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The Forum > Article Comments > Philistines of relativism at the gates > Comments

Philistines of relativism at the gates : Comments

By John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, published 16/4/2007

Shakespeare v 'Big Brother': the radical philistines have taken the high culture v low culture distinction and inverted it.

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Nice piece.

It's important to distinguish this issue from that as censorship - I've no doubt there's plenty of people who'd like to see programs such as big brother yanked from the networks because it offends their sensibilities.
The difficulty is, when we do start to rate the cultural importance of certain texts, we need to be aware that there are those that will use this as a tool for encouraging censorship of that which doesn't fit in with their idealised world.

That however, doesn't mean we can't rubbish the rubbish for what it is, and if there's a general consensus as to what constitutes a worthwhile pursuit as opposed to what is trash, then hopefully, more will study what is worthwhile.
Unfortunately, plenty will pick an easier subject, like studying things such as big brother, and I'm not sure I'd countenance removing a subject if there is demand for it.

I guess my solution, would be to somehow make studying big brother just as difficult as studying shakespeare.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Monday, 16 April 2007 11:06:40 AM
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Thank you so much for raising your voices against the appalling dumbing down of our mass media. You are so right! Please keep up the fight; commercial television is 'educating' a whole generation of youngsters into absolute cultural and moral emptiness. The only 'values' worthy of pursuit on commercial television these days are money, fame (if appearing 2 minutes on TV can be called fame) and immediate self-gratification. Voyeurism has become the ultimate entertainment for some. I wish I was clever enough to understand how we got to this point, and to foresee where it will lead us.
I ain't, so please, keep up this fight. For me and my children's sake.
Posted by CitizenK, Monday, 16 April 2007 11:13:52 AM
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Anyone can cite examples where something is done in the name of this or that "ism". The overwhelming majority of Muslims would disavow acts of terrorism committeed in their name as would the overwhelming majority of catholics and protestants. I suspect that most postmodern and post structuralist advocates would disavow what is cited in this article on the face of it. But don't forget we only have the authors' take on this and we all know where they're coming from. As to Big Brother and TOTS, comparisons of these kinds don't necessarily put them on the same qualitative level (not that there's anything wrong with that :) )
The actions of the critical theorists in opposition to postmodernism causes me to ask whether the barbarians at the gate are outside clamouring to get in or indeed are inside doing all they can to protect their privileged position. Like notions of postmodernism where you stand on this issue depends on where you sit.
Posted by barney25, Monday, 16 April 2007 11:30:24 AM
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Any notion from post-modern or post-structural theory is subjective, and while there is merit in philosophy, at the end of the day, we are interested in what do we do about our kids.

This was a long piece of jargon to read from language that was, in its complexity, elitism, as it was barely pitched in plain English: accessible to all.

I can, however, consider Guy De Bord and the Situationists International in pointing out that Big Brother, in televisual apparatus, is located at Dreamworld. Now what does that say about the target audience. Big Brother is pitched at children. It is meant to penetrate their imagination, it’s all in "Dreamworld".

With the bad language, the turkey slapping, nudity, and Grettel choosing other fashion designers to show even more bust, as wrinkled as it is, what do our children make of this? The excuses are glossed over in such a casual way, you are sneered at as "uncool" and the circus goes on without question. Premier Peter Beattie assists this to prop up tourism for Queensland and we wonder what lengths Queensland would go to just to earn a few bucks.

Sure, we can turn off the television. But you need eyes at the back of your head. It is marketed so much to kids; they automatically turn it back on behind your back. Its hell for parents.

Then some real bogan families take their kids to Dreamworld to watch all this stuff. They wonder why the kids lose their innocence so early.

This is not Shakespeare; real life television is limited in depth, symbolism, or any enlightenment in spirit. How could you possibly relate this with Shakespeare? Academics at QUT need to revise their ivory tower.
Posted by saintfletcher, Monday, 16 April 2007 12:32:11 PM
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I struggled to follow the point of this piece.

There is no doubt that many of us - the vast majority, I trust - would find a comedy based on intellectual disabilities nauseating.

But, as was explained to me by an advertising executive when I queried the nature of a television commercial, it probably wasn't aimed at me. I wonder what sort of audience this little gem would attract?

After all, we have already tolerated, nay consumed in large quantities, reality TV that only ten years ago we would have scoffed at. Remember those Japanese shows where kids went through near-torture to win prizes? Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public, as H.L.Mencken so presciently wrote, and we are not immune either.

So fair enough, it is a distasteful concept. But to use this as evidence of a general trend, that the whole world must be going to hell in a handbasket is a little rich.

Here's the proof offered:

>>Lest the reader think we exaggerate, let us turn to the views of McKee, the enfant terrible of the post-structuralist radical philistines<<

Obviously, we are talking not about the man on the Clapham omnibus, but an academic who no doubt makes a tidy living simply be being controversial. These people represent no-one but themselves. Steven Berkoff, Barrie Kosky, John Cage have had similar careers in the arts, believing themselves to be misunderstood artists, when in fact they are merely self-indulgent iconoclasts.

Generalising from the particular is always a dangerous pastime.

>>There are dangers and difficulties here, but the present situation is one where educational institutions are beset with wilful ignorance and culturally the ruling slogan appears to be "the grosser the better". This is nothing less than an offence to the human spirit.<<

Yawn.
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 16 April 2007 12:34:30 PM
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A great article. Well written and engaging. I had similiar views about the performer Borat. He was extremely popular with the mainstream - his shows did big business - the media was almost drolling over him. But when anyone attempted to question the politics of what he was doing he chose to ignore them. Cruelty has once again become acceptable as a form of 'entertainment'. I think this is in keeping with the systematic attempt to undermine the achievements of modernism, to undermine our belief in tolerance, inclusion, multiculturalism and so on. There has never been a more powerful and (vacuous) term of abuse than 'politically correct'. Its the abuse people use when they have no justification for their own positions.
Posted by matilda, Monday, 16 April 2007 1:15:53 PM
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I find Big Brother pretty revolting and in fact extremely boring. A bunch of vile yobs and pouting princesses does not entertainment make. But regardless of post-modern or post-structuralist analysis (neither of which I can understand), it is not academics with weird theories who are the real problem.

The problem is (and I regard dross like Big Brother as a problem if not blight on television) that shows like this make a motza. John De Mol, Big Brother's creator, is in the Forbes richest 500 list. Big Brother and its clones will continue year after year as long as fortunes are to be made. Forget other "isms", its capitalism which delivers us "reality tv" and as long as money can be made, it'll be around for sometime yet.
Posted by DavidJS, Monday, 16 April 2007 2:52:03 PM
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Congratulations on a well written piece. A great attempt to teach a few misguided academics a little decency.
Posted by keith, Monday, 16 April 2007 3:57:11 PM
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I would have liked to have seen some clear cut examples of the ‘exclusion’ and ‘abuse’ that John talks about in regards to those academics who so much as ‘refer to high culture’. Saying it is so does not make it so.

I’d like to make another point though John. This whole article seems to be directed towards academics in cultural studies fields.

Dare I say, as much as it pains me to see, that programs like Big Brother etc have more cultural relevance to society today than Shakespeare?? How many children and parents alike get home from school/work and tuck into The Merchant of Venice every night?

Sure, there is an argument to be made that the classics of literature should receive greater priority in education, but as a previous poster said…we live in a capitalist society John. And the market decides what it wants to watch.

You can say what you like about the structure of text and its artistic merit, but unfortunately Shakespeare today has an ever diminishing cultural impact, while the Big Brothers and Survivors are actively shaping society in more profound and real ways.

I think that alone means they deserve to - and should be - looked at closely and critically.
Posted by StabInTheDark, Monday, 16 April 2007 4:19:49 PM
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Ever held a conversation with 'The Market' StabInTheDark? I DO like your pseudonym!
The article by Hookham and MacLennan is a fairly well-considered explication of contemporary 'reality' universities or pseudo-universities, IMHO. The only weakness in their article was to limit their focus of just who is responsible for this appalling and frightening situation to lower-order academic functionaries such as the candidate's supervisory team and the founding dean of the faculty.

Where are the august members of the 'university' Senate, the Chancellor, the Vice Chancellor and other such 'executive managers' of the institute in their oversight role, applying their years of academic and worldly experience and reflection regarding the role of the university in (modern?)society? Or over at the School of Busy-ness, Economics and Financial Accounting checking on their investment portfolios?
Posted by Sowat, Monday, 16 April 2007 5:02:17 PM
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Matilda's comments prompt me to urge some progress from the tired PM Howard-style comparison between Shakespeare and BB, etc., instead to a comparison between Borat and the usual lot of such 'high' and 'bogan' culture we're apparently supposed to regard as our binary-opposite ideological paradigms. An equally important issue here is that more ethical matter of 'cruelty', useful for comparison in all these examples.

The problem with much established blue-chip 'Culture' a la Shakespeare is its often pompous claim to truth. 'Macbeth', for example, has been demolished by historians proving The Bard's work there as opportunistic fiction suiting his English king and patron, while demonizing a locally popular and patriotic Scot killed off by other opportunism sponsored from the expansionist south. No shortage of cruelty in Macbeth: a history written truly for the victors, but no victory for historical truth.

