Season of Upheaval

Vol. 4 No. 1 February 1994 $5.00 \ ' "'1 • • • ~ ' .:: · ~~- .: ..~ ~. '·. ..j·_:!:_:~~ \ -~ .· ~~~ ,.. - ' .. t ' ~ ~ 4': ; ~ ,_ ~, ·:--, " ....... - . .. :;s: ·-~ - ·;_··_ ~{.~ : :::~~~ ~ . ., . .. !- ,, , · I. · ~.. .... ~ . ,I· - -... · ,. - . • . "t! ·, .. : .. : ... , Season of upheaval The politics of swimming pools Politics and Australia's pool of unemployed Shane Maloney Jon Greenaway and Frank Stilwell Ken Inglis observes a memorial ritual Denis Minns reads the new Catechism Eureka Street wishes to express sympathy to the families who suffered loss of life or home during the January bushfires. Photo: Andrew Stark EUR[-KA SJR[-EJ subscription form Please send me Evrelza Street: for one year ($45 for 10 issues, or $40 cone. for two years for pensioners, students and unemployed.) D ($80, or $75 cone.) [l Nan1c .. .............. .... ................................................. .................. ........ ...... ..... .................. 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Volume 4 Number 1 EURI:-KA SJRI:-ET February 1994 A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology CoNTENTS 4 36 COMMENT SUMMER READING Andrew Bullen reviews the Picador Bool< 6 of the Beach and Picador New Writing; LETTERS Michael McGirr reviews recent biographies of Christina Stead and Hal Porter (p3 7); Rory 9 Mungoven reviews Peter Crockett's Evatt: CAPITAL LETTER A Life (p39); Ross Fitzgerald reviews biog raphies of Kerry Packer and Isaac Isaacs 10 (p41), and Brian Toohey reviews Frank Stil REFLECTIONS IN A PUBLIC POOL well's Economic In equality and Peter Shane Maloney ponders the fate of a great Ewer's International Best Practice: A Crit Australian institution. ical Guide (p42) . 13 42 FROM BAD TO WORSE STAMPING GROUND The golden age of Australia media never Roger Trowbridge examines an old past happened, says Max Teichmann. ime and current pursuits. 14 43 SPORTING LIFE BARE-FACED MADONNA Andy Hamilton goes cycling without lycra. Catriona Jackson sifts through the Madon Eureka na industry, and decides there is more to be This month 15 said. Street begins the ARCHIMEDES Caroline Chisholm Frank O'Shea probes The God Particle. 45 series, articulating THE MUSICAL RAMP ANT national life, with 17 Geoffrey Milne traces a national trend in EMPLOYING AUSTRALIA theatre going. 'The Rite Stuff', an Jon Greenaway and Frank Stilwell consid essay by Ken Inglis. er the implications of the Green Paper on 47 See p22 Employment. FLASH IN THE PAN Reviews of the films Schindler's List, Th e 21 Remains of the Day, The Snapper, Mrs Cover photo: Chmesc New Year in QUIXOTE Doubtfire, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, Victoria Street, Richmoml, Victoria, by Bill Thomas. Addams Family Values, The Beverly Hill 22 billies, Daens and Taus Les Matins du Photos pp 2, 5, 18- 19, by Andrew Stark; THE RITE STUFF Monde. Cartoons p6 by Michael Dal y. Ken Inglis reflects on the making of a Photos pp 10-12, 36-37 by Bill Thomas; ritual-and what the ritual made of us. G raphics pp 14, 42, 45 by Tim Methcrall; 50 G raphic p22 by Waldemar Buczynski; CONVERSATIONS Photo p38 by Michael McGirr. 28 Edmund Campion finds the right note of AN AUSTRALIAN PAINTER hilarity. Morag Fraser goes to the Arthur Boyd Retro spective. Eurel<a Street magazine 51 jesuit Publicati ons SPECIFIC LEVITY PO Box 553 30 Ri chmond VIC 3 121 LOST, ALL LOST IN WONDER Tel (03)427 73 11 Denis Milms dissects the Ca techism of the Fax (03)428 4450 Universal Church. COMMENT A magazine of public affairs, the arts and theology M oRAe F RASER Publisher Michael Kelly SJ Editor Morag Fraser Production editor Ra y Cassin Consu I ting editor Michael McGirr Production assistants Fits and starts John Doyle SJ, Juliette Hughes, Siobhan Ja ckson, Chris Jenkins SJ. Contributing editors of the season Adelaide: Frances Browne JBVM Brisbane: Ian Howells SJ Darwin: Marga ret Palmer Perth: Dean Moore Sydney: Edmund Campion, Andrew Riemer, Gerard Windsor. European co rrespondent: Damien Simonis IN'ARC¥ ) ANUARY, " the 'ubmb' wm burning, •nd US correspondent: Thomas H. Stahel SJ South Africa was doing too well in the cricket, the Sydney Fes Editorial board tival and Carnivale turned up what seemed like an incongru Peter L'Estrange SJ (c hair), ous entertainment: a theatre piece called Pla y land. Just to get Marga ret Coady, Margaret Coffey, to it you had to drive through the kind of cinder drift that used Madeline Duckett RSM, Tom Duggan, be normal only in late-swnmer tinderbox Adelaide. If you risked Trevor Hales, Christine Martin, a backward glance from the Bridge you could see the bmised Kevin McDonald, Joa n Nowotny IBVM, column of sm oke lit by a