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Gabby.

The Enthusiast is an Australian online magazine of culture and the popular arts, launched in January 2009. It is the first project of Infinite Ape Media, a partnership established in April 2008. Infinite Ape Media is Mel Campbell, Andrew Tijs and Daniel Zugna, three Melbourne journalists.

We publish news, opinion, features and review across the categories of Music, Television, Film, Books, Advertising, The Stage, The Media and Ephemera (which is everything else). Irregular columns include The Tough Question, The Stupid Question, The Bargain Bin, Best of the Bestseller Lists, Bourgie Barometer, Exhumed, Parlour Games, The Best Stuff On TV This Week, Schmooze Reviews and The Biscuiteer. The Enthusiast is also the new home of the Crikey!-endorsed Subeditorial Antics Appreciation Society.

Directed by: Eric Bana
Starring: Eric Bana and friends, Dr Phil McGraw, Jay Leno, Jeremy Clarkson
Distributed by: Madman Entertainment

“Vroooom Vroooom…neeerrrrr neerrrrrr neeeeeeeeeeerrrr….”

That is the sound of a kid playing ‘cars’. It is also the sound that goes through your head when you play a car-based computer game (even though there is also a soundtrack), and when you sit, as an oversized giant with knees spilling over the sides, in a pretend car in a kid’s playground. It is also, rather distractingly, the one sound that I heard in my own head for the entire length of Eric Bana’s directorial debut.

With his recent run of serious acting roles, in Munich, Troy, and Black Hawk Down, one could almost forget that Bana is, in essence, a very funny man.  I had almost forgotten his time with Full Frontal (I blame my parents because I wasn’t allowed to watch it so my memories are pervaded by the fear which held my quivering index finger over the power button on the remote, in case any authority figure should spring me), and his role in The Castle, though hilarious in its simplicity, was minor.

A documentary about Bana the man, not the actor, therefore, is the perfect medium to remind us of his pokerfaced, earnest wit. Love the Beast, as the name suggests, is a love story about Bana and his car, a Ford GT Falcon Coupe. Not this genre of cars, mind you, but this particular car, the same one he has owned for 25 years. If you think the car is probably going to be a minor part of the story, you may be disappointed. The film is a homage to the Beast, showing it from all angles, stationary and moving, inside and out. Vroooom.

But of course, the car is only one part of a more complex story, about male bonding, object loving and getting back to yer roots. After building a backstory, involving Bana’s acquisition of the car, and introducing his parents and best mates, the film follows Bana’s street-rallying career – described as one of the most dangerous forms of motorsport. Bana and mates attend rallies and fix faults, bickering and teasing each other along the way. The tension builds as they take part in the five-day Targa Tasmania rally, where after a nervous start they slowly build confidence in a way that makes you think something is going to go wrong. And it does (this link is a bit of spoiler so click at your own risk).

It is at this juncture that the film takes a disconcertingly Hollywood turn – both stylistically and literally. Though still sprinkled with wit and genuine emotion, Bana is spirited away from his childhood home in Essendon to attend to red carpet duties, and in the process, goes on a soul-searching journey.

The trailer and promotions for the film suggest that celebrities Jay Leno, Dr Phil and Jeremy Clarkson might be a major part of the story, but their cameos are bunched into this particular storyline.  They are quite entertaining, and somewhat insightful, but no more so than Bana’s mates at home. Their presence unbalances the film. Perhaps if they had been dotted throughout the narrative, you might feel less suspicious that their role was nothing more than a promotional tool.

Overall though, Love the Beast is moving and surprisingly emotionally convincing car love story. Even if you’re not a motorhead, Bana’s humour and passion are contagious. And if you do get at all bored with it, you can always supplement the dialogue with car noises in your head.

Photo credit: Bana by Vern Norrgard/http://www.flickr.com/photos/norrgard/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Sometimes, long afterwards, it’s possible to look back and see the beginning of things… the point at which you’d already plunged in, though at the time you thought you were only testing the water with your toe.

- Monkey Grip, Helen Garner

On a hot day a week or so ago I am on the phone to my friend in Sydney. She mentions that she had seen dolphins at the beach at Bronte that morning. Trumped once more by Sydney’s physical beauty, I sheepishly tell her I was also thinking of going for a swim. I can hear her grinning down the phone. “But you don’t have a beach?” she offers, “Where will you go?” “I’m going to Fitzroy Pool,” I say. “Oh!” she says respectfully. “Like Monkey Grip!”

At first glance, the suburban pool is not an object of beauty. Though many a happy Australian childhood was spent there, inhaling the toxic combination of chlorine, sunscreen and melting confectionery on the pavement, it is designed for recreation, not for aesthetic pleasure.  Bodies of water do have their own mystique, whatever the circumstances, but the combination of bright blue paint, red and yellow lane ropes, and authoritative signs telling you not to run or dive proscribes the poetry somewhat.

Yet many people have found beauty here anyway. When the local council threatened to close the Fitzroy Pool in 1994, the community gathered together and occupied the pool for six weeks, which halted to the process. Now, the Aqua Profonda sign marking the deep end of the pool and immortalised by Garner’s book is heritage-listed. There is a strong sense of history here, and generations of families return to the pool, many who now bring their children here remember its significance in their own teenage memories.

