Vote for Me (again).. please!

Nominal

Superman Returns got an oscar nomination for best vfx. Nice. I coordinated about 110 VFX shots on that show, so as far as I'm concerend 10% of that Oscar is mine bitches. (Artist? Supervisors? Who needs them?!)

Nationhood and Fundamentalism

The most basic feature of all fundamentalist ideologies is the belief in the existence of a social essence (core ‘fundamental’ values and beliefs) of which a national society is but an expression. Though such a belief is not in itself sufficient to turn someone into a fundamentalist, it is a necessary one. In Australia, the usage of a notion of ‘Australian values’ is something quite widespread among both the Left and the Right. However, we should begin by noting that no politician has used it as much as Howard does. No politician is as systematic as he is in deploying the concept, and no one positions it as the cornerstone of a holistic political vision of Australia as he does.

[...]

For Howard... there were people out there (the hidden mainstream) living the Australian way — as it has been initially projected by Western civilisation, of course. However, their non-negligible presence has been buried by a false emphasis on multiculturalism, Asia and Aboriginal land rights. Howard wants to bring back to light — not back from the past — these persisting core Australian values and the people living by them. Unlike the historical fundamentalism we have been used to so far, Howard’s is an archaeological fundamentalism. It is a fundamentalism of recovery and restoration. Here it is important to stress that this restoration is not only a social restoration but a psychological one as well. Howard has always seen himself engaging in a kind of political therapy project. For the black-armband politicians have not only threatened the reality of the enduring presence of Australian values. They have also propagated Guilt, thus attempting to make people living according to Good Australian values feel bad about themselves. As he indicated by his emphasis on making Australians feel ‘relaxed and comfortable’, Howard wanted people to feel good about `being themselves’ again and to regain the pride they ought to have when reflecting on Australia’s essential goodness.

[...]

Of course, all fundamentalist forms of politics do not encourage critical reflexivity. The national self needs to assert its essence and practise it rather than investigate it... Indeed, such critical reflexivity is a priori negative since it implies that the self can be questioned and changed. Fundamentalism is clearly more concerned with the never-changing nature of the Good self. We simply need to remember the Good self we are, and act accordingly. Critical reflexivity has been on many occasions explicitly dismissed by Howard as ‘navel-gazing'.

-- Ghassan Hage in an old but still relevant article: Ayatollah John’s Australian Fundamentalism’ (Arena Magazine, February/March, 2001) which is printed verbatim here [Be warned, you have to scroll through some vitriol to get to the article itself]

The whole thing is worth reading. This pretty much nails the "Australia as an institution" idea I was trying to articulate below.

[I'm still angry that Howard has co-opted Anzac Day - what should be a national day of mourning - into some vague celebration of mateship. Hello? Gallipolli was a fucking disaster, thats why we remember it. But that doesn't really reconcile with the hero worship of Churchill given his involvement in said fucking disaster.]