Theatre, Television, Discernment and The Emperor’s New Clothes

Perhaps this is the sort of image your mind conjured

Consider for a moment your conception of the sort of person who would typically watch a lot of television. Personally I would think of your typical television viewer as a very average sort of person: not overly intellectual, not on the cutting edge of topicality, lacking awareness of important contemporary issues like post-ethnicity and moral transcendentalism.

If you were forced to conjure an image of this person you would probably think of a single guy around his thirties who wears only shirts, from a clothing store whose demographic aim is quite clearly obnoxious teenage boys, with ambiguously malicious or crude slogans, is either slightly balding or covered in acne, not morbidly obese but could use a bit of exercise. Or perhaps your mind produces an image of a tired middle aged housewife who lives for The View and adores Oprah.

No-one wants to be perceived as fitting within the television watchers stereotype, there’s a couple of things people can do to avoid this. Sometimes they claim to watch only the non-commercial networks (In Australia ABC and SBS are the favoured choices, usually people engaging in this method of excusing/justifying their viewing habits will allude to obscure late night programming that they hope you haven’t seen or heard of) other times they claim to watch trashy reality (complete with dubious and mostly irrelevant allusion to dystopian literature by George Orwell) for their fill of ironic merrymaking and as a means of keeping the sardonic edge of their wit sharp by constantly refining it through sarcastic interjections throughout the programs.

However, the most effective method of shaking the television watchers stereotype is to go to the theatre; no not the cinema the theatre. You know where artistic people dressed in black skivvies act out fragmented plotlines documenting the fractured quality of the contemporary human condition (or something similarly inaccessibly arty).

If you somehow manage to mention to someone that fact that you regularly attend theatre they will instantly assume that your tastes in all areas are more refined than they are in actuality. Theatre here doesn’t mean mean smash hit musicals like Wicked or Mama Mia or rehashing of Andrew Lloyd webber classics (don’t get me wrong here those shows are great, Jesus Christ Superstar is seriously amazing, they just don’t earn artistic credibility as effectively as their less successful counterparts). It means fringe and alternative, shows by companies that have obscure titles that serve as a wry little joke that only the company director appreciates; though this doesn’t stop him from smiling an annoyingly quirky smile every time the name is mentioned.

This is why many people go to plays, it’s not because they like them, it’s because they’re trying to appear edgy and artistic. The people who produce live theatre know this so they create works that are increasingly unpalatable and obscure to feed people’s desire to disassociate from the mainstream.

If we’re honest we could all say that the first play we saw left us confused and dissatisfied. In retrospect we justify this sour aftertaste in terms of enigma and say things like ‘Oh Brechtian theatre is an acquired taste.’ When what we really mean is, ‘Until I got cluey and read a synopsis of the key themes of the play I was seeing  before going to the show I was completely lost by what all the arty/intellectual people were going on about at interval.’ (I’m currently working on an article on how to impress people with intelligent half time discourse so stay tuned!)

So what can we take from this, I think we can safely say that a lot of people who go to plays either don’t like or don’t understand them.

Why do they go then? This is a question that has plagued me for years, I have gradually been developing a theory that explains people’s continued attendance at these self-indulgent exercises in fringe and independent theatre, beyond merely wanting to appear intellectual or artistic. I like to think of this peculiar phenomenon as similar to that which occurs in the fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes.

In this fairy tale the basic premise is that the king commissions a group of tailors to make him a fantastic set of clothes for his birthday. These men aren’t in fact tailors but conmen who set about to exploit the system by taking the exorbitant amounts of money designated for the purchase of material for the kings set of clothes and pocketing it. Rather than spending the money on material the employ various methods of persuasion and suggestion to create a paradigm of thought in which anyone who can’t see the kings clothing supposedly ‘lacks wisdom.’ In doing so they take away their responsibility to produce articles of fine clothing and instead rely on the assumption that no-one viewing the king’s clothes will be willing to concede lack of wisdom.

