Peter Sutton - The Politics of Suffering

Sim lent me The Politics of Suffering after a conversation about how to think about western ideas of improved health and other life outcomes not being an unquestionable objective of white engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities, and it's been a very worthwhile read, especially given my current work.

Its two major challenges to conventional (white) progressive thinking - and my own - are its arguments that:

1. The relative importance of colonisation, genocide and intergenerational trauma to the terrible conditions - in terms of violence, abuse, poor health, overcrowded housing, poverty and suffering (to name just a few) - in many/most contemporary Indigenous communities is typically overstated, and the effects of the interaction between traditional cultural practices and norms (including those which involve sanctioned violence, internal inequality and anti-scientific practices), and the forced imposition of modern technologies, social institutions and conditions (eg fixed housing, with its associated communal and hygiene-related challenges), understated; and
2. Too much weight is given to the 'rights' agenda, including campaigning for land rights, constitutional recognition, 'reconciliation' via treaty and other formal mechanisms, and self-determination, at the expense of action - intervention - much more directly targeted at the ill health, violence and other factors causing direct harm to individuals, including a particular focus on child socialisation as a means of breaking the intergenerational cycle.

Both of those obviously have large implications for how to try to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and indeed for how even to understand the nature of 'Indigenous disadvantage' and what addressing it and 'closing the gap' might mean.

The way it's written, as well as the depth of experience, knowledge and empathy that Sutton brings, makes it clear that The Politics of Suffering isn't meant as an apologia or Trojan Horse for simplistic conservative attitudes to the topic, and having read it more or less twice all the way through, I'm inclined to be at least open to that first argument (although it makes me very uncomfortable, and what its nuanced acceptance means for the messy, contested realm of public debate and policy-making, with all its ignorance, bad faith and vested interests amongst its competing participants, is another question), while less convinced about the second.

One obvious response is that neither question is an either/or - but that doesn't answer either the in-principle question about how to then balance efforts between the two poles of each question, or the practical one of how to contribute to moving the balance of government's and others' focus towards where they best should lie. Also obvious is that there are no easy answers, and at the same time that the recognition of such lack shouldn't be an excuse for diminishing the forcefulness with which any individual/collective/organisation (including, in whatever small way, me) pushes towards what is right, and at the same time again that a constant humility and awareness of the complexity of the terrain is the only ethically responsible course. I think I'll return to this book, because it presents a real and needed basis of tension to force me to examine my own beliefs and assumptions about how 'we' should engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Twyla Tharp - The Creative Habit

This one was a loan from Sara, and I've worked my way through it a couple of times over the past however long it's been - something like a year I think, probably longer. In a genre - broadly, books about creativity and how to practice or acquire it yourself - that I suspect is crowded and full of woolly platitudes, and which I've mostly avoided for that reason, it's refreshing in its combination of practicality and richness. The narrative sections are full of useful ideas and concepts - such as the concept of finding a work's 'spine' - and the exercises are illuminating, and the act of translating them from choreography and dance to other forms of creativity, such as writing, is itself helpful.

The Rise of Skywalker

I was planning to skip this but it came up that Rob was planning to see it by himself, and since he can always get free tickets and I had a free night, I was well pleased to go along to such an event of a film. And I guess it was fine, just a bit weightless; it also gave me a renewed appreciation for The Last Jedi.

(w/ Rob)

Knives Out

I went into Knives Out with no strong feelings or knowledge about its advertised genre - murder mystery / 'whodunit' - but a large amount of faith in Rian Johnson on the strength of everything he's done before (especially, still, The Brothers Bloom), and I think it was equal parts that personal starting point and the way the film itself knowingly both draws attention to and plays out any number of iconic components of its genre which made it impossible for me to disentangle the extent to which Knives Out is traditionalist, as opposed to deconstructionist, in what it does.

In any case, it turns out not to matter because the result is a very entertaining, clue-filled story full of enjoyably performed characters and more-or-less unexpected turns, with a depth that comes from the integrity of its plotting and construction as much as from its thematic treatment of class and race.

(w/ Hayley)

Parasite

Very ferocious, very metaphorical, very good - including in the way it evades neatness in its constituent parts (especially characterisation) and is thereby sharper in its diagnosis of capitalism / neo-liberalism as the root cause of all the suffering and hardship it depicts. Also made me think of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".

(w/ Kim)

Angel Olsen - All Mirrors

Enormous, and at the same time delicate. All Mirrors is outstanding, probably her best yet, and both of the last two - My Woman (2016) and Burn Your Fire For No Witness (2014) - had been pretty great already. There's heavy orchestration on many of the songs, sparseness at other times. There are icy, churning moments which veer almost goth - the standout title track reminds me of Pornography - while elsewhere the mood traverses 'fraught Disney', contemporary torch, and all kinds of distinct singer-songwriter, with something both tender and fierce underneath every song. 

Shirin Neshat - Dreamers (NGV)

Three videos, each following a different woman through a series of encounters with aspects of the unconscious, black and white and around 15 minutes each.

"Illusions & Mirrors" (2013) is the most straightforward in its symbolism - a cyclical sequence in which Natalie Portman follows a figure along a beach into a house filled with troubling, blurry reflections of herself and others (including one moment which is something like a jump scare in what I took as a return of the repressed) and ends with a doubled gaze back out to the crashing waves. "Roja" and "Sarah" (both 2016) are equally striking in their imagery but more cryptic and I think deeper, operating with a less-determined (less linear), and so more apt, logic in accessing the unconscious, more glancing association than one to one representation.

Zombieland

I'm late to this one (I've seen bits on tv before); it's good. The writing takes it a fair way but the four main actors are crucial. Plus Bill Murray.