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woman-loving · 3 years

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Lesbian Literature and International Networks in 1950s-70s Australia

Selection from Unnamed Desires: A Sydney Lesbian History, Rebecca Jennings, 2015.

I included two passages here, one about lesbian literature and the other about engagement with overseas lesbian magazines, namely the US The Ladder and British Arena Three. Both touch on how customs/censorship laws restricted lesbian connections. (Compare with the importance of media freedom for lesbian subcultures in Weimar Berlin; for more on how lesbians can be affected by anti-gay laws absent direct criminalization, see how lesbians were policed in 1950s-70s Sydney.) I also appreciated the description of how engagement with literature can be a form of lesbian expression.

For those women who lived discreet lives or who were unable to locate other lesbians in this period, literature and other cultural representations of same-sex desire played an important role in alleviating their sense of isolation. Novels with lesbian characters or themes enabled women both to find a language for their own desires and to realise that they were not alone. Their significance to women in this period is testified to by the frequency with which lists of lesbian literature appeared in early issues of lesbian and feminist journals. Although identifying and obtaining lesbian-themed literature could be problematic without the assistance of such lists, reading these works offered women the opportunity to engage with a discourse of same-sex desire without the risks of exposure inherent in reaching out physically to other lesbians. In an article entitled ‘On the Virtues of Remaining in Your Closet!’, contributed by ‘a gaygirl’ to lesbian and gay paper Campaign in the 1970s, one discreet lesbian drew on a rich array of cultural sources to reinforce her impassioned plea for the right to conceal her sexuality.[17] The author attached no personal details to the article and observed that she planned to ‘post this anonymously from a suburb I don’t live in’. Her family, she claimed, was hostile to homosexuality and unaware of her own same-sex desires, as were her friends and work colleagues. Nevertheless, she noted that ‘about the time I discovered I was gay, I read everything I could on the subject of homosexuality.’ The article demonstrated that, while maintaining a ‘closet’ identity in everyday life, she had been able to actively participate in a discursive lesbian and gay community through the medium of the press, the theatre and Campaign itself. In assembling her arguments, she referred to a letter to the editor of an Australian newspaper by a gay man; an article in Time Magazine entitled ‘Gays on the March’; and a performance of Peter Kenna’s play Mates at the Nimrod Theatre in Sydney. Her consumption of cultural representations of homosexuality had helped to shape her own sense of gay identity and community, and ultimately enabled her to enter into dialogue with that community without conflicting with the need for concealment.

In earlier decades, however, women’s need for such literature, and the difficulties of locating it, were correspondingly increased. The cultural imperative to silence desire between women and to conceal it from families and society at large was reinforced for much of the mid-twentieth century by the paucity of literary and media portrayals of the subject. Margaret commented that books were neither accessible nor relevant in her attempt to make sense of her same-sex desires in the late 1950s[...]. As Margaret noted, literary representations of desire between women were extremely limited prior to the 1970s and were rendered largely inaccessible by the difficulties of locating them. For working-class women such as Margaret, who had not been raised in a culture of reading, literature did not in any case represent an obvious source of information. Strict censorship laws further restricted access to such works in Australia.

The importing of books and written materials deemed indecent or obscene was banned under the Trade and Customs Act 1901, and thereafter many of the decisions regarding which titles should be banned were taken arbitrarily by individual Customs officials who seized books at the point of entry into Australia. In 1933, the Book Censorship Board (renamed the Literature Censorship Board in 1937 and ultimately disbanded in 1967) was established to consider those books which were deemed marginal or literary.[19] The presence of homosexuality as a theme was accepted as grounds for censorship and Nicole Moore argues that:

“Censors actively targeted the expression of same-sex desire, descriptions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and cross-dressed sexual practice, the elaboration of gay and lesbian identities as identities, agitation against restrictions on the expression of same-sex themes, as well as many other forms of meaning moving beyond a straight, reproductive model for intimacy and sexual life. Until late in the twentieth century, homosexuality was seen as a pornographic and perverted form of obscenity where present in literary or popular novels, avant-garde poetry or films of all kinds, magazines or postcards. From the earliest moments of government censorship in Australia, and increasingly as an explicit priority, the erasure of homosexual meaning from as many public fora and discourses as possible was achieved to a significant degree.”[20]

A number of notable lesbian novels were banned, several limiting the availability of literary representations of female same-sex desire. Radclyffe Hall’s controversial British lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness, was banned in 1929, following its obscenity trials in the UK and US. Moore claims that Australian censors attempted to obtain a copy of the novel following its prohibition in England in 1928. However, they were unable to locate one as such copies as had been circulating in Australia had apparently been sent to England in the wake of the trail to be sold on the lucrative black market there. In the absence of a review copy, Customs officials banned it sight unseen on the basis of English law. The ban was lifted in Australia some time between 1939 and 1946, unusually prior to the UK release date of 1949. However, the absence of a high-profile obscenity trail like that which occurred in the UK, Moore argues, meant that lesbian identity was not publicly debated in Australia in the same way. [...] The secrecy surrounding The Well’s subsequent Australian release further limited its availability in Australia, where many booksellers remained unaware that it was now legally possible to order copies and offer the novel for sale. It was not until the mid-1960s that US lesbian pulp fiction, such as Tereska Torres’ Women’s Barracks, was allowed through Australian Customs and it was a further decade before the first Australian lesbian novel, Kerryn Higgs’ All That False Instruction, was published.[22]

