for the Perth Writers’ Festival. And God, is it a good one this year.

Illustrated by Grace McKie

The calibre and quantity of attending novelists constitute an Elite Ops. We have Booker-Prize winning Tom Keneally, whose remarkable output includes The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith and Schindler’s Ark; two-time Miles Franklin Award winner Kim Scott, who will speak on the importance of Noongar culture and “Keeping Language Alive”; and Three Dollars’ Elliot Perlman, whose realism has garnered him the title “the Australian Zola” in France (and you know how hard French critics are to please). Charlotte Wood, Steve Carroll, Amanda Curtin, Craig Cliff, Craig Sherbourne and Frank Moorhouse – darlings of the critics – will also be attending. We expect the hugely popular Nick Earls, Glen Duncan, Barbara Trapido, and Alan Carter, who have tackled with aplomb humour, horror, chick lit and crime respectively. The Kim Jong-un of crime writing – an up-andcomer who’s building up his reputation as Dear Leader – is Jo Nesbø. If you’re particularly keen on the Norwegian author of Snow

Leopard, you can see the film adaption of his novel Head Hunters screening at the Somerville. Chetan Bhagat, author of One Night at the Call Centre, will deliver the closing address, “India and Us”. He’s the biggest English-language author in India and was voted one of Time’s Most Influential People of 2010. Other bestsellers include Michael Robotham , David Levithan, chick lit phenomenon Liz Byrski, and He Died with a Felafel in his Hand’s John Birmingham (who now writes “big explodey airport novels”, his words). If the Australian literary scene has an ideological champion, it’s probably Ramona Koval, the tastemaker who has hosted the ABC’s Book Show for the last five years. Koval has not only spent years mingling with the biggest and brightest of today’s literati – she has also written several works of her own, to much acclaim. Of course, poetry will have some impressive ambassadors at this year’s festival. David Brooks has recently published The Sons of Clovis, a discussion of parallels between the much-lamented Ern Malley hoax (which did much to stifle the modernist movement in Australia) and Adoré Floupette, a symbolist parody of the 1880s. Inua Ellams is a poet and graphic designer who seems to have made a career out of being cool. Ellams will perform The Fourteenth Tale, an autobiographical verse play which won the Edinburgh Fringe First Award in 2009. Major Canadian poet Michael Crummey is here promoting his novel, Galore; much admired Australian Cate Kennedy will discuss the role of poetry in contemporary life. As Sunday is the Festival’s “Family Day”, we’ll also see a number of children’s and Young Adult authors (including Gruen Transfer panellist Jane Caro). Most notable is Leigh Hobbs, whose illustrations (think Old Tom) are as synonymous with childhood reading as Quentin Blake’s or Dr Seuss’s. If you’re interested in illustration, you’ll want to take a look at Nicki Greenberg’s work. Her striking graphic novel adaptions of Hamlet and The Great Gatsby are triumphs of comic art. Oliver

