WHEN journalist Margo Kingston described the existential crisis of journalism, and that she wouldn’t advise anyone to enter the industry, she expressed what very few media punters were willing to say.
Journalism dropped to the bottom of satisfying career lists during the last decade. In the 2013 ‘Jobs from Best to Worst’ survey, conducted for the past 25 years, CareerCast.com listed Reporter last, at number 200, with Editor not much higher, at 168.
How did we get here?
It’s hard to gauge, but things can hardly get worse. As advertising revenue continues to take a dive, and limitless access to social media fosters the expectation that content should be free, neither the mainstream or social media allocates much money to the creation of content.
On this score alone, Journalists have entered the career bracket previously inhabited by Artists, where remuneration is never guaranteed, product floats below the surface of a constantly uncertain marketplace, and validation is in very short supply.
To put things into perspective, the CareerCast.com survey ranked Artist at 148, Choreographer comes in at 156, even Actor, once considered the most marginal of careers with 99 percent unemployment at any given time, gets a higher ranking than Journalist, at 197.
On this advice, Journalists might be wise to start thinking and operating like Artists in order to change the ranking of our industry.
Depressingly, holidays are the hardest time of the year to do so. If you’re an Artist, the silly season can be anything from an inconvenience to a handy escape from the fact that it’s another year, another blank canvas.
“Journalists might be wise to start thinking and operating like Artists.”
Unless you’re a successful practising Artist of any stripe, it may have been devastatingly easy for you to take time off from your creative work and spend summer days with friends and family, joining in at the edge of groups of ‘real people with real jobs’: Web Developers (ranked at 24), Hair Stylists (83), Architects (61), Statisticians (20), and a host of other very sensible folk who listened to their parents and forged careers with prospects.
It takes plenty of self belief and a plastered smile to get through. Having even a shred of an official day job goes a long way to keeping you off most naysayers’ radars.
And you don’t have to be anything nearly as extreme as an Artist to raise eyebrows over the Christmas pudding.
Try adding something even slightly different or new to your repertoire (Citizen Journalism, for example), and notice how the occasion soon becomes like the dinner table scene in August: Osage County.
“How is that going for you?” cousin Peter (let’s imagine he’s a Financial Planner, snug at ranking number 5) asks, topping up your glass with his wine, and you have no answer, because you’re really not sure, exactly, how it is going for you, you only know you’re drawn to spend your life doing something different than he.
As the summer days lead us from parties and fireworks back to the working week, friends and family in the great good workforce drift back to their routines.
The mainstream media fills this period with an array of self-help articles of the New Year’s Resolution stripe (purchased from syndicated news sources for a pittance), the perfect panacea for people who only ever dream of pursuing their heart’s desire.
But Artists generally have no back-to-work start date. We need to make one for ourselves. Of course there may be an app for that, but is there anything to inspire the independent Artist into resolutions to sustain our dreams?
During the holiday I read some alarmingly depressing ideas about being an Artist: apparently it doesn’t get any better than it already isn’t.
I hasten to add that this comes from a very successful UK-based Author (a profession ranked at 156) of many published books, who may well be having to fill 2014 with checking over the proofs of her latest release as it hits the shelves in another edition, poor thing.
HANDY ADVICE Georgia O’Keeffe, hands 1918 (Photo: Alfred Stieglitz).
Lest this all get too negative for words, let me redress the imbalance with some inspiration from working Artists who’ve been there, done that, because Artists learned, long before Journalists came on the scene, that the only solution to negative situations is to just keep creating.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Andy Warhol
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” Georgia O’Keeffe
“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” Erica Jong
And one for the Citizen Journalists.
“Writing is a struggle against silence.” Carlos Fuentes
Working in the lowest-placed profession for nothing ranks you as a legend.
LINDEMAN’S LEIGH Australian actress Susie Lindeman as Vivien Leigh in ‘Letter to Larry’.
A Writer’s review.