Despite the difficulties of locating literary representations of female same-sex desire in mid-twentieth century Australia, however, some women clearly managed to do so. By the 1960s a number of international lesbian novels were officially available in Australia, but even a generation earlier, despite strict censorship, women were able to obtain a limited range of lesbian-themed literature. Beverley recalled buying a copy of The Well of Loneliness in ‘one of the big bookshops in Sydney’ immediately after the war while ‘C.P.’ told British lesbian magazine Arena Three about her experience borrowing the novel from a Sydney library in 1950[...]. In the 1950s, Georgie came across The Straggler by Danish novelist Agnete Holk.[24] The Straggler was passed by the Literature Censorship Board in 1954, and board member Kenneth Binns noted: ‘this is the first time, to my knowledge, that a novel dealing seriously with the subject of lesbianism has been submitted to the board.’[25] Even when women were able to locate lesbian-themed books in bookshops or newsstands, purchasing such a book often proved a challenge for women accustomed to a life of concealment. Kerryn Higgs recalled the difficulties a friend of hers had experienced in attempted to buy The Well of Loneliness:

“I remember a friend telling me the story that she was unable to buy The Well of Loneliness even though it had no subtitle [identifying it as lesbian] for she was afraid of what the cashier would think, so she pinched it instead.”[26]

Higgs was concerned that her publisher’s decision to append the subtitle ‘A novel of Lesbian Love’ to her own novel, All That False Instruction, would create similar obstacles for women who wished to obtain the book discreetly.

The impact of lesbian literature on women who had encountered few, if any, depictions of desire between women varied considerably. Deborah described her discovery of Violette Le Duc’s novel La Batarde in 1965 as a revelation, it being her first encounter with representations of lesbianism. [...] For Deborah, the experience had a profound effect on her understanding of her own sexuality. She recalled: ‘So I read the book, and then I thought “Wow! This is me, this explains how I feel.”‘[28] Other women, however, felt that literary portrayals of lesbianism simply reinforced broader cultural messages about silence and isolation. Laurie complained that the cheap paperback novels she read in the 1960s and early 1970s were ‘so depressing, there was never a happy ending. They [the lesbian characters] either got killed, or went straight and saw the errors of their ways and all that sort of shit.’[29] When Robyn told her mother that she was a lesbian in the early 1970s, her mother was concerned about the risk of loneliness and Robyn connected the fear with Radclyffe Hall’s novel, The Well of Loneliness[...].

When Kerryn Higgs’ semi-autobiographical novel All That False Instruction was published in 1975, its reception was an indicator of how much, and how little, had changed. Despite the author having been awarded a publisher’s prize to develop the book, when the lesbian content of the novel became known, familial disapproval and threats of legal action forced the publisher (Angus & Robertson) to delay publication and the author to publish under the pseudonym Elizabeth Riley.[31] Reviewers in the Melbourne Age and The Australian objected to the novel’s lesbian theme and its depiction of men. [...] However, the existence in 1975 of a flourishing feminist and gay press meant that the novel was also received into an appreciative political environment and it was widely reviewed in lesbian and feminist circles. Sue Bellamy, reviewing the novel for feminist journal Refractory Girl, described it as an ‘exceptional piece of work’. Her engagement with the novel derived to a considerable extend from her identification with the experiences of the lesbian central character and, by extension, the author. [...]

For lesbian readers, and particularly those outside of the feminist community addressed by Sue Bellamy, this familiarity could be a source of both comfort and discomfort. While for Bellamy and others, reading from the relative safety of 1975, the sense of shared experience was validating, the setting of the book in the different cultural context of 1960s New South Wales could be unsettling. Escaping a rural working-class upbringing, the novel’s heroine, Maureen Craig, wins a scholarship to attend university in Sydney, where she embarks on a succession of relationships with other women. however, social disapproval from home and at college constrains these relationships, prompting the women to conceal their feelings for each other. [...] Despite Maureen’s fantasies of escape, fear of exposure is ultimately too much for all three of Maureen’s lovers, who in turn abandon Maureen in search of social conformity. Her story reflected the experience of many women who desired other women in this period but whose relationships were constrained by the pressures of secrecy.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Early encounters with lesbian-themed literature and film afforded some women a point of introduction into a language and cultural framework for thinking about same-sex desire, but the passive and solitary nature of reading could also leave women feeling more isolated, with no one to discuss their impressions with. However, by the late 1950s the beginnings of an international homosexual movement offered new opportunities for Australian women to reach out to others and especially seek discursive lesbian networks overseas without revealing their same-sex desires to family and friends in Australia. Rachel recalled that in the early 1960s: ‘I think people were sending off subscriptions to American magazines even in those days’ and this is confirmed by letters which appeared in a number of overseas magazines from Australian readers.[45] The Ladder, produced by US lesbian organisation Daughters of Bilitis from 1956 onwards, clearly had an Australian readership. The magazine’s round-up of international news frequently referred to stories in Australian and British newspapers, which were derived from clippings sent in by an Australian reader, and from 1970 onwards letters and magazines were received from Marion Norman of the Melbourne Daughters of Bilitis chapter.

British lesbian magazine Arena Three also had at least two contributors from New South Wales and potentially many more subscribers and readers. First published in 1964 by Londoner Esme Langley with the support of three or four other women, Arena Three provided a combination of articles, sketches, news items and a letters page for ‘homosexual women’ readers.[46] In 1964, Kate Hinton contributed two articles, including ‘The Homophile Down Under’, which offered a sketch of lesbian life in NSW and reported on broader social attitudes to lesbianism in Australia.[47] The following year G Mackenzie of Sydney wrote a number of times, enclosing donations to assist the magazine in continuing its work. She congratulated the editor: ‘You are doing a wonderful service to homosexual women. I hope you can keep it going. I look forward each month to receiving A3 and only wish we had something like it out here.’ This, she felt, was an idle hope, and she complained: ‘I guess we are never likely to see an ad in or paper like those you put in “New Statesmen” etc. I guess our mob would have pups on the spot.’[48] Her wish was apparently echoed by other Australian subscribers as in July 1968 the editor advised readers that ‘two Australian girls have recently written from New South Wales to say that, inspired by the example of A3, they would like to start a publication in the Antipodes, and would like our expert advice.’[49] Perhaps discouraged by the rather disheartening advice offered by the Arena Three editor, they did not, however, start an Australian magazine.

