Melborea Moronica: New ‘Depraved Species of Electric Flora’ Found Growing in Melbourne, Australia
Author: Simon Sellars • Oct 19th, 2007 •Category: Australia, Ballardosphere, Jean Baudrillard, YouTube, celebrity culture, consumerism, crime, death of affect, dystopia, fascism, features, film, media landscape, politics, speed & violence, sport, suburbia, urban revolt
A Melbourne rugby reporter, Ben Davis, presents his live-to-air TV report on the night’s game. Behind him a Brisbane Broncos fan pretends to lick his ear. A few seconds later the phantom ear licker returns, grabbing Davis in a headlock and knocking him off camera. Davis recovers, attempts to restart his report and is then attacked by the ear licker and around 10 of his mates, who proceed to bash the hapless reporter — in full view of the still-rolling TV camera.
Unsurprisingly, a few days later Davis’s attackers were caught and arrested, having not bothered to hide their gurning mugs from the camera. I’ve watched the footage again and again, as it’s absolutely boggling, the sheer, brazen willingness of these men to perform for the lens, to not even bother to cloak their random acts of violence from a watching world.
Ballardian? Absolutely. Let me count the ways:
1) In High-Rise, the character Wilder records the breakdown of social life in the high-rise via his all-seeing cine-camera. Immune to the deaths of all those around him, his only thought is to capture the scene on film, ostensibly to record a documentary on the building, but really to fulfil the deep-seated need to record his own ‘personal biography’, a record of his ascent through the high-rise that would shame those who he feels are superior to him, ie, the professional classes who also populate the building, mainly media types — reporters, journalists, and so on. Wilder signals an extreme macho life-force, a callous, brutal and selfish masculinity that completely effaces any vestige of community that surrounds him. Elsewhere, Ballard describes the ‘true light’ of the high-rise as that of “…the metallic flash of the Polaroid camera, that intermittent radiation which recorded a moment of hoped-for violence for some later voyeuristic pleasure. What depraved species of electric flora would spring to life from the garbage-strewn carpets of the corridors in response to this new source of light?”
Mr Ballard, please, look no further: your ‘depraved species of electric flora’ has sprung forth from the cracks of the concrete and macadam right here in Melbourne.
2) In Cocaine Nights, Bobby Crawford advocates a social program of ‘crime as performance art’, mediated by home video cameras and ad hoc, mobile film clubs. When pressed as to why, Crawford responds, ‘There’s a kind of amnesia at work here — an amnesia of self. People literally forget who they are. The camera lens needs to be their memory.’ But Crawford is not simply interested in documentation; like any good film student, he knows that there is no such thing as an ‘objective’ documentary, that selection of angles, deployment of edits, and selection of scenes, right down to minute spatial and temporal data (ie, shooting at a certain time of day, in a certain place) in a documentary is as much a manipulation of reality as any fiction film.
Thus there is certainly an amnesia at work in this footage, an amnesia that absolves its participants of all responsibility, an amnesia that says if the cameras are rolling, then anything and anyone is fair game, that it’s all staged, we were joking, its only a game, a performance for the cameras but one that has real, violent — but ignored — consequences. My advice to these boys? Hire a lawyer familiar with Baudrillard, or Ballard. How else are you going to talk your way out of a charge of committing a brutal assault recorded on live television with thousands of viewers as witnesses? With ‘Ba(udri)llard’ as your lawyer, you might just be able to claim that ‘the assault on Ben Davis did not take place’…
(However, it may be that these bad boys are simply dishing out celebrity justice, Savage (re)Public style.)
3) But let’s step away from the camera angles for a minute. As the president of the Melbourne Psychogeographical Society recently remarked to me, from out of nowhere Kingdom Come has emerged as the Ballardian text par excellence as it applies to Australia, where our penchant for en masse flag waving, random and unexplained violence, blind prejudice, anti-intellectualism, minimal funding for the arts and unwavering sports obsession puts even England, and Ballard’s St George’s-flag-flapping hordes, to shame.
