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Guest review: Gabriel Ng on Various Pets Alive and Dead by Marina Lewycka

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Fig Tree (Penguin)
9781905490912
March 2012 (buy paperback)

review by Gabriel Ng

The title of Various Pets Alive and Dead might make you think it involves lots of cute animal stories and some kind of furry genocide. Instead, it’s a very political novel about the global financial crisis and the failure of the leftist ideals, played out through the intergenerational conflict of a family of hippy-commune escapees. This probably doesn’t sound like the most fertile ground for a comic novel, but its author, Marina Lewycka, milks the politics for as many laughs as possible, and even manages to throw in the odd ill-fated hamster or doomed family of rabbits.

Lewycka’s fourth novel, Various Pets Alive and Dead tells the story of Serge and Clara, and their mother Dora, who, along with her partner Marcus and the other quirky members of their collective, raised her children in an old country house on a healthy diet of free love, socialism and lentils.

Unbeknownst to his parents, Serge has chucked in his Maths PhD and is earning big bucks at a trading firm, FATCA (geddit?). Clara, on the other hand, has stuck to her family ideals and is working as a teacher at an underprivileged school in the same area she grew up, Doncaster (which is not, as I thought when I put my hand up for this book, a suburb of Melbourne of Westfield Shoppingtown fame, but an area in England’s de-industrialised north). Dora, meanwhile, reminisces about her radical youth and cares for her youngest child, Oolie-Anna, who has Down Syndrome.

In tone, it reminded me a lot of those other popular British comic writers, Nick Hornby and Sue Townsend, and it starts off with a lot of promise. Readable and contemporary, I thought I was in for something like Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, not only because it engages with current world events, but because it seemed like it might tap into the rich literary fodder of family relationships: those deep, entwined bonds of love and resentment and dependence.

Unfortunately, Various Pets Alive and Dead doesn’t deliver on an emotional or a political level, because neither the characters nor the plots are engaging enough to sustain interest.

Deluded Serge pines for his sexy Ukrainian co-worker, Maroushka, and digs a hole for himself through illegal trading. Morose Clara pines for the sexy head teacher and tries to help one of the chavs from her class, who may or may not be a thief. The most likable character, Dora, considers a fling with a not-so-sexy counsellor and struggles with the idea of Oolie-Anna living independently. They all pick over the memories of life in the old manor, Solidarity Hall, mulling over mysterious parentage and the cause of a fire that eventually ended the whole social experiment.

The above describes almost all of the action of the novel, except for a few ridiculously unlikely occurrences (such as Serge’s case of mistaken identity). The mostly separate narratives don’t provide enough interaction between the main characters, and there is an absence of rising and falling action. Instead, each short chapter is often a frame for a social observation instead of dramatic development, making the plot feel episodic. The pace picks up towards the end, but there are other, more significant issues with the conclusion.

Similarly, the politics start out tantalisingly grey, but end up being disappointingly black and white.

Lewycka has obviously done a lot of research into the banking world, and her portrayal of a trading company is of an all-consuming, fast paced and cosmopolitan environment. Naturally, its denizens are obsessed with wealth, but you can see the appeal of it, especially for Serge, who is striking out against a materially deprived upbringing.

On the other hand, the portrait of life in Solidarity Hall and its socialism is affectionate, but heavy with an irony that suggests that Lewycka has limited respect for the hippie lifestyle. The youthful Dora and Marcus are only able to afford the run-down country manor thanks to one of their friend’s inheritance. The radicals are all conspicuously middle class and end up isolated from the coal mining community they hoped to inspire to revolution. The tenants of free love are either unattractive, as embodied in a perpetually pantless letch, or the cause of destructive secrets. And Serge’s love interest, Maroushka, the only character to live the reality of a communist government, has become a vicious proponent of the capitalist system.

There’s an interesting contrast between the members of the commune, who treat their cause with deadly seriousness but end up having little impact, and the bankers who act like their market manipulation is all a game while destroying people’s livelihoods.

Unfortunately, it all descends into easy demonisation of bankers, notalgia for idealism, and affirmation of middle class values. Characters that start out being morally ambiguous are flattened into bad-guy stereotypes and get their comeuppance. Bastards are slapped, bitches have their hair pulled, ill-gotten money is lost.