Immersed at the end of a lane or sitting on a bench at the poolside, you realise that fitness and cooling down are only small elements of the social ecosystem at play here. Groups of eight teenagers sit on the side, four girls and four boys all studiously ignoring the one they like the best. The girls try to appear nonchalant about their almost nakedness and the boys splash around them also pretending not to care. Eventually someone always gets chucked in amongst screams of protest and laughter.

As you move your way down the ‘Slow Lane’ you see flashes of headless bodies playing around in the aisles next to you, interlaced with audio clips of laughter and talking as your head dips in and out of the water. It’s like music video, albeit a meditative one. There is plenty of time to think when swimming; it is the one place where you can’t listen to music or answer your phone. You can either use this time to think profoundly or try to keep count of your laps.

The seats along the side of the pool are strangely divided: beautiful people, who never used to have a place here, reside on the steps, hipsters on the lounges. I think it’s because of the full sun on the steps. Families are generally on the other side, or in the baby enclosure with its cloudy paddling pool.

It is a meeting place of all types, and observing the transformation that takes place when people replace their work suits with swim suits is fascinating.  If they were on the other side of the high pool fence, in the middle of inner-city Melbourne, they’d look and feel absolutely ridiculous. But inside the pool it is summer, with all the carefree attitude and flirting that the season entails. For only $5, you can escape the heat and watch the human parade – even if you don’t see dolphins dancing in the waves.

Photo credit: ‘Fiona Flip 3′ by Popofatticus/http://www.flickr.com/photos/barretthall/ / CC BY 2.0

By Hamish McDonald, Al Jazeera Blogs: The Middle East Blog

Ash Koosha and Negar Shaghagai are young Iranian rock singers. They star in a film called ‘No one know about Persian Cats’, which charts the story of Tehran’s underground rock scene. On Saturday the film debuts at the London film festival and next week it will screen at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival.

Although the film is a drama, their story is real. The movie is part fiction, part documentary. They are very much part of Tehran’s music scene and they have suffered at the hands of a political establishment unwilling to accept their form of art. Some members of their rock group have spent time in jail after being caught performing at illegal outdoor rock concerts.

The young rockers have been in Europe since earlier this year, helping to promote the film and play gigs. Shortly after the Cannes film festival it became obvious that returning home was no longer a real option. Going back to Tehran would mean an uncertain future and possibly even arrest. They sought asylum here in Britain (as Al Jazeera reported back in August), and it has now been granted.

Saturday is a big day for Ash and Negar. The film screening in London is an important part of their journey, but their story is most definitely not over yet.

This work is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

When I was talking about my favourite sites, I forgot to mention this one. Pool is an ABC-based project/experiment in online collaborative work. It is a really exciting platform, built on open-source content management system Drupal which allows users to be part of the development process as well.

ABC is building an online ‘town square’ for all Australians. Pool is a collaborative space where audiences become ‘co-creators’.  It’s a place to share and talk about creative work – music, photos, videos, documentaries, interviews, animations and more.

Pool brings together ABC professionals and audiences in an open-ended process of participation, co-creation and collaboration.  In this way Pool is a predictive project.  We’re conducting research in action at the intersection of broadcast and participatory media. The project is using open rights frameworks to explore this new territory with our research, community and education partners.

The Pool story began in early 2003. That seed has grown into the public beta site you see today,  launched in August 2008.

It’s an exciting concept – anyone can share their creative work and have others see it and comment. One of my favourite things is the tagging functions – the Pool site is mostly based on folksonomy, so the arrangement of the site is organic and based on the way we think.

She was fighting in the dust

There is always a sense of promise and excitement when you are discussing changes to a website. Little things which have always annoyed you can be resolved – and because developers have specialist knowledge, it’s like someone doing your homework for you.

Except that like someone doing your homework, there are sacrifices to be made in return.

Worst Nachos EVER!

With apologies to anyone who knows/loves a website developer, they are on a completely different – and somewhat bizarre – planet.  My usual analogy is the comic geek from the Simpsons. I know it’s really unoriginal to use an archetypal nerd to illustrate my feelings for a software developer, but I have met about 6 in my life, and everyone of them reminds me of that character. Very often, they barely manage to hide their disgust at having to talk to someone who does not speak a computer language (I’m not sure if you say ‘speak’ HTML, but that’s what I’m saying, and it only supports my point).

Anyway, this rant was inspired by a tweet I just saw from Jay Rosen at NYU, who wrote:

Geeks lack empathy for users and most users lack geek. Meanwhile, designers make it look good. Usability eludes them all.

This might be a little simplistic, but it does summarise the dilemma of dealing with developers, and how to do it well.

Generally, if you are working as an editor, or consultant, or coordinator on a website, you have to act as a translator between developer/customer or geek/user.  And, because the geek, user, and designer all lack an awareness of usability, that has to be your primary concern.

Image: Worst Nachos Ever by Elvissa. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic Licence.

Update: In related news, this article from A List Apart, ‘Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus’.