The Emperor was unwilling to realise the fallacy of his clothing

In the same way many independent theatrical companies have taken the responsibility of producing profound content and thrown it back in the face of the audience. Often, rather than a thoughtfully crafted theatrical journey that subtly and insightfully explores whatever issue the play happens to be dealing with, the audience is presented with an incoherent series of scenes with very little interconnectivity, or a convoluted allegory or super-metaphor that somehow attempts to allude to or represent every current topical issue imaginable but only actually manages to become a confusing puzzle where the audience is left with their minds aching like they’ve spent their evening simultaneously trying to solve difficult Sudoku and cryptic crosswords with beer goggles on and a siren blaring loudly in the background.

Just like with the king’s clothes no-one is willing to state bluntly that theatre of this sort is laughable, self-indulgent whimsical to the point of inaccessibility and pretentious in almost every way. So we get people going to plays even though they don’t like them because no-one is willing to point the finger and say ‘look at the king’s bare genitals.’

Personally I think the aforementioned television watchers stereotype is wrong, I think the average person who watches television is far more discerning than they’re often credited for. Many pieces of contemporary theatre would fail abysmally if they were ever translated into a television program they simply wouldn’t have the pace, the quality scripting or the relevance necessary to adequately interest and engross the notoriously click-happy television audience.

This sentiment is brilliantly surmised by a statement that one of my friends once whispered to me during a particularly pretentious performance (that if memory serves me correctly involved four people speaking internal monologues  simultaneously in such a way that it was impossible to follow any one of the four the result of which was a strong desire for the show to be over) he said to me something along the lines of ‘This rubbish wouldn’t even make it onto ABC2 at three in the morning and we paid 45 bucks to get in here,  we could watch Dylan Moran or Noel fielding on DVD at home for free.’

I’m not saying that all contemporary or non-naturalistic theatre is pretentious rubbish, in fact there’s a lot I really enjoy (shameless plug: if you ever get a chance to see Ying Tong a surrealist comedy documenting the mental breakdowns of Spike Milligan the writer of the goon show, see it you will never regret it and it might be the greatest piece of theatre you ever see I know it was for me), I’m just suggesting that perhaps we should collectively be a little more discerning and willing to recognise the kings nakedness and say at interval ‘this play is garbage, the acting is bad, the plot makes no sense why don’t we go home and watch the Fawlty Towers box set.’

Vermillion Murmurs: Half a day in the making

This might seem odd but earlier today me and some good friends had nothing to entertain ourselves with so we decided to make a really bad amateur horror film using only my digital camera and household items.

We set out on the creative endeavor with no real plan, not even some scribbled notes, just some vague ideas of the sorts of images we’d like to include. An hour later we thought we’d have enough footage to work with, we didn’t know how the footage would fit together but we thought we’d be able to thread the random images together using the age old technique of filling in exposition textually using title screens. An hour or so of editing later this is our finished product:

Parallels between Hamlet and the Lion King: Part One

Has anyone ever noticed that Walt Disney borrowed substantially from Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the creation of the Lion King? At first this suggestion might seem outlandish, and one is tempted to explain any similarity away in terms of superficiality and inherent similarities of many plotlines. However upon examination of the correlation of characters, plot and symbolism it becomes clear that the similarities are far more than cursory. Clearly the parallels are contrived and intentional.

‘So where are these supposed parallels?’ I hear you ask. The first of the parallels is the most obvious: plot. The fundamental premise of each work is identical. In Hamlet we see political unrest following the mysterious death of a monarch, it is later revealed that the king was sleeping by Claudius’s (his brother) and the ghost of old hamlet charges young hamlet with the task of avenging his murder through killing his uncle and reclaiming the throne of Denmark that was rightfully his.

Additionally hamlet is profoundly disturbed by the fact that his mother is intimately involved with the lecherous satyr Claudius. This existing angst combines with the revelation of the fact that Claudius had in fact killed his father and forms the basis of a series of contradictions and subjectivities that eventually engulf hamlet in a swamp of indecision. The reader of the play is then confronted with a further three and a half acts of metaphysical contemplation, moralizing and philosophy revolving primary around the issue of the incongruence of Hamlet’s motivation to act on his filial obligation and his actual ability to act. Procrastination and action are examined and hamlet finds them both paradoxically inhabiting him. In the culminate moments of the play hamlet finds himself acting on his obligation not by choice but because his hand was forced, sadly however, he dies doing so and the kingdom is inherited by Fortinbras.

