Friday Five: Value Portraits

A few weeks ago I organised a workshop in Canberra for my work team. As part of a session about our organisation's values (respect, integrity, collaboration, excellence and innovation), I took them to the National Portrait Gallery, where we all chose an artwork of a person who we felt represented those values, and shared our findings with the group. These are the results:

Adam (Adam Goodes), 2014 by Alan Jones

Adnyamathanha/ Nurangga man Adam Goodes (b. 1980) is a former champion AFL footballer who played 396 games with the Sydney Swans. Recognised as one of Australia's great footballers, he is a dual Brownlow medalist, a four-time all-Australian, and a member of the Indigenous Team of the Century. With his cousin and fellow Swans star, Michael O'Loughlin, Goodes established the GO Foundation in 2009 to provide educational opportunities and mentoring for the next Indigenous generation. Awarded Australian of the Year in 2014, he has challenged endemic racism both on and off the field. After his early retirement in 2015 following repeated on-field heckling and a lack of support from the AFL, he co-founded the Indigenous Defence and Infrastructure Consortium, which helps First Nation businesses work in long-term building projects.

Goodes' pride in his cultural heritage and the dignity on his stand against racism inspired Alan Jones, a self-confessed Swans supporter, to paint this dual portrait for the Archibald Prize in 2014. "I have enormous respect for the strength and integrity he shows both on and off the field. Adam is an amazing athlete but also so much more than that; he is a son, a brother, an extremely proud Indigenous Australian... and a great role model in so many ways."

Dr Joan M Redshaw by Barbara Tribe 

Joan Redshaw AM (1921-1944), medical practitioner, graduated from the University of Sydney in 1944 before travelling to London to complete post-graduate studies in paediatrics at the Great Ormond Street Hospital. Returning to Australia in 1948, she became the first woman ship's surgeon to be employed by the Orient Line, famously performing an appendectomy on the Red Sea. On board, she met Captain Arthur Strong, whom she married in 1949. For twenty years from 1951, Redshaw was a paediatrician and general practitioner in Nabiac, on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. A member of the Women's Advisory Board to the NSW premier, she spent twelve years on the council of the Medical Association. As president of the International Women's Association, she campaigned against child marriage and female circumcision; her local community involvements included crisis accommodation for women affected by domestic violence, and alcoholic programs.

Barbara Tribe was a significant sculptor and the first woman to win the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship. She spent most of her career in England, exhibiting with the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

Quentin Bryce (2016) by Michael Zavros

The Hon. Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO (b. 1942), academic, lawyer and human rights advocate, was the first woman to be appointed governor-general of Australia. Born in Brisbane, she spent her early childhood in Ilfracombe in central western Queensland. She attained degrees in arts and law at the University of Queensland, where in 1968 she became the first female member of the law faculty. By the time she retired from teaching in 1983, she was increasingly involved in human rights and advocacy work. Between 1984 and 1993 she was director of the Queensland Women's Information Service, director of Queensland's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission and the Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner. In 1997 she became principal and chief executive officer of the Women's College within the University of Sydney. Six years later she became governor of Queensland. In 2008 she was appointed Australia's 25th governor-general, and served in this role until March 2014.

Michael Zavros commenced work on this portrait in 2015, when Bryce became chair of Queensland's Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence. Zavros included the proteas as the emblem of the Taskforce, but also to signify the sitter's strength and wisdom, and the dignity of her longstanding commitment to justice and human rights.

Professor Penny Sackett, astronomer and physicist (2011) by Andrew Mezei

Penny Sackett (b. 1956), physicist, astronomer and former Chief Scientist for Australia, gained her PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Pittsburgh. In 2002 she was appointed director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University. Responsible for the Mount Stromlo Observatory, she had to endure its destruction by bushfires in January 2003, and negotiations for the insurance payout and rebuilding of the heritage-listed facility. Sackett was one of an international team of 73 astronomers who discovered the first known earth-sized planet orbiting a normal star other than the Sun in the inner Milky Way in 2006. Appointed the Chief Scientist for Australia in late 2008, Sackett remained an adjunct professor at ANU and continued to supervise research students. She resigned as Chief Scientist in 2011, announcing that she intended to contribute to science in other ways.

