Lies, Damned Lies, and Media a Feature by marcus (marcus westbury) For the first time Helen Darville talks about the media, the establishment, identity, and being a young person caught up in a media madness... In 1993, somewhere in the vast sprawl of suburbia stretching between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, a 22-year-old first-time novelist packed a manuscript in an overnight express bag and sent it off to The Australian/Vogel Award for young writers. Only the most optimistic (and paranoid) young author could have imagined what followed. "The Hand that Signed the Paper" went on to win the Vogel, the ALS Gold Medal and the Miles Franklin Award for best Australian novel of the year. By turns praised and vilified, the novel established the author, Helen Demidenko, as the most promising young Australian writer in decades. Then it emerged that the novelist was not ethnic Australian Helen Demidenko but Helen Darville, Anglo-Celtic Australian student at the University of Queensland. The story was one of Australia's largest literary scandals. It captured headlines and sparked accusations of antisemitism and literary hoaxing, dragging critics onto the front pages and into the media spotlight for the first time in years. Marcus Westbury and Helen Darville got together via email to discuss the media, identity, multiculturalism, the Holocaust, and being on the receiving end of a serious shafting from the establishment. MARCUS: It is interesting the extent to which your name is not mentioned in the context of "who are Australia's successful, creative young people". LOUD has been trying to co-opt some of the more serious, happening, young creative people to draw attention to the festival. That process has been very much bound up with an idea of "credibility", and yours has allegedly been shot to pieces by recent events. HELEN: Part of the problem, I think, is that some people are conflating "credibility" with "authenticity." There's been a perpetual search on lately for this or that "authentic" voice (from youth, women, ethnics, Aborigines, gays, whatever) with almost no appreciation that authenticity is entirely culturally constructed. It's even bureaucratically constructed in Australia, when one considers the OzCo and its method of arts funding. I freely admit my inauthenticity, but since authenticity doesn't exist, I'm not particularly worried. Credibility is different, and I think varies from occupation to occupation. I'm not sure what sort of credibility writers and artists should have, but I'm certain it has nothing to do with the composition of their DNA. There is a real opportunity to fiddle the paradigm through noise! and LOUD. The idea that it should be uncensored is powerful. If nothing else it will introduce perturbations into Australia's youth discourse feedback loop. MARCUS: You winning the Miles Franklin is probably the most spectacular case where someone under 25 has been successful in recent times in the Arts. But it certainly isn't being presented as an inspiring example to hold up to aspiring young writers. HELEN: Why would the powers that be set it up as an inspiring example, when it generated such a shit-fight? I think Mark Davis (in "Gangland") is right when he argues that parameters demarcating youth success are pre-set. I just didn't fit those parameters. I won old, distinguished prizes (notice, no-one said "boo" for the Vogel prize two years earlier), and rattled too many cages - psychological, theoretical, social, whatever. And, as Kate Legge and Les Murray pointed out recently in The Weekend Australian, I was the wrong age and the wrong sex. It wasn't my allotted place to do that. MARCUS: Aren't you supposed to rattle cages when you're young? There is a systematic acceptance of the idea, but there are lots of antibodies that come out when it actually happens. Could there have been the same desire or ability for the media to turn on an older person with an established support network in the media, in academia, the literary establishment? HELEN: The (Australian) mass media will turn on any perceived "high achiever" and grind them into mincemeat given half a chance. However, it's easier to mince a young person, not only because they don't have friends in high places, but because "youth" is a wonderful ready-made stereotype to be called upon whenever certain bodies feel the need to inject some moral panic into the community. Young people are continually constructed as dangerous. You can probably recite the litany of youth stereotypes: moshing at gigs, dropping tabs, running wild, no respect, rampant crime... MARCUS: Was there ever such a thing as serious investigative journalism, or is it an old myth that we kids have grown up with? It's seems easier for the media to attack people who are unable to defend themselves than to go after the Packers, Howards, and Kennetts of the world. HELEN: Kennett is able to say insensitive things about all sorts of minority groups and get away with it. Look at his justification for refusing to put Konrads Kalejs on trial for war crimes. He said "you can understand the Jewish community being very upset. Some of them are still living awful lives and obviously many are still remembering family they never saw after the war. On the other hand, if you want to take an entirely Christian point of view, I think the last words Jesus uttered on the cross were 'forgive them, for they know not what they do'." Even the media creation "Helen Demidenko" (misquotes and all) never, ever said that. "The Hand that Signed the Paper" also stresses the idea of owning the past, and makes it clear that conventional Christian pieties don't work. Kennett is laughed at as someone who opens his mouth to change feet, and his popularity remains undented. I get compared with