I’ve been in Italy for a total of nine months now.

I’m pleased to say that I speak far more Italian now, but one thing still strikes me regularly. In polite company, ‘scusa per il mio Italiano’ is always met with ‘no, scusa per il mio Inglese.’ In fact, I discovered quite quickly that as timid as I was about my Italian, Italians were equally shy. Sometimes they would be fluent, and still apologise in advance. My answer remains the same: “ma dai, siamo in Toscana, quando siamo in Australia, ci parliamo in Inglese.”

But the pressure remains. With English spoken all over the world, and Italian spoken only in Italy (or by Italians abroad), there is this perception that not speaking English is a sign of something, perhaps a lack of education or an absence of world travel. In my experience, those who speak English usually have a reason to do so, and those who don’t, simply do not.

You can try to break it down into education, but students these days learn English from a very young age, and speaking English is not necessarily a simple signifier of intelligence. Rather, it seems to me a desire to connect with something to which English is a gateway.

From my perspective, those who do not need to speak English for their work share one thing in common: cultural fascination. English provides a doorway through which Italians might understand a great body of work beyond their fair shores. It would be ignorant to say that, culturally, this is a necessary body of work and it is easily argued that the thousands of years of Italian art and history is far more necessary than that created in the US over the last 400 years. However, those who speak English are usually more interested in English-speaking culture at some level than those who have let their knowledge of the language slip. Whether reading classic English/American literature as a comparison to Italian literature, or enjoying American pop music, there is some need to connect to that world.

Just as it would be naïve to generalise all English speakers in this way, it would be equally so to assume that non-English speakers are in any way uncultured. The Italian landscape is so incredibly rich in heritage and cultural artefact that I can’t imagine ever feeling limited, and personal history is far more lucrative a resource than those found across the seas.

But still, I hear of the necessity of English, and for economic purposes that may well be true, but I would argue that culturally, there are pitfalls to opening the cultural door between the English speaking world, in particular the USA, and Italy. Already, the younger generation of Italians seem less interested in the traditional food of their heritage, the songs that were sung over the generations, or the art that lines their streets. Tourism has well and truly made its mark on the large cities and leaves few passageways for a life untouched by fleeting foreign hands. Opening the door to global pop culture at a time of economic crisis, with Berlusconi controlling entertainment, is a culturally dangerous move.

In Australia, as television was adopted on a large scale, laws were introduced for all free-to-air providers (that is, commercial TV stations without subscription fees) to maintain a percentage of “home-grown” content. At a time when it was easier to purchase a season of television than it was to make one, it was a necessity to protect the artistic occupations in the country. As I write this, the percentage required under the ACMA guidelines is 55%, broadcast between 6am and midnight and the networks regularly exceed this.

Economically, however, the threat remains: it is cheaper to purchase a season of The Simpsons than it is to create one episode of an Australian equivalent. Hollywood, simply put, has the soundstages and the industry that Australia does not. Today, commercial stations use a loophole to bypass the original content law. News hours get included, current affairs programs and morning shows too. If you can run four hours of ‘Australian content’ in the morning and create it very cheaply, you have ‘done your duty’ legally. This is why every commercial channel has a morning show full of interviews and low-budget production values – if you’re lucky, a soap opera with repetitive sets and salary-paid actors. They may be creating Australian content, but these programs are far less valuable to the Australian arts industry than fresh, high-end production.

In Italy, we can already see the hand of Berlusconi on popular culture. Game shows centered on attractive women. Interview shows providing endless commentary. This, too, is cheap to make and appeals to the lowest common denominator. It does little for art, but it does provide entertainment.

If the majority of the country spoke English, there would certainly be a benefit in terms of entertainment – hit shows would be released here far more quickly, without the horrendous overdubbing – but there is great potential for local art to suffer. Incredible American dramas like Breaking Bad, Homeland and House of Cards would soon see a change in television viewership. Movie cinemas would show original language films immediately.

