Movie Doubles

View From The Cheap Seats

There is absolutely no imperative to see these 2 films together in any kind of critical sense, but I did because they were both selling the DVD for less than 10.00 a pop. That's less than the price of admission and that about covers that. Even if I did see 'T3' at the movies when it was released, I've not seen it since. As for 'The Mexican', I avoided it because I was busy buying DVDs, and it never seemed like the sort of movie you wanted to see on the big screen anyway.

In fact the DVD is coming to a rapid end of its product life as HD TV and Blu-Ray hits the market en force. Since the arrival of DVDs in 1996 through to now, that's been about a 12 year span in which we've all been buying these discs. I can tell you I've bought a whole bunch of these things and I feel a little sad to see them go. Yes, the higher spec of HDTV and Blu-Ray just blow away what DVDs have to offer, but it seems to me seeing Underworld 2 in HDTV/Blu-Ray actually isn't a vast improvement in my actual viewing experience at all - even with a scrumptious Kate Beckinsale in a tight leather outfit, dealing death - a cruddy film is still a cruddy film. It's still the same old crappy story and there's nary a film that really deserves to be owned at $50.00 a piece.

Thus, I figure I'll keep cleaning up the el cheapo DVDs as the new thing comes to the fore. I'm going to watch a whole slew of films in the older mass-market format, good, bad and indifferent, in tandem just to see if I can squeeze out some extra critical meaning out of them by doing so. Not that it has much relevance, but with that in mind, I'm going to try and connect two most unlikely films as a Movie Double Experience.

The Mythology of Guns - 'The Mexican' and 'Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines'


What have these two films got in common at all, you might ask. Here's the deal: both films are massive fetishistic odes to the gun. Most American films are to some degree a celebration of guns. If gun laws got stricter, the one industry sure to find it hard to cope would be Hollywood. The easy availability of weapons permeates American cinema to the point that the audience does not question how such arsenals come into play.

If the 1980s cinema was emblematic of anything, it was the carnival of the orgasmic violence. Somewhere along the way, we the audience got hooked on the massive explosion, the spray of machine gun fire, the tumbling of cars on freeways and shards of glass going everywhere as people smash through cheap architecture. The apotheosis of such films was the totally Freudian/Phallic joy of 'Terminator 2'.

'T2' as it was affectionately known completed the infra-psychic journey of recovering the castrated penis as it were. Here was the new generation of man, raised by a single mother full of hatred for men, given lessons in masculine violence by an emotion-less killing machine played by Arnold Schwarzenegger - an entity so powerful it could fire a mini-gun from the hip.

If anything, 'T3' as it was derisively known came as a big redundant statement, outstripped by the sensitive new age guy era. In what became his last big movie splash, the current Governor of California made one last appearance in the franchise. Once again, the main feature of the film is how often a gun is discharged with destructive power - and this time, how the feminine monster robot keeps coming back in spite of the shells fired into it.

In 'The Mexican', there is the legendary eponymous gun which centres the plot. All the machinations involve how the gun will be re-acquired. Which is interesting because the Terminator series of films seems to be an infra-psychic telling of the concern while 'The Mexican' is a rather dour telling of the concern. Where things go bombastic in 'T3', they tend to go like a Seinfeld plot in 'The Mexican'. Surely they are both metaphorically 'Raiders of the Lost Gun', just told differently.

Castration Anxiety

The gun, is clearly a Freudian object in both films. While the castration anxiety in both films runs deep, you get the feeling that if the makers of the Terminator series of movies insist on it long enough, the gun might eventually save their sense of self-importance. In other words, if they blow up enough stuff, they will regain confidence in their own penises. If T2 was an attempt to re-establish the power and validity of masculinity through the Arnie character, then T3 goes even further in making the villain a near-indestructible robot that appears as a beautiful blond woman.

So much of T3's action is spent on trying to stop the juggernaut that is this a rampant feminine monster. Arnie fires grenades into her, as well as big shotgun rounds. He drives her down with a truck and then flips a crane onto her. Nothing seems to stick. That she keeps on coming back with even more resolve than Robert Patrick's T-1000 in 'T2' indicates that the fantasy has moved on to an even more complicated terrain. Add in the fact that the Sarah Connor character is dead by the time the story begins, we get the feeling this story is even more convoluted in its attitudes about the feminine.

The Mexican is by contrast a film entirely concerned with the recovery of a certain, particular gun, and therefore the meaning is already over-invested before anybody even sees the thing. The gun then is the magic penis that is going to cure all impotence in post-feminist man. or so we are led to believe through most of the film. Put it this way, they're not looking for the sacred spear, but this is about as plaintive as it gets.

Brad Pitt plays a hen-pecked boyfriend who must go on one last journey to recover a mythic gun. If there ever was a film about castration anxiety of men in the contemporary era, there it is in all its glory. As such, Brad Pitt's Jerry bumbles from mishap to mishap while his lover played by Julia Roberts goes on a weird road trip with a gay hitman as they discus the ins and outs of relationships. The very set up of the film is like a parody of the 'Crisis of Masculinity' discourse.

As Jerry struggles to find meaning in the recovery of his metaphorical penis, he encounters a series of problems that hang almost as non-sequiteurs to the central issue. All the while, the legendary Mexican Gun gets 3 tellings which involves love, power, passion, honour and betrayal - qualities that are seemingly absent from the characters.

The structure of the story evokes 'The Maltese Falcon' but the ins and outs of the story are incredibly de-powered by the very fact that the entire population of characters live in an era of the 'Crisis of Masculinity'.

Eternal Return of the Repressed

Both films have characters who discuss their past in terms of their parents. Amazingly, and it is amazing because it is purely coincidental that I'm watching these two films in tandem, we are faced with archetypal case of the Return of the Repressed.

Just to quickly re-cap the theory, Freud had this notion that the thing that gets repressed, usually the mother comes back to haunt us. Jung of course said that it was more likely that the feminine was your anima, but the point is, for an average bloke, the thing most likely to return from the repressed is the objectified feminine thing.

In 'The Mexican', we are graced with the story of how the gun is dedicated to a man who would be the groom to the gunsmith's daughter. Yet, the daughter is in love with the apprentice. So as the story gets deeper into the mystery of just what the story is with the gun, we come to realise that the feminine has been somehow trapped into the essentially phallic gun. The gun can only be fired by a person who is true to its destiny - and in the climax, it is Julia Roberts' character Sam who fires the gun, dislodging a wedding ring hidden inside.

It is only when we come to the point in the story where Julia Roberts' Sam has expressed just about all the irrational rage she could express about Jerry played by Brad Pitt that the apparent curse can be extinguished. As intended, the bullet meant for the interloper finds the target of another interloper.