BRITISH actress Vivien Leigh (1913-1967) may have felt rather independent when she toured to Australia in 1961 with the Old Vic theatre company.
Divorce from Sir Laurence (‘Larry’) Olivier the year before had seen her separated from the theatrical powerhouse she was one half of – the international stage and screen duo known as ‘The Oliviers’.
Australian actress Susie Lindeman recently returned home with her production of Letter to Larry, a play by Donald Macdonald which captures Vivien Leigh in this pivotal moment of her life and career, and has already been acclaimed in London, Paris and Los Angeles.
“I was attracted by the role, and Donald Macdonald’s script,” Susie says. “We knew we had something special from the response to the first reading – here and in London”.
“We always wanted to present the show during Vivien Leigh’s centenary year. The early London performances were previews, and then we created a new version as the world premiere season for Paris in 2013.
“From that we received interest from New York. It was our intention to play in places significant to Vivien, so I also performed as part of the 100th celebrations in London and took it to Hollywood.”
One of those places of significance in the life of Vivien Leigh is Sydney’s Independent Theatre, a venue she played in the late 1940s and in 1961 (recreated in the bookends of Macdonald’s play), and the venue where Letter to Larry played on February 23, 2014.
“It’s the sole surviving Sydney theatre that Vivien herself knew. She and Laurence Olivier used to dodge the press and send a decoy somewhere so they could enjoy seeing shows at the Independent. This was when Olivier was also scouting Australia for talent – actors whom he felt could form Australia’s first national theatre.
TREADING THE BOARDS Actor Trader Faulkner with Susie Lindeman.
“When Tyrone Guthrie, the legendary London director, came to scout also, he went to the Independent to see a show, and he discovered young Aussie actor, Trader Faulkner.
“Trader went on to work with John Gielgud and the Oliviers and many more, he was not only a co-star but also a friend to Vivien, and he will be with me sharing this performance.
“He is the show’s special guest and will stand again upon the stage of his 1947 triumph. He is a legend himself – he was a protégé of Peter Finch and wow, he has some great stories!”
Considering her acting career in mainstream theatre and film in Australia and Europe, I am keen to ask Susie how she approached the role of producer.
“I’m just an actress taking roles and opportunities when they present themselves,” she says.
“As an Australian, social media has allowed me to retain my identity here as I work in other places. It’s all on a page, the whole world, we could be everywhere and anywhere.”
“However, when I think about it, I suppose that I also became an independent artist when I met Yasmina Reza, the great French writer, and through this personal and independent encounter, she entrusted me with the world rights for her play, Hammerklavier.
“Performing it internationally meant I performed independently; here, London, Edinburgh, Paris and even a performance in Singapore. Now, I guess I’m lucky enough to be asked to perform independently by several theatres themselves, rather than theatre companies as such.
“The decision was simply to be all I can be, to play Yasmina seemed a wonderful chance, and to make it happen I simply had to create it independently.”
What part does the social media play when independently producing a piece of theatre?
“It’s actually how I started using Facebook, I mean really using it, and for this show, we started to tweet,” Susie says. “But I think Letter To Larry having its own Facebook page is great to spread the word. Sometimes 600 people will like a status, which is wonderful, especially being such an indie creation”.
“As an Australian, social media has allowed me to retain my identity here as I work in other places. It’s all on a page, the whole world, we could be everywhere and anywhere.”
So where to from here for Letter to Larry?
“We want to have the Australian premiere season soon,” Susie says, “but I think because I’ve worked a lot in London and Paris, it seemed easier to get a theatre in those cities, so we do have the London premiere in the pipeline, a hoped-for season in New York, and a return to Hollywood”.
“But of course we’d love the chance to do an Australian season and tour, especially as the play opens and closes in the setting of Vivien’s 1961 Old Vic tour to Australia.”
I am interested in knowing how audiences respond to Susie’s interpretation of one of the world’s most beloved movie stars.
