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WOMAN WANTS DEBATE, GETS IT
“We are living in times when debate is not encouraged,” shrieks Two Brothers playwright Hannie Rayson:
Andrew Bolt, the relentless fulminator, is screaming at me in page after page of vitriol: “Shut up. Just shut up. You are a witch who has no right to speak.” In this climate, what is called for is bold provocation. Now is not the time for timidity in our drama.
It’s actually Rayson who would prefer that debate over her latest play be silenced; she wants her “bold provocation” to be met with supine agreement. Bolt doesn’t oblige:
Last week, we mourned the gallant Sea King dead—the nine members of our defence forces who died bringing aid to Indonesians.
Tonight, the Melbourne Theatre Company pays its own tribute to our military—a play that shows them murdering asylum-seekers.
That’s Rayson’s idea of non-timid drama, which is written from the perspective of someone who is wilfully clueless:
In an interview last week, Rayson said that in writing Two Brothers, “my quest in a way was to try and get inside the conservative mindset, because I don’t really understand it”.
She added: “It was an odd thing to start researching: How do the Right think? ... So I ring people up and tell them what I’m doing and can I come and talk?"
It seems that Rayson, this student of humanity, doesn’t actually know or understand anyone who isn’t of the Left. These are people whose views she seems to me to have never considered—and still cannot grasp—even though there are so many such folk that they’ve put John Howard and Costello into office in the past four elections.
Those same people fund Rayson through their taxes. Naturally, she’s a Hansonite:
Two years ago, at a taxpayer-funded awards night, Rayson made a speech condemning the Howard Government for backing free trade, allegedly making artists here compete harder with foreigners.
"Our Government is turning us into a kind of cultural Werribee,” she complained.
My home town—slandered! Shut up, witch!
UPDATE. Highlights from Mad Hannie’s interview with The Bulletin’s Jennifer Byrne:
"I don’t want to be a satirist because I think satire is a kind of right-wing position ..."
"How do you explain this global phenomenon that the right is on the rise and rise and there is a sense of vigour coming only from that side of politics? People want to talk about the left but this isn’t a play about the left ... it’s about how the left has been outwitted, outgunned, outmanoeuvred, and why all energy is coming from the other side. And that’s what I wanted to understand and why I met these establishment people because I don’t have cause to meet such people in my life."
"I am ambitious to write beautifully."
God, what a savage attack on the ALP: not to mention them at all!
To a leftist, ignoring them is the worst thing you can do to them.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 04 18 at 10:33 PM • permalinkFor those who haven’t yet read Bolt’s articles, note that the “witch” quote, as far as I can see, is a fabrication. In the articles, Bolt does not use those words, he does not imply them, and never questions Rayson’s right to speak, only her right to government subsidies.
Actually the “page after page of vitriol” comes to a tabloid page and a bit, so she is technically correct there.
That oft-professed cluelessness about “the Right” on the part of artists doesn’t speak well for their alleged greatest asset as artists, i.e. their creativity. Really, if you can’t even imagine why people might think differently from you, let alone act differently, how good an artist can you really be?
I wonder if people like Rayson ever ask themselves, “why do they hate us?”
Further on the inability of luvvies to imagine anything other than the soft-left mindset, the lead actor in Rayson’s play (Garry Mac Donald) had this to say about preparing for his role as a right-wing, refugee-murdering politician:
I’ve based the character on different people, including a friend’s husband, who is quite right-wing, but very rational. You lose your temper with him; that just makes him win and you get angrier. It’s like watching Gerard Henderson on ‘The Insiders’ or Andrew Bolt. They drive you mad because they’re so
rational.Lousy sneaky rational conservatives.
zscore - Yeah, I assumed that. Bolt is far too smart, and too good a writer, to say anything like that.
On the other hand, it sounds exactly like the typical reaction of the lunatic left to any form of criticism. To the moonbats, criticism is censorship, and censorship is free speech.
It all depends on who is doing the criticising or the censoring.