In both cases, it's pretty certain that the mother is a monster that gets repressed because America just can't deal with the larger-than-life importance of mom from 'mom and apple pie'.

IWC Annual Stoush

Here We go Again!
One of the idiotic things I do here on this blog is cover the IWC meet every year. Why? I don't know - I guess I like finding out just how bad the rhetoric gets before people will make some compromises. After 3 years of this space, it's just not looking good.

Here's an example of the sort of stupid rhetoric you get: Caribbeans think the Anti-Whaling position is 'Economic Terrorism'.

The Japanese delegation think the Anti-Whaling lobby shows no respect to the whaling nations.

At the IWC meeting overnight, anti-whaling nations thwarted a bid by Denmark to allow its self-governing province Greenland to include 10 humpbacks in its annual aboriginal whale hunting quota.

"If you scratch the surface then a lot of disrespect comes out, and I think today showed how difficult it's going to be for the whole future of the IWC process," said Glenn Inwood from Japan's Institute of Cetacean Research (ICR).

"The Japanese delegation was extremely disappointed and made a very strong presentation in the meeting after the aboriginal subsistence quota for Greenland was turned down," Inwood said.

The vote opposing endangered humpbacks being included in Greenland's aboriginal hunt came despite the IWC's scientific committee endorsing the proposal, and the whalers offering to give up rights to catch eight fin whales.

Australia voted against Denmark's bid, but other countries including Switzerland and the United States voted for the proposal, which failed by 36 votes to 29.

Inwood said a new process advocated by IWC chair Bill Hogarth to see annual votes at the IWC largely abandoned in favour of consensus from a working group, now faced uncertainty.

That doesn't sound too good. The BBC obviously thinks it's an un-constructive stalemate.
Peter Garrett takes over from the hopelessly idiotic Ian Campbell (who, in his infinite stupidity, has joined the board of directors of the maniacal Sea Shepherd organisation).

FEDERAL Environment Minister Peter Garrett has urged Japan to take part in a multinational collaboration in non-lethal Southern Ocean scientific research and to call off whaling.

"In support of this new partnership approach … I would specifically ask that Japan suspend its lethal scientific research in the Southern Ocean," Mr Garrett said in his most direct call yet at this week's International Whaling Commission talks in Santiago.

Earlier in the week he had moderated his criticism of Japan.

Tokyo made no response to the partnership call. Glenn Inwood, a spokesman for Japan, said: "Japan feels it does not need to respond to this."

Australia's non-lethal research partnership proposal, announced by Mr Garrett yesterday, drew wide support from anti-whaling nations at the IWC. Some observers were hopeful Japan would join the first planning meeting, due early next year.

Labor came under further fire yesterday from critics who say it is being too soft on Japan.

Former Coalition environment minister Ian Campbell told ABC radio the IWC meeting "all just seems to be a big love-in. They all seem to be holding hands and saying let's sit around the table and talk about it, and that's exactly what Japan wants.

"Australia has just got to maintain the rage against this … We shouldn't even be talking to Japan unless they say 'we're fair dinkum about the talks and we'll stop whaling while the talks go on'."

Japan called on its opponents to give a little ground so it could move, in a cautious invitation to negotiate over the whaling divide.

After making a concession by suspending the kill of Australian humpbacks, the Asian power wants anti-whaling nations to make concessions themselves, its chief negotiator, Joji Morishita, said. "What do we get?" Mr Morishita asked The Age. "We would like to see something from the other side, then it will be easier for us to take the next step."

Yeah, that would be about right. As Marlon Brando once said, "What've you got?"
I think the problem is that the anglophone nations that go hard after the rhetoric have lost a road back to the negotiating table. The Whaling nations on the other hand actually have been at the table for some time, waiting for a proposal. I don't really see a way through this without the anglophone nations taking a PR hit.

ADDENDUM:
The Story so far.
June 2005 Part 1
June 2005 Part 2
June 2005 Part 3
June 2005 Part 4
June 2006

Been A Long Time

Following The Bliss - Indiana Jones 4

So... they made this little film about a grave robber some years back and ever so often they add new installments to the story. When they announced they were making this latest episode, I thought, "What? Now? Why?"

After all Harrison Ford is over 60, the last episode was 19 years ago, and nobody made a case for that film as being a film classic. The DVD box set has come and 'gone' (read 'Bought-by-the-Truckloads'), and there seemed like there was nothing new to add. Then again, I had no idea where they were going with this one. Set in 1957, this episode has a totally different nostalgia to it that actually takes you by surprise. It's actually a delight to see Indiana Jones in the context of latter events in history.

What's Good About It

Let's face it, there's nothing like an old leather jacket that fits you well. It's like that. Just like that it's Harrison Ford on the big screen doing what he does best - whatever it is, it's not something they teach in acting school. While the hair is gray and his face is lined with deep lines, it's not like he's lost any charisma in the intervening years. The hat, the whip, they wry smile and it's game on.

I didn't realise how much I missed having Harrison Ford throw his knuckledusters and haymakers against movie villains. It's pathetic but true; it's just pure joy to see him doing Indy again. It's like seeing your favourite band from a long gone era reform, and then seeing them play live in front of your eyes. The performance just punches through the cobwebs of nostalgia.

Then there's Spielberg's direction. He too has been spending a lot of time making movies that have won him Oscars, but bottom line, this is the kind of movie he makes best. Really, I wish he'd just make these. It feels like it's been a long time in between drinks, but the things about his directing style that I loved are all back with a hellacious energy and fury. I forgot just how good Spielberg could be, and his handiwork is astounding in this movie.

What's Bad About It

I don't want to nitpick but it's just as nonsensical as the first film. I'm not expecting taut dialogue and tightly structured logic like we see in say, 'A Few Good Men', but the writing is just a touch on the fanciful side. Not that that should be held against this fanciful franchise. If you don't like fanciful, you shouldn't be in the cinema watching it - but even then there have been moments where you go "Hang a minute guys..." over the years.

Then there are all the interesting thing that get set up and never get paid off. It's as if we're supposed to ignore them as a hundred MacGuffins, cast aside into the dust heap of cinema history as Indiana Jones goes looking for ... aliens! Yes, those stalwart Spielberg aliens with bubble heads make a big appearance in this film too.

But wait just one moment. It's an Indiana Jones movie. It's supposed to be preposterous, so take my complaints with a pinch of salt. There's a lot more to discuss than what's good or bad. If anything, it's a bit Nietzschean in that it's beyond good or bad.