PLAYING PASSION Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Names Desire (1951).
“I was absolutely astonished at the love Parisians have for Vivien. I mean, I knew that in London we would have an audience, but I was swept off my feet by the passion of the public, and the press, for this show,” she recalls. “Every night after the show there would be people waiting to tell me their thoughts and memories of Vivien, and they truly lit up when speaking of her. That’s why its such a pleasure to play her, she has a magic and spirit which is still tangible in the world.”
In the five decades since Vivien Leigh’s death, a result of chronic tuberculosis, public attitudes to mental health have changed enough that her now widely known about manic depression, explored in Macdonald’s play, can emerge from the shadows. I ask Susie about this aspect of her interpretation of Leigh.
“Vivien was passionate and often cast in passionate roles, whether mad for her loss of Lord Nelson as Lady Hamilton, as Ophelia, or most searingly as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire,” Susie explains. “She never performed ‘madness’, she just felt so deeply the emotions and passion and loss”.
“Gielgud said: ‘The extremity of Vivien’s performance was extraordinary, and frightening. She elevated the text and the emotional intentions’ .
“It’s true that Vivien suffered with un-diagnosed bi-polar, and that her infinite energy and passion for life grew into manic phases,” Susie says. “In Letter to Larry I play Vivien from deep in her soul and heart, feelings magnified by her loss of Larry”.
“I believe there’s a fine line between insanity and inspiration. Vivien, as so many who knew her have told me, was such a free spirit, but also spiritual, so she was in touch with the source of sorrows as well. Someone said Vivien didn’t break down as much as stand up and fight back.”
INDEPENDENT ARTIST Actress, producer and director Susie Lindeman.
And what does Susie think are the main challenges for performing artists working in Australia?
“I think funding, and the swiftly sinking press coverage, oh and sometimes the celebrity culture, which means sometimes actors who are so right for a part don’t even get a chance to read.
“I know theatre is a risky business, so theatres need to be careful,” Susie says, “but being careful has never been a way to create.”
With a nod to one of Vivien Leigh’s most memorable roles, Susie says: “Art isn’t intrinsically commercial anyway, and knowing that after a show, so often the audience will buy you a drink, so if you’re not paid properly, there’s always the kindness of strangers!”
She declared the debate “interminably dull” and credited lobby group Australian Marriage Equality’s (AME) latest pitch for support – via the small business benefits of allowing same-sex marriage – with triggering her boredom threshold.
This is a world record – even in countries which have already passed marriage equality legislation, community support for same-sex marriage is nowhere near that high.
So, with apologies to Gay and anyone else who’s asleep on marriage equality, here’s why it’s already too late for anyone in the current political spectrum to bring full civil rights to lesbian and gay Australians.
Tony Abbott will never take the free kick
After promising his cabinet would be free to raise the issue of marriage equality “after the election”, nobody in the Coalition party room seems keen to take up the challenge.
“In order to lead Australia to marriage equality, our primary leader, our Prime Minister Tony Abbott, needs someone in his party to lead him to the debate.”
I have an undeniable gut feeling that twelve months “after the election”, if he was ever going to back marriage equality, Tony Abbott already would have done.
His sister Christine Forster and her partner Virginia Edwards announced their engagement after the election. I imagine they’re getting quite impatient to tie the knot on home soil, and it’s Christine we have to thank for the latest news about her brother’s leadership on the issue, when she spoke at a Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) event in Brisbane last month.
“I have been married, I am a gay woman, a lesbian, but I was married for 20 years,” Forster said, “so I know the significance of marriage and how that speaks to your community, friends and family and what it says about the special relationship you have with your partner”.
THEY’RE WAITING Christine Forster (right) with her partner Virginia Edwards. (Photo: James Boddington)
“My brother is a very good Liberal and a very good leader of the party and if that’s what the party tells him that’s what he will accept,” Forster said.
