By Aaron Darc
Aaron Darc
Empathetic, intelligent, reactionary, aware, convicted enough to use adjectives like this about myself...
Posts by Aaron Darc
LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES
May 8th
In the post-post-9/11 world, can reality television deliver us from evil? Big Brother, please take notes…
Seven years ago, I had very little presence in the digital sphere. As an oldschool comms marketer who was eager to cross over into the future – and, yes, as a writer with a little audience looking to find a big audience – the potential of the online world called to me with tempting stories of little people with big websites. And I was late to the party. By the time I got there, it was already a little like a Corey Worthington bash – the press, similarly to their ridiculous stories of businessmen who made it big from their garage (we liked those, didn’t we?), often toted around success stories of talents who had been “stumbled upon” online; but in the now crowded cybersea, nobody was being stumbled upon, because nobody was able to sit there in anyone’s way to be stumbled upon. But I knew enough from my marketing background to understand what this meant - you had to be connected to something else, something big, something commercial, that people were quite deliberately stumbling into, and, through association, there you were. I needed to write about something everyone was talking about – or reading about – online. And I needed to write about something that also gave me the vehicle to slip in the same things I’d be writing about, anyway – disguised as discussions not about those concerns (psychosocial concerns, a the end of the day), but of the topic du jour. I investigated commercial hitrates, did a bit of cybersurfing, and found what I thought was too good a vehicle for Aaron Darc to be true: Big Brother. Aaron Darc meet reality television. Whether you like it or not.
MDNA: MADONNA TRIUMPHS. BUT AT WHAT COST?
Apr 8th
Madonna’s twelfth studio album, an astonishing thirty years after her first, is the most crucial of her career. Let’s look at why, and understand its evolution by, as the album itself does, also looking back. Oh, and Lady Gaga. Let’s talk about her, too.
There are two artists who I would say I “grew up” on. One is David Lynch, whose neo-noirs very much connected to my sense of isolation in a quaint little town with a darkness beneath it (the kind of darkness quaint little towns show those who are outcast). But sadly, David Lynch has recently declared he will probably never make another film, which means his work will become forever connected to my past. My other love, however, refuses to give in – and, considering her nature, will no doubt eventually be forced from the stage, than choose to exit it. Madonna continues to amaze me for, if nothing else, her continued ability to rise from her own ashes, facing a barrage of male journalistic criticism (that has, thanks to ageism coming to the party, only increased over the years), as well as a widening generation gap that now has bizarrely thrown her the challenge of appearing “original” amongst a sea of young popstars who are all commercial rehashes of her own career, and yet somehow coming out on top. And she’s done it, again. This week, her new album, MDNA, hit number one world wide. In the UK, this gave her the new crown of most number one albums ever, finally beating Elvis. She has been one of the most hated and scorned stars the world has ever seen, and yet she continues to be the biggest of them all. And in this way, she has not betrayed the essence of what she represents – like most of the diehards, Madonna also appealed to the outcast in me, and still does.
THINKING DIFFERENTLY: REMEMBERING STEVE JOBS
Oct 8th
“My job is not to go easy on people. My job is to make them better.”
Steve Jobs
So there was this guy on my friend’s friends list today, and he’s like one of those hippy anti-Apple brigade types, carrying on like it’s all just some evil capitalist corporation or whatever; and he was on this thread where a bunch of them were going on about how the Chinese workers who make the iPads are tortured and treated like battery chickens, and how they kill themselves, and bla bla bla, and he asks this question. He says that if Steve Jobs changed the way the world communicates, then did the guy who made the car radio change the way we drive? You know, basically doing that whole “Steve is not important to our civilisation” thing. Completely ridiculous.
And it got me thinking. I’d been thinking all day, really. In fact, since Steve Jobs died yesterday, I haven’t stopped thinking about Steve Jobs. Reading all those quotes everyone’s been posting on facebook – those amazingly profound things He has said throughout His career – you realise what a Visionary™ this man really was. And He was more than that. He was a Teacher™. I mean, you forget that. But He didn’t just give us all this Cool Shit™, and let our dreams come true on these machines, and enable us to download movies on demand and stuff. He taught us. He taught us how to Be. He changed our lives by teaching us how to change it. And He gave us the machines to do that on.
LONDON CALLING
Aug 11th
“There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society; but when they don’t have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.”