David Irving. Tony Coady (Director, Centre for Philosophy and Public Issues at Melbourne Uni) argues that Kennett can route around media criticism because the media is held in such low esteem. Coady says "the public are highly cynical about the 'holier than thou' attitude that the media adopts. Some politicians manage to avoid the wrath of the public by deflecting it onto another object of public scorn and resentment - the media." Kennett has enough clout to do that. I don't, the Paxtons don't, the Filipino TV repairman didn't. And now he's dead. MARCUS: A lot of your work is threaded with the idea of the "ordinariness" of evil. I thought of that when I heard Earl Spencer's eulogy for Diana. ("I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media - why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling. My own, and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum"). Diana's genuine goodness or otherwise is open to debate, but that's a strong condemnation of the press. HELEN: It is, because it locates a fundamental "evil" within something most of us have been taught to cherish: the freedom of the press. I followed the reaction to Earl Spencer's eulogy, fascinated by the sight of a world press that truly did not know where to put its head. It seems most of the Fourth Estate - until Spencer got stuck into them - failed to appreciate the extent to which they are held in contempt by the wider public. The same phenomenon is happening with Hanson locally. Every time the press bags her, her approval rating improves. MARCUS: The fact that someone like Pauline Hanson can find a voice again has a lot to do with the confusion everyone is feeling. It's nostalgia for a lost world that comes from a fear of where this world is going. She's a symptom of a broader disillusionment and alienation that people feel from the political system. One of my obsessions is the lack of new ideas for political organisation in the wake of communism's collapse. I see the idea of the nation state withering before my eyes. Politics is reduced to advertising campaigns and tabloid sideshow. The media's desire to build Hanson up as a "political phenomenon" - rather than as an obscure, misguided, ignorant, independent member of parliament is extremely irresponsible. HELEN: The problem, of course, is that Hanson's people don't just remember the days of White Australia, but full employment, a robust Australian manufacturing sector, certainty. Hanson (and what she represents) terrifies me but as you say, the alienation created by loss of certainty is not going to go away. We don't know anything about Hanson's supporters (apart from cliched labels), or even why her popularity is increasing, because of the infotainment/marketing paradigm employed by the media in its approach to her. I can think of two people in the media who've done some proper research. No-one's ever asked why her website is so popular. It's even got its own daily news server - subversive and often funny - although the politics make me cringe. MARCUS: Hanson has also hacked into multiculturalism, which frightens me. I love living in a place of ethnic and cultural diversity. It is something I cherish about Australia. My criticism of multiculturalism is that it blurs the line between an ethic - which I support - and a government policy - which I can and should criticise from time to time. That the policies of the government are somehow representative of morality is problematic to me. HELEN: Multiculturalism is one of my favourite things about Australia. But, like you, I find the idea of government attempting to tinker with collective morality through legislation problematic. I've also got the feeling that - despite good intentions - multiculturalism is excessively bureaucratised. A lot of the original social justice ideals within it are now diluted. It also appeared (to me) during the last years of Labor to be a vehicle for stifling debate. Hanson is playing on this with a degree of malicious skill. MARCUS: That the tabloid media allows itself to get so out of touch with the morality or effects of its actions - while the individuals swept up in it are apparently either self-justified, oblivious, or persisting despite their self doubt - is fascinating to me. There is a kind of systemic cruelty at work in which perfectly good people allow themselves to be caught. HELEN: The issue here is the seeping of the marketing model into every facet of society. "News" can be bought and sold - or made to measure - for a given audience. Look at the ridiculous sums of money I was offered for exclusive interviews. When someone wants to pay me $160,000 for three hours' work - all to be turned into ten minutes of airtime, if that - something in our society is deeply screwy. Even stranger was the reaction from these various media bodies when my agent Andrew Greenwood - on my instructions - knocked back the money. Andrew tells me a couple of them went into what he describes as "phone meltdown." Obviously they work in a paradigm where everything is for sale. MARCUS: I presume the offer of money came with a tantalising offer to "tell your side of the story." Surely there must have been a temptation? $160,000 is a fortune to most young people. HELEN: Some letters sent to Andrew were incredibly creative. "Telling my side of the story" was only part of it. There seemed to be a consciousness that the media had cocked this one up badly. (One offer even talked about "removing all the media hooplah"). Strangely enough, I was never tempted by the money. I just don't operate in the world according to that "everything for sale" paradigm. I also wasn't really interested in supplying any more grist to the media mill. Anything I said during a verbal bushfire like that was going to be singed out of