Entering this portrait in the Archibald Prize for 2011, Andrew Mezei said that he aspired to paint Sackett after hearing her speak on the radio. He wrote: 'She responded to scepticism about climate change with eloquent reasoning … I wanted to show her femininity as perfectly compatible with her impeccable focus on facts.' The setting is imagined, though informed by various images of Mount Stromlo Observatory.

Lowitja O'Donoghue (2006) by Robert Hannaford AM

Lowitja O'Donoghue AC CBE (b. 1932), Indigenous rights campaigner, is a Yankunjatjara woman. Removed from her mother at the age of two, she was raised in a mission home and worked as a nurse before joining the Department of Aboriginal Affairs in 1967. By 1975, she was its regional director in South Australia. She was Foundation Chair of the National Aboriginal Conference in 1977 and chaired the Aboriginal Development Commission from 1989 to 1990. O'Donoghue was Australian of the Year in 1984, when she became the first Aboriginal person to address the General Assembly of the United Nations. While Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission between 1990 and 1996, she helped to draft the Mabo legislation. Currently she is Patron of Reconciliation South Australia and of the Lowitja Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health.

Robert Hannaford said of O'Donoghue that he observed a 'vast understanding and sympathy in her face, a sadness', but also thought she looked 'fantastic in that light I've got in that studio'. The pair became friends during the many hours of sittings involved in creating the work.

Crime of its Time: Vintage Murder

Vintage Murder by Ngaio Marsh

Fontana

Pp.223

Inspector Roderick Alleyn is on holiday in New Zealand when he gets caught up with a theatre group and a murder, involving a mistimed opening of a jeroboam of champagne. This combines Ngaio Marsh’s interests perfectly, allowing her to give her chapters such titles as Prologue in a Train, Intermezzo, Duologue, and Business with Props. Written in 1937, it is dated in language and attitude, although it was doubtless considered progressive at the time.

Detectives, witnesses and suspects have a lot in common with actors as they rehearse stories, play parts and deliver lines, whereas Alleyn is straightforward and direct with a self-deprecating sense of humour. When he lists the suspects, their possible motives and alibis, he draws up a chart which is included in the chapter Entr’acte to assist the reader as much as himself – naturally, everybody has one.

There is snobbery towards people’s age, size, class and accent, although most prejudice, however, occurs towards the Maori people, as exemplified through the character of Dr Rangi Te Pokiha. A considerably hateful comedian describes Te Pokiha as “the black quack” and “the light-brown medico”, and when Te Pokiha retaliates (he has also been called silly, obviously wrong, and a liar), we are told, “The whites of his eyes seemed to become more noticeable and his heavy brows came together… [His] warm voice thickened. His lips coarsened into a sort of snarl. He showed his teeth like a dog… the odd twenty per cent of pure savage.” One suspect asserts, “There is no colour bar in this country,” but people still use the expression ‘a white man’ to denote a person of good character. Alleyn describes the country and the people with an anthropological aspect that is offensive to modern readers.

The plot is well-crafted, some of the characterisation and theatrical tropes are fun, and the Kiwi setting is original, but the inherent racism, sexism and body-shaming are problematic. Crime novels may remain popular, but fortunately times have changed.

'God's Chosen People': Tanamera

Tanamera by Noel Barber

Corgi

Pp. 736

Tanamera (from the Malay meaning ‘red earth’) is the saga of the eponymous house and all who live in her, namely the Dexter family. It is a tale of a dynasty, narrated by John Dexter, and, by extension, a novel of Singapore. Of course it is a white colonialist’s view of Singapore and contains all the inherent classism, racism and sexism one would expect to find in a novel written in 1981. It claims to be both a witness to the change in the country before and after the Second World War, and a love story, but it is so partisan that it can barely be either, especially as the women are very poorly drawn caricatures.