The same elements of plot drive the Lion King. The story begins preceding the death of the monarch so the viewer is given an insight into the benevolence of Mufasa’s rule. This glimpse serves the purpose of illustrating Scar’s inability to effectively manage the complexity of the ecological microcosm of pride rock.

Scar is intensely jealous of his brother who like Old Hamlet was a much-loved benevolent father figure to the people. As such scar concocts a plan to induce a stampede whereby Mufasa would be deposed as leader (on account of his being dead) thus ensuring Scar’s ascendance to the throne. Like Hamlet Simba is initially unaware of the fact that scar facilitated the events that led to his father’s death and this dramatic revelation has a similar effect on samba to it does on hamlet, his conception of reality and the natural order are shattered and he is forced to undergo a journey to find himself again.

Given the media, Samba’s journey is less figurative than Hamlet’s and he geographically travels and experiences new things a means of illustrating his growth as a person. Simba’s forays into the madcap world of Timon and pumbaa parallels Hamlet’s descent into madness, this inference is based on the similar developmental bearing of both the effect of the radical ‘no worries’ philosophy on Simba and Hamlet’s feigned ‘antic disposition’ on Hamlet’s expanding conception of the world.

Like Hamlet Simba is forced into the realisation of the necessity of his returning to and righting the wrongs propagated by scar in the kingdom that was rightfully his and he returns and reclaims the kingdom that was his birthright. The ending is one point where the Lion King’s plot deviates substantially as there is stark contrast between the joyous fulfilling ending of the Lion King underscored by the inspirational music of Mr. Elton John. This is probably primarily due to demographic constraints; what sort of seven year old wouldn’t be disturbed by the bloody ending of hamlet and disappointed at Fortinbras’ seemingly random inheritance.

A discussion of plot doesn’t do justice to the extent to which the Lion King borrows from Hamlet. To fully comprehend the profound influence of Shakespeare’s hamlet on this classic film one must consider the relationships between various characters that serve an obvious allegorical purpose.

As such this article will be continued…

Gig Review: The Beautiful Girls (No it’s not a strip show)

Some Beautiful Girls

Last week I was on holiday In Ulladulla; one of my favourite spots in the world (growing up there probably has something to do with this). As I was reading the local paper I was pleasantly surprised to note that there was a gigs section that listed all the local events. I was even more surprised to notice that the list of gigs was not comprised, as I was expecting, of metal bands made up of groups angry year nine boys and ageing hippie-ish women playing bad folk songs about local issues that I don’t know about. Rather, The Beautiful Girls and Josh Pyke were listed as playing locally within the time I would be spending in town.

Naturally my first impulse was to jump on the phone instantly to book tickets. However some practical constraints got in the way of this, namely: me not having my drivers license (or a car) and the fact that I was without cash. Luckily a lift was offered, and my amazing girlfriend’s family bought us tickets as a Christmas present.

Interestingly The Beautiful Girls’ had chosen The Sussex Inlet RSL club as the launching point for their first Australian tour in three years. I found this mildy amusing considering the incongruence of the ideals of conservatism and bourgeois respectability associated with the RSL and the carefree willingness to party with abandon associated with The Beautiful Girls. My amusement and confoundedness at the bands choice of venue was further exacerbated by the fact that Sussex inlet is a town of less than three-thousand people.

When we arrived there was an interesting mix of people at the reception desk of the club, many were over fifty wearing sports jackets and collared shirts despite the languid evening heat, others were dreadlock wearing chillers who had been forced by the RSL dress code to abandon their thongs for the evening in favour of the closed shoes demanded.