Thus we have Big Brother, a contrived or fake opposition for the postmodern sensibility conscious of the pretensions of such past grand narrative. But here the media bosses have made a history not written by the losers but one by the winners at the gratuitous expense of losers. Whatever payment and fame BB-ers get, their achievement is a larger-scale version of our dehumanized workforce made into 'celebrity' exhibits. Voyeurism by BB's many cameras resembles closely the surveillance culture in our workplaces and its compatible nastiness of divisiveness, deceit and insecurity: "finding the winner!". I agree that cruelty here is distasteful, but it too only matches its oppressive surroundings of dishonest and cynical exploitation.

Borat, by contrast, invades the conceits found in this culture's very foundations. Whether prole or upper-middle, academic or white trash, overtly racist or self-consciously 'tolerant, multicultural', etc., Cohen's Borat cruels his targets by exposing their own prejudice, arrogance and hypocrisy.

The mainstream success of Borat apparently owes much to Cohen's clever use of satire in several layers. But under the gags and slapstick, the real joke is on anyone who believes Cohen's caricature of the other as a necessarily uneducated, sexist, racist and homophobic boor. I fear that Matilda may be another of Cohen's unwitting victims.
Posted by mil_observer, Monday, 16 April 2007 5:25:57 PM
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As someone who experienced the rise and rise of postmodernism/poststructuralism from within a Social Sciences faculty at an Australian university, I can only concur with the thrust of Hookham and MacLennan's article. I will add to it my observation that the most fervent proponents of this excuse for 'theory' seemed to be mostly female, 'mature-aged' postgraduate students in such disciplines as Education, Anthropology, Psychology and Sociology, who couldn't cope with quantitative methodology.

Much of the tripe that is dished up in so-called 'Cultural Studies' is a direct product of the replacement of methodological and epistemological rigour with convoluted and self-referential 'pomo-babble' designed to obscure the intellectual limitations of its practitioners. Unfortunately, this process has only provided ammunition for 'neo-conservative' elements who can easily take pot-shots at what now passes for academic writing.
Posted by CJ Morgan, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 7:52:16 AM
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In his time, Shakespeare provided entertainment to everyone from Elizabeth I and her court to London's labouring classes. His plays were meant to be enjoyed and not dissected by academic theorists. The creators of Big Brother, Survivor and the Biggest Loser et al also primarily want to provide entertainment and make a lot of dosh along the way (as did Shakespeare). The fact that Big Brother can be analysed in terms of a deconstruction of hegemonic discourse within a hetero-normative framework is irrelevant to Mr De Mol and his colleagues in the entertainment industry.

What is relevant and what I consider a problem is that Big Brother encourages gross egotism and a desire for fame for its own sake. Selfish behaviour and wanting to win by humiliating other people is part of the package. I find this both boring and repulsive and it seriously worries me that many people tune in to see people behave in such a self-centred, "look at me" manner.
Posted by DavidJS, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 8:23:30 AM
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CJ I don’t think it’s so much about not being able to ‘cope’ with quantitative methodology as it is about understanding that it is not always an adequate way of accurately exploring a topic. A problem those working within the field of quantum mechanics also struggle with from time to time.

I also fail to see how proponents’ age or sex has anything to do with anything. It's all ideas right?
Posted by StabInTheDark, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 10:27:32 AM
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Curious but rather blunt and misdirected points by DJ and CJ (is that Borat's "CJ" from town of Baywatchers?)

DJ writes: "The fact that Big Brother can be analysed in terms of a deconstruction of hegemonic discourse within a hetero-normative framework is irrelevant to Mr De Mol and his colleagues in the entertainment industry." Irrelevant indeed, but I thought any such discussion was hardly meant for Mr De Mol et al (why bother?). So what was DJ's point, except perhaps to appear in command of the discourse with impressive-sounding conceptual glitter i.e., "deconstruction...hegemonic discourse...hetero-normative framework", with the "in terms of" cliche for good measure ("Look at me!")? Or does DJ join this debate on behalf of Mr De Mol, expecting everyone else to do so too? I think DJ sets unfair standards here, because "gross egotism...desire for fame for its own sake...Selfish behaviour...wanting to win by humiliating other people" should apply not only to the program's participants, but especially to its rich sponsors and producers. Therefore, many punters probably tune in to learn what attitudes may get them out of exploited drudgery, debt and other humiliation.

This is an ideological dilemma, all part of the Neo-Liberalist package and its aggressive market of anything for the Mammon-God monetarists call "growth". However, many neo-libs/cons then hypocritically and snobbishly brand themselves as above such savagery (except for many, no doubt, behind locked club, society and party doors). The phenomenon resembles "bum fights" films, where homeless beggars are offered prizemoney to beat each other senseless in the street. Or more nakedly, where middle-class schoolboy gangs brutally assault such people, unprovoked. Ridiculing disabled people is a logical result of an individualist cult which deifies pampered beneficiaries of the purported meritocracy.

So CJ's neo-cons may take pot shots, but only in a phoney war against a discourse largely reproduced and simulated from venues of the neo-cons' own ideological origins! Given such a cornered market, we realize just why they're so hostile to marginal ideology opposed to their market's premises and its corrupted notions of 'supply-demand' and 'competition'.
Posted by mil_observer, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 10:44:28 AM
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The pseudo-academic babble I used was meant as a joke. Okay, so I'm not Ross Noble.

I do agree with the authors' point that subjectiveness and relativism at all costs in academia is appalling (although that's a subjective statement in itself). But comparing Big Brother favourably to Shakespeare, as some academics appear to do, isn't the main problem. An article recently on John De Mol was enlightening. De Mol thinks that intellectuals, far from endorsing Big Brother and its clones, are his main critics. De Mol believes his support base comes from non-tertiary educated "ordinary people". And he may be right. I don't think the regular Big Brother viewer gives two hoots whether QUT lecturers like Big Brother or not.

It's the market driving "reality" television and what academics think is a side issue.
Posted by DavidJS, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 3:37:08 PM
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Side issue it may be, but I saw the article specifically being about academic discourse, not an attack on big brother - you can't miss your point if you write about what you are focusing on.

I wondered how long before the content of the article was interpreted as a discussion point advocating the removal of big brother.

I for one, don't believe this article is a side issue - the article is largely about the decline in standards of what is studied in universities - the driving force being a prevailing ideology of post-modern deconstructionist thought - that is, there is no unifying concept of what is worthwhile and what isn't, so lets study everything. For this issue, big brother's nothing more than an example of low culture (if I'm permitted to call it that).

Nothing more, nothing less. This isn't about big brother, that topic is censorship, something that personally, I'd oppose.

I guess what it comes down to, is whether you believe popular culture should be studied in universities, and whether there should be an effort to distinguish worthwhile cultural pursuits.

I frame the debate in terms of cause and effect - the effect is, that studies are being dumbed down to a degree, and there is diminishing awareness of past western culture when compared to the popular present. This makes placing them within a framework and judging the present much more difficult.

That isn't to say I'd advocate removing studies of popular culture, but if we can integrate them with other studies a little more, and perhaps find ways to encourage more variety in cultural studies, we'll be better off.

Besides, practically speaking at present we need more scientists, nurses engineers and teachers. The last thing we need is more cultural analysis, though of course, this isn't the fashionable statement to express...
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 4:03:43 PM
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Say the authors: "the radical philistines have taken the high culture v low culture distinction and inverted it."

No. The "philistines" have merely made the case - with scads of historical evidence and well-argued theory to back them up - that "the high culture v low culture distinction" is a false dichotomy.

And Hookham & MacLennan, in their ivory tower, who have made their career out of drawing a line and declaring themselves to be on the "high" side, don't like having their toys taken away.

Before you accuse me of being a relativist, let me assure you I believe this to be absolutely true: "the high culture v low culture distinction" is a gimcrack parlour trick. It's bulldust. It exists only in your heads. Get over it.

There's culture all around you. Make your false distinctions if you like. But if you try to build a case that your distinctions have any existence outside your own terms of reference, you'll fail.

And I believe the above claims to be absolutely true - no "relativism" about it.
Posted by Mercurius, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 6:58:30 PM
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Touche for DJ! I was Boratted in text - I'm sure I did pick up CJ's 'Boratting' with the stuff about female, mature-aged, etc. Didn't expect two to do it in a row...

I think the false distinction Merc describes here is called 'class'. The 'Phillistines' do less to prove the falsehood within class systems than they do to deny the real effects thereof. So it's not just "in our heads", but built into post codes, advertising, and the education system, for example. It's even apparent in the funny ways people like Christopher Pyne, Alexander Downer (upper-middle) and John Howard (middle) speak English (Sorry to seem partisan - these guys are just too obvious). These are falsehoods indeed, but the lies continue to play a major part in driving an inefficient socio-economic system. Just ask people in real estate or banking to find out how such irrationality keeps pumping the big bubbles of debt.

Again, the falsehoods of these distinctions are found in the adherents' claims about truth, or more broadly "quality" and "value". I've met many upper-middle opera-goers who know barely a word of sung Italian, German, or French, much less about the actual music. And we can't expect Howard to know or really care about Shakespeare: he just wants to express his deference to a certain class identity.