Books

39 Phommavanh has made a name for himself both as a cartoonist and stand-up comedian, and might soon reach a young adult audience of Terry Denton proportions. We’re very lucky to have major humourists Fiona O’Loughlin (Me of the Never Never) and Marieke Hardy (You’ll be Sorry When I’m Dead), who should both be familiar to any comedy enthusiast. Hardy worked on the project Women of Letters with cocurator Michaela McGuire, who is also attending. Part of what makes the Festival so good is the number of non-fiction authors and experts who give seminars on their work. Annabel Crabb – one of Australia’s prime political commentators – is on tour with her book Rise of the Ruddbot, while Susan Mitchell discusses the torrential masculinity of Tony Abbott and Federal Shadow Finance Minister Andrew Robb talks about his struggle with depression. Peter Godwin tackles the downfall of Mugabe, Michael Wesley covers the rise of Asia, while Robert and Anne Manne will be their usual incisive selves. George Megalogenis, senior writer with The Australian, will also speak. Paul Cleary will discuss his denunciation of the resource boom, Too Much Luck, with a title ominously reminiscent (like the works of many other attending Australians) of The Lucky Country. We can certainly expect a lot of debate about where Australia is headed. If public policy isn’t your thing, you can listen to UWA alumna Rosalind Appleby on women composers, Andrea di Robilant on Venetian navigators, or Paul Ham on the Atomic Age and Hilary McPhee on Australian cinema. Alom Shaha talks about meaningful atheism, Selina Hastings about W. Somerset Maugham, and David Rieff about the pitfalls of collective memory. Australian authors Alice Pung and Hanifa Deen will discuss their works on the migration experience. There will be some attendees who aren’t so much literati as “livers” – people who go out in search of thousands of lost bath toys (Donovan Hohn, Moby Duck); reporters who seek stories in warzones (Kim Barker, Taliban Shuffle); punk rockers who road trip in search of success (Dave Graney, 1001 Australian Nights). We’ll be visited by Nigel Brennan, a photojournalist who spent 462 days as a hostage, and Niromi di Soyza, who served as a child soldier with the Tamil Tigers. On a slightly less serious note, you can also listen to television personality Ray Martin and Seachange’s William McInnes talk about what makes them tick. A few foodies will also be attending (on a campus rife with catering controversy) – Mark Jensen, Matthew Evans and Janet de Neefe.

The Honourable Michael Kirby AC CMG began life as a popular figure when a few overzealous law students revered him as the Great Dissenter. Today, he’s a judicial Jagger who can fill lecture theatres with laypeople. At least one of my nonlaw friends has been reduced to love-struck tears over his autobiography, A Private Life, and he’s here to discuss the book along with his struggle against discrimination and a serious crush on James Dean. He’s one of Australia’s greatest intellectuals, he’s absolutely adorable, and he’s the only person I’ve ever heard use a verbal footnote. Law nerds will salivate over this year’s festival line-up. As well as Justice Kirby, it includes UWA’s own Professor Antoni Buti examining the Mickelbergs, the Honourable Justice Nicholas Hasluck AM promoting his political novel Dismissal, and Stuart Littlemore QC’s featured novel, Harry Curry: Counsel of Choice. Really, though, the author everyone’s itching to hear is the formidable Germaine Greer, whose first publication The Female Eunuch remains the most widely read – and possibly the greatest – feminist tract. Although some of her assertions should be treated with scepticism (like the unfortunate “Pantomime Dames” chapter in 1998’s The Whole Woman), her work – which spans four decades – is irrefutably intelligent, challenging, and relevant. She’s one of my personal heroes and should be as topical as ever when she discusses eco-feminism at the Festival. Every army’s got a slightly screwy Lieutenant Kilgore. Although I’ve always had suspicions about the sanity of performance poets (like professional hipster Inua Ellams, who describes himself as a Keats-Mos Def hybrid), I think there are a couple of outstanding oddballs attending. Any fascination

I’ve felt towards the mad, bad, and dangerous to know Lord Byron has been outstripped by the obsession of Julietta Jameson, who’s promoting her poetical take on the Eat, Pray, Love formula. Me, Myself and Lord Byron, which opens with the assertion its author is a “born-again virgin”, is undoubtedly cray-cray. The other eccentric to look out for is Krissy Kneen, who assures us in her promotional bio that she lives with “her husband and no pets”. Kneen’s latest work, Triptych, is a collection of three erotic novellas, which explore the emotional consequences of online onanism, twincest, and conjugal relations with cephalopods. !Viva la Revolución! The Perth Writer’s Festival takes place at UWA from February 23-26.