Worst of all, Lewycka seems to have no other ideas of how to resolve the three stories than to pair everyone off as if marriage or coupledom were some undeniable law of physics towards which all people eventually gravitate.

As the last quibble in a long line of quibbles, there aren’t even that many animals in it, alive or dead. I’m not saying I wanted a mountain of furry corpses, but it seems like the title was just tacked on to suck in animal lovers.

Look, it’s not all bad. It’s easy to read, a good airport or beach novel. The characters and settings are distinct and memorable. But its beta-blocker compulsion to keep things light and the extremely pat resolution mean that Various Pets Alive and Dead ends up being more Hugh Grant rom-com than Franzen-like book of the times.

Gabriel Ng is another Melbourne-based reader, writer and blogger. He blogs about books and whatever else takes his fancy on writeronwriter.wordpress.com, and has had short stories and poems rejected by Overland, Wet Ink and numerous writing competitions. His first novel is due out in 2052.

Between worlds: Dominic Smith on Bright and Distant Shores

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Allen & Unwin, 9781742374161, 2011
(Aus paperback, ebook + US/Kindle)

Bright and Distant Shores is hugely imaginative historical fiction. It’s set just before the dawn of the 20th century in Chicago and the South Pacific. Owen Graves is sent by Hale Gray, the president of Chicago First Equitable, to collect some ‘special items’ to display on top of the tallest building in the city. Graves is dubious about the morals of the expedition but wants the money so he can finally marry his girlfriend, Adelaide. In Melanesia, a mission houseboy called Argus loses his master, but not his faith. He seeks out his sister and they are soon promised new prospects by the man on a ship from Chicago… This book travelled with me around the globe recently. Back at home I got in touch with its Australian-American author, Dominic Smith.

AM: I was swept up in every element of this vast story – the tensions at sea, Owen and Adelaide’s relationship, Argus caught between worlds, the skyscraper sliding into the ground – and I wondered, was it difficult having so many balls in the air while writing? You draw them all together seamlessly and somehow keep the pace steady throughout.

DS: I’m so glad to hear that you were pulled along! Writing this novel was sometimes akin to running between spinning plates, giving them each another nudge as I darted by. I was conscious from the beginning of the scope of the novel and thought about ways to handle all the moving pieces. Some of my favourite literature includes sprawling narratives and plots with many moving parts. I think of Dickens and George Eliot especially… I feel like one of the things I tried to do was to keep the plates spinning. So that meant even when we are at sea it’s worth taking a dramatic pause in the nautical action to check back in with the Chicago characters. It builds more tension - in both the Chicago and Pacific narratives – and allows the narrative to skip through passages of time. It increases the pace. I also tried to create some friction between the interweaving narratives, so that the ideas and predicaments of one storyline might echo with the storyline that is juxtaposed next to it.

It’s set in a fascinating time-period, when all the islands had already been somewhat ‘infected’ by ships of explorers, collectors, naturalists and missionaries and would never be the same again. What was it about this era that drew you in?

The 1890s was a fascinating period for both Chicago and the Pacific. When I was doing research for the novel I was shocked to discover the widespread fear among collectors of the late-19th century that ‘the bathtub had already been drained.’ There was a feeling that it was easier to get good curios in London or New York than in the Pacific islands. That surprised me. So you saw a huge collecting impetus by many museums and private collectors as the new century dawned. They were trying to get the last of the loot. So by 1900 the Pacific was already awash with European white culture; islanders were more likely to want Winchesters, ammunition, and cigarettes, than beads, glass, and ironwork. This is also a time of missionary zeal, when the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Catholics are divvying up the Pacific, sometimes along tribal boundaries. Meanwhile, in Chicago, you have a dozen or so business tycoons who make millions from meatpacking and railways and insurance. They pour much of it into building cultural institutions - libraries, symphonies, museums. Marshall Field, of department store fame, donated $1 million to set up a museum in his name. There was a widespread interest in the exotic and ethnographic after the World’s Fair of 1893. So I was fascinated by how the tribal Pacific and commercial America could intersect in ways that were both strange and compelling. The 1890s, for me, is a crazy mash-up of conflicted ideas and visions.