As far as Western societies go, Australia is still the WILD West, still new and unformed and built on a tradition of bloodshed that goes right back to the very birth of the nation, a psychic schism that still festers like an open sore. In many ways, Australia, despite affectations of worldliness and cosmopolitan charm in big Australian cities like Sydney and Melbourne, is like the suburb of Brooklands in Ballard’s Kingdom Come writ large: an isolated culture (just as Brooklands is sealed off from London by the motorway system, Australia, as a whole is sealed off from the Western world by distance) fuelled by media prejudice and hatred, blind loyalty to sport (and I’m not a hater of sports per se, just the culture that surrounds it; don’t forget the bozos in the YouTube footage are proudly displaying their team colours), and jingoistic thinking that is able to be tapped, diverted and funnelled into ‘us and them’ dichotomies as needed. The sense Ballard gives in Kingdom Come of sporting fans supporting consumerism rather than any notion of ‘team’ or ‘community’ is hyperrealised here in Australia. The big football teams in Melbourne, for example, all play out of the same two grounds; there’s no suburban specificity, no sense of individuality, just a differentiation predicated on sponsors’ logos. The dystopian cliche of a One World Government effacing all nations under a fascist regime finds full expression in the microcosm that is Australian football, in itself an expression of wider society. And consumerism begets violence, needs it to survive…
Worryingly, inner-city Melbourne is becoming increasingly lawless. Each day brings newspaper reports of gangs attacking passengers on trams, bashings involving Sudanese refugees, drunk patrons of nightclubs targeted for muggings… The true sound of Australia is no longer ‘Advance Australia Fair’ but rather the sickening thud of a skull hitting the pavement. Well, that’s what you read in the papers anyway, and while I have never been one to trust the sensationalized Australian media for my eyes and ears on the world, my attitude changed once it started happening to me. In the past couple of years I have been punched to the ground, unprovoked, by a gang of drunken/drugged up men in the main street of Byron Bay, in full view of passers by, for the territorial crime of being a ‘tourist’. Minding my own business, walking home, I have been set upon by a group of football fans leaving the Melbourne Cricket Ground after I made the mistake of protesting when they tried to tackle me to the ground.
But it’s as a cyclist, back into it after a long absence and now riding 20-30km a day, that I’m especially vulnerable. The Melbourne sprawl, with its endless ribbons of freeways and dual carriageways, is among the world’s largest exurban conglomerates. It’s designed for cars to move quickly between long distances; our suburbs are built from the rubble of autogeddon. Cyclists flirt daily with death in such a system, dehumanised as ‘rats who have no place on the roads‘ and victimised for the crime of holding up a car for a few seconds when ill-thought-out and inadequate bike lanes suddenly vanish at intersections and high-traffic areas and we are forced to merge with drivers wielding their vehicles like weapons. The Australian media whips up this hatred, printing sensational articles about ‘lycra louts’ hogging the roads and holding up traffic, about how we don’t deserve to be on the roads, how we are all leeches as we don’t pay road taxes. Ballard’s vision of a ’soft fascism’, smuggled through by the cloak of consumerism, or in this case, media reportage, is the Australian reality — and this media reportage is consumerism, cheer squads for the powerful car lobby who pay big bucks for advertisements in newspapers and whose constituency is the readers of these hateful articles.
Listening to the animated conversations around him, he was struck by the full extent of the antagonisms being expressed, the hostility directed at people who lived in other sections of the high-rise. The malicious humour, the eagerness to believe any piece of gossip and any tall story about the shiftlessness of the lower-floor tenants, or the arrogance of the upper-floor, had all the intensity of racial prejudice.
J.G. Ballard. High-Rise.
