Gender Bender
It’s been a big month for gender – with the globally publicised scandal of gender testing of Caster Semenya, the South African runner and the humiliating trails she has had to undergo to confirm her sex. Regardless of the outcome and regardless of the surrounding ethical debate and constructs around this particular case I think it has, avertedly, illuminated the fact that gender can be more ambiguous that we like to think. Like so many things, it is somewhat of a grey area - a rainbow terrain with two poles at either end - uber male, uber female and a thousand nuances betwixt them. The novel Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides is a beautiful illustration of this, the story of a person born with Gender dysphoria – initially pushed into a female identity by her parents (apparently as many as one in two thousand children are born with some kind of gender dysphoria that either need surgical or genetic ‘correction’) and whom ends up living as a man – compelled psychologically. This is a far more complex issue that society will admit and I suspect, for obvious reasons, still finds disturbing. (for reference there is a great article in The Independent, Science 21/8/09)
One of my very close friends (now tragically deceased) was, when I met him was a 19 year old transvestite who had undergone hormonal treatment so was living as a woman (with a penis and breasts). A year later he’d changed his mind and had shaved his head, stopped the hormonal treatment and was living as a bi-sexual man. I’ve never known such a maverick as he – and certainly he was most anarchistic in the way he would throw up (with a great deal of wit and humour) our (heterosexual) prejudices and assumptions. He still traces a path through many of my books, and for my readers, you would recognise the shadow of him in some of my characters.
¬_Okay, reasons to be cheerful – the artificial trees they are thinking of constructing along the freeways to absorb carbon dioxide. Have you seen these? They kind of look like a cross between a cheap fan and a triffid – and do not resemble trees in any way except for their ability to absorb the culprit emission. However, as an admirer of the single propeller wind farm prototype (there’s a great example in California driving towards Joshua tree – set against the desert horizon, they loom up like a field of fantastic sculptures and somehow, the way they rotate imbues them with a strange intelligence) I’m all for the artificial algae screen tree. If you painted them sky blue they would look surreally beautiful against forest or bush, or seashore. And given how ugly most freeways are it can only be an improvement, not to mention the huge ecological gains. Bring them on, and fast!
On Aliens and Men
I’m about to head down to perform at the Brisbane Writers festival in a few weeks, but in the interim I have been brainstorming a couple of theatre projects and possible screenplay between the next big novel idea. Fertile time. It’s always liberating to come from under the yoke of a big epic commitment like Sphinx and let the imagination play for a couple of months before diving underwater again into the initial research and the psychological hijacking that seems to incur when immersed in writing a big fat novel.
But in between all this seed planting and gathering a couple of other works have grabbed me. The first is a history book – written by an economist, which tracks the cycles – feast, famine and population of Europe (and related colonies) from the 13th century through to the 19th century – ‘The Great Wave’ by David Hackett Fischer. For many this book will read like a shopping list of woes (with graphs) – harvest failure, plague, starvation and revolution. But if you’re a fast reader like myself it is extraordinary documentation that joins the dots in terms of culture, economic and climate for the layperson like myself. What becomes apparent is how horribly resonant some of the cycles are – i.e.: periods of posterity when the rich get very rich and the poor begin to literally starve then top this off with a few bad crops due to climatic change and you have the perfect recipe for bloody revolution. Or the collapse of the Italian banking boom in Siena in 1298 when they had overextended borrowing to the great merchants, nobles and kings (then the equivalent of world banks) which lead to a hike in food prices and commodities, topped by horrible weather and failed crops in early 13th century – leaving most people starving then introduce the black plague, and you have the catastrophe of 1315 and the following years. Not an era I would have like to lived through.
I’ve always thought history should be compulsory at school and reading this book only confirms this. Foresight is to be forewarned, and although the tools are different - the rules, greed and fallout appear completely contemporary. The Great Wave also has great footnotes and clear global references, great read for the amateur historian or fact collector. I mean who would have known that Eskimos kayaking off the coast of Scotland were sighted during the ‘mini Ice Age’. Or that J.S Bach’s lifespan mirrors almost exactly the economic equilibrium of the Enlightenment. It was certainly a revelation to me that humanity has always been at the mercy of climate change.