It is right that people are concerned about the effects of such class denial and the spread of elitist behavior e.g., deceit and guile as virtues, more blatant cruelty and more obvious decadence. But again, it all points to the ideological and moral quagmires of Neo-Liberalism. I think intellectuals have a duty to expose such falsehoods via critical examination.
Posted by mil_observer, Tuesday, 17 April 2007 9:11:56 PM
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Well Mil, if the high culture/low culture thing is all about class as you suggest, then that makes this article doubly amusing, for author MacLennan has some socialist and Marxist leanings, as evidenced by his scholarly writings on the teaching of English language in Australia and his critique of Australian education as being in thrall to a capitalist agenda.

Heh...so we have an apparent Marxist supporting the class-based snobberies of high culture/low culture - and a whole chorus of pomo bashers cheering him on --> and I'm sure many of the commenters in this forum who sympathise with the article would be having heebiejeebies right about now.

It's also one in the eye for the conservative commentariat who love to portray postmodernism as some sort of lefty pinko plot...when pomo pulls the rug out from under Marxism and pretty much all other absolutist schemes.

They are all hoist upon their straw men...or, as Hamlet would put it, "words, words, words."
Posted by Mercurius, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 1:24:03 PM
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Ahh but Mercurious, don't you see? Via a post-modern deconstructionist approach, the academic establishment is programming young minds into a process of marxist thought, though interestingly this is done by a relativist approach that refuses to acknowledge the superiority of a single ideology.

So as I see it, there's an amusing game of cat and mouse where the cultural conservatives have painted the academic establishment as inculcating their own marxist values on students. The problem is, that they're doing it via a post-modern syllabus that by its very nature can't place a particular ideology on a pedestal.
How someone who accepts relativism can push a particular ideology (aside from relativism itself) is beyond me.

In other words, the conservatives are just mad the teaching's not outright conservative. Boo hoo.

Actually, the problem with relativism is it can make it harder to gauge results, which is something the wiser cultural conservatives have latched onto.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 1:38:42 PM
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I just want to make a point here - I used to be a Marxist and it was definitely not a relativist ideology. The organisation I used to belong to was very firm regarding what was right and what was wrong. That organisation (and Marxist thought interpreted by Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky) all had what you could call a "grand narrative" of history and were contemptuous of other political ideologies. Quite the opposite of what I can glean from post-modernism. You could accuse my erstwhile comrades of being "politically correct" (to haul out another cliche) but not relativist. I hope that clarifies things.
Posted by DavidJS, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 2:09:24 PM
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I refer to class dynamics because of their enduring and typically implicit meaning, which I perceive to have been hardly touched by the po-mo wrecking ball. Po-mo has probably otherwise smashed the Marxist Grand Narrative into a hard-to-sell relic, but some of that narrative's ambitious predictive claims on history have been appropriated (in typical style) by Neo-Liberalism. My latest reading of Engels, for example, evoked frighteningly clear impressions of the 'trickle-down' nonsense trumpeted loudly from the 1980s. Like a cunning virus, Neo-Liberalism both adopts and circumvents key aspects of Marxist eschatology; an ideological heist robbing progressives of much that hitherto served as references, if not tenets. Hence the supposed witnessing of 'ends' to 'history', 'society' and class. That last point has a peculiar Australian expression via increased publicity and rhetoric about "our egalitarianism" and "mateship", all during a period of middle-class welfare and relentless erosion of workers' last vestiges of collective self defence.

I urge that we see through the neo-lib/-cons' brand-marketing in this: their 'attacks' on po-mo are the same fakery as their other spin advertising themselves as 'conservative' to constituents nostalgic for the Cold War when genuine limits and penalties were applied to monetarists. These people are not conservative: their aim has been to reduce all human relations to some financial exchange, more or less. So Hayek's exception about 'family' should be seen as fakery too, probably just to better market his works to conscientious anti-socio/psychopathic capitalists.

However, Postmodernism is perfectly compatible with the Neo-Liberalist project; indeed, it often helps it along by depicting all modes of consumption as matters of individual 'choice' irrespective of 'class' (a taboo term for the regime). Therefore, we should probably not be surprised when the regime pays lip service to opposing such practices as: ridiculing disabled people, relativizing art, trading in plastinated corpses as ornaments - or even in children and adults for labor. Note too the regime's unease with conscription, even when in crusading warmonger mode: troops must have somehow 'chosen' to get blasted to bits or crippled by Iraqi guerrillas.

BTW, MacLennan's article was probably written in gadfly mode.
Posted by mil_observer, Thursday, 19 April 2007 10:15:17 AM
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I am a first year film student at QUT. Michael Noonan is one of my lecturers. As part of lectures we have looked at the shows in question. I have seen cut footage, uncut footage and have met the two men in “downunder mystery tour”. Take note I say men. This article refers to them as "two intellectually disabled boys". That is an insult. One is around twenty and the other is at least forty.

This is the Noonan's documentary is the first piece I have ever seen that has made me confornt the misconceptions I have about disabled people. After screening and discussing some footage, the two men "William and Craig" were invited up to the front of the lecture to field questions from the class. They were completely at ease and very aware of when they were being funny.

This article talks about the piece as if the two men were simply put into staged situations. They footage which contains the "we would share her" comment takes place outside the house the two men share. After realising the connotation of what he has said the young man actually goes on to says "No, not like that". The older man laughs at him and says "your funny". "Philistines of relativism at the gates" does not mention this, why would it when it seems intent on robbing disabled people of their voice, or infact acting as if they don't have one.

(will continue in next post)
Posted by WWSBD, Friday, 4 May 2007 6:08:28 PM
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(Continued fomr last post)

The two men regularly visit the pub on their own, but apparently according to MacLennan and Hookum disabled people don't enjoy alcohol, so that Noonan has filmed them doing it is offensive.
Also, a little more context. One of the men has a goal to get a girlfriend. That is what he wants, it is discussed in an earlier documentary that the two men participated in. That is where the questions about single girls come from. The two were not prompted to say it.

"Philistines of relativism at the gates" is an insult to the two men involved in the film project. It assumes that they have no personality, no wants or needs, because they have a mental disability. It assumes that they have no sense of humour, that they are barely even alive.

The point of the documentary is to get the viewer to see them as not a "disabled person", but just a person. Like you. Like me. It achieves its goal. After viewing the footage, when "William and Craig" came to the front of the lecture, I saw two men, two people who I could relate to. Not two "disabled boys" who are "less fortunate than us". Less fortunate how? MacLennan and Hookum seem to assume that simply because their mental ability exceeds "William and Craigs", they have less to offer, that their lives will automatically be not quite as rich as ours.

I would also like to note that I have Gary MacLennan as a lecturer as well. I love his lectures. He is inspirational. I was disapointed to see that he could not see the potential and the beauty the work Michael Noonan is doing. Perhaps if he had watched more of the work or perhaps met the two men before commenting.
Posted by WWSBD, Friday, 4 May 2007 6:10:18 PM
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Thanks WWSBD,
Seems like your points are in the same thrust as those I made about the Borat spoof. This is reassuring if it means that students have NOT been herded into mass-consumer savagery as seemed to be the article's assertion.
I can't presume to know the position of MacLennan and Hookum here, but I think there is a real and rarely expressed worry about critics who miss such essential aspects of this personally confrontational approach to satire. Maybe there's a prevailing, established mindset, ossified and unself-critical to the point where the very existence of such deep-seated bigotry is dismissed as unthinkable?
Note that a later, related thread ('Australians are all conservatives now') has mired itself in squabbles over dessicated definitions: "conservative", "progressive", "left", etc. In such a sorry excuse for an intellectual, educational and demographic environment as we now have, I expect that Noonan (like Borat's Cohen) would be labelled as 'reactionary', nihilist', and so on...
Posted by mil_observer, Friday, 4 May 2007 6:41:26 PM
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Then again, on second thought, it seems Noonan has probably shone so brightly in his field that he's embarrassed others. Perhaps there has been some networked push to marginalize and even vilify him, so that he stops showing up the lazy, smug, backward and mediocre?
I hope this is not the case with the Maclennan/Hookum article, but am now very interested to see their response - if any.
That uglier possibility is always useful to keep in mind though. Probably happens in every field.
Posted by mil_observer, Friday, 4 May 2007 6:51:51 PM
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Good on you guys for raising you voice. It makes me sick to hear of the situation these boys were put in. My brother is mentally disabled and I can only imagine how horrified my family would be if he was put in this situation. Michael Noonan has lost all of my respect as one of my past tutors at uni. And so to the Governing body that would condone such material. Humour without respect requires very little wit, doesn't it!
Posted by bedwin, Friday, 4 May 2007 9:55:10 PM
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I am annoyed at the slight manipulation Gary and John have tried (and succeeded if measuring the responses) to impose upon the readers of this article. While they have a valid point; since we cannot censor programs such as "Big Brother" and shouldn't in fact censor them for they are programs which the audience wants. The academics, the elite intellectuals should act as to sway the society away from the interest of such shows. It is the education and parenthood level we need to bring higher and not the level of crap that we can see on television.
I cannot understand the train of thought of a parent that says "I can't control the child. I tell him to turn it off and he watches it behind my back." If that is the case then you should strongly enforce your instruction not to watch the show and while most children will find a way to watch it, they will understand it differently since the context is different. For now it's "wrong" to watch it. And the "wrong and right" are then deducted by your way of raising your children up to that point.