Stumbling Out of Boxes, Back From The Dead

The first we see of Indy in this film, is when he is dragged out of a Car boot. We see him stumble out of a refrigerator and a number of other claustrophobic spaces. It is as if the Indiana Jones persona is coming out of deep freeze, which indeed, he is. As the film echoes the first film where we do not see Indiana's face until some ways in, we do not see Indy until he puts his hat back on. When we do see just how gray Harrison Ford has become in that revealing moment, we sort of gasp at how old we have become. At least, I did.

I can't remember the last time I felt the mass of 19 years in a cinema, ever. Yet, in that moment, I reflected on my own 19 years since the last time I sat in a dark cinema watching Harrison Ford put on his fedora. And just as I adjusted, I felt this might even be one of the last few times I would see Harrison Ford on the big screen in a new film. I certainly hadn't done it in a long while. Maybe the last time I bothered was when he did 'Sabrina', just to see what it looked like. I think it put me off seeing his movies for some time.
So there it was, a sense of time and mortality.

Then there are the missing players. Denholm Elliot is dead. His absence is particularly keenly felt in the obligatory University sequences. He's been replaced by the guy who plays Bridget Jones' dad, which must be some kind of in-joke, perhaps. There's no sign of Sallah, played by John Rhys Davies either. Sean Connery's character, Henry Jones Snr. is dead and gone, and that's depressing too, because the original James Bond has retired from acting altogether so I imagine he's simply waiting to die somewhere out there in 'wealthy retired stars land'.

The most striking feature of this film is the deep sense of mortality that runs through it. If the third film was about dealing with the mortality of our parents, then this film is in some ways a film about dealing with our own. Indiana Jones can still do his thing, but he is so out of place in his 1957. In fact he is accused of perhaps being a communist, which is so absurd when you consider how fundamentally capitalistic and mercenary his character has been before.

The Mushroom Cloud In History
The nuclear testing range sequence is perhaps one of the more depressing aspects of the film. Not because it's unlikely that Indy survives a nuclear blast in a lead-lined refrigerator, but because when he emerges and looks up, he sees a blossoming mushroom cloud. All I could think of was John Wayne and Susan Hayward, previous stars of the screen who succumbed to cancer because they acted on the nuclear contaminated sand in Nevada.


Not only is the mushroom cloud haunting because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but because of the history of stars who have been felled by it. To see Harrison Ford's Indy gaze up to it brought me a sense of despair. It's a deeply moving moment filled with dread as all good science fiction films have. I spent the rest of the film thinking, after all this is over, Indy's going to be riddled with cancers. It's depressing, I know, but I was never one to handle mortality well. I never liked 'Star Trek: Generations' because it kills off Captain Kirk - and once you know how he dies, you can't look at any of the episodes or movies in the same way ever again.
Maybe Indy's going to be all right?
Maybe he didn't get irradiated badly at all because of that fridge.
Maybe it's just crap writing where they put him into one-too-many crazy jeopardy that nobody can actually survive.
But most of all, I thought of John Wayne and Susan Hayward who were going to die from that sand created by such nuclear tests. ...Although to be honest, it is possible that six-packs-a-day of cigarettes was the real cause of John Wayne's cancers.

Absentee Fathers

One of the more cheesey story developments in this film is the appearance of Mutt Williams played by Shia Labeouf. His first shot is a straight lift off Marlon Brando in 'The Wild One' , complete with the bike, lather jacket and white cap - but no trophy. Yeah, I'm pretty sure George 'American Graffiti' Lucas taught him how to do the greaser schtick, but it still looks hammy.

Worse still is the notion that this Mutt is Indy's long lost son out of *gasp* Marion Ravenwood/Williams played by Karen Allen. It's daft. The story logic is that Indy and Marion never really got it on, but Marion was pregnant with Indy's child when she married some English guy called Colin. Isn't it every absentee father's dream that his son turns up at his front door? This is what I mean about fanciful - and much more so than the aliens in Roswell or the KGB agents in America.

What I mean by fanciful is this: if indeed Indiana Jones is a lifetime adventurer coming to the end of his career, the last thing he should get is a blast-from-the-past son. Being the adventurer that he is that we know and love, he should be the ultimate in absentee fathers who never sired a son. It's too nice a gift for a guy who turned his back on domesticity to fight Nazis and evil cults and whatnot. I guess it's my own prejudice that I find this aspect of the story to be more sentimental than I want it to be.

Really, Indiana Jones is the guy we all want to be; a loner, a cynic, an adventurer unfettered by worldly connections, seeker of Truth, punching out at the bad guys, swinging on his whip towards knowledge, running towards enlightenment... Giving him long lost family members is not doing him any favors.

Cults, Occult Cults And UFO Cults

Many of my friends who have seen the picture are shaking their heads at the UFO ending. I actually don't find it perplexing at all. I recently sat through all the previous Indy Jones films on DVD before going in to watch this one, and the one bit of detail that caught my ear was that in the first one, Indy gets approached by the US Army because he is also an expert in the occult. That's right. Not only is Indiana Jones an archaeology scholar, he's a student of the occult.

What does this mean? To my ears, it's the big nexus of mumbo-jumbo that brought up things like Madam Blavatzky and her Theosophists, Rudolf Steiner and his Anthroposophists, Gurgieff, Aleicester Crowley and the Golden Dawn and whatever else junk philosophy that was doing the rounds at the turn of the 20th Century.

It's actually the exact same kind of dross that fed into the core beliefs of Nazism and so there's an interesting mirroring there, where to beat the Nazis looking for the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail you need the same kind of scholar of nuttiness to figure out where they're going. Thus, in the makeup of the original Indiana Jones is a big chunk of mumbo-jumbo and junk philosophy. And where did these kinds of people all go? By 1957, they were into UFOs.

Hence it does not surprises me in the least bit that the 50s installment of Indiana Jones is about the Roswell crash and the drawings in Nasca and Pre-Columbian American Civilisation being linked to Aliens. It's exactly the right claptrap that Indy should be navigating. To be honest, I like it for that.

If there was one thing I really found hard to stomach in the Indiana Jones movies, it was the heavy duty Judeo-Christian mythology getting such validation through special (specious?) effects. A Universe where the Ark of the Covenant AND the Holy Grail exist and work as some kind of artefact is ipso-facto a Universe of the Judeo-Christian God. Even if 'Temple of Doom' side-tracks out to Hindu mysticism and Thugees, the tenor of these film has been a massive validation of the Bible. You'd almost think that Indiana Jones *would* discover Noah's Ark on top of Mount Ararat (and thank goodness they haven't done that story).

So in evolving/devolving to finding out that the Nasca Gods were trans-dimensional space aliens and that somehow their technology is linked to the Ark of the Covenant, then it seems to me, the logical answer is that the text is telling us that ancient Jews did not have a 'God' experience, but rather a 'Transdimensional Space Alien' experience instead. Suddenly the Judeo-Christian subtext is completely blown out of the entire series - and I have to say it pleases me greatly.