Books Reviews

Batman: The Black Mirror

Currawalli Street

Writer: Scott Snyder

Writer: Christopher Morgan

Artists: Jock and Francesco Francavilla There have been well over a thousand Batman stories over the past 70 years. A select few make up the Batman canon; the collection of iconic Batman stories any serious Batfan needs to read. The Black Mirror by American Vampire scribe Scott Snyder and artists Jock (The Losers) and Francesco Francavilla (Black Panther and Captain America and Bucky) deserves to be the latest addition to the Batcanon. The Black Mirror is set during the time when the original Robin, Dick Grayson, serves as Gotham City’s Dark Knight. Grayson makes for a more optimistic Batman than his mentor Bruce Wayne and this optimism is tested as he’s forced to face his deepest fears. The new Batman faces villains who represent his dark mirror image. Cold and compassionless, The Black Mirror’s lead villain is one of the scariest Batman villains ever. The creative team tap into a rich vein of psychological horror rarely explored in Batman comics. Jock’s angular and jagged art-style perfectly compliments the disturbing tone of the story. Francavilla illustrates the chapters focused on Commissioner Gordon and his family with brushstrokes distinctively his own, yet also reminiscent of David Mazzucchelli’s art on the classic Batman: Year One upon which The Black Mirror draws heavily. Snyder has the best grasp on Jim Gordon’s voice since the writer of Year One, Frank Miller. The Black Mirror is a near perfect example of what dark superhero comics should be. The creators avoid gratuitous gore shock tactics in favour of horror emanating from family tragedy and the dark impulses of human nature. A must-read for Batfans.

Written as if Tommy Wiseau tried to replicate Cloudstreet, author Christopher Morgan’s attempt at the Australiana suburban tale is a mess. Seemingly important character developments that are highlighted in the blurb are told briefly, or in retrospect, or not at all. The rest is taken up by mundane, inconsequential, uninteresting characters, meandering up and down the street dealing with shit we’ve read about 30 million times before. The writing flows like a brick in a drain pipe, the characters so badly written and characterised that I ended up hating all of them. With dialogue such as “Rose, can I be asking you something while we are alone? It won’t go any further and you can take it for what it’s worth”, and character insights such as “Sometimes he says what he means; sometimes he doesn’t”, it’s obvious to see why I struggled through this. I wouldn’t spend money on this. I wouldn’t recommend this. If I wanted a similar experience I’d give myself a concussion and try read Tim Winton instead.

Mark Tilly

1/10

9/10

Kevin Chiat

Feast Day of Fools

Netherwood

Writer: James Lee Burke

Writer: Jane Sanderson

James Lee Burke can be filed next to Cormac McCarthy as an author who unflinchingly interrogates the fear and loathing of the American South. Even though Burke’s novels embrace the strictures of a decidedly unliterary genre (crime fiction), Feast Day of Fools is no mere pulp whodunit; rather, it’s a roaring, thrilling indictment of the incompatibility of American ideals. This is due in no small part to Burke’s use of a murder case not purely as a plot, but as a device to bring into play the human forces of dark and light in their most extreme iterations so they can be explored more fully. Things commence horrifically enough with a senseless murder in the desert, but they spiral constantly from there, as a suite of alternately ruthless and desperate malcontents emerge to hunt each other down. These colliding forces are split between key schisms in American identity (religion, xenophobia, individualism, feckless idealism, victimhood), and the allegory is extremely satisfying. Burke’s prose is pitched right on point throughout, conjuring an aching landscape of ageless death and cruelty. Though the dialogue slips into the perfunctory, the characterisation is rich and fluid, lending the sense that this is a land populated with people who are completely irreconcilable, and destined to destroy one another. The odd contrivance of plot and forced turn of phrase aside (how does a Texan sheriff know so much about E.E. Cummings?), Feast Day of Fools is a belligerent, sweeping triumph.

Alex Griffin

Currawalli Street is a story about several families who live in the suburban Melbourne street of the title. The plot begins in the early years of the 20th century, with families coming to grips on issues such as war, grief, growing up, and marriage. It ends several generations later with the residents’ ancestors still living on the street and the changes they face with slightly fantastical and magical elements influencing and shaping the world around … I’m sorry have you heard this story before?