About the manipulation I was talking about earlier and my main point. We are being shown a one sided opinion from two individuals (as respected as they may be) that have seen footage of the project and have formulated their own ideas about it. A critique of a piece; be it a PhD thesis or a 3rd grade final English essay should be read only by people whom have read/encountered the piece before reading the critique.
It is extremely unfair towards Michael and towards ourselves that our mind is reeling on the side of the opposition before we ever spoke to him about the project and seen it.

I have been a under the tutelage of both Michael and Gary and hold them both in high regards as to their academic prowess and their personality. Regardless, I refuse to formulate any connotation to the material before I've seen it in the proper context; as Michael has intended.
Posted by Anecdote, Saturday, 5 May 2007 5:04:11 PM
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I am at the student at the centre of Hookham and MacLennan’s attacks.

I thank WWSBD for understanding and appreciating my work in its context. I appreciate the words of Anecdote, who understands that a work must be seen and placed in context before it should be attacked. And I am disappointed for bedwin, who has lost all respect for me on the basis of an uninformed and incorrect article.

Much has been assumed about my project, my integrity and my intentions. Very little of it is based on truth. The simple facts are these: the excerpts I showed at my PhD confirmation seminar were presented in the context of exploring and discussing issues of authorship and representation in disability. My project seeks to empower the disabled, to give them a voice through comedy. Each clip was prefaced with my own thoughts about whether or not this had been achieved.

As a sessional staff member at QUT, I can think of nothing more deplorable than attacking a student’s incomplete research in a public forum. Hookham and MacLennan have made no effort to read my PhD confirmation document (it was offered) and they rejected my attempts to meet and discuss their concerns.

To date I have not sought to respond to their attacks in print. But I refuse to be further bullied and vilified before the public, my peers and my students.
Posted by Noonan, Saturday, 5 May 2007 11:20:49 PM
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WWSBD, having seen the same things you claim to have seen, my impression was that the whole Noonan presentation was staged so that it could be discussed in a forum like this one. I also got the impression there Noonan’s presentation had been scripted beforehand. I'd like to believe that it was Noonan himself, but I'm a little older than most first years and having done some TV subjects at QUT, if I was to hazard a guess, I'd say that his supervisor Alan McKee had a part in preparing the Noonan presentation you write about. And since I'm a naturally suspicious person, WWSBD, from what I can remember of those TV units, you write very much in the style Alan McKee! Interesting coincidence, perhaps?

Of course, what we don't have is an impartial observation of what happened during Noonan's PhD Confirmation hearing.

But we've gone beyond this, to the manipulation of the Truth, and, frankly, I'd say that Noonan himself, his supervisors Alan McKee (and Jeffry Portman, as I've read elsewhere), his detractors (MacLennan and Hookham), are all guilty of such manipulation. Perhaps this is something that's endemic to the Creative Industries Faculty at QUT.

Which does not negate the comments and observations made about the manipulation by MacLennan/Hookham of the actual visual material. It’s just a shame that many academics, researchers, postgraduate students and those in management positions in CI Faculty seem to pursue their own interests and careers without regard for the impact this has on the wellbeing of others. If these CI people at QUT are representative of the ‘new humanities’ (as Vice-Chancellor Peter Coaldrake said about the CI Faculty in media releases after announcing the abolition of the Humanities School at Carseldine) then it’s a new humanities faculty without it being very humane.
Posted by Val Id, Saturday, 5 May 2007 11:28:46 PM
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There are so many arguments presented in this text, and while Noonan asserts that John and Gary are attacking him - they are not.

Gary MacLennan is one of few lecturers at QUT (particularly in Creative Industries) who will look at both sides of any argument and who, unlike EVERY lecturer at QUT, does not automatically promote the most profitable.

To suggest that MacLennan would manipulate evidence or distort the truth in order to serve his own agenda for an article... (now really, what would his agenda be? Seriously.) Obviously these critics have no firsthand experience of the man, read his work or even bothered to think about what this article is really telling us.

Is MacLennan attacking Noonan's PhD particularly, or are the authors attempting to bring to light a wider issue? An issue spreading like a disease throughout universities in Australia, but most notably in QUT's Creative Industries.

Innovative. Groundbreaking. The first of its kind in Australia. Creative Industries - An absolute joke. And the only ones laughing are QUT, as they toddle off to the bank, loaded with research grants, students' money and government funding.

With more applicants than ever, QUT's 'groundbreaking' degree in Creative Industries is preparing more and more students for future careers at Coles, IGA and Woolworths. The only 'Real World' these graduates will ever know is one of night shifts on minimum wage.

Any Joe can study Big Brother. It’s on every night. This is university. This is what is coming from universities. I am the first to argue the merit in studying popular culture. I strongly believe in the power of popular culture to shape us as cultural, spiritual, physical and communal beings.

However, what is coming out of QUT these days is absolute bollocks. Absolutely worthless. The authors of this article know this. Every CI graduate knows this.
(continued next post)
Posted by RealWorld, Sunday, 6 May 2007 11:08:24 PM
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(continued from above)
Why on earth the deluded lecturers who one day preach the importance of cultural/racial/sexual stereotypes on television in creating an inclusive society, and the next verbally attack our country for believing these stereotypes, haven't realised that they are dragging this ridiculous degree out time and time again for criticism is beyond me.

Noonan's piece may or may not have its merits. I don't know, I haven't seen it. But I know for a fact that QUT is a sea of mediocrity, caricature, shameless self promotion, profiteering, favoritism and blatant incompetence.

In this sea there are a few voices - a few staff and students who stand up for whatever they might believe in. Who encourage legitimate debate not relating to finance, who challenge the enervated students to rise and fight for rights, social justice, truth, and all the other stuff you'd see an inspirational lecturer who changes peoples' lives do in the Hollywood movies they all study in CI and then write whole Masters and PhDs in.

Gary Maclennan is one such lecturer. The hypocrisy of the absolute joke of a faculty of CI to condemn this man... I can not express in words. Noonan is a fool who is only outshone at spinning any amount of ‘justification’ of a creative work by those ridiculous caricatures running the faculty and the university. Don’t think of this article as an attack on Noonan, or Big Brother, or even popular culture. It’s an attack on the fluff of a world that exists intra-murally.

Wise up kids.
Posted by RealWorld, Sunday, 6 May 2007 11:10:27 PM
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A wonderful, balanced, non-bitter post from RealWorld. Clearly a frustrated, struggling artist. Or maybe a tired academic.

To call me a fool suggests that you know me; to admonish my work suggests that you have seen it. If it is neither, it's hardly worth responding to your twisted little rant.

I thought this site was for scholarly discussion.
Posted by Noonan, Monday, 7 May 2007 1:48:00 PM
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Post-Modernists take themselves and their inane theories so seriously, they cannot realise that they are having the mick pulled out of them. They have nothing to offer to civilisation. Thankfully, in 50 years, no-one will remember them, because none of them will have any children.
Posted by dozer, Monday, 7 May 2007 5:20:56 PM
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In response to “RealWorld”.

Thank you, good sir for your enlightened view! "Any Joe can study about Big Brother" and I suppose any Joe can learn about Quantum Physics… The real debate here is about what conclusions each is capable of drawing?! What I am sure of though, is that any Joe can write a rant without providing any sort of arguments to support him other than his own biased observations.

I do not wish to align myself in any direction of Gary’s wider view as I am still contemplating it. However, one of the main debates that have sprung in light of this article is Gary’s use of Michael’s PhD thesis as a base camp for his words. Something which is totally unacceptable in my eyes as it is manipulative, unfair and unethical to critique so a colleague’s work to a public which did not have the chance to encounter the piece on its own before having his opinion swayed one way or another.

You have claimed Michael Noonan as a fool. It is not my purpose to defend his honour, and yet I wish to ask you if you have seen any of his works so far or the one discussed in the article? Have you ever, in your life met the man and perhaps had a conversation with him? I speculate that you in fact did not.

Indeed, I could speculate further and depict you to be a mediocre, bitter human being who’s never in his life had any piece of work recognized for the ingenious that isn’t really there. The difference between you and I is that I do not stoop myself to that level of speculations and would not claim that about you without first encountering you and study your work. Even then, if I was convinced beyond any doubt that my claims are true, I would probably find some way to at least leave a note before my biased words that they are, indeed, biased and are based on twisted personal observations.

Also unlike you, I can condense my empty words to one post…
Posted by Anecdote, Monday, 7 May 2007 10:41:15 PM
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The philistines are no longer at the gates...Hookham and MacLennan threatened with the sack!

I have just received a letter from members of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) about closure of the Humanities and Human Services School at Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

The letter states:

"The argument that Creative Industries is the ‘new’ humanities is spurious – the programmes are important to QUT but are not intended to the breadth and depth of the (Humanities degrees). Indeed, much of the argument about the ‘new’ revolves around the apparent audacity of comparing Shakespeare and Big Brother … the undergraduate degrees and the postgraduate research at Humanities and Human Services … is grappling with the complex human, social and ethical issues and uncertainties faced in science and bio-medicine, business, built environment, law and education.

