Pseud's Corner: No. 4

Order of the Brown Nose

Julia Gillard wears power incredibly well. Sorry to use the verb "wears"; a colleague had warned against it. But as Australia's first female prime minister established the running order of questions at yesterday's press conference, her newfound authority fitted like a second skin. Her voice was steady, her gaze direct, her cheeks ever-so-slightly flushed. My eyes kept returning to her stylish necklace. Our Prime Minister chooses a necklace in the morning and not a tie, I kept thinking. Funny what a giddy, slightly nervous mind can latch on to.

As we stood around watching the press conference, one woman thrust her fist into the air and hissed, "Yes!" Another whispered "Finally", her eyes moist. No, I decided. Granted, the time for bursting into "I am woman, hear me roar" has long passed. And it is a challenge to mark this moment without lapsing into the sentimental or the patronising or the glib. It is a bittersweet, heartbreaking moment too; encompassing the shattered dreams of a man of great promise. But don't piss on this parade by claiming there's nothing to celebrate. . .

When Kevin Rudd became Labor leader in 2006, a reporter wrote about how sexy he suddenly seemed: a dusting of power being all it takes. So let's say it: Gillard was damn sexy too, even sexier than she was two days ago. If saying this undermines the [feminist] cause, the cause still has a way to go. (Julie Szego, "A feminist hero", The Age)

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This week's Order of the Brown Nose goes to Julie Szego for her reaction to the Gillard boil-over last week in The Age - not quite for sucking up, but for empty-headed cluckiness on the subject. "Funny what a giddy, slightly nervous mind can latch on to," Szego twitters as she catches herself in flagrante full of confused sentimentality; less funny is what such a mind is happy to splurge into its newspaper column: the worst of the lot is the cliche' that power is sexy - that Julia G is sexier than ever before now she's come by the highest office in the land. Szego knows the effect is pure media hokum - something that dissipates over months or can vanish almost overnight, as it did for Kevin Rudd; she says as much. But when it comes to Gillard, well. . . because she's feeling giddy, the cliche' doesn't just get trotted out as if it's true and interesting, it gets elevated to the status of a feminist nostrum; the logic seems to be - we all know that the power-is-sexy idea is bollocks, but - if women can be sexy in power just like men, it proves that equality of the sexes is another major step closer to full realisation.

The Age was at its worst in its coverage of Gillard's rise to power. In comparison to its 10-page spread, the Hun read like Tacitus. With more column inches to fill - and at such short notice, given the coup against Rudd took everyone by surprise - Age staffers were able to really indulge one of the mainstream media's worst habits: reporting on their own reactions to events (events that they in every sense tease into existence) as if their reactions were themselves the news. Maybe this kind of situation's made specially surreal in Australia by the fact that the national capital is a sort of anti-metropolis: the drama of Rudd's resignation, like so many a national-political story, took place in an almost wholly negative public space - in front, that is, of no one but an assembled mass of PR-bods, journos and camera-operators, with no street scene to function as backdrop, no vitally interested or plainly curious or merely indifferent group of burghers to raise the scene from out of its hyper-mediated sub-reality.

The best response to the civic vacuum, you'd think, would be to let events speak for themselves. Instead, Age sloggers like Szego and Tony Wright fill out their pictures of events with the reactions of fellow sloggers. The media stands around observing itself, ready to write up its experience of itself as news. There it is, front and centre of the story, crowding close to the "spectral" Kevin Rudd, hanging on the "dying words of the extinguished leader". Rudd's own media-team, together with other staffers, are captured accompanying him on his "final journey" - this is the journey into the prime ministerial courtyard outside his office for his last press conference: poignant spinners in serried ranks of three "march as a battalion across the cobbles, forming a sort of guard of honour." Wright really earns his place in the Corner of Shame with a little touch that comes in the middle of Rudd's speech: a nameless member of the media-pack bumps the sculpture in the courtyard and - you guessed it, it tolls like a bell - "the bell that has already tolled for Kevin Rudd, the vanquished prime minister." Tony, we feel, it tolls for you too, for all those dead phrases walking, the ritual changing of the words on the page. As you put it so aptly - it is all nothing more than a formality. Lead us, your lambs, to the slaughterhouse of prose. Vanquished yet expectant, we read on. . .
 