You capture that mash-up very well! Some of the characters are ‘in between’ the two worlds (the West and the Pacific life), none more so really than Argus. He’s also caught, in a way, between loyalty to Malini, his sister, and to Owen; and between his past and his faith. His character is representative of some of the strongest themes running through the novel, but he’s very empathetic, three dimensional. Could you talk a bit about creating him?

I struggled with Argus and with my own misgivings about trying to represent someone with a tribal background. In the end, I gave myself license to explore his psychology. One of the things that made that easier was to make him a character who is caught between two worlds, between the Euro-Christian way of seeing things and the Melanesian tribal way of seeing things. He – like the writer – feels pulled between these opposite poles. So in some ways I gave Argus my own misgivings; he has to chart those waters on the writer’s behalf. Characters who have inner conflict are dramatically interesting, I think. Argus has a kind of visceral connection to faith; it’s in his blood. He’s also ambitious and wants to explore the world he’s read about at the mission.  So those forces of curiosity, doubt, faith, and ambition ground his character. They pull him into the future but not without uncertainty. That is perhaps one source of empathy for him as a character.

You play with issues of class through the character of Adelaide, and through her relationship with Owen. They are both strong characters: determined, charitable, hard-working. Can you tell us a bit about shaping their relationship? Of course the distance between them does also add great tension to the narrative.

In some ways Adelaide (and Malini) are the moral core to the novel. Argus and Owen are filled with ambition, but they’re also capable of a certain kind of ruthlessness. With the relationship between Owen and Adelaide I was interested in exploring class and privilege, in addition to a love story that would seem of the period and compelling for contemporary readers. Adelaide comes from money but throws herself into charity. Owen comes from poverty and on some level thinks charity is a rich person’s enterprise. So when the voyage comes up – the prospect of bringing back natives to Chicago so that Owen can receive a windfall – there is a real divide wedged into the romance. Owen struggles to reconcile the morality of the Pacific trading scheme with the pragmatic need for money. He slightly resents what he imagines Adelaide – with her blue-blooded philanthropic ways – will think of this equation. I think these are the kinds of issues people deal with in relationships every day. How does one person’s actions reflect on the other? Relationships are evolving narratives and we sometimes want our partners/spouses to add coherence to the story we’re trying to tell the world. So in addition to their obvious admiration for each other, they struggle with how to integrate their pasts. Until Adelaide, Owen has never ordered a bottle of wine in a restaurant.

Were classic adventure novels an influence? I’ve been reading Gulliver’s Travels, and thought perhaps your book has a subtle element of social commentary to it as well? Ambition and wonder are present in your novel – as you’ve mentioned – and on some scale are seen as unrewarding and even destructive. I keep thinking about the ambitious insurance firm building sliding down into the earth…

I certainly thought of Treasure Island and Moby Dick when writing this novel, but also more recent novels, like Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage and Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger. These latter novels showed me it was possible to render a seafaring story in an interesting, nuanced way, while still having fun with the tropes that come with sea voyaging and lore. There is social commentary in Bright and Distant Shores, though I think I’m more interested in paradox than a set of thematic statements. Ambition and wonder abounded in the 1890s, but so did naivete and exploitation. The early insurance companies saw their enterprise as somehow noble and they were paternalistic towards their employees. They had this idea of their clerks never needing to leave the skyscraper – they could get haircuts and eat in the cafeteria and take night school all under one roof. The insurance towers eclipsed the church spire as the tallest point in the city and the tower was seen as a kind of totem, but also a beacon of hope for the populace, with its clock tower a suggestion of life ticking away. This is obviously capitalism on a grand scale, with the delusion of benevolence for an under-insured populace. Corporations often think they have enlightened interests when in fact it’s really about selling insurance or widgets.

Not only is Bright and Distant Shores a ‘ripping’ tale, the writing is delightful. I found myself gasping at certain turns of phrase. And yet it never obstructs the story, it is not showy – just beautiful. Some of the descriptions: ‘spandrels of moonlight’, ‘a crapulous German clipper captain’, and the ‘fusty nooks and fetid warrens below deck’. It makes it such a pleasure to read. How much time do you spend with the book on a sentence level? Does that all come in final drafts, or do you craft the language carefully as you go?