Are members of this forum aware of the attacks being made against the two academics, John Hookham and Gary MacLennan, who both work in Creative Industries at QUT, and whose article is the subject of this forum discussion?

Now, apparently, they are threatened with the sack for disrespectful conduct and bringing the QUT into disrepute.

It is clear that, for some, there is a point at which we can tolerate no more.

Sadly, in these times, it seems it is difficult to coordinate this into collective action rather than individual revolt.

Surely collective action should be organised to protect the democratic right of John Hookham and Gary MacLennan to speak out?

It seems the philistines are no longer at the gates, they run the institutions and, as always, those who oppose them are to be shut outside.

BushTelegraph
http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2007/05/08/philistines-no-longer-at-the-gates-of-queensland-university-of-technology/
May 2007
Posted by BushTelegraph, Tuesday, 8 May 2007 5:35:09 PM
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Post-Modernists never had any interest in free speech. They disguise their bile in the form of a critique of the so-called elites. However, it is the Post-Modernists who are running the university departments. Post-Modernism has become the dominant discourse, and it brooks no opposition.
Posted by dozer, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 3:21:13 PM
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Interesting debate...and one which throws into pretty sharp relief the deficiencies of 'postmodern' epistemology when used to justify what seems to be the age-old human practice of laughing at those who aren't like me (and probably you).

The point is that such laughter is not 'empowering,' it's plain wrong. It's the smug snicker that runs through a train carriage when a funny-looking character begins to talk to himself, or propositions the woman in the opposite seat. That's not empowering, it's cruel.

The point is that this debate simply shouldn't be happening, that making documentaries about 'funny' disabled people is tasteless and uncaring in the extreme, and that serious academic rigour seems to be completely surplus to requirements down Kelvin Grove way.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not some Puritanical Ian Paisley type. I laughed like a drain at 'There's Something About Mary' and reel off jokes I've read on 'Sickipedia' like a wannabe Bill Hicks. There's a voice in my head, however, that suggests using the public purse to fund PhD 'research' (by definition something new, original, and beneficial to the sum of human knowledge) is a joke sicker than the one where the drunk Murri lady hits on the bloke with Asperger's Syndrome.

And 'Big Brother' has nothing in common with Shakespeare (I'm still waiting for the Shilpa Shetty saga to be compared with 'Othello' by some half-bright spark, BTW) beyond the fact that Shakespeare also lifts up the occasional societal rock for us in order to contemplate some form of microbial life going about its activities.

All of which assumes the ability on the part of the viewer to tell raspberry jam from cat poop if you take the seeds out...obviously not a requisite quality for work in and around our 'Creative Industries'.

I weep for the quality of critical thought in this nation's halls of academe...and can hear a whizzing noise that's surely Theodor Adorno spinning in his grave.
Posted by The Jung and the Restless, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 6:32:26 PM
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I apologise in advance that I cannot condense my words into one post.

I am a QUT Creative Industries student and one of the least radical people you’re likely to meet this side of Canberra. But I was incensed when I heard about this issue second-hand in a tutorial. Some nitwit of a girl said ‘I’ve had Gary as a lecturer and I loved him, but if Gary is going to bitch about Creative Industries why is he here? He should just leave.” *sigh* I believe he and John have a right to express their opinion, and furthermore, if everyone left a group every time they disagreed there’d be no groups left...except the KKK. It’s called having a point of view.

Now I don't pretend to know much, I don't pretend to be an academic. Yes I see the irony writing in an academic forum. In fact, given I'm in my final semester at QUT, I think my 'unknowingness' proves at least one of Gary & John's points: QUT Creative Industries may have failed me...or I it. But I digress.

Anyhow my point is that although I am unable/unwilling to unravel all the 'isms' in the arguments that are zooming across cyberspace, I do NOT believe that Gary and John should be suspended for their actions. As an avid TV watcher, I believe in our quasi-American quasi-right to 'Freedom of Speech'. However, I also believe this freedom put Noonan in a bright spotlight that, as a student, he shouldn't be subjected to. Yes, he is a sessional staff member and yes he is at a PHD level, but he is still a student and therefore at a junior level to John & Gary.

I recognise that John & Gary's state it isn’t Noonan's fault and points towards McKee and the CI department. I also recognise this isn't the first time that Gary has gotten in trouble with the QUT law for voicing his opinion, so they may have it in for him, and perhaps would like to avoid handing out severance pay.
(con't)
Posted by MelDiva, Friday, 11 May 2007 1:11:54 AM
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(con't from above)
I love Gary to bits. I love his ability to create an interesting argument out of a ball of twine and an empty cereal packet. He is the Argumentical McGyvver of QUT and he is a treasure (yes misspelt on purpose).

However, he and John do raise a real issue. But it seems the debate has been hijacked by the detail (the doco), although I appreciate it doesn't feel like a small detail to Noonan and those offended by the doco’s concept. I hope people will address the real issue of the Creative Industries department, Creative Industries Theory, and post-modern deconstructionist educational theory-isms and whether it’s working.

Am I a better educated person for my three years at QUT? I suspect not. Would I have been any better with the old school methods? Well...Id probably have been so bored by the dry intellectual ‘isms’ that Id have eaten my own arm to get out of class. My own failing perhaps. But don't they raise a damn good question?

On a light-hearted note, it's ironic that after years of Gary's rants about how blasé and anti-reactionary modern students have become that some are actually radical enough to get off their behinds to write a comment, let alone attend a rally? Woo. Gary has become his own napalmed Vietnamese poster-child. (yes, if Id been better educated Id know what that famous photo was called)

One more thing, I think this has gone too far for Noonan to stop his doco. He should be given the right to finish his vision. He can’t prove anyone right or wrong just by the rushes of some initial filming. I do hope that it won’t be, as some people have suggested, a taxpayer-paid pilot for a potential mocku-docu-comedy series. That would be a waste of taxpayer’s money...cos one day soon, when I finish my degree and have become a disgruntled supervisor at Coles, Ill be paying those taxes...and I'll still be wondering what the Vietnamese napalmed girl photo was called, let alone what an 'ism' is. Gotta love QUT.
Posted by MelDiva, Friday, 11 May 2007 1:15:09 AM
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If ever confirmation was needed for the lunacy of MIUAUG (some will get that) this article and the various comments provide it.

Pericles trumpets:

"After all, we have already tolerated, nay consumed in large quantities, reality TV that only ten years ago we would have scoffed at."

Exactly Pericles, yet when I make such a point you simply go into head in the sand denial.

Mercurious bleats:
And Hookham & MacLennan, in their ivory tower, who have made their career out of drawing a line and declaring themselves to be on the "high" side, don't like having their toys taken away.

CJ Morgan wades in:

Much of the tripe that is dished up in so-called 'Cultural Studies' is a direct product of the replacement of methodological and epistemological rigour with convoluted and self-referential 'pomo-babble' designed to obscure the intellectual limitations of its practitioners.

aah..we get it now CJ. They are intellectual dwarfs, as opposed to you, a Goliath of brain power and intellectual 'straight and narrow':)

We have
-'Post Modernist construction project'
-'post-modern deconstructionist approach'
-'reactionary', nihilist'
-'Marxist Grand Narrative'

Taken together, it seems MIUAUG is going ahead on Turbo. The "High" culturalists are said to be having a tantrum over lost toys, rather than seeking to maintain a semblance of cultural order.

Seems to me its like cultural browns cows 'clutching at straws' (Rob1245... u reading ?)

Confrontation is good, but the demeaning of ill equipped people in the hands of cultural mad scientists seems a bit much for me.

Love God.
Love your neighbour.

Pretty simple really.
Posted by BOAZ_David, Saturday, 12 May 2007 11:29:55 AM
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Boaz, if you are going to excerpt from a post of mine, please do everyone the courtesy of doing so in context.

Yes, I did write "we have already tolerated, nay consumed in large quantities, reality TV that only ten years ago we would have scoffed at", but proceeded to qualify it with "to use this as evidence of a general trend, that the whole world must be going to hell in a handbasket is a little rich"

In other words (as if you didn't know) my point was that the fact that the tastes of the general public have changed over the years is *not* evidence of moral degeneration.

It is of course quite typical that you would deliberately take a quote out of context in order to pretend that everyone who "makes it up as they go" is a moral retard, but your attempts at this deception are becoming increasingly transparent.

Once more, with feeling. Just because someone does not share your one-eyed, narrow-minded, holier-than-thou penchant for evangelical proselytising for Jesus does not mean that they do not have a moral compass.

It is perfectly possible to live a totally blameless life without once uttering the words "I love God".

It is also perfectly possible - as has been demonstrated many, many times - to utter "I love God" every hour of every day, and still molest small boys.
Posted by Pericles, Saturday, 12 May 2007 5:28:03 PM
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Hi all.

There's no doubt that Gary Maclennan is a very popular lecturer and great at what he does. However, it's important to bear in mind that he and John H. have some political axes to grind here. They've bashed creative industries in the Australian and elsewhere before, so this is nothing new in that respect.

Why are they being disciplined this time? Because this is workplace-grievance thinly disguised as commentary, and because they had to have a go at a student to do it.