For Australian subscribers in the 1950s and 1960s, American and British lesbian magazines offered opportunities to feel part of a lesbian community which were not available to them elsewhere. For some, they were invaluable in demonstrating the existence of other lesbians and the range of communities and identities which existed. [...] Letters often expressed the profound loneliness which women who were not pat of lesbian social network experienced in mid-twentieth century NSW. In 1958 Miss S. from Sidney [sic], Australia wrote to One magazine, based in Los Angeles:

“I know your magazine is not a lonely hearts magazine, but it seems my only hope. I am very unhappy. I’m desperate to write to a lady who will write to me. I am 26 and I don’t like men.”[51]

Seven years later, an Australian reader placed a classified advertisement in Arena Three stating, ‘Lonely Dutch migrant wants correspondence with lady 25/35 interested in migrating to Australia.’[52] while simply reading such magazines helped to alleviate the isolation engendered by the cultural silence around same-sex desire, some women saw these networks as a potential introduction to more personal and intimate relationships. They also provide occasional insights into existing social networks and their role in transmitting information. In 1970, an Australian reader enquired of The Ladder:

“I am twenty and my girlfriend (I’ll call her Sadie) is twenty-two. We have been sharing an apartment for a year, going to bars, and all that stuff. Yesterday a friend of Sadie’s asked her what I was like in bed. When she said I wore striped pajamas and slept like a log, the friend laughed. Now we think maybe we are missing out on something. Could you fill us in?”[53]

In the context of scarce cultural representations of lesbianism, it is possible to read this letter as evidence that overseas magazines provided an invaluable source of information, even to women who were part of a wider lesbian network in Australia. However, it is perhaps more likely that this reader, who was part of a more knowing lesbian subculture centred on public bars, was poking fun at the discreet representations of lesbianism typical of US and British lesbian magazines in this period, which avoided direct references to sexual activity between women out of a concern not to offend either the censors or a sensitive middle-class readership.

While overseas lesbian magazines offered a lifeline to women in mid-twentieth century NSW, as with other literary representations of same-sex desire, access was limited by strict censorship laws. Several Australian readers of One magazine, which catered to both homosexual men and lesbians in the 1950s and 1960s, complained that their copies had been seized by Customs, while readers of Arena Three experienced similar difficulties. Such seizures were apparently sporadic and often dependent on Customs building up a gradual awareness of the content of overseas journals. In September 1966, G Mackenzie of Sydney told Arena Three:

“I got Bryan Magee’s book, ‘One in Twenty’, but in a way I think it is a pity that he gives publicity to MRG and Arena Three, because I suppose that will be the next thing to be stopped by Customs out here.

I noticed after the ‘Grapevine’ came out for sale in Australia giving publicity to DOB and ‘The Ladder’, it was after that time that Customs started to confiscate my copies of ‘The Ladder’ --they didn’t seem to know of its existence before that. ‘The Grapevine’ was reviewed by Customs in late 1965, before it was allowed to be sold to the public, and in 1966 they confiscated my January and February ‘Ladder’ and have got 4 more since then. So the publicity for A3 was no good, as far as I am concerned.”[54]

G Mackenzie’s comment reflect the ambivalence felt by some lesbian readers in this period toward open discussion of lesbianism and lesbian communities. Although a degree of publicity was necessary to enable women to locate resources such as Arena Three, increased discussion carried its own risks. Letters to Arena Three and The Ladder in the 1950s and 1960s indicate that readers used these magazines in different ways. While some women undoubtedly read them in the privacy of their own home, as a means of seeking input from other lesbians without compromising their discreet way of life, others wished to be a more active member of a discursive community, contributing articles and letters in order to enter a dialogue with other readers. For others still, these magazines offered a potential route to a material community of other lesbians, which might be reached either by placing lonely hearts advertisements or by requesting information about lesbian social networks based in bars or private homes.

In 1968, the editors of Arena Three put two readers from NSW in contact with another from Melbourne, enabling the women to meet directly with each other.[55] A small number of Australian women also travelled to the US and Britain to participate in the social networks attached to lesbian magazines: In 1969 Arena Three thanked Rene Vi, an Australian woman who had been organising the magazine’s London social group, for all her work for the magazine, on the occasion of her return to Australia. The editorial team at that time also included another Australian, Carol Potter.[56] While these women lived for some time in the UK and became embedded in British lesbian social networks, other made contact with overseas lesbian groups while travelling. Margaret described a visit she made to the offices of the Daughters of Bilitis while on a trip to San Francisco in the early 1960s. Margaret was staying with friends on a naval camp, and these circumstances shaped her encounter with the Daughters of Bilitis women:

“[T]hey were in an office building, it was just their office where they published that magazine called The Ladder. And it was the third floor or something in an office building on Market Street, so I just thought I’d just go up there and see what was happening. But I was dressing in the manner befitting a visitor from abroad staying with a Lieutenant-Commander and his wife and I got there, introduced myself, I was from Australia and one little dyke said ‘Are you really a lesbian?’ I can see why she asked that question because I looked like some respectable housewife ... And then they said there were all sorts of events and dances and things and could I, would I go with them, but of course I could not, well unless I’d have to make some silly excuse and where would I say that I was going to my hosts?”[57]

Encounters with overseas lesbians could be positive and welcoming, offering openings into the vibrant lesbian subculture which existed in some cities in the US and elsewhere. On this occasion, Margaret felt unable to incorporate this social scene into the respectable parameters of her visit to a naval camp, but, on her return to Australia she did begin to explore the possibilities of lesbian bar culture in Sydney.

#lgbtq history #lesbian history #australia #rebecca jennings #the ladder #arena three #lesbian literature

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degrassi-fandom-confessions · 2 months

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idk how drew ever got bianca OR clare. like two bad insane bitches with his lame ass?? he should have died instead of adam fr

#degrassi confessions #degrassi #degrassi the next generation #dtng #anti drew torres #drew torres #admin nick

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fuzzychildchopshop · 7 months

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imagine if Uncle Phil threw Drew, Zig and Tristan out

because never mess with uncle Phil ever

#degrassi #degrassi next class #fresh prince of bel air #anti drew torres #anti zig novak #anti tristan milligan #uncle phil #phil banks #submission

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hydesjackiespuddinpop · 2 months

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The way Degrassi S12 was trying to make me feel bad for Katie Matlin 😭

Spoiler: It did not work. Drew may be a fuckboy, but he sure as hell deserves better than Katie imo.