The other work that has really blown me away was the movie District 9 (yet to open in UK and Australia). I don’t think I’ve seen intelligent sci-fi like this for decades (maybe ever). For the squeamish, or haters of alien movies don’t be put off. This is a moving treatise on racism, the internment of refugees, a condemnation of the weapons industry and a friggin’ glorious celebration of independent film making that has Hollywood jittery. Although made for 30mUS it was made outside of the studio system (Sony picked it up for distribution after it was made) with the visionary Peter Jackson at the helm as midwife/producer. Directed by South African 29-year-old Neill Blomkamp (who has a background in special effects) and written by Terri Tatchell and Blomkamp it is by far the cleverest film of this genre I’m seen. And as the stepmother of three teenage boys I get to see a lot. Blomkamp manages to subvert the traditional demonization of Crustacean-like aliens (avoiding the schmaltzy isn’t he cute Spielberg trap) in a beautifully paced arch as his everyman hero Sharlto Copley (who hadn’t even acted in a feature before) ends up avertedly fighting for his own ‘humanity’ and battling an insidiously (and utterly believable) global weapons company. The fact that it is set in a real shantytown in Jo-burg (with the huge alien craft eerily hanging over the city like some futuristic abandoned Noah’s Arc) is genius and gives extraordinary resonance and insight into the poor bastards that live in places like these all over the globe. Go see it. It haunts.
For Brisbane readers and anyone else interest – info on my appearances at the Brisbane Writers festival go to www.Brisbanewritersfestival.com.au and hit on my name – under L for Learner.
Criminal Muse
There was an interesting article a few weeks ago in the Australian papers citing a legal case in Western Australian wherein the Western Australian State government had frozen the bank account of an author who had co-written a book with an ex SAS soldier who had previously served time for a series of bank robberies he’d executed to fund the Karen Liberation front (a movement fighting Burma’s current military junta). The book told the SAS guy’s story, so one assumes it’s based in fact. The bank account of the co-author - Kingsley Flett - contained his publishing income and the West Australian Director of public prosecutions froze the account because the state was claiming the account contain monies that were proceedings of a criminal activities – in other words money made from telling the story of real bank robberies.
Extraordinary – apparently there is a clause in Western Australia (differing from the rest of Australia) that gives the state government a freezing order if there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that property is crime-used or crime-deprived. I guess this now applies to intellectual property – the case has opened up a whole can of worms and threatens other writers of crime (based on actual events) as well as the surrounding publishers/production houses that profit off such series – this is only if it gets through the Australian Supreme Court. The publishing director of Penguin, Australia (hello Bob) has made a direct appeal to the Premier of Western Australia as he should, but it did make me think about the ethics of such masterpieces as Capote’s In Cold Blood as well as a plethora of other excellent movies, books and TV series all based on actual crime stories.
Personally, I never knowingly write something based on someone’s experience – and, somehow, the notion is too limiting as a fiction writer. But that doesn’t mean the government has the right to prevent others from doing so. Is this just another sideways step toward censorship as driven by the Christian Right? Ironically Australia has a literary history based on the glorification of maverick bank robber/revolutionary figures – Ned Kelly withstanding and the extremely morally ambivalent figure of the Australian hit man Chopper Read comes to mind – God knows how much money his book, movie, TV, appearances and spin generated, not to mention launching the career of one outstanding film director.
I suspect it is both absurd and impossible to control the muse wherever it may spring from, but the move does indicate a worrying trend of government attempting to control artistic expression. I’m thinking about the Bill Henson controversy last year, when Kevin Rudd announced that he had found the veteran and internationally renown photographer’s work pornographic (the Australian Henson does hauntingly beautiful depictions of pubescent sexuality – that are not pornographic in my opinion – more dreamlike and strangely reminiscent of one’s own awakening in a metaphoric way). Next to the latest wave of New British Art - Emin, Hirst etc, Henson is positively conservative, but hey, this is the country that banned D.H. Lawrence up until the 1950’s – which is why the trend is worrying.
The notion of an artist gleaning inspiration from real life events whether they are violent, criminal, or violence legitimised by politics (i.e. war) has existed ever since cave men scratched depictions of hunting on the cave wall. I’m thinking of the National Theatre’s wonderful production of Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage (written in 1585 and based on Virgil’s play) I’ve seen recently, in which Aeneas the central character (an Trojan) gives an graphic and totally compelling eye-witness account of the siege of Troy – a monologue which was actually inspired by the French Saint Bartholomew’s massacre - the massacre of the Protestants by the Catholics in Paris (as depicted in the movie Queen Margot). This was an event of his times that fired Marlowe’s imagination enabling him to create a totally believable experience of war – still moving people today. I would argue that Marlowe’s monologue is ethical because in no way does it encourage violence or war- but instead operates as a graphic warning about the horrors and senselessness of such events….