You read it right: in order to lead Australia to marriage equality, our primary leader, our Prime Minister Tony Abbott needs someone in his party to lead him to the debate.
Even if this somehow qualifies as leadership, even if by some miracle a Coalition minister has the guts a week, a month, a year from now, Tony Abbott will never escape the taint that he left it too long.
Too late, Tone. Far, far too late.
Laboring on equality despite Plibersek’s evolution
Australian LGBTIQ must look elsewhere for our civil rights champion.
But both of Plibersek’s public gauntlet throws to the Coalition occurred while she was in opposition, and seemed designed to highlight the shortcomings of an incumbent government, because that’s the only impact they had.
Labor supports marriage equality without a binding ‘yes’ vote for their MPs, a situation which will not change unless the ALP national conference in 2015 agrees to it, and will not change anything for LGBTQI.
The last time any government had the numbers to do anything unilaterally was under Kevin Rudd’s first suck of the sauce bottle between 2007 and 2010, but the ALP didn’t do anything about marriage equality.
Not as late as some, but still too late, Tanya.
The sky did not fall down
Marriage equality arrived in Australia for a brief time when the ACT passed the Marriage Equality (Same Sex) Act 2013.
After decades of inconsistency between state, territory and federal legislation on everything from homosexual criminality, de-facto recognition, superannuation, adoption and a host of other issues, the High Court suddenly demanded consistency.
STONE’S FRUIT Sharman Stone MP, federal member for Murray. (Photo: ABC)
I knew of this Victorian MP, federal member for Murray, because of the many voluntary sub-editing hours I gave in support of SPC Ardmona, the fruit canning company in Stone’e electorate, during the wave of No Fibs articles filed during the 2014 #SPCsunday campaign.
“But believe me the loss of the last Australian fruit processor would be a human as well as a regional economic and national tragedy.”
But Stone had little such empathy for her correspondent Tilly Rose Goldsmith’s situation, replying that her conscience did not extend to upholding marriage as an option for Australian LGBTIQ.
“The family implications of a marriage are totally different to the outcomes possible in a same-sex marriage i.e. not inferior but DIFFERENT” (Dr Stone’s capitalisation).
Stone’s response fell into the argument-breaking trap which invalidates childless heterosexual marriages, and it ignored how prone young LGBTIQ are to suicide as a result of bullying, a subject Goldsmith had raised in her letter to the minister.
I took a small stand on Twitter after reading Stone’s letter. As far as I am concerned, overseas canned fruit is no longer inferior, it’s just DIFFERENT. Food for thought for SPC Ardmona workers when it comes to election time.
Too late to question my support for Stone’s cause. More fool me for not checking her marriage equality record.
Defining Australian LGBT as “second-class citizens” until we have full marriage equality, Leyonhjelm’s announcement that he would bring on a marriage equality bill nevertheless contained some big qualifiers – he would not bring a bill forward until there was a conscience vote across the parliament, encouraging Coalition senators to tow the line and warning that, with six years as a Senator, he would see his “libertarian” bill through.
“There seems no urgency in Leyonhjelm’s stance on marriage equality.”
Six years could be far too late, Dave. Bring it on.
Pink dollar last link to marriage equality?
Although Gay Alcorn seemed to be chortling to herself at AME’s idea that marriage inequality was hitting the back pocket of Australia’s wedding industry, there is some merit in looking at boycotts as a way to lever the Australian parliament into legislating for same-sex marriage.
Fact is, there are widespread ‘faith boycotts’ encouraged by anti-gay advocates across the world, and Australia is no exception.
Before you write off the idea of the LGBTQI community boycotting anyone, name a single civil rights movement which succeeded without using the only language that moves postmodern communities into action: money.
For the LGBTQI community, their families and friends, those who constitute the 72pc of Australians who support marriage equality, the question is this: is it too late for you to boycott companies that do not support marriage equality?
And one for the Citizen Journalists.
Michael Burge Media 