However, Italian entertainers would find themselves competing. Italian films would, as Australian films do now, struggle to compete with the budget of American films and compete for the audience. American products may soon litter the streets, as they do in Australia, and Italian language music would become marginalised, as Australian music is now. Potentially, the food would remain the same, but the value system would change. There are discotheques here in Italy, but Rome does not yet have the club culture of New York. There are cinemas here, but the museums are always full.

Now, obviously Australia and Italy have different histories. Post-colonial Australia has always spoken English, but I think the point remains – no matter how you get there, if you open yourself up to the importation of mass culture, you put your heritage at risk. If you do not remain devoted to the preservation of that heritage, over the coming decades it may begin to slip away.

We worry every day about losing our tradition, about adopting new ways which are shallow versions of the old, but rarely are we on the precipice of major cultural foresight. In 50 years, the oceans will have risen, and time will have taken Venice underwater. I just hope it doesn’t take the rest of Italy with it.

Do you agree? Is it necessary to speak English in the 21^st century?

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The appearance of Archbishop Peter Jensen and Catherine Deveny on the ABC’s Q&A last week revealed a number of character traits about both, and those on either side of the issues have been quick to jump in with their support. What is odd is the way that this support has been voiced: not purely as an engagement along intellectual lines of argument but as character witnesses.

Deveny is seen as ‘mouthy’, despite working with facts, not because she is considered impolite but because she’s a woman (critics argue that a man would be merely ‘outspoken’). Jensen is seen as a misogynist, while adhering to principles those within his religion agree with, women included.

Now, it is inevitable that this piece will be written with some view of bias, but I promise you, I’m trying to deal with both sides equally in order to engage with a bigger issue. That is, that the waters are muddied every time the media chooses commentators who consistently parse their views through religion. The religion debate, when it is directly about religious practices, needs to happen, but for issues of ethics or legality, the debate needs to occur in the spheres of human rights and legislative process.

The problem with the public debate which follows such a media spectacle is that it goes along two specific lines, and each side believes that it must be just one thing. The Jensen supporters claimed he was being unfairly targeted for his beliefs, and disallowed from polite discussion on account of them. They call Deveny rude, inconsiderate and bigoted towards people of faith. The Deveny supporters argued that she was not only right, but dismissed because of the religious tradition of restricting female outspokenness and even going so far as to call the disagreement an example of gaslighting.

Those with religion, and secular supporters of Jensen’s position of authority, refuse to engage with Deveny on account of her brash, insensitive statements, seen as examples of atheistic arrogance.

Those without faith, and the more liberal among the church flock, believe that Deveny is representing a modern truth, and that the career status of a man shouldn’t stand in the way of that opinion being voiced in opposition. Many go so far as to say that Jensen is let off the hook because of an inherent sexism in our culture, and that he addresses issues from a purely misogynistic and archaic standpoint.

Obviously, the removal of religion from all discussion is detrimental to the discourse of a democratic nation, and so this is not an answer. Nor is the removal of discussions around a lack of faith (either by birth or through careful consideration) as this is a valid way to come to ethical ideas and responsibility also. However, attempting to find some meaningful discussion amongst a church leader, and a well known atheist speaker (a leader in different robes) is like gene splicing glue with a leather jacket to get a donkey. The oppositions are so heavily defined (and equally closed for negotiation) that it results in a monumental butting of heads, a divisive public response and no real change. The ethical debate becomes reliant upon the religious one, and is not dealt with for what it is because the religious debate is a stomping ground never fully claimed by either side.The problem is that all of this furore does very little for the issues at hand. Amongst this dazzling array, we abandoned the frightening mortality statistics of both refugee arrivals and the queer minority as the media circus spun its bright lights and we emerged dizzy, driven toward one side or the other by a position we had already formulated. No positions changed, no considerations were truly felt and engaged with. We were feminists, sexists, bigots, bleeding hearts, gaslighters, prejudiced and stubborn religious atheists. It is a confusion which stripped the debate of all content but preexisting conditions, and therefore strips the concept of democratic engagement of all value.