Such a long walk, the one to the gallows. Kevin Rudd, hands in pockets, Labour Party elder and keeper of the last rites John Faulkner. . . He had declared the night before he would fight; he would call a ballot and he would put himself in the hands of the party. But as the night wore on, it became apparent there was no point. A ballot would leave on the books a dreadful truth. He had no mates, or too few to matter. And so he was a dead man walking. The destination was a party meeting that was nothing more than a formality: a ritual changing of the guard. No ballot. The Australian people had elected him. The Australian Labor Party's fear of the Australian people had executed him. Within two hours, a spectral Kevin Rudd . . . stood for the last time in the prime minister's courtyard. A couple of hundred journalists crowded close, intent on capturing the words of the extinguished leader. Rudd's staff, all those exhausting days and nights behind them, their future uncertain, marched as a battalion in ranks of three across the cobbles, a guard of honour. "What I remember most about [the day of national apology was that] as they came in from over there - he gestured across the courtyard - they were frightened," he said. "Our job was to make them welcome." He could barely utter the words. The eyes welled, the silences grew, the crowd stood transfixed. Someone bumped a large metallic sculpture in the courtyard. It tolled like a bell. But the bell had already tolled for Kevin Rudd, the vanquished prime minister. . . Within two hours, Rudd would attend question time in the House of Representatives. He sat at the back of the bankbenches, determined to stay, hoping for redemption. . ." (Tony Wright, "Kevin Rudd's Long Walk" The Age)

Meanwhile. . .

There is an old Dale Carnegie saying: It goes - 'people don't care how much you know, 'til they know how much you care'. - Thought Leaders are knowledgeable people, often very objective and analytical around an issues that a business or person may be facing. I try to remember the importance of care factor. Without it, all your smarts, all your IP [Intellectual Property? Induced Polarisation? Intercessory Prayer?] is completely useless.
My friend and Thought Leader Darren Hill, would tell you it's simply increasing your Humanity. My dear friend Pete Sheahan, would tell me it's simply being Old School. My customer experience mate Iven Frangi, would tell you that it's Good Business. My technology and futurist friend Craig Rispin, would tell you it's being High Touch in a High Tech world. However you look at it, show you care. That's why so many profiteering [sic] businesses are getting all "do good" with corporate social responsibility and I think it's a great thing. Some may be faking it, but the power of kindness means that before long they'll be making it. (Matt Church, "Care factor 'zero'" Inspiring ThoughtLeadership)

Learning about Our City of Literature has been a personal journey. My great-grandfather, Frank Hobil Cole, arranged the lease for the Hill of Content back when A.H.Spencer needed funds to get his dream. started. Having historical connections to this iconic store was my catalyst for developing the "Melbourne by the Book" tour, which is sensory discussion about the heritage of reading, writing and storytelling in Melbourne. I believe that how and what Melburnians are reading is a historical indicator of the nature of our city, so the writers festival . . . is seeing history being made. (Fiona Sweetman on Melbourne as a UNESCO memorial City of Literature, an Age Writers Festival special)

This is a Godot which is accessible at every point and which refuses to acknowledge any lacuna or yawning gulf that doesn’t have its primary registration in a human sigh or shrug. . . At every point Sean Mathias refuses to formalise Beckett. The clowning always looks like the natural fumbling and frolicking of two professional chaps who know each other and the routines they share which constitute the forms of their intimacy, above everything else. In the great lyrical duet, the nearly liturgical refrain, about leaves and everything else that sounds in the silence, McKellen and Rees cut through the form of Beckett’s cadences to find unexpected human colour and surprise. And it’s that sense of tumbling, improvised comedy on the part of two old stagers that dominates throughout. Ian McKellen as Estragon has an encyclopaedic repertoire of ghoulish comic faces to pull and imbecile dances to dance and dogged cowardly lion growls to growl. It is a wonderfully warmhearted, baffled face he presents to the world as Gogo, almost a fluffy toy with the stuffing knocked out, and the fact that you can hear the great tragedian behind the bawling, long-vowelled northern tragic of a music hall man brings him to the heart of Beckett’s vision. Roger Rees as Vladimir is McKellen’s perfect complement, partly because his eroded matinée idol smoothness comes from a different planet which is, nonetheless, professionally compatible. It’s such a dapper, rapid performance style, as if he had fallen asleep doing Private Lives and woken up 30 years later on a dung heap.Of course, this Ian McKellen/Roger Rees Waiting for Godot is as much Shakespearean as it is sawdust. The magic, though, which releases Beckett’s sense of mystery, is in the lavishness with which these two masters of the technique of the classical theatre pay homage to music hall in order to convey their sense of the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart. (Peter Craven reviews Sean Mathias' "Waiting for Godot", The Spectator)