The descriptions of Singapore are as viewed by an ex-pat; there are tennis clubs and gin and tonic on the veranda. And it is hot, and full of insects. The Dexter dynasty, and the house, was established by Grandpa Jack who made his money through rubber (Dunlop), railways, shares in tin mines, and setting up Raffles. The novel condenses the history of rubber and those who control the price and the export of it. The colonialist attitudes are jarring but not unusual: the casual racism and exploitation of the local people is hugely unpalatable but typical of the time. This attitude of superiority extends to gender and sexuality, as the narrator says of his brother, “even though Tim’s sickness manifested itself in his trousers, it was the head that needed attention.” He also refers to Tim, as “that fairy” and “a bugger boy”.

The narrator cannot write a credible female character. Julie, his love interest, is docile, compliant and beautiful, like an ex-pat’s colonial dream of an Asian woman. She is happy for him to take her virginity and does not mind that she is not allowed in his tennis club or at his parties, saying demurely, “I’ll always be yours if you want me.” Her looks and desirability to other men raise her value in his eyes and he admits to a “fierce feeling of possession and intimate knowledge of showing Julie off. Of course Johnnie marries and has children with someone else, while claiming to retain undying love for Julie. He tries to justify his actions as Julie forgives him for sleeping around and marrying someone else because there is licence to cheat during the war, apparently. She is light-hearted and never remonstrates with him but quotes poetry instead in a parody of the accommodating oriental mistress.

It is unlikely that he appreciates a woman’s ability to enjoy herself sexually; he has sex with a friend, Vicki, when they are both married to other people and she tells him, “Every married woman secretly dreams of being raped – by a friend of course.” Later, Julie repeats this nonsense, with the exact same words. This dangerous fantasy of his displays a complete lack of respect and understanding. Dramatic scenes later in the novel linger on the prurience of a gang-rape of his wife and sister, Natasha.

Action at Parit Sulong, January 1942 by Murray Griffin

There is some merit within the book, however, and it is in the description of war and how it affects Singapore (as seen through a colonialist’s eyes). There is a strong ‘end of an era’ atmosphere as can be expressed when viewing it in hindsight. War, when it comes, is initially just another reason for exploitation and profiteering, as it is seen from a distance as capitalists prepare for its approach. Eventually Singapore falls and the war comes directly to the Dexters, as John fights in the jungle, and there are detailed descriptions of making bamboo bombs and the sadistic torture methods and general savagery of the Japanese. As Barber’s reflections become more political and less personal, he includes footnotes to historians’ writing as if to back up his fiction with fact. He is better at understanding the big picture than individual motivations.

As a rambling novel of a family saga with Singapore as a backdrop, this is an ambitious work. One is reminded of James A Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific. He couldn’t write women either and approached the situation from a white male colonialist viewpoint, but it won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1948 when that was the only perspective that mattered. Hopefully times are changing.

Childhood entitlement: Birds, Beasts and Relatives

Birds, Beasts, and Relatives by Gerald Durrell

Penguin

Pp. 245

This is the second instalment of Gerald Durrell’s Corfu Trilogy in which he continues with stories from the first book because the family say he has missed out all the best bits. As it is the same time period as the previous work, we don’t really need re-introductions, although it is interesting to see what the family members thought of their portrayal.

Gerry introduces several extra characters to us, mentioning Larry’s many friends who come to visit, including Max and Donald, and Sven who plays the accordion. We are also introduced to Countess Mavrodaki, “the recluse par excellence”., and we learn about his tutors, such as George, and his final (for this book) tutor, Kralefsky, a keen aviculturist (a person who keeps and rears birds) and a storytelling fantasist. He also provides greater depth to characters we have already met, and he describes his meeting with Theodore Stephanides, to whom the book is dedicated ‘in gratitude for laughter and learning”.

Gerry still collects animals for his menagerie: an owl called Ulysses; three dogs; and “there were rows and rows of jam jars, some containing specimens in methylated spirits, others containing microscopic life. And then there were six aquariums that housed a variety of newts, frogs, snakes and toads. Piles of glass-topped boxes contained my collections of butterflies, beetles and dragon-flies.” I remember things that I learned from reading these books as a child, such as the fact that snails are hermaphrodites.

