Something I have grown to realise and accept in my life of late is that blackface is not okay. I personally don't find it offensive as I tend to try and see the motivation for whoever is masquerading thus, such as a fancy dress party. It's quite likely the person who has dressed thus has had no intention of denigrating an entire race and culture. However, people do tend to jump on a bandwagon about it, and frankly, it's not worth doing. Not that I would. Not that I ever have. Some people have donned blackface for fancy dress when attending a costume party. However, in these times of social media should you attempt such an outfit, you are going to end up on the Internet and labelled a racist, whether the term is deserved or not. Blackface was, to my understanding, linked to vaudeville entertainment wherein white entertainers lampooned people of dark skin.
In Australia, we don't have the history that the US has and don't get it. Likewise, I think the US doesn't 'get' us, either. I do think people should look for context before they start getting offended. I tend to think of this as the Harry Connick Jnr Syndrome. It's not a recognised psychological textbook condition, but just something that makes me think of the crooner having a sook on 'Hey, Hey' that time when a group of contestants performed a spoof of the Jackson Five. Harry complained about their makeup, and Darryl Somers crawled up his bum. Rather than having the host of the show crawl up Connick's bum, the producers should have organised a crash course for him in history and geography so he could understand the rest of the world is not America and there was no way the contestants on this Australian show intended offence of any type.
The skit was first performed at a university medical students' revue. I actually attended the show, accompanied by a guy with whom I was then hanging around. I did not see racism; I saw a rather funny pisstake of the Jacksons.
The point to these ponderings is that an aide in the cabinet of Bill Shorten has resigned after a picture of him in blackface was leaked onto social media. This was from a party some ten years ago, before Harry Connick Jnr enlightened us, or else spoiled everything with his amazing ability to totally miss the point and not see past his own nose (depending upon your point of view). Should the staffer have resigned? In my opinion: no fucking way. Come on, hands up who hasn't done something completely bloody stupid when they were younger. Here's a hint: I'm typing this with one hand because I've got the other raised in the air. Why should someone lose their job over youthful hijinks that at the time were not considered really offensive, and not illegal anyway? I don't care that one of Shorten's staff did something a bit asinine when younger. I wouldn't care if a member of Turnbull's staff had done the same, either. Nowadays might be a bit different because we KNOW it's considered not cool, and you'd have to be completely devoid of any sense particles to pull such a stunt, and for THAT you should be castigated.
I'm curious about whomsoever leaked this photograph. If a member of Shorten's staff, maybe THAT person should be called to task. I bet if we tried to find a photograph of this person in fancy dress some years ago, he or she would be in a Roman toga and brandishing a knife to portray the backstabbing Brutus, murderer of Julius Caesar. Or perhaps the person would be in a shiny, scaly reptilian looking body suit with some greenery around him or her ('Who have you come us?' 'Who, me? Oh, I'm a snake in the grass!').
Speaking of politics, now there's stories abounding of Barnaby Joyce having had an affair with a staffer. What can I say but: ick. Kind of flies in the face of Barnaby's image of being a family man, and having policies to protect the traditional nuclear family unit. But if they're consenting adults, why do people have to care? Certainly I question the sensibilities of the lady involved, but it's honestly none of my business if Barnaby Joyce is doing The Wild Thang, and it's honestly not an image I want in my brain, either.
This might be a more entertaining image for the brain. Picture this: the year is 1977, and in rural New South Wales an eleven-year-old girl is sitting down in the lounge room of her home to watch 'Sounds', which is typical Saturday morning fare. She is the only one watching; her mother is in the laundry tending to the weekly wash. Her father is out fixing the windmill. Her siblings, much older than her, are elsewhere; the oldest working as a jackaroo in a nearby town, the next to oldest away at university, and the closest in age to her (still a seemingly whopping gap of five years) is away at boarding school. She enjoys her solitude, being somewhat socially inept and not always enjoying the fact she towers over most of the boys her age, because she is very tall for an eleven-year-old. Then the film clip is played for a song she has never heard before. It is performed by two guys she can't quite place. One is tall and blonde, and the other is short with dark hair. They're both kind of plain. That doesn't matter. The verse is kind of spoken to the music, with a powerfully evocative feeling of ennui in the delivery as he tells us 'the sun arose/trying to smile/gave it all away....'. It's just saturated with the pathos of really, really trying, but in the end being unable to give a fuck. Then it's the chorus picks up the pace drastically as these bland guys give a shout to the keeper of the Pearly Gates, who is also one of the patron saints of fishermen. 'Hey! Hey! Hey, Saint Peter...', they beseech, and go on to plead their case, 'Just been down/To New York Town/Done my time in Hell...'
The song continues and then it moves into the liveliest bridge played on the piano this eleven-year-old has ever heard, and in the forty years since she's not heard a bridge so mesmerising in its ability to transfix her to the spot, make her feel alive quite the way that one has. As an adult, she wonders could have bridge be almost Rachmaninoff-ish, and wonders is she leaning a little towards grandiose hyperbole.
The film clip closes with the actor playing St Peter cutting loose in his biblical costume and throwing around Peter's brand ice creams (such an Aussie outlook in this clip). On the final uttered, despairing, 'Hell...' the figure at the keyboard turns. It's a skeleton in a hooded cape, with Devil horns. The entire film clip was probably miserly cheap by today's standards, but the song sells itself. That is one mofo of a song.
The eleven-year-old learns the name of the band is Flash and the Pan, and they comprise Harry Vanda and George Young. The eleven-year-old, already a music nut, eventually comes to realise Vanda and Young are responsible for a considerable percentage of the Australian music she enjoys.
The eleven-year-old grew up, and maintained her admiration for Vanda and Young's body of work, and yesterday was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of George Young. RIP, George. You no doubt climbed the stairs to the gates, and greeted the keeper with a companionable, 'Hey, St Peter!'
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