As we got closer to the desk where we were to pick up our tickets I could overhear snippets of conversation going on between the manager and the punters, something about everyone needing ID to get in even if they looked over sixty. I have never in my life been asked for ID (this probably has something to do with the fact that I’ve had a full beard since Year Ten). My mind went into panic mode and my pessimism kicked in and I instantly assumed that they’d never let me and I’d miss my chance to see one of my favourite bands. Fortunately my father has occasional flashed of brilliance when dealing with this sort of situation so he signed himself into the club and they gave him a temporary members slip which he then passed onto me, then I used this slip to get into the club, the only condition was that I became Gavin for the night.

As an aside to continue the topic of nonsensical RSL tightness: on the way in my girlfriend got told to take of her crocheted beret, something that I found really random as it was a very subtly stylish piece and I couldn’t see how it was infringing the RSL’s apparently very strict dress code. (She feels that sentence justified the effort in bringing it)

Once inside it was a far less formal affair the people there for the pokies wandered off and the crowd began to look more like what I expected at a reggae gig. There was some stackable chairs strewn randomly about the room so we grabbed a couple and waited for the band to start.

After about forty minuted of chilling and people watching the support band Bonjah took to the stage. Their first track was a slamming reggae/funk infused rockout that showcased the power of their rhythm section that comprised of percussionist James Majernick, drummer Dan Chrisholm, and bass player David Morgan. It was clear that these guys were a practised unit, they didn’t need to look at each for cues and their playing left enough spaces for every one of them to contribute grooves and rhythmic ideas that brought the music to greater heights. This wasn’t your typical drums lay down a straight groove they bass fills out the bottom end and the percussion accentuates and adds flavour, these were complex interwoven parts the effect of which was an insatiable desire to get up and move.

The Boys From Bonjah

Sadly the vibe in the room at this stage was still tentative and mildy awkward, people were unsure as to how to react to this band and were unwilling to seem overly keen by getting right into on the first song of the night. The next couple of tracks took it back a couple of notches with some mellow acoustic songs that showcased the dynamic vocal range of singer Glenn Mossop and the complementary musicality of guitarist Regan Lethbridge. The relationship between the guitar parts and vocal melodies in Bonjah is an unselfish one; neither deliberately takes the foreground or shows off with each contributing what is necessary to make the song come to balanced fruition.

As the set progressed I became increasingly conscious of the accuracy with which the sounds and lyrics of Bonjah captured the Australian condition. The feeling of melancholic patriotism (you know the sense of being proud of who we are as a nation but being slightly ashamed of what we did to get here) conjured by the quality of the acoustic guitars and wailing harmonica combined with wistful and witty lyricisms was similar to that evoked by the earlier works of Midnight Oil.

As the set built the dance floor gradually filled with bodies and an air of appreciation of the moment pervaded, however throughout the later parts of Bonjah’s set there was an increasingly sense of anticipation; it was clear that people were eager to see The Beautiful Girls.

As Bonjah finished their set with Spin with the world they were greeted with a thoroughly appreciative applause, the crowd were primed and ready to get down with The Beautiful Girls.

Naturally between sets I went off and procured a copy of Bonjah’s album. I always find taking note of the bands that support bands I like to be a good way of discovering new music.

I’ve followed the Beautiful Girls since they were basically an acoustic duo singing songs about the ocean and not needing money to appreciate it. Since then their sound has developed into a slightly more sophisticated beast incorporating trad reggae and dark ska with a hint of minimalism. I hadn’t really kept up with the bands sounds as it developed so I was going into the gig with only a vague idea of what to expect.

When the band walked out there was an uproarious applause most of the guys were wearing pretty typical surfer band gear t-shirts and jeans; I only comment on this fact because their bass player Paulie B was wearing a three piece suit and a jazz hat. The fact that he could do this and still exude cool in a small room packed with four-hundred people amazes me. Like Atticus Finch not an item of the suit was loosened or removed until the end of the set.

