The Australia Letter is a weekly publication from our Australia bureau. This week’s problem is written by Damien Cave, the Australia bureau chief since 2017.
With my 13-year-old daughter house for a break from her one-year journey at a boarding college within the Australian bush, we placed on an outdated film the opposite night time that she had requested to see: “Lifeless Poets Society.”
As a lot of you most likely know, it’s a coming-of-age story set at an American personal college, starring an inspiring instructor performed by Robin Williams. I liked it when it got here out in 1989 (I used to be a younger teen then myself), however when the director’s identify — Peter Weir — appeared onscreen in my Sydney front room, I did a double take.
I’d by no means realized that the film, a beloved traditional for a lot of Individuals, was directed by an Australian. One way or the other, the identical bloke chargeable for Australian classics like “Gallipoli” and “Picnic at Hanging Rock” was additionally the director of very American favorites like “Lifeless Poets Society” and “The Truman Present.”
Like me, or so I wish to consider, Mr. Weir gave the impression to be conversant within the cultures of those two English-speaking settler nations, ready, maybe, to see extra clearly the deep grooves and darkish shadows of every as a result of he’d had the possibility to look from a distant perspective.
I watched the film with recent eyes. I used to be already on the lookout for what secrets and techniques and classes it’d maintain for my daughter. I questioned if I might really feel extra sympathetic to the adults relatively than the reasonably rebellious teenagers this time (nope), however I additionally determined to search for what may make the film extra Australian than I had observed in earlier viewings.
What, if something, would Australian audiences have discovered related and relatable?
At first, the film struck me as extraordinarily American. I acknowledged the emphasis on Henry David Thoreau, an American author who lived not removed from the place I had grown up in Massachusetts. His quotes from “Walden” about the necessity to stay intentionally and “suck out all of the marrow of life” have been already in our household combine: I’d despatched a little bit of Thoreau to my daughter in letters, an analog alternate that I not too long ago wrote about in an essay for The Occasions.
Doing a little bit of analysis, I may see that the movie’s screenwriter, Tom Schulman, who received an Academy Award for his efforts, based mostly the story on his personal experiences on the prep college he attended in Nashville. And there was a little bit of Hollywood narcissism to be discovered as nicely — the lead character, Neil Perry, needed to be an actor relatively than, say, a poet or pianist. There’s nothing film folks love greater than to make their very own enterprise appear rebellious and heroic.
However in Robin Williams’s character, and the way he was handled, I felt I may additionally see a contact of the Australian. Mr. Williams’s efficiency was remarkably restrained, one thing that needed to come partly from Mr. Weir’s path. It made the severity of the character’s skilled demise by the hands of extra conventional forces all of the extra painful to observe. It labored partly, I feel, as a result of John Keating (sure, that’s the identify of Williams’s character, no relation to the Australian prime minister) walked to the sting of one thing very Australian: tall poppy syndrome.
Keating was an alumnus of the fictional Welton Academy the place he taught. As a scholar, he was the captain of the soccer group, Cambridge-bound, a founding father of the Lifeless Poets Society — and voted the “man probably to do something,” in accordance with the yearbook discovered by his college students, whom he inspired to name him “Captain.”
He had each cause to toot his personal horn, and the truth that the directors on the college all knew him by his achievements and status hinted at resentment and the tall poppy phenomenon — which might imply numerous issues, however is mostly outlined as “a societal angle that happens when individuals are resented, disliked or criticized as a consequence of their successes.”
In my expertise, many Australians hate that this is part of their tradition, however additionally they discover it practically not possible to withstand. As Ben Shewry, the internationally famend chef at Attica in Melbourne, advised me after I had simply arrived in Oz, Australians are nonetheless horrible at celebrating one another’s successes.
If Keating had been too large a character, exuding vanity or just resembling Robin Williams the standup comic, many Australians wouldn’t have linked with the character. However as an alternative, in my studying, he was a tall poppy who discovered humility whereas holding onto conviction.
As an English instructor, relatively than some high-falutin’ college boss, he was quietly calling for carpe diem. He was a guru, not a maverick (“Prime Gun” reference!), calmly encouraging nonconformity as he raised his head excessive and climbed on prime of his desk. Sure, he was lower down and blamed for one thing terrible that he was not in the end chargeable for. However perhaps that’s the purpose the film, and Mr. Weir, needed to make?
The filmmakers have been aiming to name out the guardians of rigidity who see nonconformity as vanity, no matter whether or not it’s or not. Individuals could gravitate to the antihero in such conditions. However whereas Australians wish to see themselves as cultural rebels or Larrikins, the truth is, many of the nation tends to go together with the wardens and no matter guidelines there are.
I’ve by no means interviewed Mr. Weir (mate, should you see this, drop me a be aware), however I do know he is aware of this dynamic from firsthand expertise. He attended a conservative all-boys college in Sydney (Scots), the place he has stated he would have been thrilled to affix a model of the Lifeless Poets Society that gave the movie its identify.
If there was a message that he needed to convey, maybe it was a criticism of Australia’s tendency to denigrate the iconoclast, to tear down the bolder, extra inventive collaborator — to see sticking collectively and staying roughly the identical as everybody else, even when which means hovering in mediocrity, as one of the simplest ways to stay in Australia, and generally.
A few of these struggles got here up for me simply the opposite day, when I discovered myself educating a journalism class on the College of New South Wales. After working via a lesson on function writing, I used to be encouraging college students to tackle longer, advanced, thought-provoking tales, it doesn’t matter what job in journalism they could have. I advised them to exit and report on what they have been obsessed with with out asking for permission.
I didn’t channel Keating. I didn’t stand on any desks or ask anybody to name me Captain.
However one of many college students requested if I had any recommendation about the best way to get past a slim function whereas avoiding disdain — and being labeled a tall poppy.
I admit that I stumbled with my reply. As an American who has written a ebook partly concerning the perils of my house nation’s tradition of utmost individuality, perhaps I’m extra accepting of Australia’s strain to stay unpretentious collectively.
The place I ended up was with a suggestion to remain humble as you pursue concepts that don’t essentially suit your job description; to try to present, with the work and never self-promotion, what your ardour may add to the publication and for its viewers.
Like Keating, like Weir, I feel I used to be looking for a center floor between the virtues of America and Australia, to construct a relationship between the 2 for the subsequent technology. Perhaps that’s one thing that each international locations would profit from in the event that they each made it a precedence.
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