Women’s Aid/Keira Knightley Anti-D.V. Commercial to be Censored

Though not yet officially released in cinemas, some of you may have already seen the anti-domestic violence commercial featuring Keira Knightley floating around the internet. The Telegraph (UK) reported yesterday that Clearcast – the organisation that is responsible for pre-approving British broadcasting based on Ofcom standards – is to remove the scenes depicting violence before allowing the commercial to be released to the public in the United Kingdom.

The commercial, created by UK anti-D.V. charity organisation Women’s Aid, sees Keira Knightley returning home to be confronted by her on-screen partner, who accuses her of having an affair. The ensuing scenes see Knightley getting violently attacked by the man and being repeatedly kicked while lying on the floor. The Telegraph reported that

“…it is this last sequence that has been deemed too shocking for a television audience.”

If you haven’t seen the commercial already (N.B. If I haven’t made it obvious already… insert trigger warning here):

The commercial is by no means a flawless or all-encompassing portrayal of domestic violence. After all, domestic violence is often a long-term problem that doesn’t simply pertain to physical violence; it also refers to the psychological domination and potential control of one person in a relationship/intimate partnership over the other. It is the lack of media attention to this kind of violence and abuse that, in my opinion, is partially responsible for the women who refuse to admit that they are in an abusive relationship.

That said – it seems downright ridiculous for Clearcast to consider cutting the explicit scenes in the Women’s Aid commercial. While the scenes are extremely uncomfortable to watch, I believe that there is something to be said for not sugar-coating the events of the commercial. It only takes a quick YouTube search to see that, more often than not, domestic violence is unrealistically portrayed – even ‘spoofed’ – in the media. It might even be said that before the media’s insensitive treatment of, for example, the Rihanna/Chris Brown case (which saw Rihanna’s bruised and swollen face on the covers of tabloids everywhere), some people may not yet have even been exposed to ‘real’ domestic violence. [This is not at all to say that it was ethical, in any way, that the photos of Rihanna were leaked to the tabloids – every victim of violence has a right to protection.]

The Women’s Aid commercial is an extremely confronting portrayal of one form of domestic violence, but at the end of the day it is a fictional (hell, they got Keira Knightley didn’t they?) representation of what is, of course, a very real problem. Shouldn’t this be enough for Clearcast? They definitely need to add a trigger warning of sorts to the start of the commercial, but considering the amount of graphic depictions of – for example – drug addiction and binge drinking so prevalent in media campaigns today (the latter perhaps more rampant in Australia than in the UK), why is domestic violence the issue that needs to be palliated here?

Behind Every Brilliant Writer…

Claire Walsh (right) with Michael Moorcock (left) and JG Ballard (centre), in September, 2006. Image: Linda Moorcock, via Ballardian.

This is just a quick, fragmentary and unfinished musing, since I’m technically on deadline today. As you may know, game-changing British author JG Ballard died yesterday of prostate cancer, from which he’d suffered since 2006. This is a real tragedy: Ballard was a man of letters who wasn’t just controversial for the sake of public attention, nor out of the nihilism that I tend to see in his heirs such as Michel Houellebecq and Chuck Palahniuk. Rather, in writing things that were deliberately repugnant and offensive, Ballard provoked readers into considering the savagery that underpins our tenuously civilised society.

But more curiously, amid all the obituaries I haven’t read very much about Ballard’s partner of over 40 years, Claire Walsh. Many obits have mentioned that Ballard’s wife, Helen Matthews (referred to as Mary in some obits), died suddenly of pneumonia in 1964 during a family holiday, leaving Ballard to raise their three children alone. (Her death seems to be represented as some kind of dystopian watershed for Ballard, whose most notorious work, The Atrocity Exhibition, was written in the years immediately after her death.)

I only found out about Claire’s existence in an interview that Ballard’s friend of many years, the SF novelist Michael Moorcock, gave to Amazon following Ballard’s death.

“He leaves a partner, Claire Walsh, who was his companion for over forty years and nursed him through his long illness,” Moorcock said.

From what I’ve been able to piece together in the one-line mentions of Walsh in various Ballard obituaries, she is a journalist, and she and Ballard didn’t live together until very recently, when he left his Shepperton home to move in with her. Presumably Ballard was very ill by this time.

There’s a telling paragraph in an interview Ballard gave in 1991 to Canada’s Sunday Times, that hints at the dynamic of their relationship:

Engaged in writing far from the mainstream and bringing up a family singlehanded, Ballard had to rely on women coming to him. “I didn’t have the freedom to move around a lot. I was not passive in my private life. It was just a matter of time-tables. Women had to take the initiative with me out here.” The female characters in the book are very strong.

Ballard has written fondly of Claire in his autobiographical novel The Kindness Of Women and in his straight memoir Miracles Of Life. As he revealed to author Iain Sinclair, he also fictionalised her in his novel Crash: “Claire is the basis of the character Catherine. Catherine Ballard. I remember, when I was writing the book, I said, ‘Shall I call the character based on you Claire?’ She said, ‘Umm, perhaps not.’ So I called her Catherine.”