Martin Luther King
Earlier today, I had the misfortune of finding a copy of The Daily Telegraph (yeah, I know), which led me to experience the displeasure that was Miranda Devine’s creative take on the London riots. I say “creative”, because she somehow managed to turn a riot that happened under a conservative government into another case of left-wing mismanagement. You gotta hand it to her, she doesn’t let reality get in the way of what they pay her so nicely to spew out. For Devine, it was all down to “politically correct policing”. Yes, that’s right, lovely Miranda actually proposed that, far from having too much racism and cruelty in our social policies, we have not had enough – and if we did have more, like… say… the freedom to basically lock away the immigrant portions of our society (they did that in Germany, once), then this damned riot wouldn’t have happened, because they’d all be… I don’t know…. locked up… or killed. Elsewhere in the paper, random fuckwits on the street (they’re not exactly thin on the ground in this country) answered the searing question: Could the riots happen in our own country? My favourite was the guy who answered, “No, because though they have the same problems, they have some on a much bigger scale that thankfully we don’t, like immigration.” And it struck me, really, because at the end of the day, everybody knows it – we know very well what this riot “was” – and yet the media, none of it, has had the guts to outright call this… hello… a race riot. It’s also a class riot, yes (we’ll discuss how aspirationalism has given birth to a new monster in a moment), and certainly there’ll no doubt be plenty of white looters and rioters. But class and race are ultimately inseparable in this society of ours, anyway. And if there is shown to be no element of race in the rioting – taking note of the current absence of race in the actual reporting (as opposed to the op ed pieces, where it’s perfectly acceptable to basically invoke genocide) – we have taken it upon ourselves to imagine it was (hence the mountain of racist op eds and abominable forum comments) – and that in itself says so very much about the racial divides in Post 9/11 West.
MAD BASTARDS
Apr 30th
MAD BASTARDS (M)15+ opens May 5th
With Tony Abbot’s current decision to sit in the dirt of our outback indigenous communities (well, that particular photo opp was the conjuring of his publicity machine, not himself) and manipulate more white right-wing votes… sorry, I mean… engage the indigenous community and try to help them… there couldn’t be a better moment for this new Australian film to hit our screens. It’s called Mad Bastards, and this week, I had the pleasure of interviewing both its writer and director, Brendan Fletcher, alongside its main star. Have a listen…
YES, I’D LIKE TO SCREAM…
Apr 12th
SCREAM 4 (otherwise known as SCRE4M) Rated MA15+ ****SPOILER FREE!****
Okay, I can maybe – just maybe – be accused of being a bit of an elitist snob, when it comes to film. I don’t spend much time in multiplexes, let’s put it that way. I’m really excited about Lars Von Trier’s new film. I have every David Lynch dvd you can buy. I thought the original Funny Games was better than the remake. I thought Rabbit Hole should have won every Oscar for everything. I’m like that. Feel free to sigh “wanker” under your breath, if you must. But, unlike many of my pretentious film wanker friends, I do have an inkling, somewhere inside, for the occasional venture into those hideous cinema centers for something – gulp – mainstream. But it’s a certain kind of rubbish that gets me there. It can be rubbish, as long as it’s clever rubbish. Then, it actually does become a kind of art. I think Basic Instinct is art. I adore Tim Burton – most of the time (let’s all forget Alice, shall we?). I think Romi & Michelle’s High School Reunion is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. And I will tell crowds of intellectual wankers that the Scream movies – every one of them – are god damned cool. “It’s actually really clever. And fun. But clever. And scary!” I don’t have too many big words to use – though I’ll happily put it in a postmodern context, if that is required – but I love them. And so, this week, while an invite to the Scream 4 preview screening wouldn’t have excited too many of the city’s “serious reviewers”, I, for one, was pretty psyched.
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IT’S A GAS?
Nov 12th
GASLAND (directed by Josh Fox) – opens Nov 18th
Just last week, the Queensland government announced it was approving a new natural gas drilling operation by multinational giants like Santos and British Natural Gas – heralding in a new economic boom the embattled Bligh government can’t wait to bandage their budget blowouts with, or take to their electorates with the creation of thousands of jobs. The Official Position™ is that the government is imposing stringent environmental policy and report conditions upon the deals and, not to worry, we’ll all make a tonne of cash and everyone will be safe. But this has already come a little unstuck, with the recent discovery that toxic chemicals were found in eight exploration wells already in operation (Santos alone already has 1500 wells in operation prior to this current expansion deal). Federal government, whilst backing the deal, has wiped its hands clean of environmental accountability, passing the buck onto the state governments – which may not be great news, considering a new admission by state government that approval has been given to the operation, despite many of the environmental conditions not yet proven to be met.
It’s perfect timing, then, for the Australian box office release of Josh Fox’s acclaimed documentary, Gasland. It’s easy to dismiss the urgency of the steady flow of left-leaning activist documentaries that flow from The States, these days, and treat them as mere indulgences or cross-cultural studies; but whilst Fox’s eye remains firmly on natural gas drilling across America, it views a model that is no different to anywhere else – certainly when it comes to the model of the resource industries, and the science of natural gas drilling. The only variable, then, is government response and legislation – but if recent concerns are anything to go by, perhaps we’re not as different as Tony Burke would like us to believe. Gasland is a film about America, but it is a dire warning to us all.