8.5/10

Jane Sanderson’s Netherwood builds well after a slow start that includes a very thorough introduction to the setting and characters, both central and supporting. Sanderson juxtaposes the upper and lower classes in an industrial town in 1903 Yorkshire, where the two segregated groups slowly seep into the consciousness of the other. The protagonist, Eve Williams, becomes the fusing element between the two classes. Her determination and innovation inspire all those around her after the death of her husband destroys the steady normalcy of her life. A wearying element of the novel is Sanderson’s use of Yorkshire dialect. This is vaguely useful in setting the scene, but it becomes distracting and tiring rather quickly. The overly frequent punctuation – used to reflect speaking patterns – further slows the opening. However, if you consider that this book is only the first in what is conceived to be a series of at least three, it makes a lot more sense for the author to have invested so much time in describing place and the personality of her characters. Described as being perfect for those who enjoyed watching Downton Abbey, this novel is enjoyable for a quiet afternoon and – if you’re willing and able to continue reading through chapters of scene-setting – eventually builds into a cliff-hanger ending that will have you waiting for the next instalment.

Cassandre Hubert

6.5/10

Writer: Andrew Relph

Artist: Brian Simmonds

Andrew Relph’s Not Drowning, Reading is a memoir about his life and the ways it has been shaped and enriched by literature. It is so personal and thoughtful that it almost seems beyond criticism. After putting it down, you feel more like you have had a conversation than read a book, and it feels indecorous to pick it apart.

The River is an art book by Brian Simmonds documenting the Swan River, accompanied by a selection of poetry. While I admire Simmonds’ ambition, I think there were a couple of significant problems with both the sensibility and execution of the book that prevent it from being a success.

Relph even writes about this effect in an early chapter entitled Intermezzo. He argues that many books these days fail to build a strong relationship with their readers. He rallies against the patronising way that “you the reader” is often treated as “a regrettable necessity in one’s higher calling as author.” Relph deals with this calmly and insightfully and reminds us of past writers, such as Shakespeare, who respect and befriend their readers: “If we shadows have offended, / Think but this – and all is mended –/That you have but slumber’d here / While these visions did appear.” The various joys of reading are sprinkled throughout the book and Relph is careful to never overstate or lose himself to sentimentality. Intertwined within his praise of literature are interesting insights into his family life, reminiscent of those insights expressed in Franz Kafka’s A Letter to His Father. We see a highly sensitive and inquisitive man coming to terms with distracted and distant parents. Ultimately Relph’s memoir is a very good read, especially for those who have forgotten the magic of reading a good book.

James Spinks

8/10

The first is that it tries too hard to be what art should be. Both the subject matter and style are ‘correct’ – gentle landscapes done in a gentle gestural style; suffocatingly safe and acceptable. Simmonds falls into the trap of propagating clichés rather than conveying a subjective truth or experience. Another significant problem is the display medium. This type of art (oil paint and pastel) is ill suited to being displayed in a book that is not functioning as documentation. The paintings are far too painterly and much too large in size – so much is lost in the transposition. The poetry, while appropriate for the medium, feels equally lacklustre. Much like with the paintings, it smacks of what poetry should be – soft rhythmic verse about slightly magical/romantic/eternal natural phenomena/objects. It would be remiss of me to not mention the painting ‘Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club’, which was actually quite excellent. The subtle purpleleaning palette is moody and evocative, and the simplified forms that allude rather than depict, are expertly abstracted, which creates a compelling ethereal tone. For me, the principal flaw of The River is the fact I am a 20-year-old male with a disposition that preferences garage rock and pained expressionism – melancholy is my currency. When I am older and a bit more Zen I will probably love this book, but at the moment it just seems a bit naff.