Pseud's Corner 3

Send your favourite examples of self-important, euphemistic, contorted, pompous, wanky and plain weird prose through to pseudsaustralia@yahoo.com.au [Ed]

I have been looking at the idea of letting people help you. I feel that there are 3 levels of personal evolution when it comes to collaboration, delegation and relying on others. 1. Take 2. Push 3. Share. - Take is about being dependent and taking from others, it has a needy vibe and is obviously not ideal. In take, you draw from others unconsciously. Push is about being independent and winning from others. It has a competitive vibe and is about getting by, pushing your agenda. In push, you win, they lose. Share is about being interdependent and working with others. It has a liberating vibe. It is about effortlessness flowing and is the key to creating sustainability. In share, you flow. (Matt Church, "Take no More" Inspiring Thought Leadership)

The audience was peppered with Beckettian spectres. I didn’t see Barry Humphries, who’d been a striking presence at the Bill Henson opening in Sydney two nights earlier but Geoffrey Rush, [Mel] Gibson’s Vladimir, and a triumph 30 years later as Ionesco’s exiting king, was there, as was his friend Bille Brown who had actually written an Aladdin pantomime in which McKellen played the Widow Twankey. So too was Max Gillies who had done Krapp’s Last Tape for Elijah Moshinsky at Monash 40 years ago. And Colin Duckworth, the professor of French who knew Sam Beckett himself, was in the audience, having seen most of the notable Godots since Peter Hall’s. . .
With the passage of the years Waiting for Godot has come to seem less like a shocking paradigm of absurdity and more like the deep sad comedy of a continuing condition (call it human if you must). As with Eliot’s Waste Land, the brilliance of the comic surface has almost outlived the existential insecurity it is shaping. - Sean Mathias’s quietly brilliant production takes this fact as its opportunity by constantly emphasising the mature human face of the grinding rituals through which his two ageing tramps wait and wander (wittily and witlessly) as Godot puts them through their paces in his failure to come. McKellen and Rees, in contrasted ways, have the rueful stoicism of age, and their comic embrace of catastrophe — McKellen’s boggle-eyed and flailing, Rees’s dapper and wincing — is light years from the contorted angst of young actors with the world before them as an enigmatic agony. (Peter Craven reviews Sean Mathias' "Waiting for Godot", The Spectator)

Knowledge Transfer is the name of a central concern that an intellectually ambitious university should have. The attention that we're giving it is logical. I think we're in a phase in which responsibility is a key concern. - In the humanities you see that in the gradual demise of irony and theory. Knowledge Transfer expresses the ambitions of being understood and of making a difference. . .
A university stands in a reciprocal relationship to society. How much good will does our society have towards the university sector as a whole, and to the University of Melbourne in particular? Governments tend to reflect broad public sentiment in this respect. Research doesn't only need to be done, it needs to be seen to be done. That's crucial to good relations with the state, and crucial to developing autonomy. You can't force people to take you seriously. If we're ignored or left to drift - that's our problem. We have to do something about it. Knowledge Transfer is our name for doing something about it. (John Armstrong reflects on the concept of Knowledge Transfer)

Teachers must endeavour to engage their students by creating lesson plans which are 'RRR': Rich, Rewarding and Relevant... But there is one 'R' that we have omitted: Resiliency. Resiliency is the quality of approach that each student brings to their particular life circumstances; the ups and the downs. Fostering resiliency in the learning environment enables students to approach their world with confidence and expectation. Fostering resiliency is learning to get up after a fall. When we learn resiliency we take the bull by the horns and look life in the face again, after (or before) the fall. Resiliency is its own outcome in the modern classroom. (Lesson plans and their relation to fostering resiliency. Victorian Department of Education)