Thanks for those nice comments. I do think a lot about language – it’s what draws me to reading fiction in the first place. I used to write skeletal drafts of things with very little attention to language, and then I would go back and polish things. Now I seem to write very slow and deliberate first drafts. It’s a gamble, because you may end up throwing out much of what you write in a first draft. But I seem to like feeling that a sentence does its job, that it’s more than a place holder, before I move on. I really try to work at the sentence level as I go.

You grew up in Australia but live in the US and have published over there. This is your first novel published through and Australian publisher, Allen & Unwin. How does it feel? Can you tell us a bit about your other works?

It has been very gratifying to publish a novel in Australia and I’m thrilled to have had it shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year and the Vance Palmer Prize. That means a lot to me; it’s a kind of sweet homecoming present. Allen & Unwin have been incredibly attentive. I was back in Australia for a month in June with my family and it was such a treat to share places and memories with them. My first novel, The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre, was a historical novel that re-imagined the life of Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype who supposedly suffered from mercury poisoning. The second novel, The Beautiful Miscellaneous, was a contemporary story and focused on the average son of a genius. It’s a story about a boy who is 15% above average in everything he does. His father, a renowned physicist, is convinced that the son harbors some greatness and desperately tries to uncover it.

Thank you so much, Dominic.

More details about Dominic Smith’s books can be found on his website.

Raj Patel: Messiah? Or Sydney Writers Festival guest…?

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Value-of-Nothing_0So you may have heard about author Raj Patel being deemed a Messiah by a religious group after appearing on The Colbert Report recently. Well I have heard more exciting rumours, that Patel – the author of The Value of Nothing - will be gracing our shores at Sydney Writers Festival this year. The program for the festival, which runs May 17 to 23 will be available on the SWF website on Friday April 9. If the rest of the writers are as enlightening (enlightened?) as Patel, it sounds like it’s going to be a great and important festival.

I haven’t yet read The Value of Nothing, but it sounds wonderful, and right up my alley. Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine says: 

With great lucidity and confidence in a dazzling array of fields, Patel reveals how we inflate the cost of things we can (and often should) live without, while assigning absolutely no value to the resources we all need to survive. This is a deeply thought-provoking book about the dramatic changes we must make to save the planet from financial madness — argued with so much humor and humanity that the enormous tasks ahead feel both doable and desirable. This is Raj Patel’s great gift: he makes even the most radical ideas seem not only reasonable, but inevitable. A brilliant book.

The trailer, featuring Patel himself, gives you plenty of insight into what the book’s about:

 

Patel’s website is here. The Value of Nothing is published by Black Inc. in Australia.

Also, check out Colbert revisiting the deification of Patel here. Hilarity.

Avatar: a mash-up

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This piece is a mash-up of an undergrad essay from a couple of years ago, plus present thoughts, imaginings and speculation on the narrative of self in a virtual environment.

Storytelling is as old as humanity. The human has always actively projected him/herself into realms of fantasy (through song, art, drama, writing). Modernity advanced the visual aspect of imaginative adventure with diorama and panorama displays, museums, and the invention of photography.

From here on, global culture = visually excessive.

Current experience = deterritorialisation through photography, cinema, advertising, television and the internet. It has become necessary to visually immerse ourselves in narratives.

In a complex, rhizomatic pastiche of ‘real life’, one may construct an ‘avatar’ (a digital version of themself) and physically control this avatar in their explorations of the new world. It is both a phantasmagorical escape, a facade for the reality of alienated individuals, recreating themselves (in a new environment as a modernist ‘I’). But it is also a site of appropriation, subversions, contradictions and of course, commercialism.

There is no centre. One’s avatar may have the option of flying, to cover large distances.

In a heterotopic sense, the mind is engaged within the spatial explorations of the avatar – within three-dimensional virtuality (while the body is on firm ground). Physical room + virtual head = modernist ‘montage’.

This space inside the computer screen, an interaction with computer screens the world over, is hyperreal. Because while the objects and mobilities are often symbols (representatives of real life things) they are in fact ‘created’ from nothing but strands of numbers. Their workable reality effectively ‘replaces’ the things they are representing. They are simulacra, and this is emphasised by the fact that someone will actively create an avatar to ‘be amongst’ this new reality, in effect making even themself into a simulacrum.

There is not much need for a system of order, as De Certeau discusses with the city, because there is no sickness, no waste, no excrement, no death, and no bodily necessities. Shelter, food, sleep, are not necessary. It is Donald’s ‘un espace propre’.