shape, misquoted or robbed of its context. In addition, nothing I said or did was going to stop the bushfire, so I opted out. The only problem was that I got a weird notoriety as a reclusive writer, and out came the chequebooks. MARCUS: Are there positive aspects to the fame from your point of view? HELEN: "Fame" is a construct. It means there's a pool of recognisable, available people who can sign petitions against this or that social evil, but whose actions for the most part are turned into theatre - even theatresports - by the mass media. I used to think that having "someone famous" front the Save the Whales campaign or whatever was a good thing. In terms of the marketing model it helps to sell the cause, but it means that the cause itself (however worthy) is commodified. MARCUS: Do you pay attention to your own coverage and have you learnt anything from it? HELEN: 1995 and the Miles Franklin taught me as much as my university degree (which taught me most everything until then). Most of what I've written here is informed by that experience. I don't usually vector my own coverage, although I used to try to collect local stuff (i.e. Brisbane) and file it away. The sheer volume beat me in the end, although I'll read something if it seems interesting. Between us, Andrew and I also acquired/purchased the original Michael Leunig and Bill Leak cartoons published during the controversy. MARCUS: Yours was an extreme case of something that is an ambiguous area for all of us. Identity is something we can all play with a lot - whether we are representing only part of ourselves to a potential employer or partner, or, as is often the case on the internet, making completely new identities for ourselves. HELEN: I'm persuaded by Gayatri Spivak's argument that there's "no possibility of knowledge on identity," and that writing cannot be linked to any sort of "real" identity position (as opposed to being linked all sorts of assumed identity positions, usually by persons other than the writer). I must admit I find the idea of identity oppressive. It's so easy to use it to exclude rather than include. During a session at the most recent Brisbane Writer's Festival, an Aboriginal writer told how she'd been forced - by a certain publisher - to fill out a slew of forms documenting her Aboriginal ancestry. There was a gasp around the auditorium when she said it. Maybe people were thinking of two organisations infamous for demanding "blood and heredity" information from those wanting to join up: the Waffen-SS and the KKK. MARCUS: I think fluidity of identity is a generational thing. There are hundreds of internet channels right at this minute where teenage boys pretending to be twenty-something lesbians are having "cybersex". There is an unspoken convention and an acceptance of roleplaying in that context. HELEN: I'm also a gamer/roleplayer, and so even more dangerous! Remember when D&D "was leading young people to suicide" and "teaching them inappropriate moral values"? I remember seeing a debate on the 7.30 Report years ago between some Christian crazy and a regular gamer. The "debate" was a joke. Everything was predicated on the idea that "here is another bizarre thing that young people do for us olds to have a moral panic about." It was a scream. MARCUS: I used to play D&D as well. I picked up some ideas - you could call them tools - for looking at the world. I once had a character who was a cleric possessed by a creeping vampirism. Switching in and out of that headspace over weeks and months has shaped my views - the idea of seeing the world through someone else's eyes appeals to me. Perhaps their fears were founded. Are you what the moral panic merchants were afraid of - that kids would grow up with an "inappropriate" sense of identity and morality? HELEN: Yep. I'm a dangerous, destructive and immoral gamer. "Maus" and "Maus II" are the best books I've ever read on the Holocaust. I watched Dr Who and Blake's 7. (Wasn't Avon a lovable bastard?) I think that information is becoming infotainment, and more to the point, there's nothing I can do about it. Please enjoy... MARCUS: I am curious as to whether your website's representation is any more you than "Helen Demidenko" or than the media's "controversial Helen Darville - anti-semitic, plagiarising, blah blah blah." HELEN: The webpage is as much a creation as anything else, but it's my creation, not the media's. People have the option of buying what (some) in the media say about me or using the net to access my version. It gives me a space where I can control what goes out, and has enhanced my privacy. I do get a lot of email, but again, I can keep it under control. MARCUS: Your story seems symptomatic of a whole culture of journalism by press release and repetition of hype. I don't know to what lengths you went to keep it secret, but surely when your photo went in the paper everyone who had ever known you went "Hey, that's Helen Darville!" A big part of the media reaction must have been to the fact that they looked really stupid for not working it out. HELEN: My name was listed on my academic record as 'Demidenko-Darville'. When I won the Australian/Vogel award (in 1993), both University News (an in-house publication distributed around the St Lucia campus), and the Australian Studies Newsletter (produced within the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Queensland, but widely distributed around the country) gave my name as 'Demidenko-Darville'. Similarly, The Courier-Mail routinely receives a list of each year's university medallists. The names of the 1994 university medallists - I was one - were sent to the paper in May 1995. I also had a reasonable profile locally through involvement in a number of environmental campaigns (notably VETO - Veto Eastern Tollway