At a more basic level, there is the general way the Australian state should operate: mindful of its foundation yet making decisions which benefit contemporary progressions toward equality and peace. When Tony Jones asked Jensen if he agreed with Tony Abbott that coming by boat was the “Christian thing” to do, similar questions were left unsaid: “Was it a Buddhist thing to do?”, “Should we also consider whether Muhammad would have come by boat?”

These are questions which even seem ridiculous to write down, because they have such tenuous links to the nature of the journey. The real questions are: is it safe? Why do they think it necessary to risk their lives? Can we make it safer? Can we remove the threat so they don’t feel the need to risk their lives? Why do Christian values so directly influence Australian policy?

And these are all before we get to the ethical issues around how to process these people who risk their lives for freedom. These are issues of ethics, rights and humanity, not religion. To argue that Christianity has a monopoly on ethics, in ANY society, is offensive to those who have come before and after Christianity. To argue that faith is required for people to treat each other humanely is too dim a view to even qualify with a response. Religious belief and Atheism are polar opposites and as such, the debate sees followers of each elevate their own ethics as being a byproduct of their faith or lack thereof. Christ said to look after the disenfranchised, say the Christian leaders. We don’t need religion as a moral compass, say atheists. Once again, butting heads on a side issue despite being in possible agreement.

Later in the week, a group claiming to be representatives of the Muslim faith (in reality, an angry, fundamentalist representation at best) protested in Sydney and major cities around the world. A protest is an extremely valid means of making a public statement, but these placards preached for death (specifically, by beheading, a particularly cruel method) in response to someone exercising his democratic right to free speech and insulting the prophet. I understand why they are outraged, hurt and offended. I do not understand why the debate has become the merits of Islam. Whether they are Australian citizens by birth or migration is not important – we should not allow such threats under the guise of free speech. This is an ethical, moral and legal issue, first and foremost. Any person calling for the beheading of another, in Australia, should be dealt with to the full extent of the law for hate speech and threats on a specific individual (an Australian citizen or otherwise).

Following actions framed within a religious context can get in the way of actual insight into the event at hand. Generalising is too easy. In this case, it is hateful and, specifically, xenophobic. Such an approach would bar insights as luminescent as Waleed Aly’s: “This is the behaviour of a drunkenly humiliated people: swinging wildly with the hope of landing a blow, any blow, somewhere, anywhere. There’s nothing strategic or calculated about this. It doesn’t matter that they are the film’s most effective publicists. It doesn’t matter that they protest using offensive slogans and signs, while protesting against people’s right to offend. It doesn’t matter that they object to insulting people on the basis of their religion, while declaring that Christians have no morals. This is baffling only until you realise these protesters are not truly protesting to make a point. The protest is the point.”

If the day must end with retribution, it should be with arrests for manipulating the right to protest to encourage and propagate hate speech. The day should have ended with the Prime Minister denouncing ANYONE who calls for another’s death (including some of her own radio personality detractors). The day should have ended in respect for the many Muslims who do not condone this barbaric and torturous method of punishment, by refusing to acknowledge their action as representative of religion. The debate needs to be directed toward acceptance, democracy, and respect for your fellow man. If religion comes up in the process, engage with it for what it is and no more: why tar others with the same brush just because it’s easy to categorise people that way? Nothing will get solved that way. We will continue to butt heads.

We will not see cultural integration or tolerance as long as we give fuel to the fire of otherness. We will not grant the rights to marriage equality until we begin to deal with it as an issue of rights and not of preserving religious tradition. This is not to say that those who believe in a higher power have mislaid their faith. Instead, it is a call to establish ethical debate removed from such personal oaths so that it might preserve the rights of ALL, while promoting the safety and acceptance of our fellow man. We have already fought for a secular state to stop such lobbying from governing legislation, let’s stop shirking our ethical responsibility by engaging with religion as the catalyst for all thought.