The first thing I noticed about the band’s sound was how tight the low end was; I’d been expecting strong back beats and funky grooves, but the bands new drummer was completely different to Joel Battersby the drummer he replaced. Everything he played was solid as a rock and straight down the line, very polyrhythmic too, an unfamiliar trait in a reggae drummer. Paulie B’s bass is the centre of the band’s sound currently defining the dark tonality and tight but uninhibited grooves.

These guys aren’t afraid to alter older songs to fit the sound and direction of the new lineup incorporating horns and keyboards to their older songs that would previously have only been accompanied by two acoustic guitars. This made the live experience very interesting and thoroughly worthwhile as it was like experiencing something completely new despite the songs being five or six years old.

Perhaps my favourite moment of the whole evening was in Under A Southern Sky where the bridge chords are fairly similar to Phil Collin’s classic In the Air Tonight. As an acknowledgement of this similarity, Mat launched into the chorus of this classic without skipping a beat; in seconds the whole room was singing along.

Throughout the set there was a constant sense of ascension; the set listing wasn’t formulated in the usual start out strong, throw in some softer songs in the middle and then thrash it in the end. There was a constant build to a very tangible climax. Halfway through the encore set Mat announced that due to travel arrangements the band hadn’t properly celebrated the New Year yet and a tray of shots was brought onto stage and the band indulged before launching into the last song of the night. It was clear that the band were having a great time back in Australia and Mat seemed almost unwilling to leave the stage as even after the culmination of the last song of the encore set he looked keenly over to his band mates and slammed out a repetitive riff in drop D that recurred into a screaming crescendo after which he propped his guitar against his amp and simply walked off stage crown Lager in hand.

The Beautiful Girls have an extensive back catalogue; I’d recommend listening to them chronologically so you can hear the progression of their sound over the years as it could be a little weirdto go from the ska/electronica of Ziggurats back to Learn Yourself or one of the other earlier ones.

Bonjah’s album is Until Dawn, they’ve got a couple of Ep’s too, they’re well worth checking out.

Photo of the week No.2

Samoan YWAM crew '09

This week’s photo is something of a continuation of last week’s, in that it was taken on the same trip. However, this photo has a far more uplifting anecdote attached.

The first couple of days we were in Samoa were surreal; we met people whose names we couldn’t remember, traveled (confused and jetlagged) in taxis with reggae remixes of ABBA songs, were bamboozled by the incredibly vague plans we were given to use as the basis for our building project and just generally were swept along in the currents of Samoan life.

It was not like a holiday, and by that I don’t mean to whinge about the amount of grueling work we did breaking up concrete and shoveling dirt, gravel and rocks. By saying ‘it was not like a holiday’ I mean to remark on the fact that we were, almost instantly, culturally assimilated into the community in which we stayed. There was no being treated as guests we were simply accepted. This acceptance ran parallel to an expectation that we adhere to cultural sensibilities and get on with the task at hand.

At first many of our team took the bluntness inherent in this sort of holistic acceptance as indicative of dissatisfaction with out actions on behalf of the Samoans. They weren’t terribly excited by our being there so some of us made the (flawed) assumption that they didn’t want us there. This wasn’t the case it was a simple matter of a more truthful expression of sentiment. Often our western culture demands a degree of farce in social interactions. Sometimes we, almost subconsciously, overact  a perceived appropriate emotion or response because we feel this is necessary to adequately communicate these feelings to whoever it is that we’re interacting with.

The Samoans didn’t need to play emotional charades they just acted as they deemed necessary. The first thing I love about this photo is that, in light of the inherent truthfulness of the Samoan people’s expression of emotion, one can truly believe their expressions to be of joy. They’re not smiling because it’s expected that you smile while you have your picture taken, they’re smiling because they truly want to.

The expressions aren’t uniform and some people are squinting or are halfway through talking but it captures a moment of unity amongst this incredible group of people.

The reasoning for my calling these people ‘incredible’ brings me to the second reason that I love this photo. This photo was taken about a week before about half of the people in the photo left Samoa forever to move to Japan in order to study the language and work as missionaries amongst the seedy underbelly of the population. They had no plans of ever returning to Samoa, they were leaving their families and every thing familiar to fulfill a sense of compassionate duty to the people of Japan.