Foucault describes a type of utopia –

…something like [a] counter-site… a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted.

A utopia is still grounded in real life modernist principles, the advancement of oneself within technology – by property and finances (perhaps ‘social credit’ here).

Foucault’s heterotopias and the internet:

A crisis heterotopia exists for those who are in a crisis in ‘normal’ society, thus, they retreat to the formation of their own self and narratives.

A heterotopia of deviation could be related to the sexual aspects of the internet – people engaging in acts that they are unable to in real life.

A juxtapositional heterotopia ties in with the post-modern aspect of appropriation. Several sites that are incompatible in real life may be joined.

It is a heterochrony as it has its own time structure.

It is also a heterotopia with varying points of access.

The last trait of heterotopias is that they have a function in relation to all the space that remains… Either their role is to create a space of illusion that exposes every real space, all the sites inside of which human life is partitioned… Or else… their role is to create a space that is other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed, and jumbled.

Which do you think it is?

The individual is in a mode of excorporation – utilising a product (computer) to subvert the dominant system (not participating in real life and civic space).

Archetypal cyberpunk sardonically sends up the society of the frenetic information age, but the cyber-environment itself is a given, almost an object of desire… Cyberpunk characters are in a transcendent state when they’re in cyberspace. To be deprived of cyber-reality by burn-out or misfortune is almost an exile from Eden. (Watson, 2003, p. 156)

The internet also gives residents who may be reclusive or marginalised figures in real life the chance to be part of an imagined community.

[T]he internet is… essentially liberatory: if it is not under some centralised control, it can only be the provenance of free individuals and small groups, in an egalitarian world where the individual is unhindered by boundaries of nation, class, gender or property (Thwaites, Davis & Mules).

There is the argument that too much interaction online and an overstimulation of the visual could result in a loss of tangibility. The ‘schizophrenic exchanging of identities’ could also result in ‘dehumanisation’, the exact thing the science-fiction film often warns against. This could also be referred to as a contradictionbetween the site’s promises, and its denials. The cyberpunk novel, in a more post-modern fashion, embraces the consequences of this – the possible inevitability of it in the face of capitalist commodification. It could be argued that as a transgressive space, the internet is actually an escape from the dehumanising sphere of real life capitalism. It is a place to communicate unboundaried.

While one can be transported to places they cannot physically visit without considerable expense, the internet also reinstates other imagined communities and places of belonging.

The internet can be subversive by naturalising images that are ‘unnatural’ in real life. Cartoon avatars, abbreviated language (or created/altered languages i.e. ‘I can haz…’). Online, these are ‘natural’ and thus, these symbolisations are transgressive to real life ‘natural’ order. They are, in a post-modern sense fragmentary, indeterminate (can be changed at will) and distrusting of ‘totalising’ discourses (Harvey).

The internet goes further than film, television, literature and video games by allowing an individual to not just create a character, a modern self, but create a narrative. What is striking is that this is the path of real life. We are creating ourselves and we are constructing our path. (Is a duality of self/multi-projections of self our condition anyway? But online, the less normative self finds more spaces for expression/collection/acceptance?) On the internet there are less obstacles in the way of our constructed narrative, and there is variety. And on the internet, there is an off button.

References 

Baudrillard, J 1988, ‘Simulacra and simulations’ in M Poster (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: selected writings, Polity, Cambridge.
De Certeau, M 1985, ‘Practices of space’ in M Blonsky (ed.), On signs, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Donald, J 1995, ‘The city, the cinema: modern spaces’, in C Jenks (ed.), Visual culture, Routledge, London.
Fiske, J 1989, ‘The jeaning of America’ in his Understanding popular culture, Unwin & Hyman, Boston.
Foucault, M 2006, ‘Of other spaces’, in N Mirzoeff (ed.), The visual culture reader (2nd edn), Routledge, London.
Harvey, D 1991, The condition of postmodernity, Blackwell, Cambridge.
Olalquiaga, C 1992, ‘Lost in space’ in her Megalopolis: contemporary cultural sensibilities, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Thwaites, T et al. 2002, Introducing cultural and media studies: a semiotic approach, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndsmills.