Reading those rants, and their awful spleen directed towards cyclists, I know now why, while on my bike, I’ve been deliberately run off the road and into the gutter by cars. Why I’ve had eggs thrown at me; why I’ve lost count of the times someone in a car load of P-plated hoons — safely ensconced within their ‘metallised dream’ — has leant out the window and yelled at me as they’ve sped by, apparently unconcerned that the Doppler effect means their carefully chosen witticism is rendered something like ‘ahhhhyaaffggghuuuuuuunnngggggkkk’. Why I’ve been attacked by a mob of football fans, again, for the mistake of cutting through the park surrounding the MCG late at night on my bike, and having to endure the threat of a beating with a wooden fence stake. And why, just the other week, stopping at the lights in front of a pub, I had a baboon on the top balcony threaten to throw a bottle of beer at me, yelling “Get off the road cunt, you don’t deserve to be on the road you filth”.
When I read articles in the paper saying that cyclists don’t deserve to be on the roads as they’re a menace, don’t pay road taxes etc etc and then hear these rants used as ammunition against me, as bullets endangering my life, then I can only conclude that Australia is a nation easily manipulated by market forces. If these people weren’t out attacking cyclists and trying to run us off the road they’d be lynching black people, make no mistake. This is prejudice mostly fuelled by the media but also by the government with their non-committal approach to cycle safety, and ignorant people fall for it hook line and sinker. It’s a safe and sanctioned form of prejudice — a violence micro-managed in measured doses by a rabid press — whereas attacking people with a different skin colour will (sometimes) land you in the slammer.
In such an atmosphere, in such a climate, it’s OK to bash people for sport — even if you are being recorded live on national television. There was a recent documentary about a well-known surfie gang here in Australia, in which we see the boys’ home videos. One scene has stayed with me: the gang swarms all over a bus in peak hour, refusing to let it move, harassing the driver, who can only stare in a pathetic mix of terror and resignation at the thug holding the camera, helpless and trapped and harassed for the crime of going about his job. In Australia we glorify such people — Russell Crowe is making a film about this gang. They are Aussie heroes.
Within a few minutes the next attack will begin. Now that I am surrounded for the first time by all the members of my family it seems only fitting that a complete record should be made of this unique event. As I lie here – barely able to breathe, my mouth filled with blood and every tremor of my hands reflected in the attentive eye of the camera six feet away – I realize that there are many who will think my choice of subject a curious one. In all senses, this film will be the ultimate home-movie, and I only hope that whoever watches it will gain some idea of the immense affection I feel for my wife, and for my son and daughter, and of the affection that they, in their unique way, feel for me.
J.G. Ballard. ‘The Intensive Care Unit’.
And all of this desensitised violence, this sense of crime as sport, is mediated/mediatised, whether it’s via print, television, cheap video cameras, YouTube. We have lost our bearings, there is nothing left to grasp anymore, no sense of self, no dignity, no footholds, all of us rapidly sinking as we face the ghosts of our lives staring inside out at ourselves in living death. Yeah, let’s get metaphysical. Let’s quote Virilio:
From now on everything passes through the image. The image has priority over the thing, the object, and sometimes even the physically-present being. Just as real time, instantaneousness, has priority over space. Therefore the image is invasive and ubiquitous. Its role is not to be in the domain of art, the military domain or the technical domain, it is to be everywhere, to be reality… I believe that there is a war of images… And I can tell you my feelings in another way: winning today, whether it’s a market or a fight, is merely not losing sight of yourself.
Paul Virilio. Interviewed in Block 14.
‘Not losing sight of yourself’ — a Ballardian message if ever there was one. But it’s easier said than done….
The Ben Davis bashing, the ‘bicycle wars’, the surfie gang run amok, this casual mayhem that sucks in innocent bystanders — all of it illustrates exactly how violence is deeply ingrained in Australian culture. It also illustrates something even more basic: the desire for ritual humiliation that seems to be the bedrock of Australian values. As does another disturbing incident that was all over the news, in which a gang of Melbourne youths filmed their attacks on homeless people and their sexual assault of a girl, before selling it as a DVD to their mates and uploading excerpts to YouTube. In his discussion of this incident, Stephen Smith makes some pertinent points that could readily apply to everything under discussion here:
…it appears that the public’s consumption of news media about the whole incident is part of a cycle of action and reaction. Here, it is the ‘bent’ turn of consumerism that is precisely the problem. For what lies on the other side of easy blame is a desensitisation to violence in our midst. After all, the most compelling aspect of the DVD is that its makers see it as a commercial product – a consumer item.