You damned unejjicated conservative, Blair —
Debate does not mean you’re allowed to disagree!Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 18 at 11:28 PM • permalinkI reckon she’s really David Williamson in drag. Funny how the play’s about two brothers, one a senior government member and a conservative, the other a social activist boohoo, but it’s nothing to do with the Costellos. If these dickheads think the right is dumb, how daft do they think their audience is? And why do all these fuckwits come from Melbourne? Maybe Joh was right- seccession is the only answer.
Are we sure he supposedly said witch?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 19 at 12:28 AM • permalink"How do the Right think?”
Correction: How dare the Right think!
Posted by ZombieXXXXking on 2005 04 19 at 12:49 AM • permalinkThe left thinks the right is evil.
The right thinks the left is stupid.
Ah, but as an evil theocratic RWDB, I believe we’re all born evil. Ya gotta work at stupid.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 19 at 12:55 AM • permalinkI disagree; IMO we’re all born evil and stupid. The left is happy to have shed their evilness...us righties prefer to become non-stupid instead.
Evil people can be reasoned with, you just have to accept some basic facts (that whole self-interest thing, for one). Trying to reason with stupid people, OTOH, is like nailing jello to the wall.
There’s one way to tell if Rayson is indeed a witch. First you weigh her - if she weighs the same as a duck… she’s made of wood - and therefore… a witch!! BURN HER! (M.Python).
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 04 19 at 01:56 AM • permalinkAndrew Bolt, the relentless fulminator, is screaming at me in page after page of vitriol: “Shut up. Just shut up. You are a witch who has no right to speak.� In this climate, what is called for is bold provocation. Now is not the time for timidity in our drama.
More than just a bit of embellishment there. Bolt hasn’t said this at all, this is witchypoo’s own hysterical interpretation of reasoned criticism
I love the left, when there’s nothing to be outraged about they’ll simply invent something to be outraged about. Hours of fun for the whole family.
Hey maybe that could be a new political strategy game, “Invent a Cause”, combining a number of elements to form the perfect blend of BS that makes the moonbats go wild.
Even have an online scoreboard for the highest numbers of moonbats attracted.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 04 19 at 02:19 AM • permalinkJeebus, Nic, you might be on to something- Andrew Bolt looks quite a bit like this bloke. And what’s Kevin Rudd and he trying to do to Marty Rhone?
RM- who knows? I’d like to itroduce her to Andrea Dworkin.
No Pixy, it’s sufficient for the rest of Australia to secede from inner suburban Melbourne. Who wants to go to the Commonwealth Games, anyway?
Her crack about cultural Werribee reveals not just a snob, but a dumb snob. For decades, Werribee was the most multiculti place in Victoria; it has a grand publicly owned bunyip aristocracy mansion; a State rose garden; an open plains zoo; fantastic fishing grounds; the friendly ambience of a country town growing into a city; and the weirdest village of beach shacks this side of James Hall’s home county. And a seminary there educated Pope Big George I.Why is it that ‘writers’ who cannot get the basics of grammar, syntax and vocab right are always blathering on about their ambition to “write beautifully”? Even Hannie’s op-ed piece in today’s Age, to which Tim links, is clunky and maladroit, to say nothing of hopelessly confused. I had the misfortune to sit through her last play, “Inheritance”, some years ago: just imagine a middlebrow episode of “McLeod’s Daughters”. The supposedly shattering dramatic climax - which I won’t spoil for you - had me writhing with stifled laughter.
Did I read her article in the Age correctly? Has she actually named the main character ‘Eggs Benedict’? There are retarded rhesus monkeys who could come up with better stuff than this (and they work cheap too).
Posted by Just Another Bloody Lawyer on 2005 04 19 at 05:15 AM • permalinkCucko said “Further on the inability of luvvies to imagine anything other than the soft-left mindset, the lead actor in Rayson’s play (Garry McDonald) had this to say about preparing for his role as a right-wing, refugee-murdering politician...”
Gary McDonald is a self-outed headcase.