When they left they left a strange feeling of hollowness, our team could begin to empathise; as by that point we’d spent a good five weeks away from our own families having missed Christmas and its associated nostalgic festivities. However, despite a degree of empathy, I don’t think we could really fully appreciate these people’s commitment to their duty. All summer we had the knowledge that we would return to our comfortable lives in Australia. These Samoan people didn’t have the luxury of the prospect of returning home on the horizon. They were to live in amongst the brothels of Tokyo without the consolation of knowing that one day they would return home. I have a profound respect and admiration for these people.

This is last photo I took of the team before they left. They stand together with their mentors and the cross that unites them. The photo commemorates their dedication and has become, for me, emblematic of ethicality and commitment to duty.

Not stoic toleration of duty but joyous acceptance of life.

Make Your Own Ironic Tees

It’s the cornerstone of your post-modern/hipster aesthetic: The ironic tee. But we’ve all encountered the problems associated with these tees haven’t we? Someone else having the same shirt as you, or wishing someone made a tee featuring your favourite obscure art house film or existential essayist, or worst of all the shirt becoming to mainstream to be tolerable.

The ironic veneration of dictators is very popular currently

We all want to push the boundaries of the exclusivity of the wit of our Tees, but how do we do this? My solution to these problems was to make my own.

What you’ll need:

• An idea of epically ironic proportions
• Photoshop (or another photo editing program)
• A printer
• A projector of some description (if your printer prints on a3 paper you won’t need one)
• Cardboard (thick but not corrugated)
• A thin sharp blade, like a stanley knife or one of those disposable blades you get in craft stores that you break off to get to a new sharp bit.
• Blank tees
• Screen printing gear: ink, screen and squeegee (you can improvise the squeegee out of old windscreen wipers, and the screen fabric stretched tight over a frame.)

Step One: Decide what image you’re going to create. There’s three important words to consider when creating your tee.

Appropriation: This is when you borrow/steal an image from another media source to place it in a different context to alter its meaning. Appropriation is the backbone of the ironic tee aesthetic; it’s very rare that you see original imagery on one of these shirts. Generally people will borrow a well known image like the face of a dictator or am obscure character from a well known children’s TV show and combine this image with a caption to change the connotation or message of the image.

Juxtaposition: This is another popular technique; it’s where you place two images together to try and make the viewer compare the two. For example if you wanted to communicate dissent towards your nation’s leader you could get a picture of Josef Stalin and place it next to him. (thats what I’ll be doing as an example)

Subversion: This is achieved through the other two techniques. Through appropriation and juxtaposition its possible to turn the meaning of the image on its head. Previously positive characters can become scary and emblematic of the potentiality for malevolence in everyman.

Combining these three elements should guarantee your shirt comes across as witty, playful and ironic.

Step Two: Create a representation of your idea on Photoshop.

Once you’ve decided on the image you want to use (keep it simple it will be easier to get the image onto the shirt if you do.) you need to start putting it together in Photoshop.

For an example I’ll be creating a very clichéd image that demonstrates each of the techniques I’ve talked about above.

First get photos of the subjects off Google then bring them over to Photoshop. Place them both on different layers.

Cut the background out of each image using the polygonal lasso tool and adjust the positioning of the figures so it works visually.

Then you add whatever witty slogan your amazing mind has thought of. Mines pretty average because I’m creating the image for the article and not to wear on my shirt in reality, yours will (hopefully) be much better.

Note that this image employs both appropriation of political Icons and juxtaposition.

Step Three: turn the image into a stencil

You do this by going to Image/adjustments/threshold and then adjusting the image as to look right as a tonal dropout. Do this for all the image layers.

If the image is a bit rough or pixelated run a Gaussian blur then adjust the curves into roughly an S shape.

Step Four: Print and cut out the stencil.

You can do this step a number of ways, the easiest is to use an a3 printer and just print the image. If you don’t have access to this you can use either a digital projector or old school overhead projector (to enlarge the image you print it onto a clear sheet of a4 plastic project it onto a wall) and trace the image onto the cardboard.