…
The group known as the Werribee 12 may not stand at the top end glamour of consumer culture. But at $5 a pop their DVD is just another mindless item for their mates to consume. Just as at Abu Ghraib - where US soldier Lynndie England was only the most direct perpetrator - we need to look further up the ‘chain of command’ in the case of this DVD from suburbia. We need to realise how violence has become part of consumerism. It seems that such measured doses of violence are now an inescapable part of our culture. In this respect we must face the possibility that consumerism has become what amounts to ‘soft fascism’. In this state we now enter a society that craves the image but at the cost of a loss of care and responsibility for the type of reality being represented.
I can’t really add to what Smith has written, except to note one final, disturbing Ballardian resonance: the number of David Cruises just waiting to step into the breach and funnel all that aggression into something far more apocalyptic. These low-talent hacks are waiting in the wings here in Australia, wringing their hands at the thought of revenge, and they appear to be spread over three tiers: 1) ex-TV stars unable to come to terms with a web 2.0 culture and the waning influence of traditional media, and desperate to reclaim their crown; 2) messianic, unrepentant ex-sports stars who’ve built post-sport media careers on a platform of on-camera spite, callousness and bullying; and 3) messianic, unrepentant shock jocks who’ve built their entire careers on a platform of on-air spite, callousness and bullying.
And all of them are looking to take their career to the next level: building their own little self-contained empires with themselves as dictator and lording it over a population of scum, all desperate for their five minutes of fame and all too ready to humiliate themselves and others before a camera to achieve it.
UPDATE: I have just got back from a bike ride, barely an hour after writing this, where, going 50km/h down a hill, I narrowly avoided the deliberately outstretched fist of a guy on the side of the road, as his mates stood by laughing. Unable to swerve to the right, where I would be crushed under the wheels of a speeding car, I managed to duck under this moron’s arm in time to avoid disaster.
Welcome to Melbourne.
..:: MORE INFO
Stephen Smith has written three outstanding articles on urban violence in Australia, two of them referencing and exploring Ballardian themes:
+Fear and Loathing in Cronulla
+ From Abu Ghraib to Werribee (it’s not that far)
+ It’s a mad world – the rise of middle class angst
..:: Plus
+ The Age newspaper: Savage attacks on innocent bystanders mystify experts
..:: Previously on Ballardian
+ Atrocity II
+ The Rats that Ate Mill Park
+ Kingdom Come: ‘Deeply Silly, Patronising’
+ More on Liddle and Ballard
+ The Drought: Water Vigilantes
Author:
Simon Sellars
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Simon Sellars
Newer: A bit spooky, really…. »
Well you’ve got the drought already, those nuclear test islands aren’t so far away, this is the next step. Would be nice to think Australia could aspire to becoming Vermilion Sands instead.
My first question: what’s this Talking Head doing out on a two-person shoot in what’s obviously a fairly deserted area of urban hell, as described in Atrocity Exhibition. These hooligans seem more Warholian than Ballardian… their opportunity for their 15 minutes of fame resulted in their utilizing the only artistic language they knew: fists and boots. Any sane commentator would have sussed the mood a lot earlier, and reset up shop at a safer location. Your morals are showing, Simon. I think the commentator consciously or unconsciously willed it. And that’s the Ballardian aspect of the incident. Hey, they coulda shot him!
did you read any of the links in the article, rick? i’m not talking about the youtube incident in isolation, but a wider trend. and ‘morals’? what morals? i’m sick of being attacked by thugs, mate. quite simple.