Capitalism is funny – a review of Max Barry's Company

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Company, Max Barry, Scribe, 9781921215643, 2008 (Aus, US)

Jones joins Zephyr as an enthusiastic employee, without even knowing what the company does. This doesn’t seem to be an odd thing at Zephyr, where Jones’ coworkers in the Training Sales department just accept that Zephyr is a ‘holdings’ company, and get on with their menial, perpetual tasks that often seem to have no point and no outcome.

Roger is concerned with who took his donut, and someone may even get fired over it. Holly gets through the day just so she can sweat out her exercise addiction in the corporate gym. Elizabeth falls in love with her customers, but not if they’re too easy or come on too strong. Freddy has been in the same position for five years and is thwarted in any attempt to get promoted.

It doesn’t take long for newbie Jones to realise there is something strange about Zephyr. No one has ever seen the CEO face to face, and the flirtatious receptionist Eve is never at her post, yet seems to earn more money than everybody else. His investigations take him to the forefront of the secrets behind bestselling business book The Omega Management System, which every manager carries, and into the secret labyrinthine depths of a controlling and soulless experiment.

I don’t want to give too much away about this little satirical gem. It’s a very easy and enjoyable read with romantic/ethical conflicts and plenty of corporate and personal intrigue. There were a few moments where characters disappeared that I had grown empathy for (but this may be a tool used by Barry to make us see the cruelty of the company), and a few needless descriptions of life outside the company, where the stiflingly contained world within would have sufficed. The characters are not exactly enlightening, but this is more a concept novel, and I think there should be more corporate satires about!

Gold moments (that are often frighteningly close to true situations) include the indecipherable company Mission Statement, and this exchange about why IT is on the ‘bottom’ floor:

Jones looks at the button panel. ‘What’s so bad about IT?’

‘Please,’ Freddy says. ‘Some of them don’t even wear suits.’

There are also innumerable references to outsourcing and company consolidation, and about rights at work. The Human Resources Department is like a nightmarish hall of mirrors with booming voices like the Wizard of Oz behind his curtain, while workers quiver like Tinman. There are references to the way business textbooks refer to employees as a ‘tribe’. The company intimidates people into working when they’re sick, embarrasses them for smoking, and finds other roundabout ways to discriminate in order to improve production time.

There are incredibly materialistic (and lonely) characters who look like soap stars and think they’re living in the ‘real world’ by ridding themselves of the worry of conscience.

There’s the big fat hopeful question of whether a company can be both profitable and democratic. Barry ultimately leaves you with a sweet taste in your mouth, not a bitter one, and the book is great entertainment. The fact that it might also simmer a little dissent behind some desks is a wonderful thing. Highly accessible fiction.

Max Barry’s website and really random blog.

I’m Afraid of the Five-Blade Razor – Book Review and Commentary

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Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough – Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss. Allen & Unwin, 2005, 9781741146714 (Aus, US/Kindle)

Three years ago Clive Hamilton half-jokingly referred to the possibility of the five-blade razor. It comes as no surprise that his prediction has come true, and emphasises why Affluenza continues to be an extremely relevant book. Gillette’s razor with five blades and not one, but two, lubricating strips is designed for the closest shave possible. But really, it’s to turn consumer attention away from Schick’s four-bladed ‘Quattro’, which must of course be an inferior razor, not due to the amount of blades, but due to the ‘spacing of the blades’ as their campaigns advertise. One asks – how many blades do we really need?

‘While some choice is beneficial, too much can actually cause a decline in wellbeing. In an experiment in which subjects had to pick a chocolate from a selection of 30, the sense of regret and uncertainty about whether they had chosen the “most delicious” chocolate was greater than that experienced by a group who chose from a selection of only six different types of chocolate.’

The market-based society just does not really know when to stop. Surely Schick will one-up them in a few years with a six-blade, or do a complete marketing turnaround and offer a ‘Renaissance’ blade or some such thing that goes back to ‘classic’ shaving. All the market spin and bull is just designed to suck you into a whirl of mindless, meaninglessness consumption.