News just in: Katie Price has not had sex with her boyfriend for a month. According to Fairfax newspapers, reproducing news from Britain’s reputable New! magazine, her boyfriend Alex Reid is getting ‘a cuddle – nothing more.’ What on earth am I supposed to do with this information? . . . If I were being generous, I could argue that these stories personify common grown-up problems. Many couples, particularly those with children, frequently experience dry spells. . . But this news – and I use the word loosely – really doesn’t add much to our understanding of adult intimacy. . .
So much of our every day life – conversations in queues, reading newspapers, watching television – is routinely superficial. It involves little reflection or analysis. It’s what German philosopher Martin Heidegger called ‘groundless floating’ – a sort of existential treading water, which adds little to our character. We lose ourselves in daily interaction with things and people, rarely questioning the fundamental ideas or values we’re upholding – perhaps they’re a little frightening. And the entertainment media feed on this, of course. If it’s ‘idle talk’ we want, magazines like New! will supply it: a few minutes of distracted bliss, where the abstract failures or triumphs of famous strangers can take us away from ourselves. Price’s sex life is a vaporous lure for groundless floating. But when, then, does the shallowness end? What moments offer us retreat from surfaces and reflexes? For someone like Heidegger, it presumably ends with philosophy or poetry – with some radical authenticity, or re-envisioning of Western civilization. Others have replied with God, art or revolution. But with Price in mind, I’m suggesting intimacy. In its genuine form, love is one genuine antidote to distraction and superficiality. I’m not talking Hollywood romance, with its predictable plots and happy endings – though they’re aiming at something valuable. And I’m not talking about sex, though it’s often part of the magic. The reason is simple: regardless of how the world changes, love enters into your mind as a non-negotiable fact. It is inescapably, painfully real. . . And this is particularly the case when we have children. Once they enter your life, kids push you again and again to recognise your faults and frailties, and reassess how and why you’re living. They’re the ultimate existential test. (Damon Young, "Katie Price: No Sex for a Month", darkly wise, rudely great)

And, last but not least, Eduardo de la Fuente on Academic Vampires

A growing number of academics entering upper and middle university management are themselves vampires. It's not just deans and heads of departments who subscribe to vampire ideology. In Britain, where performative-vampirist culture has been around much longer than in Australia, even the odd Vice-Chancellor is a self-identified vampire academic. In Australia, vampires are also making their presence felt within research funding bodies and in the formulation of the research assessment exercise framework. - On the demand side, it's only a matter of time before students start to question "credentialist creep", especially if it means universities force them to take vampire subjects as part of their degrees. - On the supply side, things will change when a number of the senior vampires reach retirement age. . . But for those impatient for the vampire system to collapse, let me suggest a couple of personal strategies for coping with widespread vampirism in universities. . . At some point, theology has to be about God, the divine or the sacred; in the final analysis, art history has to be about things called paintings, sculptures or, for argument's sake, let's say multi-media artwords; and, philosophy finds it hard to escape entirely considerations of logic, epistemology and things like metaphsics and aesthetics. - Then there are disciplines where there is enough exposure to daylight so that vampire tactics lose some of their magic and dark powers. Try telling studets paying for an MBA and jggling assignments with work commitments that reading Michel Foucault on governmentality is good for them! - Interestingly, the fields of marketing and management studies seem to be experiencing something of a rapprochement with the traditional humanities. Ethics and aesthetics are quickly emerging as hot topics in fields such as branding, organisational dynamics and also studies of entrepreneurship. - Of course, if one is still feeling unsafe, one could always resort to more old-fashioned metjhods for repelling vampires. Academic vampires seem to be allergic to anything that requires lots of training, especially things that might be deemed to be part of high culture and, are generally repulsed by economists and anything that is perceived as propping up capitalism. (Eduardo de la Fuente, "Vampires latch on to learning" The Australian: Higher Education Supplement)

[With thanks for tip-offs from LK, PCF, ECD and ONR.]