#degrassi #drew torres #anti katie matlin #anti krew

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phoenixlionme · 3 years

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DC/Marvel Animal-Themed Supers

1. Garfield Logan aka Beast Boy

2. Selina Kyle aka Catwoman

3. Bruce Wayne aka Batman

4. Dick Grayson aka Robin I and Nightwing

5. Jason Todd aka Robin II

6. Tim Drake aka Robin III and Red Robin

7. Damian Wayne aka Robin IV

8. Rachel Roth aka Raven

9. Mari Jiwe McCabe aka Vixen

10. Wenonah Littlebird aka Owlwoman

11. Dinah Lance aka Black Canary

12. Jaime Reyes aka Blue Beetle

13. Diana Prince aka Wonder Woman; one of her superpowers is union with beasts

14. Peng Deilan aka Wonder Woman of China

15. Wang Baixi aka Batman of China

16. Bilal Asselah aka Nightrunner (Batman of Paris)

17. Cassandra Cain aka Batgirl

18. Harper Row aka Bluebird

19. Dolphin (Ally of Aquaman)

20. Kendra Munoz-Saunders aka Hawkgirl

21. Karen Beecher aka Bumblebee

22. Buddy Baker aka Animal Man

23. Jade Nguyen aka Cheshire; I can see her being an anti-hero

24. Yolanda Martinez aka Wildcat

25. Kahina Eskandari aka Iron Butterfly

26. Marcus (last name unknown) aka Monkey Prince

MARVEL

1. Hank McCoy aka Beast

2. Rahne Sinclair aka Wolfsbane

3. Benito Serrano aka Toro

4. Amka Aliyak aka Snowguard

5. Maria Vasquez aka Tarantula

6. Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow

7. Clint Barton aka Hawkeye I

8. Kate Bishop aka Hawkeye II

9. T’challa aka Black Panther

10. Shuri; aka Black Panther in an alternate universe

11. Barbara Morse aka Mockingbird

12. Humberto Lopez aka Reptil

13. Ava Ayala aka White Tiger

14. Peter Parker aka Spider Man

15. Jessica Drew aka Spider Woman

16. Gwen Stacy aka Spider Woman but commonly referred to as Spider Gwen

17. Cindy Moon aka Silk

18. May Reilly aka Lady Spider

19. Hobart Brown aka Spider Punk

20. Red Wolf; real name unknown

21. Lupe Santiago aka Silverclaw

22. Pavitr Prabhaka aka Spider Man of India

23. Raz Malhotra aka Giant-Man

24. Ami Han aka White Fox

25. Dan Bi aka Crescent with Io

26. Logan aka Wolverine

27. Patsy Walker aka Hellcat

28. Janet van Dyne aka The Wasp

29. Hank Pym aka Ant Man

30. Doreen Green aka Squirrel Girl

31. Joaquin Torres aka Falcon II

32. Maria Aracely Penalba aka Hummingbird

33. Iara dos Santos aka Shark Girl

34. Kitty Pryde aka Shadowcat

35. Bonita Juarez aka Firebird

36. Ken Shiga aka Koi Boy

37. Lin Li aka Nature Girl

38. Jason Strongbow aka American Eagle

39. Beta Ray Bill

40. Fernanda Rodriguez aka Red Locust

41. Rocket Raccoon

42. Howard the Duck

43. Cosmo the Space Dog

44. Sam Wilson aka Falcon I; later becomes Captain America II

45. Mantis

Please be respectful with your comments. If I missed anyone, please add.

#dc #marvel #my posts #lists #group appreciation #animals #powers

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riddledeep · 5 years

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LIST OF GEN 2 PIXIES

Offspring of Fergus Whimsifinado (Head Pixie the First) from Sanderson to Southmark. Most are interchangeable, but notable characters are bolded and marked with an asterisk.

Alternatively, click HERE to view a Dropbox/Google Sheets spreadsheet that lists the Gen 2 pixies, their ages during the frozen timestream, ages compared with Anti-Cosmo, and age difference from Sanderson (Basically a prettier and better organized version of this post).

This is a quick reference tool I made for author purposes and ages are not 100% exact to the year (H.P. doesn’t have his pixies exactly on the 500 year mark, after all).

*Fergus Whimsifiando - Head Pixie the First (Gen 1)

*Ennet Sanderson - Vice president of customer service; head of complaints department; H.P.’s personal assistant; Ivorie brand cowlick

*Cecil Hawkins - Sucks his thumb; has a bad hand; does budgeting work

*Alapin Wilcox - Fagigglyne addict; runs emergency response team

*Markell Longwood - Vice President of Pixies Inc. and H.P.’s heir

*Mitchell Caudwell - Foop’s therapist at Wish Fixers

*James Bayard - Kind of a goodball; marketing team

*Luke Madigan - H.P.’s personal secretary; likes birds; especially sneaky; needed glasses early

Oliver Graham - Pixie neotype in Eros Nest

Walter Keefe - In-vitro baby; has dysolfactya; manages the Labyrinth

Hunter Springs - Had a surrogate father

*Elliot McKinley - Extremely religious

Ralston - Emergency response team; annoying suck-up

Walters - Puts everyone else first; rooms with Caudwell/Bayard/Madigan

Thane - Tinkers with mechanics; texts smiley faces

*Charlie Palomar - H.P.’s favorite child; works at Wish Fixers

Cinna - Architect; appears in “Make You Proud” and “Rain Dance”