I've spoken to a few Christians about their responses to this film and yup, they're universally disappointed by the alien. They tell me that the ending destroys meaning for them, not just in this film but in the four films. Well of course they would be upset about it, but thanks to the banality of the aliens, I'm finding I can stomach the metaphysical content of the whole four films a lot better. Yay for the aliens!

A Word Of Advice To Mr. Spielberg

Dear sir,
As the adage goes, I liked your old stuff better than your new stuff.

The only exceptions I would make would be 'Schindler's List', 'Minority Report' and bits of 'A.I.'.
I actually thought you had 'lost' it. That you had somehow lost the quality in your directing that drew me to your films many years ago as a youngster. Dare I say, you were one of about 3-4 film makers that inspired me to want to become a film maker myself, so I do not say this lightly - I thought you had just let that talent fade away.

This film shows to me that this is not so. While you make a decent line in 'serious' films, I would contend you make an excellent line in entertainment films. This film is no exception. I understand you found it to be a little bit of a chore to go back to the style of director you were 20-odd years ago, but to be honest, this style kicks ass. Every angle, every move, every edit oozes with the style that once made us all feel 'wow'.

Pleasing crowds is not a mortal sin, and you sir are a fantastic director when it comes to that quality. I myself have very little of that quality in my temperament so I am envious of your fine instincts. Thus I would say to you, that if you want to keep making important movies, then that you should go back to making truly excellent entertainment, and not the merely good serious films. Therefore Mr. Spielberg, please go back to your roots, follow your bliss and don't try to be who you are not - in other words, please be this kind of director more often.

Kindest Regards,
Art Neuro

My Song Of The Week

How Many More Times

I've been working on this version for a few months now. Once again it features the amazing vocals of Dave M. from England.

Some technical notes...
The guitar riff parts are double-tracked Left & Right and were done on my Strat. Yes, if there is such thing as a very un-Led-Zep guitar, it's a Fender Stratocaster, but I thought I had to do something pretty different on some level to make my take on Zep stand out a bit as being different.

The middle section is a radical departure from the original. I tried to do something more like the original but I found it nigh impossible to pretend to be jamming. So I counted the bars and arranged something instead. What really makes it for me is how Dave M. tackles this part, so check it out!

Here it is.

Becoming Venezuela

A Conga Line Of Suck-Holes?

I note this article today with a bit of a laugh. Depends on how you look at it, Jennifer Hawkins' surprise win as Miss Universe has kind of *inspired* Australia to send its models to the Miss Universe pageant with the hope that something sticks.

Jennifer Hawkins may have got off lightly in a strapless number but her successor, Michelle Guy wasn't so lucky in 2005 in a Crocodile Dundee-inspired get-up.

Then there was last year's contestant, Kimberley Busteed, who paraded for an estimated television audience of 3 billion dressed as a Bondi lifesaver.

This year organisers opted to play it safe, calling on the sleek - and commercially savvy - designer Jayson Brunsdon - to create the costume for the 2008 Australian contestant, Laura Dundovic, to be worn at the finals in Vietnam on July 14.

Yesterday, Dundovic paraded the dress for the first time, a cascading organza number with a wooden boomerang neckpiece, which she described as "very comfortable".

The pageant experience is a first for the 21-year-old model and psychology student from Dural in Sydney's north-west, who was encouraged to enter by her modelling agency.

Dundovic told SiT she was hoping participating in the competition would lead to a media or television career.

And so it goes. Which reminds me of Venezuela, a nation which prides itself on winning such contests. Just looking at Wikipedia, I note that the leader board goes:

USA: 7
Puerto Rico: 5
Venezuela: 4
Sweden: 3
Japan, Australia, India, Trinidad&Tobago, Thailand, Finland, Philippines, Brazil: 2

A closer examination reveals that if you include the 2nd, 3rd and 4th runner ups, Venezuela comes a close second behind the USA. I guess there's a long way to go yet before we start producing the kind of Miss Universe types in the same league as those produced by the beauty pageant power house that is Venezuela.

Fat Cat

Apropos Of Nothing...

My parents own this incredibly fat cat. He weighs in at 7.5kg which in human terms would be about.. what? 185kg? The vet actually told them he needs to go on a diet so now he only eats lean mince beef from the organic butcher in Neutral Bay. That stuff is like $14.99/kilo. Go figure. The bastard is eating better food than me.

My Song Of The Week

Symbolism

Back when I was a High School kid, I had immense difficulty with English classes run by one Mr. Lucas. Until I met Mr. Lucas, my essays were fine and got good marks, but Mr. Lucas just didn't think what I had to write was any good. If anybody would be freaked out by the fact that I've made a partial living writing and getting paid for it, it would be Mr. Lucas without a shred of a doubt.

One of the big things he used to want us to write about was symbolism. As in "the madness of Lear in the heath scene is symbolic of the breakdown of order in Lear's universe," or "The most important symbol in '1984' is the omni-present screens which are symbolic of the ever-present power of the state apparatus," and so on.

Maybe I was a little obtuse, but I always thought symbolism and pointing to something because it was symbolic was a bit arbitrary. In fact I used to have this conversation a lot outside of English class with my fellow students in Mr. Lucas' class as to "what exactly does he mean, symbolic, and why should it be so important to go around pointing out symbolic bits in a book?"

Today, many years later and now that I have read a bit more, I would argue that symbolism still sucks as a critical tool. That is to say, you could says something was a simile, where the author likens something to something else; or it is a metaphor, where the author is trying to convey and essence of something from something else; or it is metonymy where something minor substitutes for the major characteristic of something.

But symbolism? What is that? It could be a substitution of meaning for anything by anything, and at best you are guessing at what the author thought is an important connection between two, unlike things. An extreme version of this might be 'The Outsider' by Albert Camus where the main character commits a murder and blames it on the sun. The symbolic school of criticism probably understands the sun's rays a symbol of God's judgment or the Devil's temptation or a break down in a conscience. Whatever the case may be, the reader is simply grasping at possibilities, but Camus chooses not to elaborate.
Orwell does in '1984'. O'Brien tells Winston that the future will be the little guy getting his face kicked in over and over and over again. The Jackboot is the symbol of the future. So is it really worth noting in an essay? I guess it is but it is a metaphor first and symbol second.

Take the picture of the girl with the tattoo above. The tattoo seems laden with *some* kind of meaning, but if you don't know what those elements mean, it's kind of a graphic gibberish featured on a nice flat tummy. However, it is easily (and much better) understood as the metaphor for the crass stupidity of contemporary youth.