The soundbites given in this article are inflammatory, deliberately so. But let's please remember that those who have seen the film in its entirety (including the auspicing disability support organisation, the families of the chaps concerned, etc) don't seem to have a problem with it. Anyone getting irate about the content here is doing so in a complete vacuum. Maclennan and Hookham have been intellectually dishonest in not trying to understand the project before using it as a stick to beat their employer with.

More importantly, to me at least, they've dragged a student into the middle of this. I wonder how students commenting here would have felt if Hookham and Maclennan had taken one of their assignments and ripped it apart in the national press? It's a horrible breach, I feel, of the duties we lecturers have towards our students.

And just, for a moment's sake, let's say the content WAS offensive in some way (it wasn't - just a hypothetical here). What would you do?

(1) Approach the student with your concerns
(2) Approach the supervisory team with your concerns
(3) Use any of the other internal channels through the research or ethics staff to raise the concerns
(4) Write an article in the national media naming the student

I think a person genuinely concerned about the issue would have gone with (1)-(3) above. What might it say about someone's agenda that they chose to go with (4)?
Posted by fraterperturbed, Monday, 14 May 2007 10:01:36 AM
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Fraterperturbed, I can appreciate what you are saying.

As a prior student of both Maclennan and Hookham, I would like to answer your question of what the pro-Maclennan/Hookham students would think if they too were dragged into the press...even if your question was rhetorical. Obviously, we would be livid! Referring back to what I said in my earlier comment, I do not agree with Noonan being named in the national press, it was a bad decision, particularly since he is a student and of lesser academic standing than M & H.

I do wonder if, given they felt Noonan used his superior intellect to take advantage of the mentally-challenged men and expose them to the mass media, that they would do the same down the line to Noonan. It's a rather biblical method of public reprimand (an eye for an eye, etc) but it doesn't make it right.

On a separate note, we should recognize that M & H stated they attempted to follow protocol (your points 1-3) but were ignored.

I support everyone's right to voice an opinion and their right to use the media as a platform (minus the student naming). If they wish to bash creative industries (which I noted they had done before) and thereby provoke a dialogue, well that's democracy for you.

Speaking of dialogue, to the general forum I ask: is it possible to get over the student naming and leave that to the internal workings of QUT and discuss the underlying issues?

Cheers,
M
Posted by MelDiva, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 2:45:37 AM
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How does the song go?

Watch the butcher shine his knives
And this town is full of battered wives
…………………………………….
They shut it down
They pulled it down
They shut it down
They pulled it down

Round and round, up and down
Through the streets of your town
Everyday I make my way
Through the streets of your town

— Brisbane rock band, the Go-Betweens.

In the book "Pig City" [Andrew Stafford (UQP)2005] the author states that the book was originally a MA thesis submitted to QUT Creative Industries postgraduate studies. The book was well researched as regards the music scene; the author made the effort to seek out a lot of people around Brisbane at the time of his inquiry (1970s - 2000s).

In the intro to Pig City the author states that the book, while originally about rock bands like 'The Go Betweens', became an analysis of the JOH years. The author could not ignore that the 'music scene' was a product of the politics at the time. This is not to say that there was much, if any, political music to be recorded or analysed in the book.

However there was a central problem with the authors approach, Stafford failed to critically analyze the political situation carefully, he relied far too much on mainstream media and the 'Social Left' i.e. people not part of any political organization. The political analysis was biased to the personal rather than the political.

Read the rest of this article at http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2007/05/14/brisbane-town-they-shut-it-down-they-pulled-it-down/

BushTelegraph
Posted by BushTelegraph, Tuesday, 15 May 2007 5:50:13 AM
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Hey MelDiva.

I guess for me, the focus on Noonan IS the point I have problems with about this article. I don't think it's possible for me to seperate the approach from the content, the message from the medium.

While I've not agreed with some of Hookham and McLennan's public commentary in the past, I've never had a problem with them expressing it. McLennan is an unreconstructed Marxist, which is fine and dandy and an interesting position to have in a dialogue. In terms of the culture wars and postmodernism, etc, these are interesting issues to raise and worthy things to be thinking about in light of the CIF agenda. Creative Industries is still a pretty new experiment and as such SHOULD be critiqued - if only in order to make things better here for our students.

However, the problems that these guys have with CIF are personal as well as political. The dig that they had at Alan in the article is pure and simple down to that. They used Noonan as a stick to beat people that they had a problem with because he was an easy sound bite. They did so in an unscholarly and intellectually dishonest way. I know the people in the ethics committee who went over this project with a fine toothcomb are absolutely gobsmacked. To be honest, I'm not sure if John and Gary approached them. If they have, I haven't heard about it. Certainly they made no attempt to contact Noonan about it. The fact that they went to press so soon after the PhD confirmation suggests to me that they didn't try very hard to raise their concerns internally.

<cont in part 2>
Posted by fraterperturbed, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 8:01:26 PM
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By all means, let's discuss competiting ideologies within Creative Industries. To present, though, the idea that there's some sort of homogenous agenda is a little naive. Try getting academics at QUT to agree about _anything_. They're a freethinking bunch, as they should be, and while there are institutional agendas in place, to speak of postmodernism being pervasive etc in the faculty is libelously simplistic. The situation is, of course, vastly more subtle and complicated than this. I'm a lecturer in CI, by the way, and have some big problem with 'postmodernism' (although again, to speak of pomo as a homogenous thing is a little silly - there is no such thing as postmodernism, merely postmodernisms). So the reality, i feel, is that there are business descisions being made from high up that affect the general direction of the faculty, but individual academics very much formulate their own opinions and ideologies. I would argue that this is the way things should be, and that hopefully we're richer for having all ends of the spectrum at play.

That said, I defend these guy's right to be critical of their employer. There wasn't much of a useful critique here, I didn't think. It read more to me as a whinge, and the nature of attacking a student's unpublished work-in-progress, naming the student in the national media, etc is to me completely unethical.
Posted by fraterperturbed, Wednesday, 16 May 2007 8:02:36 PM
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does anyone know what has happened to Gary and John? have they actually been dismissed? or are they back at lectures?
Posted by jess'sgirl, Thursday, 17 May 2007 12:16:19 PM
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Hi there, I'm John Noonan, Mick's older brother, in Melbourne. Dad just rang to inform me of all the furore... and all I can say is ...WOW!
May I first point out is an absolute gentleman and would never exploit these people. Secondly, I have always thought Mick needed a break to further his career. This controversy is just absolutely fantastic for him! Thirdly, Mick, you now have a plethora of material for your thesis. Well done!
By the way, have you seen that latest ad where the disabled guy in a wheel chair is singing along to Radiohead. Now THAT is funny.
PS. And there's no need to sack those two guys,
Posted by Honest John, Thursday, 17 May 2007 7:18:23 PM
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This story having gone round the world before reaching Britain, I have interests in it at once as a friend of Gary MacLellan with family in Brisbane, as a grandfather of an autistic youth, and as a Catholic information scientist, i.e. from a background critical of Gary’s Marxism but a shared if technically deeper appreciation of history, psychology, truth and justice. Having studied all the previous comments, my impression is that they mainly miss or avoid the article’s opening remarks about the case being “the final straw”, explaining the subsequent attack on the Humean ethics of the QUT/neo-con establishment. Fraterperturbed’s final dismissal of this as a “whinge” is both loaded and perverse.

So, I wholeheartedly support John and Gary’s protest, directed at a product and not a student, and aimed not particularly at individuals but at their Machiavellian postmodern ideology: “tell the people what they wish to hear”. Those of “the people” in Australia who don’t understand the meaning of that would do well to study Bertrand Russell’s discussion of Modernism in his “History of Western Philosophy”, Humean and thus anti-Catholic though it is. Post-modernism is effectively Humean modernism reverting to pre-Socratic sophistry, going mad without Russell’s historical and logical appreciation of Platonic ideals and Aristotelian scientific judgement.

There is no point in inflaming the disagreement here: better to draw lessons from it. A unanimous ethics committee is surely a waste of time, since the whole point of democracy and even of post-modernism is that people have different points of view. This situation would not have arisen had Gary and John been on QUT’s ethics committee.

Will continue ...
Posted by agingstudent, Thursday, 17 May 2007 8:29:32 PM
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Continuing:

Noonan makes an interesting defence: “My project seeks to empower the disabled, to give them a voice through comedy. … As a sessional staff member at QUT, I can think of nothing more deplorable than attacking a student’s incomplete research in a public forum.”

If close examination reveals the first statement here to be true (though it seems to contradict the abstract) then Gary & John would probably be able to agree that, while it is wrong (indeed Nietzschian, fascist, Nazi) to ridicule the disabled (or Catholics, or whatever), it is good (as G K Chesterton saw) for them to be able to make fun of themselves. My experience with Asperger’s syndrome suggests even the potential for this is missing in this specific case.

On the second point, I think it even more deplorable that Noonan should feel that, as a student, he is inferior to his professors, or likely to be professionally demeaned by having to change his mind in public. I’ve been a student (among other things) for seventy years, and am glad to have thoughtful comment from any source just as long as it is honest and intelligent.