Simon
As a resident of Melbourne i feel the need to defend my city. You describe the absolute minority, of course there are drunken dicks at the football and other sporting events, but compare Australian sporting facilities to British and European where they have to build fences to stop the supporters killing each other. I have always found the crowds to be well behaved. Are they tribal? of course they are but have you ever seen mass violence under the flag of Essendon or Carlton. The Bike riding is another issue. There is a backlash against bike riders since the pedestrian was killed on Beach road by one of the riders on the so called “Hell ride”. I don’t think that all bike riders should be deemed guilty of that crime and I hope that it will settle down over time. Maybe i’m not in the demographic to witness what you have ( Family living in the burbs)but i think you view may be a little over the top. Keep up the good work, the “Ballardian” site is the best thing on the web.
regards Brent
Hi Brent,
You make fair comments, and I probably should have added a disclaimer that I love Melbourne, love living here and can’t imagine living anywhere else, which is why I am saddened that our society seems to be becoming more and more divisive. This is really an essay that I could probably expand to around 3 times the length; it’s hard to do it justice in the brief time I had available, but the main point I am really trying to make is about the goose-stepping fundamentalism that appears to be peddled as opinion in the media these days.
There is a callous disregard for other people — a casual violence that Ballard so aptly identifies — that is becoming more and more apparent the longer one spends in inner urban areas. For me, the Ben Davis incident, the Werribee DVD incident, and the cyclist issue are all elements of this trend. And all of it is mediated/mediatised, whether in front of the Channel 7 cameras (Davis), on YouTube (Werribee), or through the print media (cyclist hatred). As Stephen Smith says, this lust for the image, for the simulacra, is extremely corrosive.
Regarding my view as being over the top, like I said if if I was just reading what the papers tell me then I would be sceptical about the extent of the problem. But after experiencing violence myself, and violence perpetrated on friends of mine, I felt the need to ask some serious questions about it all. This article wouldn’t have had the tone it did if I wasn’t writing from experience, Getting whacked indiscriminately on the street changes everything.
Brent, I was hoping this would stir up some debate as I don’t have the answers, and you have challenged me to think a little deeper, too. And cheers for the comments about the site.
Best, Simon
Surely the reality is that this is not so much a uniquely Australian phenomenon as a cultural stream that runs through all of the West? It’s just that wherever you are, it feels like it’s a local thing because that’s where you experience it. Or maybe that’s because I’m from Texas, where (as one Australian commenter on my blog post on Simon’s piece above noted) such a situation would undoubtedly be resolved by several shootings, or someone being dragged behind a pickup.
Sure, Chris, I agree, I wasn’t intending to suggest it was unique to Australia, just intending to relate my own personal situation and experience, which of course is … and in fact the dark message at the heart of Ballard’s writing is that it isn’t place specific, these badlands are interchangeable — it’s mediated/mediatised violence, found wherever ‘depraved electric flora’ grows. I think what surprises many people, and myself certainly, is that Australia has never seemed on a par with the US and the UK, in terms of gang and random violence, but it is definitely on the rise and definitely something to watch out for and to be aware of over here.
Ballard himself notes in a recently posted interview here that his childhood of upheaval and violence is the norm for the greater percentage of the world’s population.
If we are lucky enough not to have those experiences it’s not a logical step to then deny they exist at all, or to play them down out of a sense of national or civic pride.
As for bikes. Only yesterday a building security guy got stuck into me for having the audacity to leave my bike in front of a shop while I bought something. How dare I! Then on the way home I got - seriously - a five dollar ticket from a cop for riding my bike down a car only street.
Hey… I don’t wanna make this a federal case… but when you start bleating from the pulpit: “We have lost our bearings, there is nothing left to grasp anymore, no sense of self, no dignity, no footholds, all of us rapidly sinking as we face the ghosts of our lives staring inside out at ourselves in living death. Yeah, let’s get metaphysical”, I start running for the door…
I don’t find anything Ballardian at all about random acts of street violence by drugged bags of ignorant testosterone… wrong target group: JG always is more interested in violence and the professional classes… he has no interest in the underclasses, except as crowds… violence? It’s the psychological antidote to boredom. They say you never feel so alive — or so wired on adrenalin… violence in ozzie culture must mean some elements of that culture are bored to death… as it ever was… as it ever shall be… it’s a byproduct of culture itself — its “discontents”
And I don’t agree with your reading of Wilder, either (sorry)… aside from his obvious connection to the Id (note the freudian motifs that abound in H-R), he actually doesn’t shoot anything with his camera… it’s just his rationalized entré into the fast-moving psycho-social evolution that’s happening around him…. and his opportunity to succumb to a psychopathology that’s hobbled him since puberty — the desire to kill his father.
