AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 7

Left to themselves, the people Maryanne Fahey's roo!ly excellent could think of nothing better to do Kylie Mole is the role model for politically than elect Richard Nixon. Minogue. who now guests on The General de Gaulle and Ted Heath. In Comedy Company as Mole’s friend Australia they couldn't remember Rebecca while Mole appears as whom they’d elected, as a succession herself on Perfect Match. And the of conservative prime ministers came role model for grade six primary and went, one of them going from the school children isn’t Minogue but beach in symbolic fusion of politics Mole: Kylie and surfing, never to be seen again. Teacher Colin Fletcher said: I think the Left to itself, the people's culture reason the .show look off so well was Minogue maintained a lively interest in the because we have a Kylie, Amanda and body and spectacle, but not in Dina in the class. I use the show in formal politics and society. And Kylie teaching because the kids are so tuned in. I ihink lhe kids can relate to Kylie Mole Minogue, a child of ’68, grew. he birth was in Bethlehem. The because she is such a real character, Did she revere Abbie Hoffman. (Perth Sunday Times, 18.9.88.) date was 28 May, 1968. There Rudi Dutschke, Daniel Cohn- T was a time when a birth in Bendit, Richard Neville, Germaine And the generation of ’68 looks Bethlehem was considered Greer? on, aghast, muttering tnea culpa. Is newsworthy, but times have No, but she and her Melburnian this the reality they imagined, the changed. The unique place and event schoolchums loved Abba, and her society of the spectacle, the politics of have become cliched, history little life was changed when mum the body? repeating itself first as farce, but then (Welsh ex-ballerina Carol) look her Well, no. it isn’t. “The Body” is another young Australian person interminably diffused and deferred to see Olivia Newton-John in as soap opera. So Bethlehem Grease. who’s electrifying the global image becomes Bethlehem Hospital, This was the spectacle of the circuits just now. Her name is Elle Melbourne and the star in the East body that mobilised little Kylie: high Macpherson. Cleo readers voted Elle becomes Kylie Minogue. energy wholesomeness, disco the No. I woman they would like to May 1968 was a newsworthy dancing, toothsome Australiana at look like. She also has the No. 1 month. The society of the spectacle large. She went on to score the part of lifestyle, she’s the No. 3 most was proclaimed by the situationists. Carla in The Sullivans at the age of glamorous woman in the world after Students and car workers mobilised eleven, followed by that of Princess Diana and Joan Collins, on the streets of Paris, daubing Charlotte in The Henderson Kids. and she’s the No. 2 ultimate role slogans on the walls of the Finally, she pupated, or pubertied. model for women today after Jana establishment: "Sous le pave, la into Charlene in Neighbours. Wendt. (Cleo, October 1988.) plage! " — Under the pavement, the Waiting only long enough to And what about Kylie beach! secure that passport to international Minogue? She came top in one Down Under the pavements of ahdom, a screen wedding, Kylie rips category. She’s the No, 1 worst role Paris, if you dig farenough, there are off her little pink cardi, piles her hair model for women. Says Cleo: “Most indeed beaches the antipodean up through the brim of what might be respondents said they wanted to be beaches of Australia. A perfect the disco version of the Australian smart rather than hanker after good location for the society of the slouch hat, and appears winking looks.” spectacle, the politics of the body. winsomely in a little black dress to rip Be smart. Remember what The revolutionaries of the off 'sixties star Little Eva in The Marx wrote in The Eighteenth 'sixties welcomed May ’68 as a world- Locomotion. Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte a bout historical event, comparable in The child of ’68 has come of age, Kylie Minogue and the turntable significance with Lhe French and with the help of benevolent revolutions of The Locomotion: “An Revolution and the Enlightenment. Uncle Rupert and his friends she's entire people, which had imagined But just as the French become the sign of >8. The global that by means of a revolution it had Revolution ended in Napoleon's villagers are all Neighbours now. as imparted to itself an acelerated empire and then farcical repetition the culture industry’s integrated power of motion, suddenly finds under Napoleon . III, so the circuits reproduce Kylie on scrcen, in itself set back into a defunct epoch evenements of '68 were comprom­ music, in magazines and on the lips and ... the nation feels like a mad ised, Culture and politics, fused into of the whole world’s pre-teens in the Englishman in Bedlam ... ” one critical mass during '68, were sacred time between school and tea. And so we'reback to thedcfunct defused. The politics of ecstasy and But already Kylie has been out- epoch of Stars in the East, for as bomb culture parted company. Kvlied by The Comedy Company's everyone knows, “Bedlam” is a Dropouts became cultural Kylie Mole; a reproduction more shortened form of Bethlehem entrepreneurs and political activists original than the original, the Hospital. became professors of sociology. revenge of the simulacrum. John Hartley