Culture and Life

by Rob Gowland

Of plays, proletarians and public lands

It's not mentioned in Worth Watching but this week's episode of the 
Scottish cop show Taggart is the last of the current series. I think 
Taggart, in writing, filming and performance, is a cut above most other cop 
shows.

When the series began, some years ago now, it was about Inspector Taggart, 
played by Mark McManus, and his small team of detectives in Glasgow. 
McManus, late middle aged and of unprepossessing appearance, nevertheless 
made the part his own and contributed significantly to the series' success.

But the entire cast made a strong ensemble, so much so that when McManus 
died the producers did not replace him, simply continuing the series with 
the remainder of the cast. And it continued to be as popular, a tribute to 
its strong story lines, fine acting and intelligent dramatic direction.

I mention all this only by way of introducing a small piece of trivia: Mark 
McManus, that most Scottish of coppers, began his acting career not in 
Glasgow but here in Australia, on the stage of Sydney's New Theatre.

Long-time New Theatre stalwart Eddie Allison remembers McManus as "The 
young left-wing actor was taken under the wing of another New Theatre 
stalwart of the time, 'Big Jack' Fegin, who also went to Britain 
eventually, appearing in films and television.

"Fegin had begun his political life as a youngster lighting the fuses on 
petrol bombs being thrown at the Black and Tans by his older family members 
during Ireland's fight for independence."

* * *

Aboriginal theatre

Thanks to a racist police and judicial system, lack of jobs and 
opportunities, and a repressive economic and social system, Aborigines are 
disproportionately represented in the jails of WA and the NT.

It is no surprise then that Jim Holland's new play at Perth's Aboriginal 
Yirra Yaakin Theatre (65 Murray St, Perth from the beginning of July) is 
about prison life.

Its two protagonists are a confirmed repeat offender and a new inmate who 
share a cell. Jacko and Fast Eddy are not very bright, their horizons 
severely restricted (even if they were not in jail).

Even their dreams are the ones capitalism has provided for them: they'd 
like to be entrepreneurs, a word whose meaning is obscure to them but they 
like the sound of it. Already possessed of hard life experiences, they are 
victims of a system that has no place for them and no real interest in 
them.

The Theatre promises: "IF you THINK you've seen Aboriginal theatre before, 
THINK again."

It's Jim Holland's first play (the season at Yirra Yaarkin is in fact its 
world premiere), and as his two protagonists explore their situation, their 
hopes and their experiences in getting to their present predicament, the 
playwright seeks to shed some light on the position of Aborigines in this 
country today.

But has the playwright perhaps fallen into a trap brought about by an 
insufficiently developed class consciousness? The two protagonists of 
Holland's play are petty criminals, lumpen proletarians.

Maxim Gorky, the great working class Russian writer, warned of the negative 
effects for the working class of writers glorifying the criminal element 
(seeing them as some kind of "rebels against the system").

Working class writers can and should write about anything and anyone, of 
course. Stories or plays about spivs or racecourse touts can be as valid as 
any other stories or plays. It's all in the writer's attitude to his 
subject.

And Jim Holland does not claim to be a working class writer, as far as I 
know, He is simply an Aboriginal writer.

But I cannot but wonder if his play would not have been more significant, 
more generally effective if he had tried to dramatise the life of 
Aborigines outside prison.

A play about Aboriginal people trying to survive, perhaps fighting back, 
people trying to raise a family in conditions of irregular employment at 
best, with the threat of police harassment and prison as a constant in 
their lives, but as a part rather than the whole of it.

Anyway, it is to be hoped that Holland's play makes it to the east coast so 
that these questions can be further examined.

* * *

Consuming green space

Here's a new wrinkle from the Bush administration which the Howard 
Government is bound to want to emulate. Wayne Sumstine writes from Southern 
Arizona about the US Government's efforts to hand control over all public 
land — state parks, forests, wilderness areas etc — to private 
corporations.

First, they introduced a fee for people going into public lands (they've 
already done that here). In the US they called it a Recreation Fee and, 
anticipating opposition, said it was only a trial, called a Demonstration 
Program which would run until 2004.

Wayne Sumstine says, "most Americans thought [the fee] was for maintenance 
of national forests (but those are actually maintained by tax money)."

Now the Bush administration, "having seen little opposition to the new 
fees, is convinced that Americans now view themselves as 'consumers' rather 
than 'owners' of the public lands.

"So, the administration is now introducing a bill in Congress to ... make 
the experimental Recreational Fee Demonstration Program permanent."

But where does corporate control come in, I hear you ask. Through the fees, 
"which actually go to expand the activities of industrial tourism".

Far from going to maintain state forests, they are all to be given to an 
outfit called the American Recreation Coalition (ARC) (a consortium of 100 
tourist industry corporate associations).

These include the oil companies (tourists must have petrol — lots of it), 
Walt Disney (king of the theme park operators), the various commercial ski-
area associations, concessionaires (fast food outlets, ski-lift operators, 
etc etc), and of course recreational vehicle manufacturers.

This mob can have only one approach to state parks and similar regions: 
exploitative. And the new US legislation effectively gives the ARC's 
corporate interests control of these areas, areas that used to be called 
"public lands".