Glad to hear you narrowly missed a fist across the face. Quick-thinking and co-ordinated. Another reason why I drive a car. Or walk. Bikes are randomly dangerous.
Underclasses? Who said anything about class? I have no idea about the background of any of these people. Its the performance aspect of crime I’m interested in. And sorry to hear you’re running to the door, Rick, but obviously still close enough to comment.
OK… final take: this “violence” you find so disturbing is a mere bagatelle to the real thing… only the media can elevate (or convert) these loonies into “stars”, and the media does it because there’s a viewer demand for these vicarious thrills.
mad is bad. If we didn’t want to see it, they wouldn’t show it. Boldly stating this is an ozzie problem seems ludicrous, as the same jerks are doing the same thing on the media here in toronto!
bad is good. haven’t you noticed the lower down the media news chain you go, the more the news consists of reports of violence? cops & ambulance chasers… that’s “local news” and it’s the same everywhere… on the other hand, most of the time nothing local happens, so fights, shootings, car crashes, the “hard” news, tends to dominate. anti-social behaviour is universal, simon… and Oz ain’t so different that you have your own special kind of violence that’s more violent than my violence.
and your post is moralistic blather about dystopian fears… if only we could all be (fill in behavior description), all would be better (according to some version of the reality principle). From the outside, it looks like Oz is getting big enough to have the same kind of mayhem the rest of us live with… is it “ritual humiliation” — obviously immoral — to indulge your desire for psychopathological behaviour and then show it to the world? That’s a desire for fame; capture is immaterial. And Smith is right: if the public didn’t consume this violence, it wouldn’t be a product for the media.
basically, I still don’t think the topic is ballardian… no inversion of the plot, no sense of coded meaning.
(I’m yelling this from the hallway): but it certainly is sellerian…
I’m not really qualified to call the topic as Ballarian or not so I think I don’t have anything else to add. Interesting ideas from both sides though.
Unquestionably Ballardian to me (or at least evidence of much of the same phenomenon explored in the recent works). Among Ballard’s keenest interests are the ways in which primal human instincts for violence and sex find strange articulation in the putatively sublimated milieus of contemporary Western society. His books serve as laboratories, creating scenarios for the exploration of how human behavior and consciousness will behave in a novel situation of stress. Here, the primitive tribalism of the sports team loyalists given weird forum by the television cameras. And now, through the Web, the bizarro territorial marking of that Droogy ear-licking will be indelibly burned into the neural hard drives of thousands of minds. Acts of hooligan violence relayed across the globe in packets of data. Science fiction?
I can see where you’re coming from, chris… but in Kingdom Come the TV cameras don’t follow the action, they lead it… Cruise incites the tribal behaviour rather than “report” it.
I’m not sure if you used the word “sublimated” correctly either… shouldn’t that be “repressive”? Sublimation involves a transfer of psychic energy to more socially-acceptable endeavours, like art.
But really, what’s this little kerfuffle in comparison with today’s really violent TV fare — like american football, Fox news and South Park?