theatrical sun and the flames out of Lyn Nossal, Ruth Pendavingh, Lane Cove National Parle John Pill FSC, Inside the Belvoir Street theatre, in a dirt circle represent Peter Steele SJ, Bill Uren SJ ing a small travelling amusement park, two South Africa n act Business manager: Mary Foster ors, one white, one black, pace through the representative Advertising rep resentative: Tim Stoney conflicts of their hom eland and soon-to-be-unified nation. The Editorial assistant: Jon Greenaway two characters, Martinus, the caretaker of the Playland park, Patrons and Gideon, an ex-soldier, feint and circle around the facts that Emel<a Street gra tefully acknowledges the divide them. Each one, we learn as the play unfolds, has killed support of C. L. Adami; the trustees of the estate som eone from 'the other side'- Each one is locked into the iso of Miss M. ondon; A.f. Costello; D.M. Cullity; lation of guilt. F.G. Gargan; R.J. and H.M. Gehrig; Gideon starts out all pelvic swagger and disclaimer. He's W.P. Gurry; J.F. O'Brien; just at Play land for a New Year's Eve good time. Martinus pos A.F. Molyneux; V.J. Peters; tures as the wronged black man. He is wronged, but his griev Anon.; the Roche family; Anon.; ance has made him an Old Testament avenger. The differing Sir Donald and Lady Trescowthick; accents of the two men mark out the cultural disjunctions. Mr and Mrs Lloyd Williams. But they understand one another all too well. And they have only one another to tum to if they are to break the cycle of Eurelw Street magazine, ISSN I 036- J 758, Australia Post registered publication VAR 9 J-0756, recrimination. Playland is written by Athol Fugard, the South African is publi shed eleven times <1 year by Eu reka Street Magazine Pry Ltd, writer who, along with the actors associated with him, has 300 Victoria Street, Richmond, Victoria 3 12 1. been one of the most powerful and influential voices for peace Responsibility for editorial content is accepted by and unity in South Africa for three decades. The strength of Michael Kelly, 300 Victoria Street, Richmond. his advocacy lies in his realism but also in hi.s vision. Fugard's Printed by Doran Printing, plays arc about the owning of responsibility but also about 4 Commercial Road, Highett VlC 3190. qualities of the human spirit that lie beyond the domain of © jesuit Publi cation 1993 justice. After their harrowing, Gideon and Martinus leave the The editor welcomes letters and unsolicited manu dirt circle together at dawn, and go to start Gideon's unrelia scripts, including poetry and fiction. Manuscripts will ble bomb of a car. It is a mundane, credible new beginning aft er be returned only if accompanied by a stamped, self the conflagration. Sub-cutaneous shoots, regenerating life. addressed envelope. Requests for permission to reprint The actor Sean Taylor, who plays the stmtting, near trag material from the magazine should be addressed in ic Gideon, has the Boer accent and idiom that Australians have writing to: T he editor, Emeka Street magazin e, just begun to re-tune their ears to during the current South PO Box 553, Richmond VTC 3 121. African cricket tour. It is one of Fuga rd's great dramatic gifts- 4 EUREKA STREET • FEBRUARY 1994 the capacity to strip away stereotype and restore to seventies, when Athol Fugard's plays first began to ap the world a culture embodied in language. Gideon's pear on school syllabuses in Australia. phrases and rhythms are rich and specific. You hear a During the Sydney fires all Australia acknowledged man, not a type. the generous energies of volunteer fire fighters and the In the voice of the African actor, John Kani, who coordinating skills of the professionals. In the Australia plays Martinus, you hear yet another resonance; you Day awards we honoured Lieutenant General John catch at the edges of the rhetoric and music of a culture Murray Sanderson for his role in commanding the Unit that we are beginning to understand and share in this ed Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Low part of the world. Kani has been associated with Athol key is the style they share. But low key, as we all know, Fugard since the sixties. Many Australian students had is not the same as no will. What we chose to do about their first taste of African literature written from the unemployment will depend more on determination than inside, not by colo on the exigencies nial or post coloni of economics. If al commentators, we go only by the when they read or a....~ .:.:.~I~!Eili economic indicat saw Fugard's Sizwe ors, 1994 has be Bansi is Dead, in gun well. But it is which Kani per crucial now to forn1ed.

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