What I have learned from my own studies is that manifestations of Humean illogic and immorality like Nazism, neo-con economics and postmodernism will continue until Hume’s arguments are confronted with the findings of post-1800’s communication and information science, including how logics are able to actually work. It may then be more widely realised that information is conveyed by form, not content, and objective truth applies to both traditional and moral logics, not propositions. The ‘or’ form can “compute true with no errors indicated”, the ‘and’ form (by means of a google-like search of a historical database of known errors) “indicates true when no errors are found” (but false when one or more are: this moral form being used to protect the logic from events – like dividing by 0 – which will undermine its truth). Hume can be excused for not realising this 270 years ago; we can’t.
Posted by agingstudent, Thursday, 17 May 2007 8:35:07 PM
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I attend TAFE with students in their teens.

In my Design class is a young fellow with Asperger’s. He was criticised by a teacher for some print design mistakes. I think the teacher was unaware of the boy's condition. The student was then laughed at by the class. This hurt the student greatly until a girl student came over and asked the boy what the problem was. The boy said that he never got treated like this in his drama class. He explained he had Asperger’s and that he was fixated on theme parks like Dreamworld.

The girl had a relative with the same condition and she made sure the class never openly laughed at the boy again. The teacher seem to get the message too.

This is a condition with human consequences that many seem to have swept aside in an effort to push their own stereotypic view of the world.

Ian Curr
Posted by BushTelegraph, Friday, 18 May 2007 9:19:25 AM
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I agree with "agingstudent" and welcome “thoughtful comment from any source just as long as it is honest and intelligent”. Unfortunately, such comment is rare. To date, I’ve mostly encountered stupidity, misinformation and outright dishonesty. People seem quite happy to admonish me and my work without having seen a single frame of footage. They think my provocative thesis title and the heresay of two academics are grounds enough on which to judge me. Perhaps, if they were film reviewers, they would critique a movie based on the DVD menu page. Some, I suspect, haven’t even taken the disc out of its cover.
Posted by Noonan, Friday, 18 May 2007 11:56:17 AM
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As a research student at QUT, I'm underwhelmed by Noonan's defense of his PhD. If your confirmation document does indeed state that you intended this piece to be confronting and provocative, how is that you're shocked to be confronted and provoked after the first showing of your work? In all your defenses thus far - on this forum, and in The Australian newspaper - you've merely restated the aim of your work, which is apparently to "give a voice to disabled people." When someone tells you it doesn't, with constructive argument, you can't just say, "well, yes it does, leave me alone", and sit by while your criticisers are hauled through a disciplinary tribunal for speaking out about something they see as wrong. As a filmmaker, you're ethically accountable for your work, even in the production stages, and as a PhD student, you're accountable to the university, to students, and to the public. If you really believe your work isn't a display of the CI faculties tendency towards moral relativism, then why not take John and Gary's arguments on and prove why not? If you really believe your work "gives voice" to people with disability, then why can't you defend how exactly it does that? Did you seriously expect to present a thesis called Laughing at the Disabled and not expect it to generate some debate and disagreement within the CI faculty and wider community? Anybody who works with disabled people understands the complexity of that work, and knows that transperancy and accountability are part of social responsibility. Queensland Advocacy Incorporated has even expressed their concerns about your project, and I think that in itself suggests it's time that you defend yourself publically and politically. If you're unwilling to show your film to concerned parties, which strikes me as pretty weak, considering you're so adamant that it is what you're telling us it is - then it's about time you at least explained why and how your studies and your film are ethical and relevant, and how exactly they're empowering.
Posted by postpostmodernity, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 7:26:42 PM
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Further, how is that you're positioning yourself as the victim here? Gary and John are the ones facing suspension without pay, and the possible ending of both their academic careers. And your supervisor, Alan McKee, was the one who made sure this would happen. All this talk of giving people a voice when you're supporting the silencing of robust academic debate.
Posted by postpostmodernity, Tuesday, 22 May 2007 7:46:45 PM
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“Postpostmodernity” (aka John or Gary) is clearly not a research student. A real research student would never support the approach these academics have taken in admonishing and attempting to sabotage another research student’s work. A real research student would never support being forced to explain and defend their unfinished work to the public. A real research student would not have the time to write such irrational nonsense.
Posted by another fictional research student, Wednesday, 23 May 2007 5:10:44 PM
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I didn't think I'd have to defend the fact of my actual candidature to you, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised to see your reaction here is just another apolitical defense of your just so misunderstood uncompleted piece, and demonstrative of your complete lack of backbone to take on intellectual and moral debates. You haven't taken on a single one of the arguments in Gary and John's article, any of the statements by concerned disability organisations and academics and disability activists from QUT's own Humanities faculty, or any of the arguments I presented, and to me that suggest you don't have the capacity to do so. As a student and a staff member, I understand it to be my obligation to explain and discuss my research work on all levels: with my supervisors, with ethics committees, with my friends, my family, and with the wider community as a whole. If my project was something as contentious as 'disability comedy', I would expect to have to explain myself at every level. You were happy to showcase and promote your work in an undergraduate lecture, but not now, which suggests to me you're aware your work won't stand up to the scrutiny.

Further, if you think research students are unconcerned with this debate, then you should start paying closer attention to what's going on at your own university. Over two hundred students, a combination of undergrad and postgrad, held a rally last week to support Gary and John's right to free speech and academic freedom.
Posted by postpostmodernity, Thursday, 24 May 2007 12:29:46 AM
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Whoever you are, “postpostmodernity”, please stop engaging in this supposedly scholarly forum and focus on your research. You say: “I didn't think I'd have to defend the fact of my actual candidature to you”. You still haven’t. You still don’t have the backbone to put your name to your post. I think if you’re going to personally insult someone and viciously attack their research, you should have the courage to tell us who you are. Further, I note that you believe “over two hundred students, a combination of undergrad and postgrad, held a rally last week”. That’s laughable. There were 60 at most and hardly a postgrad among them. Most were Gary and John’s non-student cronies. The rest were impressionable undergrads who have been misinformed, manipulated and distracted from their studies. I do not intend to engage further in this pointless exchange: I have fictional research to do. It’s a comedy project about two bitter, twisted little academics who travel around Australia in a funny car and try to change the world, one university at a time. Funny, huh?
Posted by another fictional research student, Thursday, 24 May 2007 11:40:08 AM
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Cant we all just get along? Stick to the topic and leave the personal attacks for politicians. Everyone is entitled to express their opinion, and subsequently, to have that opinion debated. The rest is unnecessary.
Posted by MelDiva, Thursday, 24 May 2007 11:46:17 AM
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The fact that you call concerned students "impressionable undergrads" speaks volumes about your arrogance and your attitude towards the students that you teach. If you really think your students are mindless plebs, maybe you could enlighten them with a screening of your film? Or even an in-depth argument for your research? I know they've been asking for it, but all they're getting from you, seems to me, is the utmost disrespect. I agree with MelDiva about the issue of respectful discussion. That's exactly what I'm asking for: a decent, meaty, scholarly defense.

There were over two hundred students at the rally that occurred on the A Block Lawns. After over an hours worth of speakers, including QUT staff members (and a message from Noam Chomsky, who plans to write an op-ed piece about free speech for the Higher Ed section of The Australian) the smaller group made their way down to the Creative Industies faculty to have their voices heard by faculty heads, who have so far done nothing but patronise and censor the students (comments on subject forums have been deleted, and journalism students have been asked not to cover the story).

All I'm asking here is: if your work is so important and so empowering, why are you acting like you have something to hide? Why, at Gary and John's disciplinary hearings next week, is the film, which they're being accused of misrepresenting, not being shown? (How can someone charge someone with misrepresenting something they themselves haven't seen?)

Why are you hiding behind personal attacks on two intelligent and respected academics, instead of actually defending yourself?
The fact you think it's somehow funny that university academics (shock! horror!) still want to change the world is actually something I find profoundly sad. If you, as an academic and student, can't see the value of such ambitions, I'm extremely worried for the future of our universities.

If you wonder why I don't use my name, it's because, with the level of censorship at QUT at the moment, I'm concerned that my unfashionable moralism might rule me an unfashionable candidate.
Posted by postpostmodernity, Thursday, 24 May 2007 11:59:29 PM
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Unless QUT's ethics committee has changed substantially since my experience of it, it is not just a rubberstamping committee and I can't imagine that they would have granted ethics approval without a careful consideration of the project and the welfare of the participants. I have since experienced human research ethics committees at other universities and was quite surprised at how lax they seemed in comparison to QUT’s.