In a similar vein, if King Lear is mad, isn't it just his madness and the storm, and the symbols are largely decoration and ornamentation? I've often pondered this over the years since High School - so I guess Mr. Lucas was a good teacher after all - but it doesn't change the fact that I still disagree with the way he wanted us to write about texts, all these years later.

Anyway, I did a collborative piece with a guy calling himself feenixx called 'Brute Cymbalism'.
My latest track is here.

News That's Fit To Abuse

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Oil And The Economy

Tell It Like It Is
Ross Gittins doesn't really write like a hard guy. So you take notice when you read criticism like this article.

I think I've stumbled on a new law of politics: the harder life becomes in this capitalist economy, the more our supposed leaders soft-soap us. The harsher it gets, the harder they try to persuade us we're living in a Sunday school where no one plays for keeps.

Take the carry-on about petrol prices. Neither side of politics is prepared to speak the obvious truth about them.

Instead we have them endlessly doing their I-feel-your-pain routines (which, of course, they don't because they're on high incomes and, in any case, have most of their travel costs picked up by the taxpayer).

There's little the politicians could or should do to reduce petrol prices, but you simply can't get them to admit it. Instead they pretend there's something. Brendan Nelson would cut the excise on petrol by five cents a litre tomorrow - if only he were in government.

Kevin Rudd will consider cutting the goods and services tax on the petrol excise - worth almost four cents a litre - and he'll let us know his decision in about 18 months' time.

What neither side will admit is that, because small cuts in petrol taxes would cost a fortune in lost revenue, they'd simply shift the problem elsewhere. And with prices changing so often, the relief they offered motorists would be forgotten within days.

It gets better too. Towards the end he has this to say about a carbon emissions trading scheme and how it was likely to impact petrol prices further:

The basic principle of such schemes is brutally simple: they force up the prices of fossil fuels so as to discourage us from using them. That's what Swan was refusing to admit in that interview.

It's possible, of course, the Government will lack the courage to include petrol in the trading scheme. But that would mean the price of electricity rose even more than otherwise. No coward's way out there. The necessary response to the present global rise in the price of petrol and to future price rises engineered in the cause of fighting climate change is the same: not so much driving less as using less petrol.

The first thing that means is moving to a more fuel-efficient car. But it also means making more use of public transport, bicycles and even shanks's pony.

Until recently, however, we've been doing just the reverse. Even as the price of petrol has risen by 45 per cent over the past five years, the price of new cars has fallen by 7 per cent (after allowing for the extra tricks each new model does), so we've been buying more of them.

In 2007, sales of sports utility vehicles were up 16 per cent, with sales of other cars up more than 6 per cent. Gas-guzzling sports utilities now account for about a quarter of total car sales. Including commercial vehicles, annual sales topped a record one million.

According to the CommSec car affordability index, it takes a worker on the average wage just over 32 weeks to buy a new Ford Falcon, the lowest reading in 24 years.

Over the four years to March 2007, the number of registered cars in Australia grew at the average rate of 2.5 per cent a year, taking the total to 11.5 million. Average fuel consumption improved only fractionally to 11.4 litres per 100 kilometres, but we now have 1.4 cars per household.

All that while petrol prices have been rising and politicians have been too lily-livered to warn us they have further to go. Only since the start of this year have rising petrol prices and interest rates obliged people to pull back.

New car sales are now falling and the quantity of petrol bought in the first three months of the year fell by more than 5 per cent.

And now we discover that people are piling into over-stretched public transport, catching our all-caring leaders quite off-guard.

Great leadership, chaps.

Some time ago, I made the very conscious decision to buy a 1-litre engine car. It felt STUPID in the context of Sydney car-culture but I had my reasons. I just didn't see petrol prices as ever coming down and so I thought heck, if I can't afford a hybrid, I'll get a small engine. After all, all I ever did was move myself and my partner around town. It was rare that I actually *needed* a larger capacity. Today, petrol prices are nearly 50% up from when I bought my little car. It hurts me too, but I can easily imagine what it must be like to be filling a 60litre tank for a 2.4litre engine car. If you're one of those people, I feel your pain too... not.

What I don't get is how people don't try to scale back their own fuel consumption given that 90% of domestic car use is urban transport of one person. The vast majority of the time you're sitting in traffic, idling your Turbo 4 or V6 or V8, trying to get to work or back home. Most people in Australia have way "too much car" for what they're doing. Instead, it's this infantile complaint that somehow petrol prices should come down through government intervention into the market place. Not only is it ignorant of the problem, it's completely myopic and self-serving.

The reality is, there's going to be more demand than supply of oil. Going forwards, prices are going to go up further for more reasons. The reality is, the lifestyle of burning petroleum in bulk to get around, just cannot be sustained into the future. The reality is, the worst of it hasn't even begun to kick in yet.
The fact that we will come to a point where one can't afford this stuff any more is just a fact of life. Like aging, or losing stuff. If people don't make adjustments for that reality, they must have the IQ of a dinosaur or the dodo.

UPDATE:
As if to underscore my point, I found this picture on a news site this morning.



There was also an article somewhere about people getting caught driving on transit lanes with a blow-up doll in the passenger seat. You'd think if you're going to go that far, maybe you should get a new car.

Movie Doubles

Novel Method

The idea of these Movie Double entries is to watch two movies in tandem and see if something comes out that wouldn't have come out otherwise. I don't know if this method is entertaining for you, the reader, so I'm sort of in a quandary as to whether I should continue with these. Maybe it's a daft way of watching movies, but I always like to hark back to the days when I'd go see a double-feature at the Valhalla. I used to dig the 'Blade Runner'-'Brazil' double as well as the 'Robot Monsters'-'Plan 9 From Outer Space' double. I always walked out with a head full of thoughts trying to get my head around ideas.

It helps if the two films have some kind of thread that binds them together, whether in subject or theme or maker. There's actually no rhyme or reason in watching these two films back to back, but for the fact that they were out late last year at about the same time and are period pieces set in England. Really, I watched them back to back for no reason whatsoever, but thought it might be interesting to see what I can write, connecting these two disparate films.

England Fighting - 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' and 'Atonement'

What do we make of period pieces? There's a fine line between a historic epics like say, 'Quo Vadis' and 'Gladiator' and then literary adaptation such as 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'The English Patient'. That is to say, once a screenwriter gets hold a of piece of history to fictionalise, then, facts and sequences of events tend to make way for a 'good story'. On the other hand, when fine works of literature are converted to screen entertainment, the screenwriter tends to get a free hand in short-cutting somewhere around 100,000 words to squeeze out a 25,000 word screenplay.