Alex Wolman

The Little Shadows

You & I

Writer: Marina Endicott

Writer: Padgett Powell

Let me start by saying that I was very excited to read this book. The cover features three young girls running through a field dressed in turn of the century pantaloons; it looked promisingly quaint and interesting. Sadly, I was disappointed. Although the writing was above par, this was a very tiresome book to get into. I was hoping to really sink my teeth into a good read, but the first few chapters dragged along

I enjoyed reading this book. Padgett Powell’s You & I is unmistakably postmodern, which might cause the reader to feel somewhat out of their depth as they start, but I think I can promise that the book works its way into a groove as it reads on.

rather limply. The novel does explore the little-known world of early 20th century vaudeville with excellent research and knowledge. However, the story just isn’t there. The novel follows the trials of three sisters who have to make their living performing on the vaudeville circuit in Canada. Endicott eloquently portrays the complex and emotional bond of sisterhood and uses evocative imagery to bring to life the intricacies of stage performance. However, several things irked me about the plot. For one, the dashing villain is allowed to be heinously villainous without facing any real consequences. Moreover, the whole business of his disappearance seems frankly implausible, as does the fact that a scrupulous and law-abiding Saskatchewan family would be willing to take on a rather disreputable bunch of relatives-by-marriage, especially during World War I. This is probably a book that would be better appreciated by those who have a background in performance theatre. As the novel progressed, it grew on me but I didn’t love it; a book to pass the time if you have a reasonable amount of time and patience to spare.

Deblina Mittra

4/10

5/10

You & I could be described as a book about two men sitting and talking. However, I think a broader normative grasp of the thing that Powell has written here makes it unimportant to state what You & I is actually ‘about’. Instead, I’m fascinated by its form and the particular way it gives access to the reality of the two proto-people it presents. That said, the book falls down where all pieces one might describe as postmodern are weakest: the infinitude of little sense-impressions delved up by the two voices is impossible reconcile into anything beyond what it is that they bring up, the reader is likely to be left saying to themselves, “The tone of this book is pretty despairing, both of these guys seem pretty hopeless”. Indeed it seems that the two voices, by spending so much time mocking every idea about absolution for the human condition, end up creating their own: “Could you dig a Flood? You mean another big one? Yes. I’m in. … I am in.” That is the book’s only weakness, and for that reason I really do think it is a good book. I’m now very interested to read Padgett’s previous work.

Blair Hurley

8/10

Books Reviews

The River

Not Drowning, Reading

Books

Official

Residence Ben Sacks visited the UWA History Department to chat with Jeremy Martens about his recently published book, Government House, and the unique challenges he faced in writing it.

Why was it important to the early colony that there be an official ‘Government House’ for the governor to reside in?

Because this was a commissioned work, did you feel any pressure to portray your subject in a certain way?

In British colonies around the world, the governor was always the supreme political authority. So Government House houses political power in the colony. From a social point of view, stratifying society is something that governors do, whether consciously or not. It’s a really important function to be the ‘head of society’ and to lend legitimacy to certain groups of people over others. Across the British Empire you had very class-conscious settler communities and often they used the governor to place themselves in the colonial hierarchy.

There were some pressures to change some of the things I had written, which I hadn’t anticipated when I took the job on. I think, having spoken to historians who have done other commissioned works, it’s just one of those obstacles that you have to navigate.

Obviously a lot of that has changed. What is the role of Government House today? Constitutionally not much (has changed) – since 1897 the constitutional role has been very similar to what it is now. The governor still gets his commission from the Queen, still passes all legislation, and still chairs the executive council as he did in the late 19th century. From a social point of view, it has changed enormously. A lot of people don’t know who the governor is and don’t care, while a lot of people don’t even know where Government House is. In that sense 100-120 years ago Government House was far more important and far more recognisable as a statement of authority.

Illustrated by Grace Mckie

You state in the introduction that you aimed to make the book ‘lively, easy to read and suitable for a general readership’. How was this different to purely academic writing? Those words were part of the job description, so I aimed to combine academic standards with a more readable book. It was difficult. With purely academic work, I have carte blanche to write more or less what I think needs to be written. With a commissioned history that needs to be written for a general audience, you do need to be mindful of certain things. I know some things that aren’t in the book because those people are still alive [laughs]. Also one might in a more academic history pay more attention to historiographical debates or talk about different types of evidence, which most readers are not interested in. Those things have been dispensed with.

