THE MONTHLY ESSAYS

“Never before have I found myself so immersed in an art form that made me question just what it is to be Australian, prompting me to ask of these films – do they really reflect our culture? While watching practically every movie, I found myself wondering why we tell our stories the way we do. There were also moments when I pondered just how the damn film got made, and why. Sometimes the only thing that stopped me from walking out was a fascination akin to the morbid curiosity that makes people slow down to look at car accidents.”

In “Nowhere Near Hollywood”, Louis Nowra explores the year in Australian film, identifying a preoccupation with heavy themes and an excess of earnestness as the possible causes of our dismal box-office sales. Nowra suggests that a few Hollywood tricks could relieve our cinema of its unrelenting glumness, particularly if we embraced the imaginative potential of the face and afforded our actors some glamour.

*

“It’s a particular moment between the grim 1930s and the shiny ’60s that enables these boys time to float and graft their way around a port city stoked with music and energy. And even at these tender ages, with members drifting in and out of the band, they must have known or sensed that there was something magical in the way they played and sang.”

In “From Mop Tops to Moustaches”, Robert Forster traces the evolution of The Beatles, mapping their career through individual songs and albums and considering how their work has been received at different times. With the understanding of a skilled songwriter, Forster takes the opportunity of the recently remastered Beatles catalogue to revisit one of the most revolutionary discographies of the last century.

*

“The end of the boom was less a sudden bursting of an asset bubble than a long period of gradual but relentless entropy to the point where, in January of this year, Access Economics identified New South Wales as having the worst state economy in the country; a wooden spoon traditionally presented to Tasmania or South Australia. It wasn’t all bad, though. In July the finance boffins predicted the situation would soon stabilise because … ‘The state simply won’t get any worse, it’s fallen so far. When you are already in the gutter it is hard to fall much further.’”

In “Failed State”, John Birmingham insightfully explores the endemic problems that plague New South Wales, to its economic, commercial and political detriment. Birmingham charts the state’s descent into recession, while also discussing its widespread institutional corruption; with so many self-serving interests in play, there is very little room left for those that would attempt to rectify the situation.

THE NATION REVIEWED

“By September 2008, the board was in breach of bank covenants. By October, the value of net assets had fallen to $126 million. Jensen had not been swift to grasp what was going on. ‘It was in November that I got the first inkling of the magnitude of what had happened to our investments,’ he said. ‘Each successive month seemed to bring worse news.’ … For the second time in 20 years, the diocese sold out at the bottom of the market.”

In the first Monthly Comment, David Marr examines the high-risk financial tactics of the Sydney diocese of the Anglican Church and the policies of its archbishop, Peter Jensen. Marr notes that the enormous losses recently suffered – not the first as a result of investment in the commercial sector – are representative of a brazen attitude towards leveraged borrowing and an uncritical “culture of ‘forgiveness’”, even when things go very wrong.

*

“We are in Asia, and our future depends on our engagement with it. But we see ourselves and are seen by others as the local champions of Western values and assumptions. We are America’s closest ally in Asia, and rely on them for our security. But will that always be the case? Might China soon be Australia’s most important international relationship? And if so, how would we manage it?”

In the second Monthly Comment, Hugh White argues that China is now pivotal to the ongoing stability of the international financial system and that this, along with the country’s swift political ascendancy, demands a re-evaluation of how Australia interacts with it. White posits that Kevin Rudd must overcome his fear of engaging with China – both politically and strategically – and that he must initiate a shift in our self-understanding from West to East.

*

Plus, in “Pigs Might Fly”, Amanda Lohrey ponders the morally troubling – yet undeniably inviting – decadence of a designer butcher in Sydney; and in “Dead, Wrapped in Cardboard”, Benjamin Law discovers an environmentally friendly way to go.

ARTS & LETTERS

“With Bright Star, Campion rescues Fanny from the eclipse caused by her lover’s posthumous fame, restoring her as the star that burned brightest in Keats’s firmament. We get to know the famous poet through Fanny’s eyes – not the other way around, as history would have it.”

In “Bright Stars”, Sophie Gee revisits the relationship between the great Romantic poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, the “dearest Girl” he fell in love with three years before his death. Gee reflects on the figure of Brawne, as depicted in Keats’s final correspondence and in Jane Campion’s film, Bright Star. Gee argues that, despite its beauty, the film misrepresents the relationship and Brawne herself, with Abbie Cornish’s robust power unable to capture the fragility of the historical figure.

*

“The Australian Ugliness is actually a condemnation of the Australian prettiness. The vice it castigates is Featurism, which – according to Boyd – flinches from utility and camouflages everything in a layer of decorative kitsch that passes for beauty. A coffee table masquerades as a boomerang, and ballerinas sprinkle stardust on doormats.”

In “Coming of Age”, Peter Conrad reflects upon Robin Boyd’s seminal book  The Australian Ugliness, both as he experienced it 50 years ago when it was first published, and as it reads now alongside all that has changed in this country. He praises the ambition of the work and Boyd’s compelling understanding of architecture as a measurement of our relationship to nature, a “calibration of our position in space”.

*

“‘We were vegetarians who from time to time ate meat.’ It was only when Foer was to become a father that he decided to resolve the question of diet one way or the other. A friend said to him, ‘Everything is possible again.’ Foer felt he needed to decide ‘what story to tell’ his child. To do that, he set out on the adventure that became this book.”

In “Cold Turkey”, Peter Singer dissects Jonathan Safran Foer’s new work, Eating Animals. He enjoys the personal, anecdotal style in which Foer forces the reader to contemplate the often-unseen implications of their meat consumption and praises the aims of the book. Singer engages with the substance of Foer’s arguments about the meat industry and critically reveals the confusion between animal-welfare principles and climate-change concerns that lies at the heart of his environmental discussion.

*

Plus, in “Neon Statements”, Justin Clemens discusses Joseph Kosuth’s role in the development of conceptual art ahead of the artist’s first solo exhibition in Australia; and in “Daytime Nightmares”, Robert Dessaix reviews two novels by Nobel Prize winner Herta Müller, The Land of Green Plums and The Passport.