Organisation) which contributed to Goss losing government in Queensland. I don't think the media cares about identity or literature, except in so far as they make marketable copy. MARCUS: It makes me realise that you must have been from so far outside the establishment that no one who knew you was in a position to tell them. HELEN: I was so far outside the establishment I didn't even know we had one. I remember someone at Allen & Unwin giving me a copy of the Queensland Writer's Centre newsletter (before that, I didn't know the QWC existed). I rang Robyn Sheahan (the QWC executive director) one afternoon a couple of days after the Australian/Vogel Award was announced. All she knew about me was what had been printed in The Australian a day or so earlier. MARCUS: Before I worked at LOUD, I started the Newcastle Fringe Festival with about $30,000 worth of private sponsorship because I didn't realise that you could get government money for the arts. I don't think I knew that the Australia Council existed - I certainly didn't know what they did. HELEN: I remember being stunned when I found out that the government gave money to writers to supplement their income. I'd been raised in a community where, if your job or business folded and you didn't make enough, you gave that away and found something else - even if it was cleaning toilets for the Logan City Council. MARCUS: I'm fascinated by the contrast in reaction to the story you published in the Courier Mail, and the repeated claims of plagiarism that Media Watch has made against Alan Jones. I find it incredible that Jones can keep his job - and his respect - from people like our beloved Prime Minister. The double standards at work are enormous and entirely back to front. Your case is headline news because it reinforces the perceptions that the media have created of you. Jones' case is broadly ignored or glossed over because it sits uncomfortably with the perception of him as a serious, respected opinion maker. HELEN: I'm a dangerous young person, remember. If I'm not shafted as thoroughly as possible, by any means possible, then I may influence "public opinion." Now I don't believe writers - or artists of any type - can influence "public opinion." They may be able to shift perceptions (a very different process), but the idea that people will be changed somehow through reading The Hand that Signed the Paper is utterly bogus. Jones, on the other hand, can shift perceptions and often frames public opinion. The literati also valorise writers and critics out of all proportion to our actual power in the culture. With all due respect to those who live by the pen, many more Australians play Duke Nukem, watch the X-Files, surf Elvis sites or see "Men in Black" than will ever read books - even a bestseller like mine. MARCUS: Had you read Manne's book or any of the other books about you and the controversy? HELEN: I read a couple of chapters of Manne thoroughly, and all of Andrew Riemer, less thoroughly. The Manne sections I read dealt with the history vs fiction issues. I read them because I was writing a major essay for a US publication. Riemer I read because I've met and chatted with Andrew, and admire him. I meant to read the whole of Manne, but when he started playing amateur psychologist the book went from scholarly to laughable and I gave it away. Until I read Davis, I didn't realise how so much of Manne's criticism was based on my age and my lack of "respect" for a story ostensibly the property of the olds. MARCUS: Manne's idea that the Holocaust is another generation's story is interesting. Do you think the significance or the relevance of it is any way lessened by the passage of time or with the passing of generations? Recent examples of genocide - such as the Cambodian killing fields, the atrocity of Rwanda, or the "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia - aren't treated with anything like the same reverence. Rwanda and Bosnia had to compete with OJ Simpson for space in the public mind. It's difficult to appreciate the magnitude of events on the six o'clock news when they are presented in sound bites wedged between McDonald's advertisements. The Paxtons got more airtime on commercial current affairs than Rwanda. It's little wonder our generation seems to have a kind of informed numbness to global catastrophes. I wonder how the Holocaust would have fared against OJ Simpson for media time? It's a strange world where a fictional account of an historical evil sparks a louder moral debate than a factual account of a contemporary one. HELEN: Part of the problem with writing about the Holocaust is that it's become our metonym for evil. Mention the Holocaust (in a debate, a speech, an article) and a mental short hand kicks in. People switch their brains off. John Frow has some interesting things to say about the Holocaust in his "Time and Commodity Culture." Basically, the price the Holocaust has paid for becoming the best known genocide is commodification. It's "constructed and reconstructed as an object of public memory within the play of present interests, fears and fascinations." Instead of existing unambiguously as "history," it's been appropriated by popular culture and turned into infotainment or theatre. (Schindler's List is a great film, but it's still infotainment). Frow also digs up a few ghoulish facts about the way we interact with such a singular horror. Did you know that Auschwitz is Poland's most popular tourist attraction? MARCUS: Michael Jackson is apparently building a theme park on the outskirts of Warsaw. People will do Auschwitz and "Michael Jackson World" in the same package tour. Now that's a mindfuck! Related Web Site Created on Tue, 21 Oct 1997 and last modified on Fri, 27 Feb 1998.

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