Skimming through the mountains of online material about Ballard’s life and work, Claire appears as a hazy but shrewd presence. In the final years of his life, she became his representative, travelling internationally to meet exhibition curators when he was too ill to do so himself.

Claire’s simultaneous cultural presence and absence makes me wonder how much we still cling to that figure of the female “muse”. In an era when women didn’t have much political or cultural agency, being a writer or an artist’s muse must have carried its own kind of power.

However, these days it’s a feminist orthodoxy that women should pursue their own creativity rather than exercising it through men, especially when women in intimate relationships with creative men become their de facto representatives or assistants.

Here, I’m also thinking of the current film Summer Hours, in which a family matriarch has spent her entire life managing the artistic legacy of her beloved (and long-deceased) uncle, a famous Impressionist painter. There’s a strong sense in the film that this woman loves the dead man more than her own living children, and that being his muse has overshadowed her own life.

Still, should we criticise women who choose to maintain private lives and let their acclaimed partners have the limelight? Claire Walsh does not seem like a downtrodden or dim person; perhaps there is no media conspiracy involved in whitewashing her out of Ballard’s public life, but rather it has been her own choice not to participate in that particular circus.

Delara Darabi’s Execution Sentence to be Carried Out

This is quite urgent as time is running out.

Delara Darabi, a twenty three year old Iranian woman, is facing imminent execution for a murder which took place when she was seventeen

Darabi and her boyfriend Amir Hossein Sotoudeh went to the home of her father’s cousin Mahin. While attempting to rob her, Sotoudeh allegedly stabbed and killed Mahin. In a statement, Darabi said she confessed to the murder to protect her boyfriend. She was told she would not be executed because she was under eighteen (he was nineteen at the time). She later learned that was not true and retracted her confession, but was sentenced to death by Branch 10 of the General Court in Rasht on 27 February 2005. Sotoudeh was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for his part in the murder.

Both Darabi and Sotoudeh received sentences of three years and 50 lashes for the robbery and 20 lashes for their relationship. The Supreme Court upheld Darabi’s death sentence on 16 January 2007.

Even though Iran has signed up to international treaties that prohibit the use of the death penalty for crimes committed by those under the age of 18, eight juvenile offenders were executed in 2008 and one on 21 January 2009.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran urgently calls on the Iranian Judiciary to reconsider the case of Delara Darabi and put a hold on her execution. The Campaign reminds Iranian authorities of the illegality of executing juvenile offenders according to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, of which Iran is a party.

What you can do:

- Sign a petition here.

- You can follow this link to Amnesty International UK or this one to Amnesty International Australia and send e-mails directly to the Iranian Head of Judiciary (Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi) and Judiciary Spokesperson.

- You can follow updates on Delara’s case here and here and here.

- You can send e-mails directly to (Supreme Leader) Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Khamenei here and to President of the Islamic Republic Mahmoud AhmadiNejad here.

Please make sure your letters are polite and respectful, since they could otherwise jeopardize efforts to save Delara. Address the recipients as sensible government leaders who are open to reconsideration of the death sentence.

- Contact newspapers, TV-channels, blogs and other media and ask them to report this story.

- Write about Delara in your own blog, homepage, or in internet forums or chat rooms you frequent. Join the facebook group and invite others to.

- Contact politicians and government representatives in your country or your embassy in Tehran and ask them to pressure Iran in this case.

Misogyny in Football? Never! At least not according to North Melbourne…

So when I said I was going to stop reading The Age I guess I wasn’t really going to.

Late last year members of the North Melbourne Football Club posted a video on the internet. In the last few days it has found it’s way onto youtube and the eyes of journalists from The Age. The four-minute video featured a rubber rooster named Little Boris depicting sex acts on the carcass of a real chicken. The backing track is ‘Move Bitch’ by Ludacris.

Throughout the video that was on YouTube, Boris the toy chicken has a condom on its head and is manipulated to look as if it is penetrating the carcass of a real chicken that also features throughout the film. The final scenes show the real chicken carcass being hurled against a wall and run over by a van – before the rubber chicken returns and simulates fornication again

I haven’t seen the video (it’s been taken down) but the original copy from The Age, that I read several hours ago, stated that the carcass was clearly meant to represent a woman. I can’t really comment on the contents of the video – though I’ll believe it contained offensive stuff – but it’s the response from the club that concerns me.

When I read the original response from the club they were all focused not on how terrible it was that the video had been made at all but how bad it was that the video had gotten out and become available to the public.

“I’m furious to say the least that it’s gotten out though I haven’t had the advantage of seeing it.”