Spike – The Meanjin Blog: The blog for the literary magazine Meanjin, Spike is mostly written by editorial assistant Jessica Au, and Editor Sophie Cunningham. As one would expect from a bookish publication, the posts are well-written, considered, concise and interesting. I first became interested in it when the Editor posted this photo from her trip to the Northern Territory. I have an ongoing interest in public memory, Australiana and history and I have been trying to write a story about those statues ever since (it’s almost there…). Apart from highly nuanced and intellectual literary debate, they also include a lot of pretty book stuff, like these shelves around which I will one day build a house.

Stair(book)case by Levitate Architects

Audrey and the Bad Apples: A friend put me on to this blog, around the same time as she introduced me to Marieke Hardy’s now defunct blog, Reasons You Will Hate Me. We were both quite bored with our jobs at the time. I think the reason I keep going back to Audrey’s is because she is so unafraid to be personal, to an extent I would never be brave enough to be online. She is entertaining, witty, interesting and recently went traveling to the US and Spain.

The Content Makers: Margaret Simons’ blog on the Crikey blog network is all about media. There are many like it (I also really like Mumbrella) but I really like Simons’ writing style – it is so accessible and readable and doesn’t assume you are part of some media-journo club like so many media commentators.

Since You Asked: Salon’s Agony Aunt for smart people. The questions can vary but Cary Tennis’ responses are nuanced and genuine. My favourite post addressed the common malaise of twenty to thirty-year-olds; indecision and anxiety about the future (relating to Camilla’s post about the Quarter Life Crisis, which we are now calling the QLC). Tennis gives this revolutionary advice:

The truth is that you’ve been hurt and you’re going through a tough time. This is a good thing. This is your chance to admit some new knowledge into your core being — knowledge of setbacks, lostness, the difficulty of making your way, the many false starts and illusions that are placed in your path.This is the classic course of youth into adulthood.

If I were you, I might be a little angry that my culture neglected to tell me the truth about these things, that my education did not prepare me for adversity. I might be upset that I had not gained an understanding of economic forces, of class forces, of the way power is wielded in hidden ways in the workplace, how we are led to believe that things will be easy when they are actually hard.

That is all I can think of for now – I do quite regularly check out some other literary blogs, but none that I consistently love. I’ve found Twitter amazing for finding stuff on the web – by following people you are interested in, its like a human search engine.

An Australian website of news, analysis and satire. Believing that robust media is fundamental to a healthy democracy, newmatilda.com is fiercely independent — it has no formal affiliation with any political party, lobby group or other media organisation.

newmatilda.com provides intelligent coverage of Australian politics, business, consumerism, civil society, international affairs, media and culture. It makes an important contribution to balancing public debate by actively seeking out new information and perspectives that are not otherwise heard. Our articles provide an understanding of current events against a broad historical and political backdrop that goes beyond that provided by the mainstream media.

Young women in Esfahan. Image © Gabby Haynes

Part 2

On a plane between Shiraz and Tehran, a young teacher talked about her struggle between fight and flight.  For her, the experience of joining the ‘Greens’ had been overwhelmingly positive, describing the Qods day marches as ‘beautiful’. “It was such a nice feeling,” she said, with an air of relief. It had brought together two sides of many Iranian lives. ‘Real’ life is lived primarily in the home, or other private spaces. Here, away from the pan-opticon effects of living a surveyed society, people are able to live as they would like.

In the movie Persepolis, Marji listened to Iron Maiden and debated politics with her parents.  For many young Tehranis, privacy might provide the opportunity to remove the headscarf, gather with friends, and listen to music. For this teacher, the private world had been brought out into the open during the protests, where friends were able to openly declare their hopes and appear in public with like-minded people.

“If all of the people who think differently leave, there’ll never be any change.”

She ventured that it was fateful we had met – she and her husband had been applying for citizenship in Australia. When I asked if she had been there, she said no, but that she loved it anyway. “I have heard it is so beautiful,” she said.

Despite attempts to move out of Iran to various other countries without success, her involvement with the protests had nutured conflicting feelings about leaving the country, because, as she put it, “if all of the people who think differently leave, there’ll never be any change.”

Iran’s political situation is never static.  Ahmedinejad is now meeting with officials from the U.S, Russia and France to discuss Iran’s nuclear program, in the most extensive thawing of relations between Iran and the West in years. Within the country, stories of rape and torture of detainees following the protests continue to circulate and opposition leaders continue to deny the government’s election victory. The leadership is also faced with dissatisfaction over rising unemployment and oil prices. Change will not necessarily only be the responsibility of the country’s young people; it will be pushed along by many other factors.

In Persepolis, though Marji’s time abroad brings isolation, her return does not provide resolution. She realises the country has become more restrictive in her absence. In a perfect metaphor for the confusing intersection of the personal and the political, her feelings of depression over the state of politics are misdiagnosed as a nervous breakdown. Unfortunately a simple prescription can’t resolve this very complex and ever-present dilemma, for Marji or for the many young Iranians still facing it.

For more background on the 1979 revolution and the context for recent events, see The Iranian Revolution: 30 Years On – The Guardian reflects on the legacy of the Iranian revolution using some stunning news photography.