In this case I had people reading what I was writing, as I was writing it. There were some things they didn’t like and I had to, at times, really push and insist on certain things. The more recent chapters are not as critical as I would have liked, but that’s unavoidable in the sense that there were living subjects who could potentially find certain things libellous. The interviews I did will be given to Battye Library probably in the next 6 to 12 months, so if anyone is interested they can listen to them. What kinds of sources did you use? There was relatively little secondary stuff to go on, so I did a lot of primary research. I would say newspapers make up the bulk of the sources I used. The National Library of Australia has all of WA’s major newspapers digitised and searchable, which makes newspaper research much easier. It’s a really recent technology, which is transforming that kind of research. Newspaper research used to be the most time-consuming, ‘needle in the haystack’ kind of stuff; now you can just type in a phrase and a hundred different articles come up. Also a lot of official publications, a lot of diaries, and – for the more recent stuff – interviews with staff. The problem with Government House is that it’s an elitist institution historically, so the voices of those who worked in it – both indigenous people and the working class – were difficult to find. There were a couple of really good finds, which I hope have rounded out the story and meant it’s not as weighted to ‘the great and the good’ as it might have been. Have changing attitudes towards Noongar people had any tangible effect on the way things are done at Government House? The thing about a governorship is that it’s still very

much a personal position. Within the boundaries of Government House, the governor is still king – it really depends on the individual. So without being specific, certain governors have been far more interested in reconciliation than others. It’s hard to see how Government House could be at the forefront of any reconciliation. I think it can reflect changing community attitudes, and Ken Michael [who served as governor from 2006-2011] was the first to incorporate indigenous people into the ceremonies surrounding the position. I think that was significant, but at the same time they remained as a symbol rather than any meaningful reconciliation. Governors in WA have always been male, and yet you argue that women in Government House have played an important role. How did they do this? Women have always played an important role, albeit in very circumscribed ways. Governors’ wives played important roles: being a hostess, running a charitable organisation of one kind or another, or making speeches at particular societies like the Red Cross. It would be unfair to downplay that. The governorship is essentially an institution that has legitimised the inequalities and divisions within Western Australian society, and those divisions are gendered as much as they have been race and class-based. Finally, If you could have dinner with one of the former inhabitants of Government House, who would it be and why? It would be Mary Barker. She was Governor Broome’s wife, and lived in Perth in the 1880s. She travelled all over the British Empire and was quite a well-known writer in Britain. She just had a very perceptive way of describing Western Australian society; she could place settler society within a wider context. She wasn’t free of prejudices herself, but nevertheless she was a lot more self-aware of what was going on than a lot of people. I think in that sense she would be an interesting person to talk to and to ‘bring back’. You can order a copy of Government House from the Government House Foundation of WA.

THIS PAGE WAS ORIGINALLY COMMISSIONED FOR PETE SCOTCH.

Books

It was going to be a puff-piece on his adoration of the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s finest ivory-traders. Unfortunately Mr Scotch is an unreliable, lazy, entitled, Western Suburbs Alcoholic with a stake in this paper who my superiors tell me I am not allowed to fire as he is too wealthy. This means the swine has cost us a whole page. Please feel free to write anything you want on the paper provided.

If you were able to adequately fill this space with words, illustrations or other miscellaneous artistic ventures, you should probably write for Pelican. Come down to our first meeting of the semester on February 29 2012 in the Guild Council Room where we can all work out how to get rid of Scotch.