In it’s near two hour run, we meet tens of everyday Americans who, like an increasing number of Australians, live with natural gas wells quite literally in their backyards; breathing the air around them, and relying on the local water supplies they utilise and, as we’re now seeing, contaminate. These include many who now suffer horrifying medical conditions – some even succumbing to cancer and brain lesions, and some who can light their own tap water by simply holding a match to it (and, yes, seeing is believing, and, don’t worry, you get to see water burn before your very eyes in the film). They drink from creeks that literally bubble, and they’re begging for help from a government who is too busy piling the cash to care. It’s an enraging film, but taken far beyond the technicalities of most political documentaries by the heartbeat that pulses through it; the film playing out like a road movie, each stop unveiling a character that deepens the audiences connection to the tragedy on an emotive – at times profound – level. And it’s often as affirming, as it is heart-breaking. Not to mention, at times very funny. In short, it’s a must-see. And I was lucky enough this week to speak to the man himself, director Josh Fox. This is what he had to say…
visit the website at www.gasland.com.au
WHEN PRODUCTS GO BAD
Aug 26th
“Mathew Newton should know better,” said one angry forum fiend. But should we?
Well, here we go. Another month, another celebrity domestic violence scandal – albeit one with considerable déjà vu. I guess this means we’ll forget about Mel Gibson now, until the next time he flips his lid? Or will these two take turns? It’s this cycle that is the shocker in these situations – that we have, after all, seen it all before. Mathew Newton is a damaged man with a violent streak – well, what a surprise! And don’t get me wrong, it’s worth our repulsion to domestic violence against women to be a part of this, absolutely. But let’s stop for a moment, and also take a look at the other aspects such situations allow us to see, in some rather startling shades of very dark truths. There is more to this than meets the single-track minds of the consumer public, or their obliviousness to network TV factories. There is much more damage to be seen, here, than just that of a troubled boy who has been poisoned, like so many before him, by the silver coating on the spoon of his nurture.
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA
Jun 17th
No, it’s not a film about George Bush. The Most Dangerous Man In America is an absolutely incredible documentary that is about to open in Australia, after enthralling audiences at The Sydney Film Festival (it won the Audience Award), about Daniel Ellsberg, a man history should never have forgotten but – perhaps, conveniently – did. Ellsberg was one of the original planners of the Vietnam war; but, after becoming increasingly disillusioned with the deception of a string of US presidents, eventually blew one of the biggest whistles the world has ever known. Dubbed “The Pentagon Papers”, Ellsberg placed over 7000 pages of top secret government documents into the hands of the American Press, risking his own freedom for that of the American people’s right to know the truth about the doomed war. The comparisons between Vietnam and today’s seemingly endless conflicts are obvious; but, really, it doesn’t even matter: the story of Ellsberg works on so many levels, it’s impossible not to be drawn in and, ultimately, inspired. I had the pleasure of interviewing one of the film’s director’s, Judith Ehrlich, who is currently in Sydney promoting the film. Here’s part of our conversation about both the movie, the man, and the very different landscape in today’s media…
ROTTEN APPLE
May 28th
The iPad is here. But the question on everybody’s lips – “Is it any good?” – is maybe a little understated. Ask yourself this… is it worth dying for? Because people are. Let’s take a stroll into the dubious world of Apple – because it is ultimately our own.
“It’s Magical™”
(Steve Jobs)
This week, Li Hai, a 19 year old Chinese factory worker, began another 15 hour shift, as he had done every single morning this year, meeting the frenzied demands of Apple’s hungry cult of technology. It had been a “good” year for his company, Foxconn, after scoring the contract to be the main producer of the latest Must Have™: the “revolutionary” and (let’s not forget) “magical” iPad. You could easily presume that these magical devices form in rose petal cocoons upon golden clouds in a cybersky, their freshly glossed screens glistening in the sunlight, waiting to revolutionise the life of yet another middle-class Westerner. But, in fact, it is the hundreds of thousands of Chinese factory workers, like young Li, who deliver us our 21st century Salvation™. Li’s factory, in the province of Hunan, is home to 300,000 such workers. They slave tirelessly through 7 day working weeks – forbidden from talking or listening to music, most not even given a stool, and under military-style supervisors armed with iron bats – and all to earn less than what most us make checking facebook in between lunchtime and clock-off (building an iPad earns you around 50 cents per hour). They are not given a magical device for themselves, nor could they dream of affording their own. They are the faceless, hidden cogs of the Apple Machine™. And they are dying.
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