Kaufman - Known for his short temper

Saddler - Works with the Big Wand in Fairy World; Ivorie brand cowlick

Abernathy - Does concept test work; chronic scapegoat

*Darius Smith - Gyne; Chief Pixie of PixieCo (in Hawthorn Haven)

Tindall - Works in retail

Butler - Personally attends to big-name visitors like ambassadors

Keight

Scott

Clark

Phillips

Richards

Ross

*Newman - Security; large “bouncer”; fastest; Ivorie brand cowlick

*Hamilton - Security; large “bouncer”; strongest; Ivorie brand cowlick

*Faust - Security; large “bouncer”; dumbest; Ivorie brand cowlick

Roberts

Wolfram

Carmichael - Judged diving competition in “Fairly Oddlympics”

Lee

Wright

Fisher

Brown

Middleton

Ward

Lloyd

Shaw

Cox

Powell

Chapman

Walsh

Dalton

Jones

Taylor

Matthews

Thomson

Miller

O'Neil

Walton

Burns

Perry

Hayes

Baxter

Johnson

Atkins

Colby

Higgins

Bates

Skinner

Marconi - Works on Sanderson’s floor (“Terrible Timing”)

Ford

Wilkes

Hanson

Devlin

Rawlings

Lovell

Heaton

Collier

Stanton

Bowman

Carey

Aldred

Cummings

Beaumont

*Herman Jardine - Gardener; likes Batman

Hirschi - Born under elephant statue at the golf course

Wainwright

Devine

Conway

Edmonds

Hackett

Fielding

Knott

Manson

McKay

Duckley

Plume

Calvert

Hale

Dowling

Pike

Beck

Millburn

Ryans

Pemberton

York

Westing

Redmond

Proctor

Squires

Penn

Sahlberg

Moore

Humphrey

McAdams

Jensen

Webber

Brooks

Iyer

Kinsley

Martel

Craven

Polluck

Rothwell

Booth

Candless

Hobson

Oldfield

Gallowey

Dougal

*Jackie Cresswell - Pixie/Anti-Pixie relations; gyne

Haddock

Alderson

Windsor

Clough

Ohara

Jackson

Keane

Lewin

Crowley

Marr

Benfield

Stanford

Wale

Emmerson

Prescott

Montague

Kipling

Howe

Milford

Foulkes

Clifton

O'Donell

Tipping

Saville

Sherry

Ashby

Lawther

Carnegie

Purnell

Dover

*Rudyard Chidlow - Pixie-Human relations; gyne

Kilmurry

Fallon

Thomas

Dallas

Merrick

Oak

Yardley

Levett

Cahill

Beckett

Peake

Haker

Patchett

Ellerby - Demoed preening with Longwood in Frayed Knots

Hartshorn

Cawley

Wilmot

Vale

Henley

Astley

Cunliffe

Walling

Hatsfield

Parkins

O'Halloran

Craddock

Rogan

McFarlene

Southam

Wilkshire

Marland

Colebrook

Kimber

Starnes

Cobb

Rackham

Enright

McAlpine

Dunne

Draper

Mansell

Monroe

Cowan - Marketing (“Solo”)

Larson - Thematic maps of magic usage (“Solo”)

Woolley

Preece

Glenn - Got H.P.’s coffee wrong once so H.P. pretends he’s dead

Dickinson

Steadmon

Dawe

McDaniel - Appears in the Origin chapter “Mother’s Touch”

Lomas

Thatcher

Hutchings

Adamson

Wilkes

Lenninger

Meadows

Dalby

Birch

Travers

Tierney

Driscoll

Stamp

Ingram

Winters

Cottrell

O'Leary

Sampson

Royle

Whitaker

Caton

Laycock

Steel

Ricci

Carter

Pierce

Harris

Feldman

Brunet

Rush

Hinckley

Partington

Gillett

Hyde

Stretton

Darter

Banner

Orchad

Xanders

Haywood

Shipley

Chalmers

Groves

Milward

Ansell

Boulton

Quikley

Lockwood

Keating

Marlowe

Samuels

Cowdery

Orme

Leith

Lander

Court

Foley

Rixon

Toland

Lomax

McCall

Chatton

Wakefield

Tyrer

Mistry

Ricketts

Bower

Peck

Hartman

Swales

Woodford

Blakey

Grant

Kimball

Raeburn

Tailor

Holt

Rowlinson

O'Dell

Benson

Coburn

Rutherford

Winstanley

Lancer - Lancer and above are taller than Sanderson as of “Name”

Torres - Sanderson is taller than Torres and below as of “Name”