There seems to be some suggestion that Noonan is not allowing his work to be scruitinised, however, unless he is lying, he stated in one of the posts here that he offered to show the complete confirmation document to M&H, but they declined. It seems quite unfair to publicly criticise this work in progress and the decision to confirm the PhD candidature without taking the time to read the entire document. At a confirmation seminar, the candidate has under an hour to present their proposed research (including an introduction to the topic, preliminary data collected, research proposal etc); the decision to confirm the candidature is mainly based on the document, not the verbal presentation. It seems rather odd that someone would be so vocal about the panel’s decision to confirm the candidature whilst refusing to read the document on which this decision would have been based. Those who want to view the completed thesis will also be able to do so through the university library once it is finished. I shall reserve my judgements on the merits of this research until I have done so. I’m sure Michael can also expect a rather large turn out to his final thesis defence ;-).... comment continued in next post....
Posted by lordmelchie, Saturday, 16 June 2007 11:14:07 AM
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Further, it is my understanding that people with complex disorders, such as aspergers syndrome can have a range of symptoms each with varying shades of severity. It seems to me that just labeling a person, such as one of the men participating in the research project, as being unable to understand humour based on his diagnosis is treating him as a disease rather than an individual person, who may have this capacity. Perhaps someone at the screening at which the two men were present could comment on whether the participants appeared distressed by the screening of (or by the laughter during) the film? One would hope that the participants’ capacity and/or the participant’s carers’ (if applicable) capacity to give informed consent to their involvement in the project was a consideration in the ethics approval being granted. Whilst exploitation of vulnerable populations is a definite ethical concern, so too is not allowing them the right to participate in research.

I think jumping to conclusions about this situation is a mistake.
Posted by lordmelchie, Saturday, 16 June 2007 11:14:55 AM
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lordmelchie, your comments align with my own investigations.

Is this a case of a pair of silly academics playing out their 'hero' fantasy at the expense of unknowing crowd of adoring students?

Ideologues gone bonkers?

Sure looks like it.
Posted by Rainier, Sunday, 17 June 2007 5:13:46 PM
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Rainer, there is a comment from Prof David Gardiner of QUT on the abc website which gives a response that sounds much more believable than M&H's version. http://www.abc.net.au/news/opinion/items/200706/s1953217.htm It sounds very much that this is a positive thesis and the two men are willing participants who are deriving benefit from it. Should they be denied this opportunity? Wouldn't that be treating them with disrespect?

My reading of the situation is that these two academics have shamelessly slandered a student and his supervisor as a means to push their own agenda. Would QUT have suspended them if they had kept their attacks to the institution rather than attacking individuals? I guess we will never know, but i suspect not.
Posted by lordmelchie, Monday, 18 June 2007 4:40:51 AM
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Arriving recently to this issue, but having read and viewed all the associated material (on this site and elsewhere), the issues at stake seem clear.

1. Gary and John are quite wrong to use a PhD candidate as a punching bag to vent their spleen about the influence of postmodern theory in contemporary academe.

This particular bandwagon has been rolling for so long surely the wheels are worn to the axles by now?

Indeed, there is something increasingly rather shrill about the remonstrations of older academics re: the erosion of traditional ideas of 'quality' by younger, callow thinkers seduced by a passing theoretical fad (notwithstanding the fact that notions of the postmodern are at least several decades old, and still going strong).

Meanwhile, calls to Hold the Barricades against the barbarians are getting very tired, particularly in their wilful misrepresentation of postmodern ethical thinking. The accusation of 'moral relativism' is intellectually lazy, and a profoundly superficial caricature of the work of such scholars as Levinas, Butler or Foucault.

This particular battlefield in the culture wars certainly makes for strange bedfellows, with self-proclaimed defenders of the Enlightenment popping up right across the political spectrum. An old Marxist like Gary can find solidarity in his railing about the evils of post-modernism among the conservative writers at The Quadrant. And John and Gary's article, delivered verbally, could take pride of place at a Sydney Institute forum.

(Happily, such stagnant eddies of social thinking are rapidly becoming the few venues that take this kind of stuff very seriously anymore).

That Gary and John want to adopt such a stance is fair enough. But as academics at QUT, they have a responsibility to the students of that institution that extends to respect and care.

-- to be continued
Posted by Flip, Thursday, 21 June 2007 2:17:20 AM
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...continued

Two senior staff members vs a postgrad student/sessional teacher is hardly a fair contest, and is actually tantamount to bullying. Posting an article in a national newspaper makes it more so: essentially grandstanding at the student's expense.

Both Gary and John should have the courage to mount their strident defense of 'quality culture' against other senior academics and their completed worsk (such as this students' supervisors), not at a student and potential colleague at the earliest point in their emerging professional life.

2. QUT had an onus to respond, to defend the student (who, it seems, had followed all relevant university procedures).

But the penalty arrived at is far too severe -- six month suspensions are certainly disproportionate to the (mis)conduct involved.

The issue here is not about 'free speech'. It is a minor skirmish in the culture wars, an episode that should have been able to take place -- robustly, intellectually, discursively -- in a wholly academic context.

I make these observations as an academic and lecturer myself (associated with a major Australian university).
Posted by Flip, Thursday, 21 June 2007 2:22:25 AM
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lordmelchie, Noonan offered M&H his writing on the project, which was also all the ethics committee and disciplinary tribunal saw. But the dispute is about process and outcomes more than intentions- what happened when the project was put into action? The furore started when footage was shown, M&H's actions were in response to viewing it, and it was never likely that they and other detractors could be sweettalked with a reiteration of good intentions. Whether M&H overreacted can only be judged next to the footage. Their objections to the topic and title flow backwards from seeing the footage, and dissatisfaction with Noonan's defence at confirmation. They raised concerns internally, but the investigator didn't see the footage, changed one word of the title, and declared the matter closed. M&H went public, renewing the criticism of contemporary developments in academia, and citing the project as an example of what the system can now produce. Heavyhanded and dodgy? Maybe, it depends on how bad the footage is. That the disciplinary tribunal could not see the point in viewing it seems a strange preoccupation with surfaces over depths, which resembles a variant of postructuralism which would likely be a disaster were it to inform academic management.

Because so much depended from the beginning on the footage, it seems odd that it became unavailable even when only internal exposure was necessary, as if the idea was that the fracas would fizzle without it. More surface management that inspires no great confidence in how the project is going. If the footage would defend the project, it was a mistake not to show it. If the fracas was meant to fizzle in the vacuum, it was a mistake to suspend M&H, making their suspension an issue in itself. QUT management has done Noonan no favours, nor has he done himself many. This could only have been internally resolved by discussion in relation to the footage, and now statements of good character and intent won't do much to disperse the suspicions that have arisen. As Noonan's supporters keep saying, the footage is at the heart of the matter.
Posted by pthomas66, Saturday, 23 June 2007 12:31:30 AM
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I am concerned that people with progressive ideas and a commitment to human rights have embraced a conservative and oppressive notion of people with disabilities as a result of what has become a civil liberties and academic integrity issue. Many people, including myself, can see that the equivalent of a $40,000 fine is grossly excessive and indicates a nasty element amongst the power games at QUT. However many, not me, have uncritically adopted, supported and defended the views about disability expressed by John and Gary as part of supporting them in their struggle with QUT. They have not been able to distinguish between progressive attempts to dismantle stereotypes of people with disability and vindictive and cruel management at QUT. The two have been melded into one demonised enemy which is has hindered the public discussion of disability issues and human rights.

This link is to my critique of Gary and John's article

Laughing at “THE DISABLED” - power, perception and prejudice.
http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/laughing-at-the-disabled-power-perception-and-prejudice/

John Tracey
Posted by King Canute, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 12:43:35 AM
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me again,
on the matter of Noonan keeping his work secret.

I do not know Noonan and I have no idea what is in his video, but I have been impressed by the few select words he has used to explain what he is doing.

However, If I was Noonan I would not let an inch of footage out yet. On the youtube video "Disability community speaks out against QUT" he is threatened with investigations from the anti discrimination commission and the Qld. Adult Guardian.

If this happened to me there is no way in the world I would allow anything into the public, including the final product, without being first passed by lawyers to check for vulnerability.


There are serious academic freedom issues to consider here, where someone is subjected to hostile and official investigation.

Noonan has apparently allready said that there are scenes that he will not use and he has also changed the name of his project because of this controversy.

The judge dealing with the industrial issues has said that, amongst other things, what is to be examined by the court is what a university ought or ought not be able to teach and study.
Judicial control of education and research? Where is academic freedom then?

Noonan should be allowed to make mistakes so that we can all discuss them - a basic educational methodology that has now been replaced by which hunts based on innuendo and projection.

The reason this has occured is because QUT smashed the discussion heavily as soon as it raised its head in John and Gary's criticism of the project.

QUT had a brilliant opportunity to be a national and international leader in forging new attitudes and services for people with disability - All it had to do was manage this controversy as a healthy public debate.

Instead they have acted with an arrogant, Bjelkesque determination to punish infidels.

Drop the charges against MacLennan and Hookham and stop the hysterical distraction from the very important issues of identity, justice and innovation in disability fields.
Posted by King Canute, Tuesday, 24 July 2007 10:15:32 AM
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Michael Noonan's film "Unlikely Travellers" was launched in Brisbane on the weekend.

Here is a review of it that I wrote.
http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/08/12/unlikely-travellers-movie-review/
Posted by King Canute, Monday, 13 August 2007 7:38:33 PM
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Noonan has now released the footage presented at his confirmation hearing to the Courier Mail. Here are my comments on the footage.

"Laughing at "the disabled", Michael Noonan exposes his naughty bits"
http://paradigmoz.wordpress.com/2007/08/31/laughing-at-the-%e2%80%9cdisabled%e2%80%9d-michael-noonan-exposes-his-naughty-bits/
Posted by King Canute, Sunday, 2 September 2007 10:32:39 AM
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