Listful Thinking

We probably shouldn’t read too much into the fact that a video featuring a talking orange made it into Australia’s most viewed YouTube clips of 2010. After all, that Old Spice advert made it in, and you can’t even buy Old Spice in Australia.

The most viewed video is an auto-tuned remix of a rape story from local American news. At last count, the video had been watched by nearly 50 million people, and we can only hope that in the future all of our news is presented in this way. (If by some fluke you don’t know what I’m talking about, the footage works better in context, so watch this first before you watch this). I mention all this only as a way of highlighting how the media fill their pages as we prepare for the Christmas lull and all of their advertisers go on holiday.

But if you’re looking for a good list, then can I push you in the direction of journalist David Dale’s stocking filler The Little Book of Australia, which is a fully updated stat attack painting a picture of where Australia is in 2010. As a dissection of modern Australia, it’s actually quite handy, particularly if you’re in the process of blogging about the country, but especially at a time when the nation’s politics continually purport the notion of ‘Australian values’. “It seemed to me that most of their generalisations were based on guesswork, prejudice or wishful thinking, and hardly ever on facts,” Dale writes.

As a reference guide, I’ll probably be dipping into this book quite a bit, and not just for little gems like Australia’s Top Selling DVDs of All Time (Finding Nemo) or Most Liked People (Hugh Jackman), or factoids like Queensland currently holding both the highest marriage and divorce rates in the country, but it is also indispensable for lists of things that a pom, particularly, should really know about. Like what the hell a Lamington is, what politicians mean when they refer to the ‘Magic Pudding’ metaphor, and why people here laugh when they say, “a dingo ate my baby”. There’s also a section on Self Deprecating Humour which, in my experience, always seems to involve a rude joke. To assist in our understanding, Dale provides the following example:

Q: What's an Aussie man's idea of foreplay?
A: Are you awake, love?

My girlfriend can do a rather hilarious Oprah Winfrey impression, usually in that broken, football mom voice that Oprah does when she’s really excited, like when she's introducing a special guest, for example, “Tooom - Cruooooosssssseee!” Her two Sydney shows won’t be broadcast until January, and although Channel Ten didn’t want to “give too much away”, they still displayed about as much restraint as a US embassy diplomat with their non-stop obsessing, from live feeds of Australia's Most Liked Person Hugh Jackman cascading down a rip wire to dramatically blacken his eye before even being interviewed, to the sickly culmination where Russell Crowe, Nicole Kidman, Olivia Newton-John, Keith Urban and Jackman sing ‘I Still Call Australia Home’.

I don’t want to talk too much more on this, but there is actually something quite un-Australian about that clip, for a nation prone to laughing at itself and retaining a sense of the stiff upper lip. Both Britain and Australia aren’t quite as prone to psycho-analysis in the same way that the Americans are, and general consensus seems to confirm that the Oprah schtick doesn’t quite wash over here. Not that the tourist board will be complaining: broadcast in over 145 countries, there may now be considerably more people considering a trip to - in Oprah’s words - “Aus - traa - leeee - aaaaarrrrrrr!”


AU Tube: Understanding Australian TV
‘Schools Spectacular 2010’ (ABC1)

Imagine if Leni Riefenstahl had directed your school play, then chances are it might end up looking a bit like this - minus all the swastikas, obviously. A parading, epic and relentless naff end-of-year assembly that is never once understated, this is two hours of glorious television that lurches - good naturedly, I should add - from the completely sublime to the completely ridiculous.

Filmed at the Sydney Entertainment Centre (the sort of auditorium that wouldn’t look out of place on ‘Gladiators’) and now in its 27th year, this is sort of thing the UK would still do if we could persuade our kids to stub out their spliff and turn off the Xbox.

But even if we could, would we want to tune in to watch school kids perform really earnest excerpts from Aida, or belting out Billy Joel’s ‘River of Dreams’ with over a hundred 10 year olds dressed as fairies and dancing around a farm of giant mushrooms? Probably not, unless you’re suffering some pining hangover from the last time you tuned in to the ‘Junior Eurovision Song Contest’. Which is why I feel this bit needs repeating: this show has been running, without fail, without irony, for 27 years.

And what a wonderful thing that is. Frankly, I could have done with less of “ABC3’s Kayne and Amberley”, a gaffawing pair of yoof TV goons who provide a running commentary on the “crazy” backstage antics. “Mate,” Kayne says, “it’s going off like a frog in a sock back there.” And perhaps re-addressing the running order may have been helpful, even if just for diversity’s sake. We probably didn’t need two particularly long and nonsensical circus numbers from the same token doe-eyed dweeb performing an Elton John skit far too accurately, and could have done with more than a mere minute of indigenous hip-hop from kids who had travelled more than 750km from the most inland corner of New South Wales to be there. In between break dancing, the kids rap “we’re talking about harmony/we’re showing you how,” and contemplate creating a “culture of trust”. It’s all very sweet, but I reckon teacher helped with the lyrics.

The most shocking aspect is that all of the kids are startlingly talented, with one section in particular - a mesmerising interpretative dance sequence marrying ballet to a cabaret versions of ‘Cry Me a River’, sung with great sass by an Aboriginal singer whose name I shamefully failed to note. But if she’s not singing a James Bond theme in a few years time then there’s simply no justice in the world. Then it’s quickly back to clowns on stilts, juggling acts and a sea of jazz hands like some unforgiving high school flashback, and you can almost hear all of their parents welling up with pride.