The previous installment of 'Elizabeth', played by Cate Blanchett was a rather discomforting affair. She was great, but boy did they get a lot of things wrong. So I actually dreaded seeing the sequel, if nothing but for the sake of my own sense of history. Yes, Cate Blanchett was amazing in the previous film, and she was genuinely unlucky to run into Gwyneth Paltrow that year who played Lady Viola in 'Shakespeare in Love' at the Oscars. All I do remember is the furrowed, perplexed expression Cate Blanchett wore through the previous film.

The big surprise is to that her reprise of the role is actually very pleasing. This time around, she comes at the Virgin Queen with a variety of moods and expressions. I know the critical reception wasn't as good with this film as the previous one, but Cate Blanchett really is incredible in this film. As for the historical inaccuracies... Where do we begin? About the only thing that is right is that Walter Raleigh married Bess Throckmorton in secret, thus bringing down the wrath of the Queen. When Raleigh enters the court and presents potatoes and tobacco to the court, it's nothing short of Scriptwriters'-Shorthand in trying to telescope way too much story into one scene. The scenes in which he plays an action hero against the Armada is pure fantasy beyond the wildest of speculations - and it looks nowhere near as exciting as the climax of the 'Pirates of the Carribean' movies..

The main tenet of the film, which tries to present Queen Elizabeth as a queen presiding over a tolerant society is probably the high point. The England that Cate Blanchett's Queen reigns over is a far more heroic, passionate and liberal England than any that I've actually seen in real life or fiction. Which is why it is funny to watch it back to back with 'Atonement'.

The central event in 'Atonement' is set in the pre-WWII England, and the consequences play out during the war and even down to the present day. The England that the men fight for in that film is essentially class-ist, strangely insular and provincial and downright xenophobic. Most of the war action takes place with the leading man Robbie walking across they north of France towards Dunkirk with two other soldiers, followed by a spectacular staging of the withdrawal at Dunkirk. The English soldiers are in disarray and hardly seem proud or confident.

England at war must be one of the most common settings in fiction, I imagine. Think of the wars that England has fought, and there must be a hundred stories one could build in. Falklands War, WWII, WWI, the Boer War, the Crimean War, The Opium War, The Hundred Years War, the Civil War, the War of Independence in the Americas, the War against the USA in 1812, the Napoleonic Wars, the list goes on and on! So it strikes one as somewhat funny that Cate Blanchett's Queen Elizabeth, dressed in gleaming plate armour (+3 no doubt!), and makes a speech that is a little parody of the Henry V's St Crispin's Day speech. Furthermore, you get the feeling that the English are not yet done fighting, even today. One imagines that as long as there's a Monarch, England is always going to be a potential Imperialist power.

If 'Elizabeth; The Golden Age" is a retelling of Henry V, then 'Atonement' then seems like a retelling of 'Brideshead Revisited' and 'The Go-Between' but with much less humour or charm. While it is devoid of the Anglican-Catholic conflict which runs through 'Brideshead Revisited' (and interestingly 'Elizabeth' as well), the key event in the film is the false accusation of pedophilia, and the subsequent humiliation and incarceration and class issues then ensue. The whole thing is so low-key in its tone, it's the definition of the 'Low Mimetic' mode of fiction. Amazingly, 'Atonement' garnered more critical acclaim than the High Mimetic 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age', and it is most probably due to this mode.

Frock Opera As Genre
People laugh at the notion of a Rock Opera. People sneer at Space Opera. How is it that you stick some actresses in period frocks and smocks, and a film suddenly gets a more serious look? What is that?

Po-Mo and Pomo-Sexuality

I have huge reservations about the way the narrative is couched in 'Atonement'. It's one of the weird developments in fiction that the narrative is discredited by the narrator. 'Atonement' essentially has the character who is revealed to be a narrator tell us that what we saw is a lie. That within the narrative space, the event never took place.

I guess you can't really haul a fiction writer for creating a fiction within a fiction within a fiction, but this is a bit more dissatisfying than the puppet-play within the play within the film of Stoppard's movie version of 'Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead' - that one is actually funny. This one elicits more of a "Huh?"

There have been a number of films to play with the notion of an 'ending'. 'The Piano' famously sports a two-in-one ending where, she dies, but she also survives. It's clever and contributes greatly to the achievements of that film's immense agenda, the destruction of the patriarchal certainty in the narrative - but it is also the same ending as 'Wayne's World'. In Wayne's World', we are treated to three endings: The Happy, The Sad and the Scooby-Doo endings. By positing the different endings, both films tell us that narrative fiction relies on audience understanding of narrative tone, whether it may be happy or sad. We understand these things with terms such as Tragedy (Sad Ending) and Comedy (Happy ending).

With 'Atonement', however we reach the apotheosis where the narrative voice tells the audience front up that they lied. The scene we just saw did not take place, but is a scene that was envisaged to make up for the fact that it was never able to happen in the narrative space of the characters. In other words, the most important scene was "just a dream".

What's particularly annoying is that the whole film begins to tackle a very important subject- whether the testimony of a thirteen year old should be taken at face value when it comes to sexuality - and then having couched the necessary pre-conditions to tackle it, it simply runs away from the topic. Instead, it chooses to try and dazzle us with its narrative nous and fashionable disruption. It's a crock.

In recent days we've seen just hysterical the public can get about the sexuality of a thirteen year old girl. So it is understandable that when push came to shove, the author didn't really want to address the full ramifications of his own set-up. And I do ascribe it to Ian McEwan, the author of the book, because it's not as if I sit around thinking about plots to do with 13 year old girls' nascent sexuality.

So here we have a story that sets up the possibility of really coming at a subject that is troubling our society and cops out by essentially saying, "girls lie, authors lie, there is no certainty in any testimony." I'm not sure Bill Henson would've liked that as a legal defense had he been made to go to court. Furthermore, what is known as the 'Greater Epistemological Doubt' that presides over this notion is something of a white elephant. Anything can be subjected to the GED and end up wanting. At best, it was good when Descartes was figuring on the The Cogito', but it's an outdated tool.

The 'Atonement' then is hardly an atonement at all. If you can't provide a useful thought to the discourse, but want to look just look like you are, then get out of the damn room, I say. We have real cases, real people in our own world who are struggling with this very issue.

While we're on the subject of this gender-politic issue, I guess it should be pointed out that 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' has two distinctly PoMo-Sexual moments: one is the bath scene, where Elizabeth is in the bath with court lady Bess in waiting is perhaps a little too close, with plenty of lesbian overtones. The other is obvious gender-bending of Elizabeth in plate mail armour, but we're at a point in history that we don't even notice the gender-bending but as mere affectation of the scene on the screen. Aren't we so fabulously decadent?; aren't we so open-minded and accepting now?