Arts

ARTS The Screaming Baby Lachlan Keeley discusses whether video games are art. Answers yes, probably. “Are video games art?” The question of whether some specific object or thing is classifiable/ definable as ‘art’ inspires in me, personally, the same kind of gut feeling that you get a couple of hours after you’ve eaten a large double pounder meal with fries. Rudyard Kipling was obviously a time traveller, otherwise how would he have known about such feelings? Regardless, video games engage with their audience at levels of interaction that no other artistic form can rival. Gaming has no fourth wall – the fourth wall is the screen itself that the player interfaces with. The screen and the player reflect upon each other and interact with each other, and well, things happen as a result of this. Does this make it artistic? No, probably not. But trying to list the qualities that define art is an indefatigable effort anyway. Interactivity may be the key to explaining the unique position gaming holds as ‘entertainment’ – not in the sense of Blue Harvest or See You Next Wednesday, but as entertainment that you yourself control, with or without influence from outside forces. Theorists talk of the ‘death of the author’ – in the phoenixical sense that inspires creation, death is perfectly applicable to gaming – every new game started by a new player will be a unique adventure, just as every new reader is an ‘author’ who creates their own reading experience, according to pretentious people.

Just as Stanislaw Lem assembled the destruction of reliable information in his volume of collected literary reviews – A Perfect Vacuum – so does the status of the visual screen demolish regular narrative form, and from the rubble construct a transparent fourth wall, which the player uses to engage in what could be regarded as the artistic pursuit of gaming. The interaction between the player and the game is not a parasitic one, but one of the parties does suffer for their enjoyment – a sort of literal case of game theory, where one has to balance the payoff, despite not knowing the odds in the first place. And that’s where things can go strange. Developers sometimes also choose to attack their players – a sort of hostility towards the audience, similar to that of a number of pieces in the filmography of James Incandenza, especially The Joke (in which the film itself was created by a number of cameras placed within the cinema that broadcast the gradual deterioration of the audience’s sense of humour as they watched their own faces upon the screen). This hostility also has a more sinister element lurking inside it – a possibly pavlovian canine scenario. In the 1996 game for the SNES, Yoshi’s Island, when the player made a mistake within the game and allowed the baby character their avatar carried within the game to be damaged, the baby would emit a piercing scream similar to that of a siren. The screaming could be stopped – sometimes easily, sometimes less easily – by getting the avatar to reunite with the baby. Simple, yes? But the issue here is that the horrific yelling of the baby was so painful for gamers to listen to that it would condition the gamers to retrieve the child, by any means – that is, to the detriment of anything else going on around them. Some gamers would become so enthralled with the task of retrieving the child that they would hyperventilate and collapse, or even in one extreme case in Japan, suffer a stroke.

However, it must be noted that the latter case was exacerbated by a glitch in the game – a certain area in one of the game’s later levels was barred to the player’s avatar after passing by it, and if the avatar was damaged just before passing this area, the baby would remain irretrievable in the previous area and emit wails ad infinitum. Perhaps this was an intentionally hostile move by the developers to punish their players through the fourth wall when failing at the otherwise relatively forgiving game. Things can be even more subtle than this, Gaming could be defined as another form of Hyper-reality – that is, in the sense of Eco (not the dolphin [and to a more sinister example, the simulacra of Baudrillard and Perky Pat]). Hideo Kojima’s 2001 game, Metal Gear Solid 2, was a game that could be regarded as being relatively hostile towards its audience. One of the main plots of the game is that the supposed stealth mission the player character is engaged in is actually all just a pre-planned simulation by a computer AI that is influential enough to be able to replicate an entire previous espionage incident simply just to see how the player – and by proxy, humans, in the game universe – reacts to certain situations. Prior to this, one of the characters in the game literally begs you to turn off the game console, reasoning that you’ve been playing for a very long time. Effectively, the debate bout whether anything is ‘art’ is a waste of time. However, as entertainment, games hold a unique position in which the fourth wall that usually blocks audience interaction does not exist in the first place. The gamer breaches the fourth wall simply by playing the game and assuming the role of the character. And sometimes, as in the case of Metal Gear Solid 2, the game breaks the wall too, and interacts, interfaces, and sometimes even attacks the player. This could probably be labelled as deconstruction of form, or some other lofty thing like that, but in actuality, it’s literally the most exciting development in modern entertainment – or even, if you like, art.