Gerry has a child’s viewpoint and assumes that people and things exist for his entertainment. He experiences bucolic activities such as harvesting olives, but also is witness to live birth, and his reaction is less palatable. The description is anatomical but also unpleasantly dispassionate, perhaps because the human is foreign. “I was so used to the shrill indignation of peasants over the most trivial circumstances that I did not really, consciously, associate Katerina’s falsetto screams with pain. It was obvious that she was in some pain. Her face was white, crumpled, and old-looking, but I automatically subtracted ninety percent of the screaming as exaggeration.”

Furthermore, his description of the gypsies is somewhat uncomfortable in a modern setting. “I had always wanted to get on intimate terms with the gypsies, but they were a shy and hostile people… and although they would allow me to visit their camps, they were never forthcoming, in the way that the peasants were in telling me about their private lives and their aspirations.”

When Mother receives unwanted attention, and even a proposal of marriage, from a ‘disgusting old brute’, Captain Creech, she is naturally horrified and a little bit afraid. The children all laugh and ridicule, and she counters, “When there’s a real crisis, you children are of absolutely no use whatsoever.” Yes, this is an amusing anecdote, but she is a single woman in a foreign country in the 1930s with no respectable family to protect her.

Gerry writes of people as though they were specimens to be studied as his animals, birds and insects; because they are foreign (or female), they are other and this dispassionate approach is a little off-putting. These are still great stories of their time, but a deeper look reveals some more unsavoury aspects, which can be excused from a child’s account, but not really as an adult reader.

Friday Five: Cross-Stitch on a Theme

Sometimes everything gets 'a bit much' and, in these times, I have found that working designs from Really Cross Stitch: For when You Just Want To Stab Something a Lot helps. Of course, I am not advocating violence, but I am hoping for progress, and there is a theme in my latest five patterns about who or what I would like to change. As previously, all the words are from Rayna Fahey, and all the complete lack of ironing is my own.

"Politicians and toddlers have a lot in common. They are both prone to tantrums and act unreasonably, especially when they don't get their own way. Every now and then - just like a toddler - you have to give them a good talking-to!"

"Contending for the misogynist comment of the millennium, a presidential candidate's suggestion that he was at liberty to grab female genitalia due to his privilege was dismissed as 'locker room talk'. Whilst this overheard vulgarity wasn't enough to kill an election campaign, it certainly put feminists on a war footing well before Trump took office.

This pattern attests to the fact that kitty has claws. The only pricks we will tolerate come from our cross stitch needle."

"Now it's really not nice to attack someone you don't like politically based on their appearance. But this time the temptation was too strong.

"For someone who is world-record-breakingly quick to insult someone, Trump's skin does appear to be diaphanously thin when it comes to people discussing the size of his hands. But in the scale of things, this is the guy that reinstated the Global Gag Rule and wants to ban the world's 1.6 billion Muslim people from America. So there's plenty of actual policy to organise around while you're doing this cross stitch."

"Cunts are deep, warm, and delightful; indeed the place from which the majority of us astoundingly enter this fragile world. Yet no single word creates as much division and carries as much power as this little number.

"One thing activists are super-good at is dissecting the meaning of language, until letters break down into pixels. Give us another decade and everyone will know that vagina is 16th century slang for a place to keep your sword. Ouch."

"Language can be used to persuade, amuse, insult, and mobilise action. Few formats can accomplish these goals as ably or succinctly as the protest sign.

"Of course, sometimes the words just won't come. Or there are too many of them to fit on one sign. Or you're just so tired of being angry and upset that you just want to go UGH; which is fine. 'Just, Ugh' conveys all the despair, rage and hopelessness in just seven easy letters, and of course, can be used for virtually any occasion as it works for anything. Plus, it's nice and easy to stitch."

I need a hero

The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

(Scribe)

Pp.297

Wonder Woman is an important feminist icon, and this book explores her creation by William Moulton Marston and her subsequent effect on modern culture. Marston used scraps of his own experiences to shape the character he wrote about in comics. While at Harvard he experimented with machines that might tell truth from lies, conducting experiments wherein he hooked people up to a machine which tested their blood pressure while answering questions. In this respect he invented the lie detector, which has a remarkable resemblance to Wonder Woman’s lasso of truth.