‘What’s this little kerfuffle in comparison?’ Rick, once again the point is not the severity of the violence but the manner it which is transmitted, and I really wish you’d stop referring to the YouTube incident as if that’s all I’m writing about. There is a series of events, a bigger picture in which that reporter being attacked is an element. I don’t care if you criticise my writing style, each to their own (and if you really think I’m being serious with a phrase like ‘Let’s get metaphysical’, then you obviously don’t know your Olivia Newton-John from your Elton John), but to completely reject my hypothesis without really taking the time to debate the points I’ve raised, except to insert your own opinion as the be all and end all, is a little disappointing considering I have done my research and i have read my Ballard. Go and read Dominika’s book on Ballard again, as I understand hers is a viewpoint you *do* value — but I know my opinions on violence and the media in Ballard’s work is not a million miles from hers. And as for my reading of Wilder in High-Rise, Gasiorek reached a similar conclusion, so I know I’m not completely off kilter, there. You refuse to consider any other opinion other than your own, when the beauty of Ballard’s text, as Luckhurst has ably pointed out, is that it is eminently ’scriptable’, rigorously open-ended. And for what it’s worth, I don’t always agree with your ad-man analyses of Ballard, but I doubt whether I’d be so forcefully ramming my opinion down your throat about it.
As for ‘boldly stating this is an Ozzie problem’, like your lazy bandying about of the class divide, please point out exactly where I state this is exclusive to Australia. Also, where do I say that ‘if only we could all be (fill in behavior description), all would be better (according to some version of the reality principle)’? I haven’t even considered any possibility other than this present scenario. I have no idea what something beyond that could possibly look like, and I would even agree that a society divested of such a chain of events is probably unattainable. I also take issue with your accusation of my position as ‘moralising’ — where do I state in plain terms an absolute distinction between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’? I think it’s you actually that is indulging in absolutism. So, please — stop putting (your) words into my mouth.
Ah, what’s the point, I might as well tear this entire site down now and leave the debris to be picked over by Freudians.
Don’t tear the site down, I only just started reading it. The material on here is really stimulating and varied.
violence, hate, perpetrated and viewed is contagious, addictive. reading over simon’s piece i’m reminded of it again. the media, like dope dealers always selling product, always bragging that the new batch is even better. “we want to warn our viewers that the following scenes may be offensive to some…” a clockwork orange is widespread as ever, but i fear there are gangs now who might make the droogs seem almost quaint. william burroughs and j.g. ballard look to me to have written the future that we are all living. reading about crash enthusiasts in spain who purposely smash into unsuspecting motorists while their cohorts film the incident is seen as a slight aberration on the conscious landscape; get consent from the drivers and you have a new reality show. along with the messianic celeb characters simon mentioned, we must add the crazed reporters, who will go to any length on a low spectacle day to sex things up.
Johnny’s quite right and to the point!
As for mr Rick McGrath, i don’t think that he was looking forward to insulting you, Simon, and i’m sure these arguments (from both you and him), appear more heated than they were actually intended to be…
The extent to which any country would be labeled Ballardian is not a very important topic (even I could claim that Greece, with its best lovers and worst drivers fame, would be the perfect place for Crash fans…) - take care!
Iraklis is right: I’m not out ta get ya, Simon… you appear to have enough to deal with out on the streets… I still think you’re great — if a tad humourless. I guess I’m hung up on perceptions here… the thing I find ballardian about your situation is, indeed, those random acts of senseless violence.
But… as JG has pointed out, this kind of unpredictable culture is often somehow rewarding — keeps you on your toes. Dispells the boredom. As JG said to Jason Cowley in 1998: “Shepperton is part of what I call the television suburbs; its culture is electronic, dominated by the television and the video recorder. It’s also pretty classless around here: the people are well travelled, they lead very active lives devoted to leisure pursuits; they learn to fly, or take up abseiling, or buy a boat and keep it in a marina. I like that, I think that’s where the future is going: a suburban calm coexisting with terrific volatility, as when the local shopping centre is suddenly destroyed by a maniac with a mail-order Kalashnikov. After all, this kind of lifestyle is what I’ve been writing about all these years, it’s what I’ve been predicting would arrive.”
so, if you substitute Melbourne for Shepperton does it still work?
If it does, hey — it’s all part of the predicted landscape… enjoy!