Unfortunately it seemed as though the vitality of this petite spectacle was drawn from the form rather than the content; the success of the individual performances resting too heavily on the festival framework. I began my program lying on a mattress in a dark enclave of the theatre and listening to an eerie and delicate monologue based on the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke during Russya Connor’s aptly named ‘How Close Do You Want Me?’

Hellen Russo’s ‘Fragmentation 1.2’, a confronting and interactive dance theatre work inspired by Salvador Dali’s Hallucinogenic Toreador, saw me in control of a torch which I was to shine over Russo as she intertwined her body around a drawer with delicate elongation and haunting facial expressions. The choreographic technicalities were underwhelming and possibly too subtle to be classified as anything other than physical theatre, however this minimalism worked in supporting the umbrella tone of the program.

Removing the visual component of the performance certainly heightened my experience aurally. Connor’s soft but guttural whisper permeated every corner of the performance space, creating a tension that clashed beautifully with the comfort of lying on a mattress. I was then greeted in the foyer by a mysterious usher in the form of Nikki Jones, whose clever performance of ‘Ush

The final installment was Janet Carter’s boundary pushing ‘Flush’ where I was to engage in a speedy game of strip poker with the artist. Down came the fourth wall with every bad hand that I drew; the distinction between artist and audience blurring as I peeled off all but one item of clothing. Not your average theatre experience, but then isn’t that what Fringeworld is all about?

Arts Reviews

And Them’ saw me exploring the depths of the theatre while being apparently misdirected to the next installment of my program. It was during this tour that I found myself escorted into a bathroom and encouraged to use the lavatory while Jones’ character nattered away in the waiting room as part of the performance.

There was an air of intrigue and mischief in the foyer of The Blue Room Theatre. Proximity’s collective of twelve minute micro-performances seem to have been curated with the desire to create a variety show for a sophisticated palate. The usual suspects of comedy, nudity, dance and danger were uprooted and manipulated to create a more interactive and improvised experience for the audience members.

Proximity The Blue Room Theatre, Perth Marnie Allen

Anyone who ever went to Fremantle on a school trip probably remembers going, at some point, to the Spare Parts Puppet Theatre. No, not the Barking Gecko, the other one. I’m guessing you either liked the funny noises the puppets made, the bright swirly colours, or thought it was, ‘dumb, man!’. The real trouble is, an eight year old does not appreciate the intricate artistry of the puppets, the emotions even the most subtle of actions can communicate; the truly amazing and innovative special effects this mainly silent company uses to communicate with its admittedly young audience.

The Arrival The Spare Parts Puppet Theatre, Fremantle Heather Pagram

Now in its 31st year of operation, Spare Parts is still chilling out in Fremantle; according to the website tag lines, they, “create work with the awareness that puppetry is not the exclusive zone of children but speaks directly to the child in us all”. It was with this in mind I braced myself for throngs of screaming children and oldies and went to the Spare Parts performance of Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, an adaptation of the beautifully illustrated and universal story of the

migrant Aki who leaves his family behind to travel to a strange and phantasmic new world in where he rediscovers his sense of self and hope. Alas, surprise! I walked in to a mixed audience all reverently admiring the weird and wonderful puppets strung up in the theatre. When the performance began, it quickly became apparent that it was not just a kid’s show. Everyone can identify with Aki’s struggles to find somewhere to sleep and a job in a strange and sometimes hostile environment, as well as the small acts of kindness that allow his dreams to continue. Brilliant acting, a compact and versatile set as well as special effects tying the show more closely to the incomparable imagination of Tan’s illustrations meant that when the lights came back on, more than a few adults were a little affected... Whilst The Arrival finished on the 28th of January, don’t forget about Spare Parts. Sometimes a return to childhood can be more than a little fun – and at roughly the same price as that ticket to the newest crappy Hollywood movie – more than a little rewarding. Check out the website at www.sppt.asn.au/company, or the theatre at 1 Short Street, Fremantle.

46 Howl

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