His personal life was also to colour his invention of the Wonder Woman character. He married Sadie Elizabeth Holloway, a strong feminist, and they had two children together. Meanwhile, Marston also conducted a relationship with Olive Byrne, who lived with Marston and Holloway in a ménage a trois and bore him two children. Their living arrangements were unconventional, but they seemed to work for them all.

Marston believed in the power of love, and he was desperate for a platform from which to spread his views. “Women have twice the emotional development, the ability for love, that man has. And as they develop as much ability for worldly success as they have already the ability for love, they will clearly come to rule business and the Nation and the world.”

Marston claimed that his basic idea was for women to be “fighting male dominance, cruelty, savagery and war-making with love control backed by force.” This dominance was represented by chains, which proved one of Marston’s major hurdles, as there were complaints that the excessive bondage in Wonder Woman led to inappropriate behaviour and attracted the ‘wrong sort of audience’.

The comics were most definitely aimed at children. “By 1939, almost every kid in the United States was reading comic books. A form of writing that hadn’t existed just a few years earlier seemed to have taken over the country.” If there is one thing lacking in this book it is the author’s inability to explain the phenomenon whereby comics began to appeal to adults. Marston himself wanted them to be taken seriously by more than just children, and he desperately wanted academic acclaim.

Wonder Woman was also accused of racism, with the villains being German, Japanese or Mexican, speaking in dialect and with hook-noses. But what all villains in Wonder Woman share is their opposition to woman’s equality. Wonder Woman fights Nazis and boys bullying girls at school; she makes sure that milk is safe to drink for American children; she battles the unscrupulous textile industry to install equal and fair wages for women workers; she tackles jealous and controlling husbands who chain their wives to the sink and will not let them go to work or even leave the house. Gloria Steinem reflects, “Looking back now at these Wonder Woman stories from the 40s, I am amazed by the strength of the feminist message.”

The first issue of Wonder Woman contained a four-page centrefold feature called ‘Wonder Women of History’ to “celebrate the lives of heroic women and explain the importance of women’s history”. The scripts featured “scientists, writers, politicians, social workers, doctors, nurses, athletes and adventurers”. Sadly, attitudes which were progressive in the 1920 became quite reactionary in the 1950s. The Wonder Woman of History pull-out was replaced with a series about weddings called ‘Marriage a la Mode’.

Like everything else, Wonder Woman changed in the 1950s to reflect the prevalent attitudes. Although Wonder Woman was created by Marston, drawn by Harry G Peter, edited by Sheldon Mayer, and published by Charlie Gaines, she was owned by Sensation and latterly DC Comics. Gardner Fox also wrote Wonder Woman stories, and he had a very different perspective on a Woman’s Place. Thus, while in 1942 Wonder Woman joined ‘The Justice Society of America’ (by popular vote from readers of Sensation Comics) and was the only female in the society, she was relegated to making tea and taking minutes under Fox.

Wonder Woman’s character was revised in the American TV show of the 1970s, but she had lost much of her socio-political heft.  As the women’s movement floundered in the late 1970s and 1980s, and splintered into factions from which it still suffers, Wonder Woman suffered right along with it. She was a woman of her time, and maybe the time is right for a revival.

Race to the end

Visible Spirits by Steve Yarbrough 

(Picador)

Pp. 273

In this novel of post-reconstruction Mississippi (Loring, 1902), although slavery is illegal, racism is rife and respected by many, blacks and whites alike. Leighton is mayor and runs the local newspaper, using it as a platform for moderation; his younger brother Tandy returns after losing his money gambling and whoring in New Orleans. The two brothers have opposing outlooks, especially over the issue of the black postmistress, Loda, in this bleak view of passion, politics and race.

Tandy is trouble, and not in an attractive romantic way. He wants to stir things up in his old home town, and agitates Sarah, Leighton’s wife, with whom he clearly had a previous relationship. He is the embodiment of white male entitlement. “Until now, he’d never done any real work, because he’d always felt he was destined for something bigger. Of that he was no longer certain, but he could see one thing for sure: work was work, and he’d been wise to avoid it as long as he could.” Tandy and Leighton inherited half of the proceeds of the farm each when their father died and they sold it, Tandy to gamble it away and Leighton to invest it. Now Tandy wants to reverse fate, but without any exertion on his part.