]]> http://www.samuelwebster.com/portfolio/2012/09/remove-religion-from-public-debate/feed/ 1 http://www.samuelwebster.com/portfolio/2012/09/poem-ode-to-todays-spam-artist/ http://www.samuelwebster.com/portfolio/2012/09/poem-ode-to-todays-spam-artist/#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:57:43 +0000 Samuel Webster http://www.samuelwebster.com/portfolio/?p=1457 ODE TO TODAY’S SPAM ARTIST

I thought, at first, that we might have been colleagues,

or simply friends, by the way you penned your missive –

as if you knew me from somewhere, or perhaps,

that we had met somewhere inside a computer,

but I became quickly dismayed by the way you returned

to safe phrases like ‘exciting industry developments’ and

I began thinking that your love might be a rationed kind of love,

one that is not bought in wine or roses, but applied for,

with credentials listed for the position.

While it has been a long time since I looked, I am almost certain

French kissing is not on offer at my local community college

and so your message, bit by bit, teased me not like lovers tease

but, instead, the way that artificial sugar teases at being from the cane.

And so I move to dismiss you, scrolling the blank pages

in search of the inevitable love-bite virus of such professing

and find, instead, the message you have left me, lover.

I wonder why you hid it so, beneath the empty white screen

scrolling endlessly as if to erase what sentiment I had left,

but there it was, the raw misspelling revealing your bleeding heart:

initially, he breatheed the last draft but one before the threshold-competitor.

He stopped at the complexion, huged a lava out of his middle,

and whistled with all his might as though giving a duty.

Shooting Hamlet

This portrait is of Sydney actor Lindsay Farris. The benefit of using Lindsay as a subject is he’s an extremely talented actor. The bonus was that he was performing the lead role in Hamlet at the time, but we’ll get to that later. Knowing I was shooting Lindsay as Hamlet let me prepare for a few things. I had an idea of the character (and if I didn’t, research isn’t hard to come across), I knew Lindsay’s basic facial structure and I knew the equipment I could easily transport across town to the theatre before an evening show. These will all come into play in different ways. I won’t break down into too many technicalities on how to shoot a portrait in this post, what I want to do is re-examine my own work in detail. It might help you. I know that it will help me.

The lighting

Lindsay’s Hamlet is a vulnerable character. He is young and witty and slightly mad. I wanted to capture all of that in my series of portraits. The images were illustrations for a longer interview with Lindsay, so capturing his personality was key.

So, the two things I wanted to capture were vulnerability and unease. After all, this is a young man mourning his father, but he does eventually murder multiple people. So, just as you would expect, I wanted some darkness in the image. How did I portray vulnerability? Soft light. It’s flattering, it tends to make subjects appear younger and softer than hard light.

The angle of the light is important too – the softbox is to the left, above and behind him – that gives a light which hits only one side, giving us our literal ‘dark side’, illuminates softly but still gives some depth to the eyesockets and shape to the eyebrows. I mimicked the depth the shadow provided with a shallow depth of field, shooting on my 50mm f1.4 (a staple lens for any portrait photographer) at about f2.8 to keep only the most important features sharp.

Obviously I shot all of these images in RAW (I rarely shoot JPG) and the white balance was ‘correct’ when I left the shoot. I liked the way that a cooler balance gave his skin a sort of porcelain look, but what sold it for me was the wild blue in his hair, it just seemed to intensify the whole thing and the blue cast brought the whole image (t-shirt, hair and skintone) together.

Within this, any expression Lindsay gives comes out a certain way. In some ways, we are filtering his facial expressions through the lighting. His rage seems more aggressive because of the shadows, his vulnerability turns the soft light to something more glowing. The way I was able to leave the shoot with a lot of options was by knowing the text. I saw Lindsay play Hamlet before I took photos of him, and I knew the play intimately as well. I was able to point out particular scenes, and get him to try to match facial expressions to his character at different points in the play.