Fairfax Still Loves Bettina

A short while back The Age published this piece by Bettina Arndt (an anti-feminist pro-rape sociopath masquerading as a sex therapist). There were, you know, some disgruntled people as a result. Their way of restoring balance isn’t to publish a well written, articulate and composed response (of which there are so many available) but to instead publish this piece of crap. An article that presents itself as a rejoinder to the fucked up notions that Arndt is pushing but, in actual fact, does nothing to explain why anyone would find Arndt offensive or why her women-blaming misogyny is, you know, not okay. Instead it tacitly legitimises Arndt’s arguments by publishing a juvenile, confused and completely fucking stupid response involving something about men being old, fat and bald and that’s why we don’t wanna fuck em. I suspect the author of the article is trying to be funny (forgive me for not getting the joke) but the whole article is based on the premise that, yes, women are to blame, women are doing something wrong, it is the fault of women that men aren’t having sex… but here are some reasons why. Why are we still coming up with fucking reasons why it is okay for a person to say no to sex? Why can’t we just accept NO!?!

Part two of my outrage involves the ‘Your Say’ page for this article. First off they refer to women as “fairer sex” in the blurb. I kid you not. Hello, calling Fairfax, are you aware we’re in 2009? Arriving at this page I then made the fatal error of scrolling down and actually reading some of the comments and I’m so choked with anger and jaw-to-the-floor I can’t even type straight so will rely merely on quotes. Here is the very first cab off the rank comment for your perusal:

“I think the photos of the men in the Age and the Heading Implying that men are to blame is In appropriate.

Women also are looking overweight and gross..”

Yes. It is inappropriate to suggest men are to blame because that would mean we weren’t blaming women and brain explode for Andrew.

The next best one is about ten down:

Wow what a bitter and biased article. I find it particularly suprsing that this article is written by Wendy Frew, who I put politely will certainly not be challenging the next Miss Universe contest.

The point of the initial survey is that after having children many women focus too much on themselves and the children, and not enough time on the relationship with their husband. It doesn’t have to be the bitter slant Ms Frew put on it but it is a very real issue.

I find her comments particularly stupid considering out of the group of friends that my wife and I spend time with I’d say as far as appearance goes this would be a fair indication. Out of 10 males only two would be considered overweight and none would be considered obese. Out of the ten females I’d say 5 of the women would be over weight and 2 would be considered obese. I’d also say that of these seven over weight women, only the two who are obese would actually think they are are over weight. Yes it is true that most of these women have had children but we are purely talking about attractiveness here, not how it happened.

Many women have what I call the “David Brent” opinion of themselves. They delude themselves to thinking that being overweight is just normal and still attractive.

Now are the men in the survey complaining about their overweight partners? On the contrary they want more sex and their overweight wives are not giving it to them.

As far as I can tell this guy can be summarised as saying: “fuck fat bitches, you’re a fat bitch, fuck you”. Which is quite a thoughtful and considered argument really. I wish that guy would bring his thoughtfulness and consideration over to my neck of the woods. We could have a beer, go for a walk, maybe kill a little time in the park kicking a ball around. It’ll be swell.

This is all just another reminder of why I find myself regularly boycotting The Age… isn’t it meant to be better than the Herald Scum? At least the HS aren’t pretending to be something they’re not.

- Edit – In the comments Amber mentioned a Lateline interview with Bettina Arndt. It’s 17 minutes long and you hear some pretty yuck things from Arndt but it’s worth taking a look at – Emily Maguire and Tony Jones (the interviewer) do a great job of bringing light to and discounting some of Arndt’s more questionable assertions and placing them closer to the context of reality. You can read the transcript or stream the video here.

Helen Clark’s New Job

Yesterday, Helen Clark was confirmed as the new administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This is generally regarded as the third most senior role within the UN. The UNDP is overseen by a committee consisting of the heads of all the UN funds, programmes and departments – the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) – and Clark is now the chairperson of this group.

In case you didn’t know, Helen Clark is the ex-Prime Minister of New Zealand (voted out of office last year after three terms). Although this isn’t a post about the success of an Australian woman I think a bit of regional focus never goes astray, particularly when we’re talking about someone who has done some pretty amazing things. Clark may have her faults and whilst I am critical of some of the policies and practices of the Clark government (such as those to do with Maori issues), I still have some pretty heavy duty respect for her.

Under her watch progressive laws in relation to Civil Unions were enacted (Clark thinks “legal marriage is unnecessary”), paid parental leave was introduced, as was the Property (Relationships) Act, giving rights to defacto couples, not just those in state recognised unions or marriages. The Education Act was amended to make sex education compulsory and involve content that dealt with homosexuality. Prostitution was decriminalised forcing police ‘best practices’ to change from registration and prosecution to protection and allowing sex workers to operate under regulated employment and health and safety standards – all whilst maintaining a distinction between voluntary and involuntary prostitution! New Zealand is internationall recognised as having one of the best systems in relation to prostitution laws (though I still personally champion the Swedish version over all others).

Even way back in 1989 Clark was busy, successfully introducing a legal amendment enabling female minors to have abortions with full confidentiality and without parental consent. The following year she achieved the repeal of the law forbidding access and instruction in contraceptives to under 16s. She is publicly quoted as saying:

“I’ve always believed that in the end it is a woman’s right, in line with her own conscience, to determine whether or not she has an abortion and you know that’s the view I will hold until I go to the grave.”

How often do we hear that in mainstream Australian politics??!?!