Pinnock

Bristow

Lilley

*Flint Spicer - Gyne

Worrall

Archer

Oates

Matheson

Fairburne

Rutter

Nicholls

Shand

Mallinson

Harker

Farnsworth

Mears

Tweddle

Falconer

Milett

Stout

Rasborne

Alpert

O'Malley

Baldwin

Featherstone

Bloom

Whitway

Bensigner

Fitton

Shackleton - Last pixie born before the War of the Angels

Kingston - Born during the War of the Angels

Sterling - Born during the War of the Angels

Sweeny - Born during the War of the Angels

Andrews - Born during the War of the Angels

Gilbey - Born during the War of the Angels

Markham - Born during the War of the Angels

*Weskar - Deceased

*Dayflower Commelina - Flower child

Burton

Kerridge

Otten

Pattel

Bleeker

Norcross

Jake

Newberry

Hemming

Oxley

Dodds

Nelms

Steward

Hatton

Sunley

Imsodon

Noidees

Trying

Hartford

Klever

Ness

Hayles

Spoons

Kettel

Avery

Brookfeld

Keywood

Highridge

Skene

Elliston

Orritt

Lincoln

Sheldon

Lovett

Conrad

Killock

*Nathaniel Lambton - Gyne

Fernley

Sellers

Aherne

Tidmarsh

Stammers

Briggon

Harrows

Gammon

Knowler

Ketley

Rodwell

Beresford

Sorrell

Handcock

Geary

Kinch

Ainsworth

Lendon

Houlton

Danby

Chaser

Applebee

Blushden

Kerby

Patton

Locke

Gann

Somerville

Jericho

Markwell

Porter

Penham

Linley

Quinton

Jasper

Langford

Dolan

Underwood

Cunningham

Littlefield

Klein

Lifsey

Jeffreys

Dell

Sewell

*Mullins - Tolbert’s older twin

*Tolbert - Mullins’ younger twin

Lake

Rivers

Carey

Docker

Collinson

Shepherd

Drew

Ianson

Lindstrom

Dunmore

Wellman

Calderwood

Kinnison

Dyerson

Burrow

Chance

Downey

Carlile

Sumner

Willetts

Shuttleworth

Lendon

Castel

Slattery

Godwin

Buckland

Shannon

Leeding

Dowler

Wheatcroft

Birkett

Stokes

Briden

Crossan

Varley

Leeson

Percival

Dimmock

Milton

Sawden

Lillfell

Davy

Elphick

Peterson

Michaels - Born under elephant statue at the golf course

Reid

Marland

Everton

Winfer

Simmons

Norgate

Kysel

Richter

Truman

Walsh

Branting

Derrien

Swanson

Burlinson

*Melvin Kettingham - Gyne

Teal

Kress

Pendleton

Roper

Brace

Showell

Dymott

McKeller

Strauss

Roman

Marshfield

Scammell

Cortes

Swatton

Green

Morse

Spearing

Steeper

Grayson

Cane

Sherwin - Last pixie mentioned in Origin of the Pixies

Stockdale - Born post-Origin of the Pixies

Zachman

Bell

Cooper

Carson

Putnam

William Snow - Scored 10/10/9 in gymnastics (“Make You Proud”)

*Addison Rosencrantz - Local screw-up

Marcus Verona - Skilled for his age and smug about it

*Gavin Finley - Poof’s, Foop’s, and Sammy’s roommate; gyne; tomte

Jordan Southmark - H.P. babies him since he’s his youngest

Click HERE for my Fairly OddParents worldbuilding masterpost

#RD general #RD Pixie stuff #RD Head Pixie #RD Sanderson #RD Longwood #RD Finley #RD art #RD canon characters #RD side characters

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dishdasha · 4 years

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https://www.killyourdarlings.com.au/article/the-arts-crisis-and-the-colonial-cringe/

The Arts Crisis and the Colonial Cringe

The arts industry in Australia is at a precipice—decimated by the pandemic and systematically starved of funding. Instead of advancing an economic and nationalist argument for the value of the arts, we need to confront Australia’s cultural estrangement and reorient the sector towards social justice.

Lauren Carroll Harris

15th Oct, 2020

‘Art is a really bad word here.’

——John Cassavetes

‘If you want to destroy something, a standard method is first to defund it.’

——Noam Chomsky

For months now, art has lived almost entirely on the internet. Museums battened down. Ticketing revenue from cancelled cultural events vanished. Major cultural institutions made frictionless, robotic virtual gallery tours their go-to method of adaptation. And as unemployment in the arts soars, the Federal Government’s late stimulus package—tiny in comparison to the size of the industry, precluding basics like hardship payments, still unspent—expressed contempt for practicing artists and the sector’s grassroots. The recent federal budget has reinforced the Government’s tactic: turning away from whichever sector it deems to be an ideological opponent with fatal indifference.

One of the earliest cultural responses in this country to the COVID-19 catastrophe was to bunker down and look inward: with the suspension of air travel, touring and international acts came a call for insularism, to enlarge ‘the breadth, calibre and impact of Australian stories that our festivals could help commission, nurture and unleash every year.’ A column in the Guardian quoted festival directors putting together programs that discuss ‘what it means to be Australian’ and celebrate ‘our place and our home.’

It struck me as puzzling. A festival can program an author or activist to speak via Zoom from anywhere in the world, or commission newly produced podcasts and radio plays by authors whose book tours have been cancelled. Video artists can collaborate remotely with their editors and sound designers to cut together new projects. Writers can work on scripts across borders and hold Skype meetings with international mentors. You can activate your VPN and click onto a trove of world cinema. Digital curators can open up access to new art to anyone, anywhere in the world, 24/7. And yet amid this internationalisation of culture, in Australia, the same tired, milquetoast cultural narratives about art’s service to national identity were being rehearsed.

I know what you’re about to say: I’m indulging in the cultural cringe. But I’m beginning to think many of us have lost sight of what that term really means. And that may be the whole problem.

A.A. Phillips’ seminal essay on the cultural cringe first appeared in Meanjin in 1950, describing an internalised inferiority complex, mainly regarding literature; Australian writing at the time was not thought worthy of undergraduate study. ‘Australia is an English colony,’ wrote Phillips, at a time when Australians were still British subjects by definition, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had not yet won suffrage. ‘Its cultural pattern is based on that fact of history or, more precisely, on that pair of facts… But the fact of our colonialism has a pervasive psychological influence, setting up a relationship as intimate and uneasy as that between an adolescent and his parent.’

The cringe’s historical origins lie in the material reality of colonialism, producing what literary academic Emmett Stinson has since called a wider set of anxieties about Australian culture in relation to the world around it. Colonists denied and evicted the cultures of this continent’s custodians and supplanted it with their own. That process cemented a displacement of culture at Australia’s heart—art lost its origin—as well as a tendency to look abroad (at first to Britain, the culturally dominant hegemony, then to the US) for cultural confirmation.

When we talk about the cultural cringe, we’re really talking about the colonial cringe.

What we are seeing this year is the arts sector grapple, or rather, refuse to grapple, with its decline and gradual rejection as a federally funded public project.

Today, though, the term stands in for a form of reflexive reverse snobbery—a lazy satisfaction with the status quo and whatever is made here. Contemporary usage of the term is cut adrift from that understanding of colonial culture, which was key to Phillips’ argument: that Australia’s subservience to overseas cultural values, specifically, British cultural values, came from it’s ‘umbilical connection’ to the literature, art and ideas of its colonial parent. Consider that the Art Gallery of NSW didn’t consider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art worthy of collection until the 1950s; that Queen Elizabeth opened the National Gallery of Australia as late as 1982.