Everything else 

The composition is standard rule of thirds. His fingers and his right eye are (almost) at the point where the thirds of the image intersect. Yes, simple and standard but it works.

The focus is key. It is on his eye, that right eye which really makes the portrait. This means his finger and lip are also in focus, but his eyes, ears and fringe all fall out of focus, not only giving depth but drawing your eye towards his. For me, that’s what makes this portrait really work.

The Sitting

This was an easy one, since I am the editor at Mood of Monk. Shooting for a publication is an easy way to cut your teeth on professional portraiture. As long as you’ve thought the situation through, you’ll be fine. Another way is to contact the press office/public relations/agent of the person you’re keen to shoot. It can be good exposure for them, and if you make it clear that you’re not planning to use their image to sell a new line of Corn Flakes, the situation is mostly beneficial for all.

In Conclusion 

Portraiture doesn’t have to be daunting. The hardest part is getting the subject to relax and let you take the photo you need. Learn to talk to people. I don’t like small talk, so I tend to get carried away with real conversations, but that’s just all the more enlightening for the work you’re doing. Small talk will do, however. The important thing is to disrupt the stillness in the air, that’s where nervousness comes from.
I hope this break down has helped you somewhat. You can think all day on the technical aspects, your f-stops and shutter speeds, but at the end of the day, you’re trying to tell a story.

For more of my work, be sure to follow me on Facebook.

The bracelet men have begun to filter in, their dark complexion
traversing the milquetoast tourist crowd, one drop at a time.

Their exchange begins with a handshake and ends with an open palm,
and the fact that they return confirms its great success.

Of course, there is more than one kind of success,
and successes have this way of bumping into one another:
a bump which, between two strangers, happens like a mid-air collision,
and (on this day, in particular) I wonder
why his small success should be allowed to impede mine,
which is to enjoy my coffee, my milk and toast,
free of pigeon and hastily woven bracelet.

Escaping the ego-introvert, I forget my plans and hope, instead,
that we might both abandon our goals to look above,
where the scaffolding adorning the healing Duomo
has begun to transform into modern architecture itself.

Again, thank you to Walks of Italy, who are the sponsors for Bella Toscana.

I am also lucky enough to be accompanied by the lovely Alessia Clusini, a talented artist in her own right. She is a wonderful guide and a font of knowledge for all things Italian. She’ll be posting about our trip on her blog and Facebook page.

Images Copyright Samuel Webster 2012. All Rights Reserved.

Crabb’s article is, in essence, a recounted slew of scandals: Ben Polis, Shane Warne, John Della Bosca, David Beckham, Tiger Woods, Ricky Nixon, and Anthony Wiener to name a few. But then she takes the next step: What do all these names have in common? They are all men, she says. As if to drive herself further from indemnity, she clarifies: “When will they learn? More specifically, when will men learn?”

Instead of taking the more academic approach – what makes men behave badly? what kind of society makes these kinds of men famous and/or powerful? why are women comparatively sensible? – Crabb chooses to give example after example, each time framing the culprit as specifically male.

Let’s consider her argument by reflecting the stereotype onto women.

Annabel says, “Give a Republican US congresswoman a Twitter account and she’ll distribute links to congressional committee reports. Give her male colleague a Twitter account and within a week he’ll be photographing his donger and sending the pictures to a puzzled sophomore in Des Moines.”

Consider what backlash might come if I had written the converse: “Give a successful businessman an internet connection and he’ll spend hours checking his stocks. Give his female colleague the same, and within a week, she’ll have increased the GDP of Italy by imported shoes alone.”