You wonder why I was at such odds with the prevalent ideological critical position, back at my film school... not. :)

Most Movie Critics Are Idiots

Between the two films, which one gets the higher critical raves? 'Atonement' (82%) seems to be the hands down winner over 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' (33%). You definitely wonder at the critics who fell for the dumb trick rather than the film that at least fulfilled its narrative responsibilities to its audience fairly.

Movie Doubles

Memories Of Dark Frustration

A long time back, I was a disgruntled university student, taking the train in everyday for 45minutes, and then arriving early for lectures with nothing to do but sit around and read. I was disgruntled because I was in the company of cultural munchkins and ignorant hicks who thought they were elite because... well, because they got the marks to get into Med School.

While some of my friends were off studying really interesting things with interesting people, I was sitting around surrounded by morons who thought a good university education was a vocational training in doctor-ing. I don't know what I expected of university but it wasn't that; and so I began reading books that had little to do with Med School and a lot to do with history and literature. I guess I started giving myself an arts education.

One of the books I read in the train that year was 'Beowulf' - the others were 'Image Music and text' by Roland Barthe and Goethe's 'Faust' Parts 1 and 2. I really should've been studying Arts. Anyay, one day I was spotted reading 'Beowulf' in the early morning before lectures started and I was asked by a medical student, "what is that?"
"It's the oldest piece of Anglo-Saxon literature we know of," I replied.
"What's an Anglo-Saxon?" he asked.
I rolled my eyes and went back to reading.

Myth of Redemptive Violence - 'Beowulf and Grendel' & 'Beowulf'

Gotta love Viking movies, even though they get made so rarely.
'Beowulf' is a primal story about a pretty primal bunch of characters with immediate needs, but it somehow got this thin glaze of Christian respectability as it came down to us in writing. Much like the Icelandic sagas, the story of how Beowulf kills Grendel, Grendel's mother and then a dragon, forms the pinnacle of Dark Ages narrative. If you really want to know what dark ages meant, well, you just have delve into the crazy world of 'Beowulf'. John Gardner who wrote his fabulist work 'Grendel' based on 'Beowulf' also discusses the poem extensively in 'The Art of Fiction' . The three monsters form a triptych of deeds that rationalises kingship. So Beowulf killing Grendel represents strength and courage while the slaying of Grendel's mother represents tenacity and wisdom and so on.

In bringing this story up to date then, the triptych is inviting as a three-act play, but has the fundamental problem of distribution of events. That is to say, Grendel is the main monster - but if he gets slain in the first act, what the hell are you selling in the rest of the two acts? John Gardner's book 'Grendel' solves this problem by making it solely about Grendel and his relationship with his mother and the world, fashioning it into a tragedy; there is no dragon.

In 'Beowulf and Grendel', the third part about Beowulf's kingship and the dragon are discarded, and the events focus upon the 2 monsters. In so doing, the film sets itself up as a feud between the family of the trolls and Hrothgar's Mead Hall. It's an interesting choice because it harks to the Icelandic Sagas where family feuds form the crux of the conflict, and these Danes surely are somewhat Viking-like. Stellan Skarsgaard plays Hrothgar in this version, which is interesting because he also played the evil Saxon King in 'King Arthur' - effectively, he carries an interesting baggage into this role. The brooding Nordic guy with enough angst to last a career in Bergman movies (if only he were still making them), trudges around dissolute and devastated by what Grendel has wrought.

In 'Beowulf', the three stories are tied together in Freudian re-imagining. Grendel is Hrothgar's son by the seductress monster played by Angelina Jolie. The dragon in turn is the monster sired by Beowulf himself by the same seductress monster. Even unto the end, Beowulf's successor is tempted by the seductress monster, bobbing in the waves. Hrothgar is played by Anthony Hopkins, and it's an entirely different kind of despair. It is a the despair of regret, because he is wracked by his own deeds. Grendel will kill everybody else but Hrothgar because Hrothgar is his father.

Thus the stage is set for the famous conflict where Beowulf ends up ripping of Grendel's arm. In the former film, Grendel is trapped and so, cuts off his arm to escape. In the latter film, Beowulf traps Grendel in the door and tears off the arm - which is reminiscent of how Grendel dies in Gardner's book. In this film, it is Beowulf who severs his right arm, to get at the heart of the dragon, making an interesting allusion to the former film.

In neither film does violence really answer the cycle of events in which it takes place, and this is perhaps the most important aspect of both films. The point of the poem is that violence does solve a lot of problems, as long as it is the King laying down the law as he sees fit. Being post-monarchic films and even post-democratic films to a degree, neither film backs this position. The violence meted out by all parties is part of a narrative that brings on a further cycle of violence. This is perhaps inevitable in a post-Post-Modern kind of environment where we struggle with our conscience to support any war.

Imagining Beowulf, The Character
This Beowulf text then is a pretty interesting challenge to put on film. What can we say about the characterisation in these two films?

Gerard Butler is better known for his portrayal of Leonidas-With-A-Scottish-Brogue in '300'. Yes, he of "this is Sparta! (kick)" fame plays Beowulf in 'B&G'. He plays a Beowulf who seems to be the calm centre of a moderately hysterical Dark Ages. Butler's Beowulf does seem to bother with the Norse Gods or the Christian God that is being peddled around. He walks around the beautiful, yet sullen landscape, brooding with questions and a muscle-bound fury. On the whole the character seems way too contemporary in his insight to really convince us. Yes, Beowulf must have some kind of insight into the monster to defeat it - that's par for the course - but you really shouldn't have a Beowulf who is worried about the cycle of violence. It's culturally implausible for a Germanic tribesman of 500AD to be worried about that.

The Beowulf in the other text is a complex amalgam of characteristics, created in the 3D realm. The action is motion-captured from the actor with the voice; these are played by Ray Winstone who does not look much like an action hero, but has a fantastic bearing and voice. The actually character is a 3D creation who looks one part New Age Hippie, one Part Surf-Nazi and one part Swedish porno stud. The combination is a staggering, phantasmagorical 'performance' that is perhaps unlike anything else in cinema.

Phantasmagorical is in fact the best defining adjective for the latter film in 3D. Everything has an overblown quality, from the props to the dress to the sets to the actual monsters themselves. Which i all a way of saying, you never quite believe what you're seeing, but viscerally you are moved to respond to the fast-paced action.

What the earlier film lacks in action, it actually has subtlety in performances that you can watch and ponder. The pace is slower and meditative as Grendel stays aloof and intractable. We see the frustration in Beowulf. The latter is more like the original text where Beowulf essentially rocks up in the boat and starts setting about killing the monster. Indeed, Beowulf's arrival in the latter film is a bit like a rendering of 'The Immigrant Song' by Led Zeppelin. The overblown quality leaves you chuckling.