Phillips confessed that at times ‘a raucous nationalism’ had led to excessive ‘over-praise’ for Australian works. Indeed, the popular interpretation of the term now is used to shut down discussion, to automatically praise local culture with an uncritical eye, such that it is almost impossible to advance a critique of Australian culture without being dismissed as an unthinking imbiber of the cultural cringe.

That’s the paradox—that the term cultural cringe is now called upon regularly with the same assumed anti-intellectualism that Phillips wished to challenge. I still believe that the best, or rather, only way, to grow the standing of the arts here is to engage with it critically and rigorously—to discard the implicit idea that anything Australia produces is above critical engagement simply because it is Australian. The question then becomes how to investigate the history of art and culture when, historically, there have been few institutional channels here to do so?

What we are seeing this year is the arts sector grapple, or rather, refuse to grapple, with its decline and gradual rejection as a federally funded public project. As this happens, it should reckon with where it first drew its power and what it replaced—what A.A. Phillips called the ‘colonial dilemma’. This cultural estrangement will continue, until the problem of colonialism is materially addressed. The centre of this society is missing a knowledge that should have been omnipresent. How will we choose to live, with such emptiness?

These things set in motion 250 years ago are still bearing out. The cultural subservience and intellectual timidity that Phillips described was baked into the structure of Australian life, from everything to the economy to citizenship. Australia never has kicked out the Brits. Still, it is the only colonial country that has not engaged in a process of treaty, truth-telling and justice on a national level (Victoria’s formal movement toward this is a necessary, heartening step).

That means that history isn’t finished with us. The defunding of the arts is of course nowhere near equivalent to colonialism and genocide, but they’re part of the same project—bending this country’s narratives and history backwards in service of lies to substantiate settler-colonial Australia’s existence and the sideswept racial guilt that haunts every aspect of life here.

Now, the art world is also facing the great failure of neoliberalism—of the logical endpoint of defunding, privatising, removing state influence and casting off formerly federal projects to states and councils. The parts of the art world founded on neoliberal economics—Carriageworks, namely, a private cultural enterprise that stayed afloat by way of venue hire to commercial activities—haven’t avoided catastrophe, rather, they’ve faced catastrophe first.

Rather, the art sector’s response to the twin crises of whiteness and defunding comes from its dedication to a tradition that promotes individual achievement rather than collectivism like political action, nonviolent organising, picket lines, marches. The impact of COVID-19 hasn’t been helped by the fact that, unlike the US arts sector, Australian museums, galleries, cinemas, theatres and festivals—which usually conceive of themselves as physical spaces, events, collections and so on—have never developed much in the way of online infrastructure and expertise with which to commission and exhibit new digital programs.

Does the Australian arts sector have the strategy and power to get what it wants? Does the electorate care enough to act, and vote, and make the arts’ defunding politically unacceptable?

Does the Australian arts sector have the strategy and power to get what it wants? Does the electorate have faith in contemporary art and culture? If so, do they care enough to act, and vote, and make the arts’ defunding politically unacceptable? Many artists and advocates have made noble, decades-long attempts to patiently explain what art contributes to a social democracy. For those of us working in the arts, its necessity is almost too ubiquitous to grasp and too transparent to prove. Rehearsing the same arguments on the back foot is pointless—the art’s displaced basis here is material, in the foundation of how this society is organised to evict one set of cultures and overlay new ones.

At present, there is enough evidence to suggest that the attacks against the arts have already been successful. It has been a political project. Even before the coronavirus forced the cancellation of cultural events, the Australian public’s art attendance only appears high because it tends to be measured in yearly brackets. Diversity Arts recorded that 71% of Australians attended art events in the year preceding the study, which institutes a low benchmark for arts participation (there’s a dearth of data on regular—say, weekly—arts attendance). In more recent research by Australia Council for the Arts, one in four people said that there were no arts events near where they live. They live in an arts desert. Cost is cited as another thing preventing more people from attending art more regularly. This data is hugely substantial. It spells out a failure in arts policy to provide access to art to everyone regardless of where they are and how much they earn. If the arts sector is to win back its funding, it needs to rapidly expand its audience within the general public. Artists are good at envisaging an audience; now this audience needs to be thought of as the sector’s allies, agents and actors for change.

Art has, since 1788, assumed a minority status. Form-breaking, adventurous modes of artmaking like moving image, net art, hybrid and experimental arts and, until recently, digital forms of exhibition, have very little institutional support here. Depletion of funding leads to depletion of ambition, experimentation and innovation. Meanwhile, media outlets often run more opinion pieces bemoaning the arts crisis than they do critically reviewing new Australian work. The arts bloodbath has outrun the arts’ output—the crisis is the story. Artists are now starved both of their bread-and-butter and a wide critical responsiveness.

The arts sector has refrained for calling for restoration of public cultural aid to, say, 1990s levels. Its main tactics to appeal for relevance from middle Australia—comparing Australians’ support of the arts to its love of sport, arguing the sector’s value in neoliberal dollar terms and employment numbers—have failed to stem the blood loss. The remaining line of argument is that the arts are essential to who we are as a country. Holding up a mirror to our life as a nation. Examining who we are, our national identity. The narrators of our nation. What it means to be Australian. These words are generally uttered with goodwill, but a terrible conservatism haunts them. It must be said: this vision of an absurd, unhealthy, nationalistic identity has backfired. The history of the cultural cringe suggests that Australia’s national existence has been predicated on the eradication of particular forms of cultural life rather than its encouragement, and its importation from greater global powers. Being Australian is absolutely congruent with degrading, ignoring and deleting culture. Art and the people who make it barely figure in the imagined community of Australia.

I’m wary and worried about the way that many of us have internalised funding agency-speak of ‘celebrating Australian stories.’ I’m more interested in art that is a window to other places and ways of thinking.