Iraklis, I’m not sure if you were aiming your last point at me or Rick, but as far as I’m concerned, I’m simply trying to make a point about a situation that I have found myself in and that I see occurring around me here in Australia. I find the stylised and mediated violence of this situation to be ‘Ballardian’ — to me that’s an interesting topic. I’m not comparing it to any other country. It’s a trend that I see becoming magnified here and it’s a trend that is articulated to me very well by Ballard’s writing. I am interested in my immediate environment.
Which brings me to Rick: no, I don’t wish to ’substitute Melbourne for Shepperton’ or anywhere else. Again, I’m talking about the ideas behind Kingdom Come, in the main, and how they relate to the situation here. For the purposes of this article, situations elsewhere are less important. Yes, I agree it’s a global trend, yes America is more violent etc etc, but that’s another essay. My point is that Melbourne is becoming increasingly Ballardian, not that it is more or less Ballardian than anywhere else; the fact that this follows trends elsewhere in the Western world is simply not the point of my essay. Which is not to say I don’t find it interesting when Chris and Johnny can relate the points raised to their own experiences in other countries. I do — it’s very interesting, and I welcome these observations, as it illustrates the sweep of Ballard’s writing. Your own thoughts on Toronto are always welcome, too, however when you start using them to try and find logic holes in my essay, I think that’s a basic misreading of what I was trying to say. To attack my post for not including this global scope is to miss the point of it all, I think. I’m at a loss as to how I can make this any plainer.
By the way, saying I’m ‘humourless’ is just another evasion tactic, as far as I can see. Humourless in comparison to what? I’m not offended and I’m not upset and I know you’re not ‘out to get me’. If I seem humourless it’s because I am trying to stay focused on the point of this debate, which is becoming increasingly obscured the more you try to catch me out! I’m just trying to break this down with you, plainly and with a little bit of logic, but you won’t stay on topic. You made a number of criticisms of the article and you have to expect that I will defend myself. Remember, you used a lot of strong terms in your replies: ‘blather’, bleating’. Fighting words, Rick…
So, still waiting for your answers:
* how exactly is the piece ‘moralistic blather’? in terms of morals, where does it define things in terms of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’?
* where exactly in the piece do I ‘bleat from the pulpit’, suggesting that people should follow or do what I say?
* where do I talk about class, or the underclass, or any kind of class divide?
* where do I say ‘things will be better if only this would occur’?
* where do I say the problem is specific to Australia (’boldly stating it’s an Ozzie problem’, in your words)?
* why exactly is the recording of stylised acts of violence, whether by news cameras that just happen to be on the spot (ie, the Ben Davis incident) or whether by mobile, home recording units (the Werribee DVD incident) considered by you to not be Ballardian? The problem here is that you repeatedly say that I’m using the random nature of these acts to prove my Ballardian thesis; once again I’m not, it’s the recorded/mediated nature that interests me. It’s that aspect that strikes me as Ballardian, as it does the commenters above, and also scholars like Dominika, Gasiorek etc. Once you can accept that, then we can maybe have a productive debate.
And after you answer those questions, then we can move on to Jason Cowley! Looking forward to it.
Gawd… this is like being trapped in an ozzie version of Kafka’s The Trial…. stab me now!
Look, mate… sorry to get this so wound up… my initial “comment” was just a bit of ballard inversion, suggesting the boobtoober announcer probably incited the violence against himself… thot it was funny… apparently not the correct response to a serious piece.
I don’t wanna answer seven questions… you can’t have a discussion in a blog comment box (you can hardly type in it!) –this topic requires numerous beers and an appropriate pub, random violence optional. Say, somewhere in Barcelona? Next July?
It was more than just ‘a bit of Ballard inversion’, Rick. Your choice of words was decidedly inflammatory. You can’t deny that, and you can’t deny that someone on the receiving end would want to respond. But yes, I’m happy to let it go, as the comments I’ve written are padding out to more than the post — always a sign to move on.
Cheers,
Simon
Is this the ‘Aussie Rules’ stuff I always hear about from my overseas friends?
No, it’s rugby–what American football was cannibalised from.