THE POOR MAN'S ORANGE ALREVIEW The film Romper Stomper has raised enormous Wright has also made an issue of this. “The film is more concerned controversy David Greason tries to get under with the audience’s involvement with its skin. the characters after they’ve reached a point of no return, rather than the liberal tradition of: 'let’s turn inside out the process of how the characters got this way’,” he said. “What we were doing was providing vicarious thrills with a serious theme, and that’s what some people find so disturbing about the film. It’s probably got more in common with a rollercoaster ride than something that is usually done. It’s not so much about thoughts as about feelings, and I mean that in the most primitive way.” When one talks about primitive forms of expression in such matters, it pays to be cautious. Wright hasn’t been. Cinematically, there is much to omper Stomper, a film by Mel­ most obtuse could miss the point that, be said for Romper Stamper and, even bourne writer/director Geoffrey for these lads, indignation at “being a if the storyline falls down in places, R Wright, chronicles the shabby white coolie in my own country” (as Wright’s rollercoaster technique takes and tragic last days of a neo-Nazi Hando says) comes a poor second to a the audience right into the skinheads’ skinhead gang in Melbourne’s west­ punch-up. So is it in real life: while circle. What that means, of course, is ern suburbs. Led by Hando (played by neo-Nazi skins are obviously racist, that Romper Stomper is an almost un­ Russell Crowe, and Davey (the late it’s the thrill of living on the edge that adulterated document of Australian Daniel Pollock), the gang spends its keeps them in, not the theoretical fascism. And presumably that isn’t days alternately whining about the minutiae of Nordic skull measure­ what Geoffrey Wright set out to make. Asian hordes, getting pissed, and ter­ ments and‘exegeses on the Protocols There is no political context for rorising local V ietnamese kids. In other of Zion. the film, which Is not necessarily sur­ words, it’s one big happy family. When Most of the violence in Romper prising given that, for the most part, Gabe (Jacqueline McKenzie), a dis­ Stomper is directed at outsiders: Viet­ the world of the Australian far right turbed young girl, enters the circle namese, hippies, the propertied bour­ owes more to psycho-pathology than and begins an affair with Hando, the geoisie. But at the film’s end the inevi­ politics. We learn nothing from seeds are sown for the family’s destruc­ table happens: gang members turn on Romper Stomper. The skins bash the tion. It is almost as if Hando’s fears each other. In real life, however, the Vietnamese. The Vietnamese bash about outsiders are justified: it’s just troops of National Action, its openly back. The police bash and shoot. What that the really dangerous outsiders are neo-Nazi offshoot, the Australian are we meant to do with these people? each other. Nationalist Movement, and the Film-makers and writers have grave The unremitting violence has lonewolf gangs didn’t wait for the sus­ responsibilities when bringing people brought the film some considerable pense music to start before they began like Hando and Davey to the world. controversy. The Movie Show’s David culling their membership lists with a And as their boots sink into yet an­ Stratton called it “A Clockwork Or- sawn-off shottie or a baseball bat. other Asian, the question has to be ange without the intellect” and ac­ Wright has captured this world asked: who’s getting the vicarious cused it of racism. The NSW Jewish very well: the basic cowardice, the thrills in this exchange, and why? ■ Board of Deputies also expressed con­ grandiose half-baked theories, and the cern that the film’s graphic scenes of shabby bedroom walls covered with violence might incite racial hatred maps and carphotos. Russell Crowe as DAVID GREASON is a Melbourne towards Asian Australians. Geoffrey Hando is the most believable psy­ journalist who spent his teenage years Wright rejects these fears out of hand. chotic skinhead alive. This is a world on the far Right. His autobiography O n the charge of racism, Wright is of uninterrupted chaos and we’re of those years, I Was a Teenage probably in the right. The racism of about to be dragged into it, without Fascist, will be published by McPhee the film is lost in a blur of fists: only the explanation. Gribble in 1993.

DEC/JAN 1993 ALR 41