Over the course of my time contributing to the arts and media, I’ve come to reassess the ways in which I naively contributed to what I now see as a kind of liberal, culturally nationalist conversation that says that the work of the arts should necessarily advance a national interest or even, in academic Julian Meyrick’s words, to persuade the nation to examine its own soul. Some artists may think of their work in that way, but art also precedes nations and borders and federations. I’m wary and worried about the way that many of us have internalised funding agency-speak of ‘celebrating Australian stories.’ I’m more interested in art that is a window to other places and ways of thinking, and culture as a project of enlargement, future possibilities and internationalism.

The arts sector’s response has also been separate from a concept of social justice beyond its spaces. It has no memory of collective power. From the top down, it values career development over social justice for its practitioners. The forces of economic segregation and sexism, austerity and racism, division and austerity bearing down on the world are the same as those in the arts. Curator Liz McNiven makes the point that the growth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander filmmaking only took off after decades of pressured progress in civil rights, social participation and legal representation—the self-representation in Bla(c)k screen art we see today is not just a function of creative and industry forces. Lack of structural opportunity means that those with financial mobility, inherited wealth, parental generosity or spousal support—or those who can bear the poverty and hardship—can make a living in the arts. There’s no possible diverse, thriving, funded art sector without a materially just society that acts on issues like decommodifying housing and issuing a universal basic income. Diversity in the arts isn’t purely a curatorial project, it’s also a social justice project. It means the arts, and society beyond it, confronting its relationship to First Nations dispossession and the potential of sovereignty.

The most dangerous discourses are often the benevolent liberal ones that hide deeper systemic prejudices and allow oppressive structures to continue invisibly. Rather than automatically confirming and celebrating who we are as Australians, the arts need to critically engage with this continent’s history. It could also reject the idea that art here must address the concept of Australian nationhood, and work instead to think about regional, local, marginalised and community identities and how those identities connect to the rest of the world. It could even take apart the very concept of Australia and think beyond Anglo-founded empires. To this end, I’ve noticed that many of the most audacious young artists do not frame their work around a national vision, and often they’re not addressing Australia at all, but link their own very specific experiences of living across cultures to broader global narratives of diaspora, lineage and family displaced by movement. I’m inclined toward the view that the most interesting art is taking place outside a national lens.

Another glittering instance of this internationalism is Brook Andrews’ Sydney Biennale, NIRIN, a program that gathers the work of Indigenous and First Nations artists from around the world. Though many in the art world have reflexively read NIRIN as a decolonising project, Andrews’ curatorial statement makes no mention of Australia. Rather than nationhood, the NIRIN website speaks primarily about sovereignty; rather than trying to insert Indigenous voices into imposed colonial narratives, the works simply stand for themselves—a quietly radical shift in the discourse, moving away from national boundaries and borders.

The small screen sometimes offers flashes of insight as to what art can look like when it doesn’t automatically address Australian identity. Made in Arnhem Land, ABC TV’s short creative documentary series Black As is fascinating in that it does not really take place in the imagined community of ‘Australia’. Its situation is the Ramingining community, its language is Djambarrpuyngu and its collaborators—Jerome Lilypiyana, Chiko Wanybarrnga, Dino Wanybarrngu, Joseph Smith—are constantly honouring law and land in small ways along their epic, mundane, hilarious journeys across country.

There’s no possible diverse, thriving, funded art sector without a materially just society. Diversity in the arts isn’t purely a curatorial project, it’s also a social justice project.

As a nation where language and images are used to obfuscate and mislead, Australia has designated its own sacred sites since invasion: statues of Winston Churchill, King George V and Queen Elizabeth in capital cities, monuments to Captain Cook along the coast where he put English names to places already named. This is where art and politics bisect right now. Statues and monuments show the myths of the nation—what is deemed worthy of being remembered, who is seen as central to the stories a country tells about itself. Tearing down statues that unthinkingly celebrate colonialism, and instead, placing them in museums, whose purpose is to interrogate and contextualise the past, designed as a gesture of cultural compensation.

And yet 2020 is also showing us the limits of art and the necessity of systemic change. Change requires policies and legalities like defunding the police, abolishing jails, establishing free childcare so that domestic labour is socialised rather than delegated to women. What can culture do? Some of the work of truth-telling, some of the work of renovating our myths and heroes. There is not much in Australian history’s cultural narrative that would suggest to you that art predates borders and nations, and that people of all genders, ethnicities, sexualities and worldviews make art. But through engaging with the social world, art can guide us through its attendant dramas of colonialism, class, race, gender, sexuality, empire and capitalism. What is art if not a search for a collective memory? As curator and artist Djon Mundine said recently, art can help this place make ‘the conceptual leap to be honest about the past.’ That means the crimes committed against First Nations people and ecologies so that an Australian nation might exist.

I’m not here to depress you or to kick a sector while it’s down. How we change the ending of the arts’ sorry downward trajectory is still to be decided. I believe the sector’s future is tied up with art as a form of community mobilisation and political action as part of a shift in the national consciousness. It’s tied up with how social change happens, and how we change the ending of this country’s sordid relationship with colonialism. Formal recognition of genocide, compensation, treaties, the teaching of Indigenous history, culture and languages in schools, and the empowerment of First Nations communities to govern their own affairs are part of this historical and cultural reckoning. There could have been a hundred Emily Kame Kngwarreyes, a hundred Nora Wompis. There still could be a hundred Tracey Moffats.

I’m only pessimistic as long as the public conversation carries on in the current mood of bewilderment and paralysis. Through history, the most unthinkable crises have led to serious debates and movements in which the future is reassembled and real progress is made. If you’re tired, act. It might be the only way to pull yourself—and the culture—out of inertia. I used to traffic in the culturally nationalist, local boosterist reasons for funding the arts. Now, only one reason remains in my mind: I want to live in a smart country.

End

#artsfunding #killyourdarlings

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