The rewrite smacks of sexism. First, because it limits a woman to her stereotype despite her financial success and then secondly, it belittles her with that stereotype. It’s not as harmless as the stand-up comedian saying “men are like this, while women are like this” – The implication is that a man in power is more likely to jeapardise his career, because he is a man. Annabel’s comment, though aimed at men and not women, is the equivalent to calling all businessmen neanderthals and then beating them with their own proverbial club.

Beyond her indictment of powerful men as dimwits, she also fails to even consider that where there are dimwitted men, there might be dimwitted women. Consider for a moment Britney Spears flashing the paparazzi, Sinead O’Connor’s disturbingly personal sex tweets, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian’s sex tapes, Rebekah Brook’s exposed corruption, and Sarah Palin’s… everything. I don’t point these women out to belittle their gender; we are equal in our propensity for failure, especially in a society which elevates individuals based on traits irrelevant to intelligence or morality.

What if we consider how all of the men were caught? Annabel cites Ricky Nixon, but fails to mention Kim Duthie who has constantly been found manipulating the truth for her own selfish purposes. Shall we wash the guilt from the women who revealed such transgressions, as if they could not possibly have nefarious tendencies?

But it would be incorrect to say that women are opportunistic or manipulative when in touch with a powerful male figure. To use Kim Duthie and her ilk as proof of a female demeanour would be a thoroughly sexist generalisation.

We should not merely be concerned about female-centered sexism on the merit of it being the more prevalent form and, as a tool of the dominantly male society, arguably more effective in its limitation of women. Instead, we need to avoid any entry into gender politics which ignores one gender in order to criticise the other. The first issue of Annabel’s article is that it focuses its critique on only one side of the gender divide. The second is that it does so with such superficiality that it blames a handful of men’s transgressions on their genital situation instead of critiquing the social discourses which might have caused such men to fall to such folly.

Unfortunately, she is not alone in failing to see the bigger picture. Just last week, UK resident Samantha Brick wrote an article in which she bemoaned being hated for her beauty. The “twittersphere” responded violently, and Facebook users soon followed. They attacked her conceitedness, and then they attacked her physical attributes. Very few, unfortunately, jumped to the heart of the controversy to ask the question: Even if Samantha Brick is blissfully unaware of her own conceit, surely the editors of the Daily Mail were not, and in their complicity, have become culprits in the perpetuation of hate.

We need to move away from being reactionary beings and consider the structures which actually give rise to such transgressions. There is very little in this world which isn’t caused or perpetuated by some kind of social structure and these antiquated structures should not be so rigid that they resist the change of a more enlightened society.

Rather than simply distil front page headlines into a male stereotype, we need to consider whether the reason that men are caught out is in the societal structure alone. Perhaps, in a time where women are still not paid equally, and where very few CEOs are female, those specific women are more sensible because they had to work harder to get there. Or because they are more likely to lose everything if they fail. Consider that the Labor party might avoid choosing another women as leader, not because they are necessarily sexist but because Julia Gillard’s gender has taken somehow the blame for her shortcomings.

Why not go further? Why are men like this in positions of power? I promise your family lawyer isn’t sending nude pics via twitter, nor is the local grocer sexting about the vegetables he fondles. It is not men who are to blame, but the society which causes guilty men to be heralded until the facade wears thin.

Why might a sportsperson who can barely string a sentence together on the TV news? Why is one of our most funded industries also the one consistently charged with gang rape? Are we really to assume that all men are rapists, philanderers, sexual deviants or just plain dumb?

It’s been thousands of years since the greek tragedy was defined, surely we can move past the catharsis of seeing powerful men fail and actually promote those with the intellect to sustain their positions. And the same goes for women. The problem with Sarah Palin wasn’t that she was female vice-presidential candidate, the problem was that she was grossly underqualified.

I really don’t think Annabel Crabb is a sexist, but I do think this article is. We need to be careful when we brand people with these labels, rather than branding their actions, because branding people merely disconnects the vessel while maintaining the source.

Yes, there are a lot of fools, but they are not all men, and not all men are fools.