Then you cut out all the black sections with your knife/blade; Being careful of islands, you’ll probably make this sort of mistake heaps of times but we learn through mistakes.

Step Five: Use the stencil to transfer ink to the shirt. There’s a couple of ways to do this, a really easy (but not as professional) way of doing it is to use black aerosol spray paint and just spray the shirt while holding the stencil over it.

Using basic screen printing gear achieves much better results (most art-rooms at unis or high schools have this stuff, so befriend the art teacher). To do this you just lay the stencil over the shirt put the screen over the stencil and use a squeegee to spread the ink. The stencil allows the ink through the holes you cut out, if you’re using black ink (which I suggest) it should recreate the image you printed or traced onto the card.

Step Six: Set the ink.

Inks vary, but generally if you blow dry and then iron the ink while holding thin material over the image it should set nicely.

Step Seven: Rock your amazingly cool ironic tee like there’s no tomorrow.

Have you made your own shirts? If so feel free to share links to them in the comments section.

Mandela Advises Class of ‘09

As pretty much anyone involved in the Victorian schooling system is aware ENTER scores come out on Monday.

There’s a lot riding on this score for most of us. I need an 86 (to get into Arts/Journalism at Monash) other friends of mine need higher (One needs a 97, crazy dentistry aspirations) .

Our lives, for at least the last two years, have been completely invested in this number. It’s hard to force yourself to view things from a rational perspective, to realise that the number (While it might seem like it) doesn’t actually define your potential.

Today, along with my whole class, I got a letter in the mail from my History teacher/VCE coordinator. In it she quoted a passage of Nelson Mandela inauguration speech:

‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is light, not darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves “who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and famous?”

Actually who are we not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing Enlightened about shrinking so that people Won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of god that is within us. It is not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.’

Who could feel angsty about a mere number after reading that?

I certainly couldn’t.

My teacher isn’t a religious crazy sort whose trying to tell us that because we’re children of god we’re obligated to act in a certain manner.

She realises the intrinsic truth of these words and their pertinent application in the life of anyone struggling with a crossroads that life has offered them.

The Death of Metanarrative

We live in the post-modern age. An age defined by pluralism and relativism. Countless perspectives and worldviews coexisting, and unlike the modern age, with its ideology of progress and assimilation, none of these perspectives is officially or holistically accepted as the societal norm. This is due to the dissolution of metanarrative.

Metanarrative can be defined as any story told to justify another narrative story, though it doesn’t have to be stories it can be a perspective, context, revelation or truth used to justify ethics, morals, views… On a more complex level metanarrative is an abstract idea that is thought to be a comprehensive explanation of historical experience or knowledge or, Post-modern thought is renown for its dismissal of metanarrative’s validity.

No-one can contend the historical existence of metanarrative; it’s evident in any culture ethically defined by religion. For example: any society grounded in Judaeo-Christian ethics has, at some point, been governed by the biblical metanarrative of ethical and moral compliance as a means of salvation.

Without metanarrative new schools of thought emerge, schools of thought that don’t involve an overarching philosophy. An example of this can be found in the increasing prevalence of secular humanism, where instead of relying on metanarrative to define acceptable action, there is an assumption that mankind desires benevolence and that this benevolence is best achieved through objective rationality. This assumption, while appealing to many people, is somewhat flawed in that no-one is accountable to any absolute. Everything is relative and therefore anything can be ethically justified.

We can still state that we believe something or somebody is evil or wrong, but in the absence of absolutes we can’t state these opinions as fact, they remain exactly that; opinion. This weakens the ethical infrastructure of society as even the most heinous acts can be justified in the absence of absolutes. Under this system we cannot truly condemn acts we know to be wrong because any act can be justified by subjective truth or cultural context or personal beliefs. The absence of metanarrative confuses people’s ability to decide a unified ethical code.