Affluenza explores Australian society today – a collection of individuals striving for material gratification. We work more hours than any other developed nation and thus spend less time with family. This is motivated by a pure drive to accumulate more ‘stuff’. Many Australians look to their retirement as the golden years when all the benefits of their success will be reaped. Hamilton calls this ‘deferred happiness syndrome.’ In the meantime any significance or wholesomeness in their life is being pulled like a carpet from under them. And many will not even make their retirement with increasing rates of stress-related diseases and rising levels of depression and suicide caused not only by overwork but the alienating effects and emptiness promoted by a shallow, wasteful cycle of life.

Statistics given by Hamilton and Denniss show that 62% of Australians don’t believe they can buy what they really need, and a high percentage of these come from the richest 20% of households. What this really shows is the permeation of the myth of the Aussie battler, and the disintegration of the ability to determine between ‘wants’ and ‘needs’.

‘Rising the threshold of desire in this way creates an endless cycle of self-deception: like the horizon, our desires always seem to stay ahead of where we are. This cycle of hope and disappointment lies at the heart of consumer capitalism’.

Like the razors, credit cards (in an age where debt is natural) have gone from Gold to Platininum to Black – and even recently, Titanium. The flashing of such a symbol is supposed to produce respect and envy at the owner’s status. Many products and brands are marketed to produce status, but what will become of a culture that looks up to shallow figures who have achieved nothing but wealth? The examples are too obvious to even warrant naming, but the SBS TV Show Decadence emphasised how society and the media in general downplay the achievements of scientists, thinkers, and writers and instead pedestalises pretty faces. Actresses and fashionistas are the new role models, and not for their skills and abilities but for their clothes, vacuous looks, and ability to be perpetually thinner than others. We are given an ideal self to emulate then marketed the goods that will help us achieve this. Even subversity and nihilism are marketed to youth, one example being the ‘Emily the Strange’ clothing range. Every market is researched and captured, everything is commodified.

But of course we are not all passive consumers, dumb and duped by advertising, but what can be emphasised is its inescapability. As the authors argue, it is certainly not money or even ‘affluence’ that is the problem, it is our attachment to it - this is the sickness of affluenza. The capitalist society has evolved into one that is centrally market-based, even through politics and the media (being 70% owned by a right-wing billionaire). A relevant point Hamilton brings up is the marketisation of illness. Society creates ills (eg. obesity) but the ‘cures’ are individualised (‘you’ have to do something about it) and companies profit from the creation of weight loss programs and drugs.

The biggest problem is of course the way that children are socialised within this framework. They are taught brand-love from their earliest years. Parents commodify their own children with label-clothing, often sexualising them too early. Adult ads are targeted at kids to increase the ‘nag factor’. Parents listen to their child’s ideas about what is considered ‘cool’. The toys available today are shocking, with even baby versions having heavy eye make up and pouting red lips. Some parents feel they have no choice in buying them because they don’t want their children to miss out. What kind of a skewed version of reality will young girls grow up with? That the only way to succeed in life, and most importantly, the only way to be happy is to be ‘sexy’?

‘We’re led to believe that money gives us choice, status, and increasingly, an identity. But there’s something hollow about all this. Whose meaning or identity is it? Am I really defined by where I live, what I wear, eat, or drive? Or am I just another willing victim of our sophisticated market?’ (from the SBS show Decadence)

Hamilton and Denniss explore how advertising plays to our weaknesses and vulnerabilities and how the culture contributes to the disposability of relationships. They also look at societally produced waste, obsolescence due to constantly updated technologies, and the damaging effects of youth’s early access to pornography.

While this may all sound incredibly depressing, Affluenza does look at options on how we can ‘downshift’ our lives without dropping out of society. It is not an attack but rather an acknowledgement that something fundamental has to change. It stresses the importance of getting back to involvement with community, giving something back but also to enable yourself to have those essential, rewarding human connections. It looks at people who have really done it and would never look back. It suggests maintaining an awareness of our own consumption patterns. We can regain the control over ‘wants’ and ‘needs’ and feel more fulfilled and enjoy a quality of life without the burden of maintaining a media- or marketing-constructed status-quo.

The SBS show Decadence believes that as a whole we have lost some intangible spirituality which is not necessarily connected to religion. It is the ability to stop and absorb the beauty of the land, the ability to feel transcendence through music, art or love. Not to fulfill a fast and shallow impulse. This basic liberal humanism is opposed to the neo-liberalism that has evolved in a West that forgets about ‘meaning’ unless constructed or manufactured and it will only be achieved through awareness, knowledge, education and even wisdom.

