Ads
unpublished
talk delivered @ the Cinema & Identity forum @ the I.C.A.,
London, 1988
In
the second of Twisties' early eighties new wave ads, an
old archeologist uncovers a Twisties pack which jettisons
him to a high-style mega-funky Egyptian shindig. Just as
he gets transported back to a dusty desolation after the
assaulting wonders of the lost Twisties' civilization, so
too are we thrust back into the dreadful drudgery of our
cinema and television after being savaged and ravaged by
a bunch of thirty-second sensory overloads. But just as
that Twisties' pack is his key to a lost reality, so too
is that advertisment itself a symbolic key to understanding
the construction and promotion of Australian culture in
our cinema. Digging a bit deeper into the ground already
covered by the movement of culture/industry developments,
some obscured origins come to the surface : if film culture
and the film industry provide the archeologically layerings
of Australian cinema, advertising is the great lost city
- the distinctive yet unrecognized base for our contemporary
placement.
In
the early seventies, the machinations of advertising (as
a commercial industry and as a cultural apparatus) laid
down the foundations to this city. The head architect as
far as I can ascertain was not Gough Whitlam but Phillip
Addams. I mention Whitlam because of the predominance of
recalling the great Labour-funded arts & culture programmes
of the early to mid seventies, which many people point to
when explaining the development of modern Australian cinema.
I don't deny the relevance and importance of those early
(yet so distant now) economic and political manoeuvres and
events. I single out Addams because of his cultural brief
which saw him simultaneously as an advertising executive
and a spokesperson-cum-lobbyist for government incentives
to aid in the establishment of an Australian (ie. localized)
film industry. In Addams we have the original modern figure
of that mutated Siamese twin of Culture and Industry, where
both could both energize and exploit each other. Of course
his and others' 'city of the future' for Australian cinema
was like most architectural plans : it looked good on paper.
The proof of its rickety planning is felt in today's shaky
foundations, rooted in projected lobbyist schemes more than
organic cultural groundswells. Perhaps if someone had pointed
out back then that Addams was a serious collector of Egyptian
mummies, his plans for a cinematic 'future of the city'
would have been surveyed with more insight.
But
Addams was not alone in his transcultural traversing from
the art of money-making to the money of art-making. A slew
of craftsmen started to execute the plans for our future
city : Tim Burstall, Peter Weir, Fred Schepsi and Bruce
Beresford, all of whom learnt their trade as much in advertising
as in film schooling and short filmmaking. Such filmmakers
form a certain historical core in the history of Australian
cinema, usually touted as bringing contemporary and relevant
content into film production. But on the other hand, I can
recall another figure who adopted a similar strategy yet
with more immediate and marked results : John Singleton.
A typically cunning ad-man, he not only accentuated a self-identifiable
'Australianess' - he exploited it to the hilt. He literally
marketed our self-image back to ourselves, giving us characters
whose hysterically implosive caricatures of consumerism
have so distinctly drawn the stereotypes which shows like
THE COMEDY COMPANY and THE D-GENERATION simply have to retrace
to become even half-successful. While Burstall (in particular,
and along with David Williamson) opted for social satire
to get us to recognize ourselves (as part of out cultural
self-help programme) Singleton opted for straight-out shock
therapy by mocking our supposedly repressed desire to see
ourselves localized up on the screen.
While
the literay skill of Burstall, Williamson et al has clearly
spiralled into social examinations which, one might say,
have now left us 'heading north' and stranded by a 'high
tide', the Singleton legacy of crassness, bluntness and
self mockery has - for good or bad - left us with our biggest
success story to date : Paul Hogan. Not a definitive Australian
cinematic figure by no means, but perhaps an essential one,
especially if one traces his trajectory from ad icon (the
Winfield man) to TV comedian (sending up TV ads) to film
star (ridiculing the media image of Australia). Such a trajectory
is in fact a series of self-mocking envelopes, each coming
out from the the previous one, each mocking the previous
phase's susceptibility to and delight in mocking and knocking.
Paul Hogan, son of Singleton. Mocker, knocker, ocker. Together
they created by exploiting, and exploited by creating, the
ocker image : an image that already could see its own reflection
in the desires and measures which caused such an image to
made in the first place. And in an expected self-mocking
and self-enveloping fashion, the Crocodile Dundee character
is a send-up not simply of 'Australians' (whichever breed
of animal they may be) but of Graham Kenedy, John Mellion,
Alvin Purple, Bazza Mackenzie and Les Patterson. The bulk
of Australian cinema is dull because it is preoccupied in
reflecting Australian culture. The secret of CROCODILE DUNDEE's
success could be that it refracts Australian culture.
Advertising
has archeologically determined Australian film culture in
more ways still. In the eighties, Australian cinema is far
from dumb about its awkward status and chronic failures
- especially living under the ungainly shadows cast by the
overseas successes of the Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee films.