Explaining The Monsters From The Id

In the original text, there is scant mention of Grendel or her mother having any kind of motivation. Indeed, the hall mark of these old Germanic and Norse texts is that the characters are largely existential an what they do are intrinsic to their beings. Thus Beowulf is Beowulf *because* he slays monsters heroically. Grendel is a monster so he does as monsters do. Hrothgar laments, but his essential characteristic is that he is a great king. Yet there are monsters.

Just where do these monsters come from? What motivates them?
These are the very questions the film makers must have had to address, and the two films demonstrate together the power of modern analysis. John Gardner's book 'Grendel' principally concerns itself with delineating and describing the monster's side of the story. In 'B&G', Grendel and his father (a character they created to set up the revenge angle) are trolls. Grendel's mother is some kind of preternatural monster, and there is no dragon, whereas in 'B', the monsters are somehow intrinsically related to the claims of kingship.

What's particularly interesting is the Freudian take in 'B', where Hrothgar begets Grendel and Beowulf begets a dragon. But there is a mention of another dragon that Hrothgar slays for Beowulf's father. The logic seems to be that Kingship begets it own monsters, in a classic 'return of the repressed'. What's more, the monster generation is intrinsic to Kingship as the slaying ad the wars that come with statehood. not only that, it seems that these terrors of the monsters come out exactly because of the 'mother-fucking' (pun intended) deeds of kings. It's actually quite brilliant how the film unites the raison d'etre of these various monsters.

All this is in stark contrast to the rather prosaic revenge story in 'B&G'. Grendel-as-troll is probably a more medieval take on a Dark Age description. The Icelandic sagas have trolls. Grettir slays one in his saga. So in working back to a more Norse sort of understanding of Beowulf, it makes more sense to have Grendel as a troll. beyond which, there is just a standard kind of motivation that would appear in any old film with any old villain.
I guess it's still better than the Dark Ages version of "He's a monster, that's what he does"; but it is inferior to the brilliant insight of the latter film.

Having said that, there is something direct and visceral in the scene where Beowulf slays Grendel's mother in 'B&G'. Apart from the Gothic horror of a monster mother, there is the satisfying hewing of the monster with a two-handed sword. It's a little too simple, given who she is, but you do feel the grunt in the strike as well as the satisfaction of slaying the monster. It is all very psycho-sexual an every bit as profound as sleeping with the Angelina Jolie incarnation of the monster.

Eroticism Of The Doomed

That body you see of Angelina Jolie, while modeled on her, is not really her. The perfection of the flesh strikes the viewer with an eerie realism amidst the phantasmagoria of 'B'. By contrast, the Mother in 'B&G' is just a yucky gothic monster. Yet both films are infused with the massive oedipalised text, and somehow sexuality and degeneracy as well as Beowulf's astounding prowess seemed to be tied in.

In 'B&G', Beowulf sleeps with the witch who was 'taken' from behind by the troll. It's pretty blunt in its presentation, but there you see, Selma the witch, having sex with the Grendel troll, which segues into the one, wide shot offering that is the entire sex scene between Selma and Beowulf. Clearly the two sexual events are intrinsically linked.

What we see in 'B' is the big come on by the Angelina Jolie Mother, full of nudity and innuendo, only for it to fade to black. Not that I'm expecting graphic depictions, but the point is, the sexuality of these characters is vital to how the texts hang together. I sort of imagine what the response would be if we could just tell a medieval Angle or a Saxon that we think it's about the Oedipal complex. Just the thought is pretty funny.

What we learn from both films is that indeed Freud was probably right in that the Oedipal complex ties together notions of love, death sex and marriage, a lot more than we thought. Beowulf doesn't just tell us a story about a montser-slaying hero, it gives us an understanding of how such undertakings are linked into our libido and sense of death. When you watch these two film versions in tandem, you get a sense f why this story has stuck around for such a long time.

Henson Case Collapses

So Much For That
The NSW Police dropped their case against Bill Henson. While the ins and outs of it are tedious (yet worth considering), the bottom line is that they wouldn't be able to make the charges stick. Which is about the length of the arm of the Law should be.

The Australian had this take in response to the case being dropped.

NSW Law Society president Hugh Macken said the Henson photographs did not offend the Crimes Act because they did not show children in a sexual context.

"There was never any prospect that these photos would fit the definition of child pornography and the decision of the DPP vindicates that position," Mr Macken said. "Nudity is not obscenity."

Gallery owner Roslyn Oxley thanked the many people who had offered support to her gallery and Henson over the past two weeks.

Ms Johnston told The Weekend Australian last night she was one of the three people who issued a complaint to police about Henson's photographs, and she intended to continue her fight against state and federal laws that allowed images of naked underage girls to be taken and circulated as art.

"It's just incomprehensible to us that, as a nation, we don't have laws that protect our children from commercial sexual exploitation," she said. "We all understand artistic protection is important - we get that. But child protection is more important."

Ms Johnston plans to consult legal advisers to examine the legislation and lobby for change.

NSW Premier Morris Iemma thanked police for their investigative work.

"My personal opinion remains clear: these photographs crossed the line and were inappropriate," he said. "I can't understand how a parent could allow a child to be photographed in this way."

It's been a weird week for me as well, in as much as I've had some discussions with people who are on the Anti-Child-Abuse crusade. Obviously this Ms Johnston's a bit of a crusader. If she thinks nudes are 'commercial sexual exploitation' I think she's going to have a tough time convincing the legislative assembly to change laws. In turn, she is suggesting the Censorship Board has no idea what it is doing, when in fact it is her, and the crusaders who are proceeding with insufficient understanding of art.

That is not to say artists are not caring about issues in our society. The prevalence of pedophilia as we've witnessed this week in the news actually does not correlate with art and nude works; and conversely, it's not like these people are going out hard buying up works by Bill Henson. They probably didn't know he existed until this last fortnight.

It's not that artists are saying children do not need protection or that they are not concerned about child abuse. It's just that when you fly in the face of thousands of years of art history and try and classify nudes as 'commercial sexual exploitation', you're going to be told you are dead wrong.

If it were the case that models who posed for Bill Henson's work were coming forward with allegations of abuse, that would be a different thing entirely. The absence of such claims kind of puts the onus on the law to prove *something* of a case out of the pictures alone - and that part of it actually has well-established social norms and conventions. If anything, this is a fight picked by the Anti-Child-Abuse crusaders with the help of wowsers, and does not say any thing about art or artists in Australia. If anything, none of this brouhaha makes our society look *good*. The fact is, there were 70 pedophiles brought in for questioning over an internet ring. People are committing suicide and politicians are goading them to do so. Real-life child-abuse crimes are going down and it's going down in places that have nothing to do with contemporary art. All this paints a pretty lousy picture of who we are as a nation.