See more:

The Australia Institute website.

Related books:

Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy.

Liquid Modernity by Zygmunt Bauman.

Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System by Raj Patel.

Late Capitalism by Ernest Mandel.

Reification, or the Anxiety of Late Capitalism by Timothy Bewes.

No Logo by Naomi Klein.

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton.

The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz.

Luxury Fever: Money and Happiness in an Era of Excess by Robert H. Frank.

The High Price of Materialism by Tim Kasser.

The Selfish Capitalist: Origins of Affluenza by Oliver James.

Consuming Innocence by Karen Brooks. 

The World According to Y – Rebecca Huntley

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2006, Allen & Unwin, ISBN: 9781741148459

(Aus, US & Kindle)

It’s strange, this book was only published last year but already there is one major change in what my generation might consider a priority. There is absolutely no mention of Gen Y being conscious of climate change. It just shows what a wonderful thing a well-executed documentary can be. The effect of An Inconvenient Truth cannot be underestimated. Perhaps now my generation won’t be as optimistic about the future and only concerned about the next 2-3 years.

Apparently we don’t possess the pessimism of our older Gen X brothers and sisters, who saw that the Boomers were handed things like University education and home ownership on a platter. In a frightening way, Huntley observes, Gen Y are interested only in the here and now, instant consumer gratification. While the Xers were taught to love ‘the brand’ as teens, we were indoctrinated as babies. The corporate world saw an opening and they took it:

‘Through TV they had a captive audience of kiddy consumers whose time-pressured parents were guilty enough and wealthy enough to start giving into their offsprings’ newly created demands for the latest toy, video game and snack food’ (p. 144).

Where does this leave us as adults? Overloaded with choices, and with the pressures of our parents because of mistakes that they made. Apparently we are optimistic, yet utterly confused. ‘Generation Paradox’. Movies we grew up on fed us the message that someone will save the day.

I was quite startled by the optimism that Huntley found. Personally, my friends and I are cynical, adopting the opinions and attitudes of our favourite satirical cartoons. Huntley does mention that we deeply mistrust authority – the government, the church, and corporations. Many of us find ways to subvert consumerism. Marketers find us ‘fickle’ because while we have been constructed to believe that a brand name item will be better quality, we won’t necessarily stick to one brand for life. How can we when there is so much choice?

The biggest challenge we face (besides conquering global warming) is juggling affordability with lifestyle. If we want a good job, we need to go to the city, if we want a nice home, we must look in the suburbs or the regional areas. Our friendship groups are important to us, so we don’t all want to be separated. At the same time, we are leaving Uni with a massive debt and as soon as we start earning money we have to pay it off. On top of that we want to travel before we settle down, because we are part of a global community, (we have grown up with people in other countries the click of a button away). This too will cost money. Our Boomer parents are also going to eventually need looking after.

But apparently we don’t possess the ‘option paralysis’ (p. 170, quoting Douglas Coupland) of Gen X, often referred to as ‘slackers’. Many couldn’t make up their minds until they were 30 and ended up childless, alone and questioning. Apparently our optimism will drive us to find solutions. We are strong and hard-headed, because we have been told we must succeed.

This pressure to succeed also applies to our stance on body image. We have grown up with the media telling us to be thin and beautiful. The olds tell me this is nothing new, in the 60s and 70s it was Twiggy, in the 80s Cindy Crawford. But Yers are going to new levels – plastic surgery is becoming acceptable for teens and boys are feeling it too. In Australia a boy has to decide whether to be a ‘bloke’ or a ‘metro’ (how about ‘lad’ or ‘emo’?). Many that Huntley interviewed though, said that while these pressures were prevalent in highschool, once they were out in the real world, people were more accepting. It was easier to be yourself. But it still depends on environment.

I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of Huntley’s book, but in a way of replying to her as a Gen Y representative, I am grateful for her research. I hope older generations can gain an insight into us. And I think popular media seriously needs to reconsider its audiences or it is going to lose us forever. This is not just a danger to them, but a danger to society if we are not absorbent to news and information. We are the future but we do not want to be dictated to. We can see through the ads that are supposedly aimed at us.

You can no longer market ‘cool’, we will see right through it. As one of Huntley’s interviewees notes – ‘We decide what’s cool.’