STRONG SILENT TYPES-STUFF ABOUT MEN

I was born in Melbourne. And I lived there for 5 years before moving up to Sydney in 2000. What seems to have afflicted my home town in recent years is more and more street violence, amplified by a hungry media which loves words like ‘stabbing’ and ‘beating’. What many people outside of Australia may not realise, is that Melbourne is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world. A new city, it was fundamentally built by waves of migrants: the Irish, the Chinese, the Greeks, the Italians, the Vietnamese and many others. The television drama, ‘Neighbours’, which is actually set in Melbourne, perhaps gives some clues as to the tensions between Australia ‘as is’ and mythical Australia, as some people would have us believe we ‘should’ be. If, for example, you have ever seen an episode of Neighbours, you would notice that it is stultifyingly and glaringly ‘white’. So I cringe when I hear our political leaders denounce suggestions that Australia might be a racist country, and that violence against Indian residents in Melbourne, or nearby Ballarat or Geelong, are merely ‘one-off incidents’. Here I see the coming together of increased violence and increased disinhibition of a simmering ugliness that is racism in this country. For anyone who might be interested further in this topic, see the classic Australian film, ‘Wake in Fright’ (www.wakeinfright.com).