Good actor but largely off his chump.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 04 19 at 07:23 AM • permalinkSlatts said “Her crack about cultural Werribee reveals not just a snob, but a dumb snob.”
It’s sour grapes. Tarneit may be a bit ordinary but there’s no way she could afford an up-scale house at Point Cook on her income.
Posted by walterplinge on 2005 04 19 at 07:29 AM • permalinkYes, Mr Astonished, July 1 indeed.
Goodbye, funding! Goodbye, grants! Goodbye, workshops! Ah yes - workshops - the union-inspired term for people who can’t write at all, yet want public money to finance their adolescent Marxist dreams of self-hate mixed in with aspirations of flying Qantas to live forever in Tuscan bliss with peasants while not eating or drinking anything produced by evil multi-nationals except good coffee and wine.
Goodnight, taxpayer-funded political protests; pathetic, clomping no-act plays and stumping-along protest music developed by intellectual half-wits wearing wool and badges like so many disabled feminists on a day trip to a protest march. Any protest march.
Goodbye, sweethearts! Goodnight, Irene!
And fuck off and don’t come back.
Ever.
Does Hannie Rayson need a right-winger to talk to? She can phone me up and ask all the questions she wants provided she treats it as a straight Q&A and doesn’t preface every question with an insulting assumption. If she shuts up and listens she might actually learn something.
BTW I write too (though still unpublished). I know that when you create an unsympathetic character it’s difficult to get inside their heads and answer the question, ``How does she think? What does she do in this situation, and why?’’ But you still have to try your damnedest. It’s unfair to your character to do otherwise (you end up with a cartoon instead of a believable if repellent human being) and you make yourself look incompetent.
Posted by Sonetka's Mom on 2005 04 19 at 08:42 AM • permalink#27 — JABL — Jeez. Even when Rocky and Bullwinkle did that joke nearly 50 years ago, Jay Ward had the wit to call the character Yeggs Benedict, thereby making a pun AND calling attention to his criminal character…
#32 — Waiting a few tables might help her writing. “Look, dearie, real people! Listen to them...”
#29 — We’ve already got a new one. The WAPO just invented a new evil rightwing conspiracy, The Constitution in Exile movement. Apparently we’re all in it, and just didn’t know it. It seems like it got a little tough to keep harping on the evil neocons over all the laughter coming from Beirut and Baghdad…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 04 19 at 10:25 AM • permalinkAaron, we could slap that on the front of the box and use it in ads, we could run them in Hyper or something, they’re stupid enough to miss the point.
(And if you’re wondering, yes the last time I picked up an Aussie gaming mag it was anti-Howard and anti-Bush crap. What do world politics have to do with the latest video card or Nintendo game? Not a damn thing, why I stopped buying Aussie gaming mags)
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 04 19 at 10:35 AM • permalinkI spend most of my day at gaming sites already thanks :P
Never feels as right as a magazine though, gaming mags were good back in the old days… though even back then there was little journalism to be found, either everyone was mates or saying anything bad about a publisher meant you stopped getting review copies of games, therefore you lost content and as a result, readers.
Probably why there’s so many damn lefties, they only hire professional bullshitters these days.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 04 19 at 12:46 PM • permalink"I don’t want to be a satirist because I think satire is a kind of right-wing position ...”
Self-parody, now that’s a left-wing position.
Posted by JDFlanagan on 2005 04 19 at 12:50 PM • permalink#8, Couldn’t we nominate her play for this year’s Bullwer-Lytton prize? It would seem to fit the qualifications, except it’s undoubtedly waaaaaaaay too long. (Probably more than the first page would be way too long.)
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2005 04 19 at 01:36 PM • permalinkHas anyone thought to ask Rayson why she didn’t write this play when Hawke and Keating were in power?
Posted by DropDeadUgly on 2005 04 20 at 06:45 AM • permalink
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You couldn’t make up someone like Hannie Rayson:
But the greatest political indictment in the play is surely directed against the Labor Party. You set out to write a political play about one of the defining issues of our times and the Labor Party is not present.
God, what a savage attack on the ALP: not to mention them at all!