A pertinent example of this sort of quandary is the topical issue of abortion. Some people contend that it is a woman’s right to choose whether or not she carries a child to full term, others believe that the abortion of a child is murder. The issue has come to an argumentative stalemate; there is no absolute truth for people to turn to.

Some quote the bible; others cite the rights of Man (and Woman) to maintain personal autonomy within the constraints of common law. But none of these truths is universally accepted and so the debate goes nowhere. (Just a little disclaimer, I don’t believe that any man can truly hold a valid opinion on this issue, it’s just too far removed from our personal experiences. I’m not presenting an opinion just using the ethical context as an example.)

Some of the moral inadequacies of post-modern philosophy are also evident as one examines the relatively recent Rwandan genocides. This was the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda’s Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by the Hutu dominated government under the Hutu Power ideology. Most people can agree that what took place was wrong, however some dissident individuals expressed an attitude that this sort of conflict should be allowed as it is the natural expression of traditional cultural tensions and that any attempt to interfere would be outside the jurisdiction of federal and international authorities.

Here lies our problem, we can recognise this suggestion as absurd but we can’t dismiss it completely for fear of being accused of adhering to some sort of bigoted idea derived from a blacklisted metanarrative. Any potency in governmental condemnation is completely lost when a government attempts to appeal to and fit into every individual’s version of the truth. This attitude manifests in weak reactive policy that inadvertently led to the death of 800,000-1,000,000 innocent Rwandans.

The obvious point of contrast here is (and I’m sorry for the cliché) the American liberation of Jews confined to Concentration camps during world war two. This liberation took place well within the modernist era known for its adage of progress and assimilation. This attitude is reflected in the Americans actions as they went in and liberated the Jews without regard for the social tensions that might arise from these actions. They could do this because, in terms of the modern metanarrative, this could be seen as the definitively right thing to do.

The post-modern perspective and the death of metanarrative has led to the prevalent belief that morality is a social construct, this assumption is flawed.  Morals are not arbitrary.

The vast areas of agreement between moral codes of different societies throughout the ages and throughout the world suggests otherwise. It could be assumed these moral norms were discovered in light of an unchanging and objective set of moral principles that find their source in the realities of human existence, but that would be speculation and I wont go into too much depth there.

I’m not saying that relativism is a bad thing in a holistic sense, just that it’s worth thinking about where the overzealous propagation of ideas of relative morality and subjective truth might take us.

Photo of the Week No.1

Setting out to explore a new country

Ever had one of those moments in life where you had a really optimistic outlook and you thought something was going to great and then all your hopes were dashed upon the figurative rocks as the experience completely failed to live up to expectation? I have.

This week’s photo was taken around this time last year. I did a Trip to Samoa with my sister and a bunch of other really cool people, the practical purpose of the trip was to help out with a construction project on a YWAM (Youth with a mission, it’s an evangelical christian organisation) Base.

So the twelve of us arrived having gone through a grueling two week training program in Tewantin Queensland at a lovely place called “The Lords Boot Camp’ that is run by possibly one of the most unpleasant and scary people I have encountered.

As you can imagine when we got Samoa our first response was to take advantage of the circumstances and relax momentarily before getting stuck into the massive building project ahead of us. We thought a good way to do this would be to go on a walk to check out the local scenery, we had a vague idea that we’d like to find a beach.

Little did we know that we were a good two hours walk from the nearest beach (we’d been driven to the YWAM base at two in the morning and when we went looking for this beach we were thoroughly jetlagged), so we walked for hours with very little idea of where we were going. It started to rain which increased the humidity and made it hard to breathe, people were crying from exhaustion and just generally feeling pathetic, in addition to this we met some very drunk Samoan men who were having trouble keeping their lava lava’s (man skirts) up and repeatedly constructed some very pointed sexual euphemisms. It was not a good start to our Time in Samoa.

Happily, the tone of the trip wasn’t set immutably by this fiasco and we had an amazing productive time. A bunch of twelve amateur builders with the help of some Samoan teenagers managed to build a sturdy fale’ from scratch.

The photo captures the moment of optimism at the outset of of fated journey to the beach that we never found.

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