If only different measures were taken - measures not based
on the industrial models of the seventies. Strangely, Australian
cinema appeared to take its cue from the now-forgotten and
largely neglected ADVANCE AUSTRALIA campaign. Remember that
one? That was the one where a whole range of Australian-made
products sported the ADVANCE AUSTRALIA logo : the visual
essence of the Australian flag sans Union Jack pulped into
a big fat ugly 'A'. To the casual observer, this was no
more than the modernization of the old Coles/Embassy MADE
IN AUSTRALIA circular symbol of the Southern Cross and flying
boomerang. But whereas that symbol was a trade and industrial
banner for the promotion of localized industries, the ADVANCE
AUSTRALIA campaign was primarily aimed at selling 'Australianess'
to Australians - which as I indicated previously is perhaps
a typically Australian way of promoting self-identity through
advertising. It came as no suprise then to discover that
the ADVANCE AUSTRALIA campaign was actually designed and
operated by a consortium of advertising executives : you
had to pay to use the stupid logo on your product. And still
people paid for it - that is, local industries paid for
the right to sell Australianess to Australians. How dizzy
can you get?
But
hold on - it gets worse. The ADVANCE AUSTRALIA campaign
took its title from what was then our unofficial national
anthem, and condensed its patrotic propoganda into a corporate
logo. The trick of course in all nationalistic propoganda
is to actually address the country by name, as if all inhabitants
concerned are somehow unified in a particular situation
for a particular cause, following the dictum that to control
a crowd you first establish a crowd. The cruel linguistic
logic of catch phrases like "Advance, Australia!" is that
if you tell Australia to advance, there must be such a thing
as 'Australia' in the first place. In the style of a phantom
pun, Australia is located linguistically in order to trick
us into accepting that there is something we could call
Australia. Instant national identity for a nation being
continually told that it must desire a national identity
in order for it to gain one. And this is where our culture/industry
fusions, mergers and mutations are metaphorically founded
: in the socio-economic rhetoric and trickery of building
up an industry in order for a culture to grow from it. Make
the films and then you'll have your film culture. Films
like GALLIPOLI and THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER are the cinematic
equivalents to those dumb products which sported the ADVANCE
AUSTRALIA logo. All of them empty products labelled with
content ; displayed in a vaccuum ; consumed with no effect.
Many a wit sarcastically rhetorted "Advance Australia where?"
They should have simply said "Are you talking to me!?"
Finally,
advertising pinpoints just how fraudulent most culture/industry
mergers are. Consider the great pressure by unions to restrict
the production of advertisments as much as possible to Australian
crews (which of course is replicated in the constitution
of film crews and casts). The mandate is that we employ
local people. The stupidity of such a blunt short-term measure
was hilariously illustrated by an Australian computer ad
a few years back which featured Mr.T. An Australian crew
was flown over to Hollywood to shoot the ad, thereby giving
us what legally we could call an Australian ad. Why not
go the whole hog and insist that an aborigine portray Mr.T?
Just like we 'prove' to ourselves how we can make slick
internationalist film product on the technical level, we
also 'prove' that we're concerned in giving jobs to Australians.
Of course the budget for that Mr.T ad would have risen considerably
under such legal conditions - which means that the ad agency
also would get a higher cut. (The punchline of the ad had
Mr.T turned into a turkey.)
Up
to this point, I've basically outlined Australian film culture
and the Australian film industry as hopelessly, aimlessly
and desperately snared by each others' desires and delusions.
I come to such a conclusion through impatience, frustration
and selfishness - every bone in my body feels totally alien
to just about every Australian film I've ever seen. As the
general attendance and acceptance of Australian films suggest,
I am not alone in feeling this, but the avenues for establishing
and presenting a critical voice for such feelings lead down
corridors away from the channels of production which accomodate
snobs and manufacture turkeys.
My
tack is not to bemoan this situation and hope that things
will get better, but to make us painfully aware of what
I perceive as cinematic failures, to try and uncover why
in hell we make such awful movies. Too much time, money
and effort has been wasted in always looking ahead toward
some utopian plane where the government coughs up money
free from the taint of vested commercial interests, and
where people in this country will willfully patronize the
consequent homegrown product born of such political flights
of cultural fancy. Australian cinema should stop looking
forward with craned necks and firm chests, as if its frozen
in the scenario of some garish socialist revolutionary poster.
Look back and behind. Look at all the crap we've made and
at all the sensible hordes who stayed away from it. Look
at all those unfinished bridges which led and still lead
to nowhere. Our cinema is a dead weight and that's how it
should be treated. It should hang around our necks until
some more interesting, engaging, unsettling and suprising
films are made. Australian cinema is anal, retrograde, deluded
and boring. Lest we forget.
