Wednesday, April 28, 2004
What is it with Australian screen's 70's leftovers and China?
Following a pirate 18 month season of David Williamson's play "The Club" in China, by the Beijing People’s Experimental Theatre* - to which Williamson said, more or less, good luck to 'em - comes this message from over-exposed hack Bryan Brown:
If [piracy] is the way of getting Australian films to the Chinese people and giving them an appetite for what is going on, good.
Is Brown actuallly on the payroll of the Central Committee? Otherwise, I have no idea how he can defend theft of intellectual property (his and others), while (I'm assuming) wailing right alongside David Williamson about how the US-Oz free trade agreement is going to silence Australian voices.
Barry Humphries' 70s caricature, cultural attache Sir Les Patterson, is looking scarily naturalistic and prophetic when you have Bryan Brown not only extolling the virtues of giving his labour away (clearly too much time spent on the taxpayer teat for you, Bryan), but actively reinforcing the worst stereotype of Australians abroad to a puzzled Chinese audience:
(It's) in a tense situation that Australian humour really comes to the fore . . . The most important thing is, we are just a bloody silly race.
We are not "just" anything, Bryan. You, however, are a fuckwit - or just a fuckwit, if you prefer. Feel free to give away your own intellectual property - aka put out the trash - but why poison the well for the next generation as you do so?
* Catherine Armitage "Power struggle in Beijing" The Australian 10 October 2003 (no URL)
Following a pirate 18 month season of David Williamson's play "The Club" in China, by the Beijing People’s Experimental Theatre* - to which Williamson said, more or less, good luck to 'em - comes this message from over-exposed hack Bryan Brown:
If [piracy] is the way of getting Australian films to the Chinese people and giving them an appetite for what is going on, good.
Is Brown actuallly on the payroll of the Central Committee? Otherwise, I have no idea how he can defend theft of intellectual property (his and others), while (I'm assuming) wailing right alongside David Williamson about how the US-Oz free trade agreement is going to silence Australian voices.
Barry Humphries' 70s caricature, cultural attache Sir Les Patterson, is looking scarily naturalistic and prophetic when you have Bryan Brown not only extolling the virtues of giving his labour away (clearly too much time spent on the taxpayer teat for you, Bryan), but actively reinforcing the worst stereotype of Australians abroad to a puzzled Chinese audience:
(It's) in a tense situation that Australian humour really comes to the fore . . . The most important thing is, we are just a bloody silly race.
We are not "just" anything, Bryan. You, however, are a fuckwit - or just a fuckwit, if you prefer. Feel free to give away your own intellectual property - aka put out the trash - but why poison the well for the next generation as you do so?
* Catherine Armitage "Power struggle in Beijing" The Australian 10 October 2003 (no URL)