Tandy claims that Loda encouraged a black man, Blueford, to behave insolently to him, and requests her dismissal from the post office, as he covets her job. After he brutalises Blueford, Loda tenders her resignation to avoid further conflict, but Theodore Roosevelt's administration decides to make a civil rights stand by refusing to accept it.

In the escalating dispute, Leighton becomes a pariah for siding with Loda, and Sarah despises him for putting her into a controversial position. She doesn’t share his views but knows that she is judged for them, asking, “What am I but an extension of my husband?” One of the strengths of the novel is the multiple viewpoints; different perspectives are raised and the reader is asked to take sides. We may not agree with Sarah’s racial stance, but we may react more sympathetically to her gender impotence.

Tandy continues to incite unrest with half-truths, slander, misinformation and downright lies. Preying on the people’s need for nostalgia and heroic pasts, he twists terrible events to suit his own ends, making his deeds fit a principle that he never held. “He’d work his way backwards from the action to the reason, discarding all the garbage in between.” Having lit the powder keg, he stands back and watches the spark ignite.

Many reviewers have criticised the novel for its lack of a definitive ending, suggesting that the author never really resolves the crisis, or creates a lasting peace. Surely, however, this perfectly represents contemporary social politics, where outsiders guide communities to make snap decisions with lasting consequences, and then hold up their hands and walk away. Who can really claim to be blameless? This is a disturbingly bleak novel with an elegant style and a deceptively straight-forward plot.

Racism and sexism top Kiwi ads

Last weekend, I watched the Fair Go awards for the best advert. I don’t know why I bother because it always depresses me. Actually, I do know why; it’s because I’m interested in marketing and advertising which frequently combines some of the best wit and humour a country has to offer. If this is the best New Zealand can offer, then it’s a pretty sad place.



Mitre 10 is a DIY store. Clearly it attempts to appeal to the LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) and does so successfully. This advert features precocious children, an attitude that spending time with your family or some alternative pursuit to manly prowess is somehow suspect, and a barely concealed racism. Welcome to New Zealand. The tourism board must be so proud. I’m only surprised it didn’t include sexism.

Not to worry – there are plenty of popular adverts that do.





These ads are obviously designed by blokes who don’t care whether women buy their products – the answer is no, we won’t, unless we’re still trying to be 16 and fancied by sleazy older blokes fiddling in their pockets. Sex sells, right? Yes, to men. They may remember the bouncing boobs, but not what was on sale – most of them are probably rushing out to buy spacehoppers. But this stuff is aimed at teenage boys. I am not their market.

This one, however, annoys me for a variety of reasons.



And I am not alone. There were complaints. They largely centred around the copycat behaviour in which parents worried that their darling little toddlers would scratch the paintwork on their Khandallah tractors while stealing the keys or worse, actually attempt to drive the killing machine.

I hate to see children advertising adult products. Not all of us think ‘littlies are gawjus’ – that’s a direct quote from the type of person who does. Nauseating isn’t it? I understand they have to be on television to sell nappies and baby shampoo and mushy food, but when it’s adult time and they’ve gone to bed (hopefully around 6 o’clock) can we be free of them please? Why would a child make me want to buy a car? Or a drill? Best not to answer that.

But above all that, it’s simply sexist. So he is driving the car. He picks her up because he thinks she’s cute – if it were an ugly kid he wouldn’t stop – plus she’s in her underwear, which is clearly a bonus for him. He takes her to the coast (which is admittedly where her sign suggested she wanted to be taken) and then she sits in the back of the truck like a diminutive towel rack while he gets to surf in the waves. As a reward for her adoration of his jock-like prowess, he puts his arm around her.

Final line – ‘the next generation is here.’ More like, ‘the next generation has gone back to the 1950s – the feminist movement might never have existed’. Okay, so it’s just an advert and I’m taking it too seriously and blah, blah, blah – but this is plainly sexualising and stereotyping infants. And the crime statistics for paedophilia are rising and everyone’s horrified. A coincidence? I think not.