Category Archives: Scott Probst

Pig’s Arms Bumper Christmas 2015 – The Graduate Revisited

25 Friday Dec 2015

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Story by Scott Probst

It has been many years since I first saw The Graduate, Mike Nichols’ 1967 classic starring Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft – not quite since it first came out, as I was only three years old at the time, but early in my life.

I began to think about how it would be seen now to the first-up viewer. There are a few obvious things about the film that stand out: it has a solo male protagonist, and so does not seem on that score to be saying anything significant or positive about the role of women. The family units portrayed in the film are all western-conventional nuclear units, and the sexuality on display is uniformly heterosexual.

So far, for a film made on the west coast of the US in the mid-sixties, it seems pretty straight in every sense.

Hoffman’s Ben Braddock, however, is far from fitting straight in. He seems confused, in shock and unable to make sense of even the most straightforward social conventions. He walks through social occasions like a sleepwalker, with some creeping sense of horror at what he is taking part in. Although everyone around him – all adults his parent’s age for the first half of the film – seem to have clear expectations about what he might do and are full of worldly advice for how to proceed, he cannot make sense of anything they tell him.

Ben is an agent of disruption, first for just not doing anything in the eyes of most, just lying around all day and going out mysteriously at night. He does not conform to expectations, or even pretend that he is going to.

Mrs Robinson, famed through upbeat yet vaguely mournful song her, is also disruptive in her aggressive chase of young Ben. She is sexually aggressive, assertive in manner and strong willed in her choices. Also, she is not specifically punished for her behaviour, unlike the contemporary trope where the sexually available woman often is punished or even dies for her trouble. She is simply unhappy and seeking some pleasure. Although she is disruptive in this sense, she seeks aggressively to maintain the social status quo by preventing any news of her behaviour from leaking outside, and particularly to prevent her daughter from partaking of the same pleasure that she has. She does not even want to talk about anything at all with Ben when they are together.

The film has a positive lack of heroic behaviour: Mr Robinson is strangely afraid of Ben when he confronts Ben over the affair; Ben does not threaten Mrs Robinson when she intends to tell Elaine and ruin their chance of a relationship; Ben breaks down and confesses his confusion to Elaine at the first hurdle. The characters display ordinary confusion and anger at every turn. There are no epic climaxes; even the confrontation at the church, where Elaine abandons her minutes-old marriage and Ben waves a huge cross around, is more ridiculous that dramatic. The real drama all along is in the obvious hatred for someone like Ben, who would cross the lines of convention and destroy the script that seems to be demanded of everyone.

Looking back, the final scene seems the most evocative of the times the film was made in. Ben and Elaine have denied convention and broken with expectations, yet they have no idea what will happen next. The only assurance is in their own authenticity, something Ben has been searching for throughout the movie, listening to advice to ‘get into plastics,’ taking up Mrs Robinson’s offer of an affair and then trying to turn it into a relationship, and confessing the Elaine that ‘the rules seem to make themselves up.’ He is no less confused, but at least he is himself.

With its dislocation from conventional values, and characters adrift in a confusing world, The Graduate reminded me of another film from the same era (1971), Little Murders, directed by Alan Arkin, based on Jules Feiffer’s play of the same name. Although absurdist and very black, it has some similar surreal qualities to the world inhabited by the characters, trying to find their way in a set of rules that seem to have lost any meaning. In Little Murders this tension is resolved by a move towards the darkest of emotions, however the loss of meaning in a world awash with social convention is a common thread between the two films.

Once more into the breach

23 Wednesday Sep 2015

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 Scott Probst takes us once more into the breach…

… or close the wall up with our English dead!  OR so the poet wrote in Henry V. We find ourselves at one of those junctures in Australian political history where it is actually hard to tell what the people driving the bus are thinking about.

I’m referring in this case to Syrian refugees – although I concede I could be talking about taxation reform, climate change policy, education funding, health, or….. any number of things.

Unless I am mistaken, our gumment is currently of a mind to do two things:

  1. Take in an extra 10 or 12 thousand refugees from Syria, given the ongoing, unprecedented crisis there;
  1. Bomb Syria.

Now, walk me through this: refugee movements are usually caused by war and deprivation. War mostly though, whether it be outright, declared international war, civil war, guerrilla war, war on an ethnic population, systematic abuse and discrimination or any other cruel, pointless, atavistic exercise in victimisation. In order to comfort some thousands of people fleeing at least one of these situations (sometimes two or three) in their home country, we are going to take them in, perhaps temporarily, perhaps permanently. Details, as they say, to come. They may or may not come instead of other refugees. Details to come.  We may only take the Christian ones. Yes, really. Details….

Okay. The basic idea seems to have merit, pending details. I would however wonder out loud how the Muslim community in Australia might respond to only non-Muslims being offered sanctuary.

It’s when I come to point 2 that I have some confusion infesting my thoughts. If I was fleeing a place, and saw that Australian jets were flying back over my head to deliver nasty things to my homeland, what would I think? I’m sure there will be assurances that the Australian missions, such as they are, will not be hurting anyone except the ‘baddies’ or the ‘other baddies’, or perhaps the ‘other other baddies’, however about 4,000 years of experience tells us that it is not just these ‘bad’ folk that suffer in war. In fact, it is mostly civilians that suffer in any conflict. In fact, Australian attacks in Iraq have recently been implicated in the killing of civilians there, so the fighting in Iraq is conforming to the lessons of past wars. That is, of course, if we even chose the right ‘baddies’ to bomb in the first place.

No doubt you can see where I’m going with this. Why would we simultaneously take refugees and help demolish the place where other refugees would come from? Without getting too bogged down in history, we might say this reminds us of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Vietnam, which I think lists the last three wars we got involved in. Also I’m reminded of the situation in Sri Lanka prior to their last presidential election, where our action to aid refugees was to give the government some old patrol boats to help them stop refugees from leaving. This, in a country where disappeared political opponents and journalists were the norm and Australia ran dead on a war crimes tribunal proposition.

Just what exactly do we like so much about refugees that we seek to cause more? Or, put another way, what do we have against good government that we would seek to prevent it?

Surely it would make more sense to promote good government than engage in conflict and help generate more refugee movements. One might think that, well, in Iraq, for example, it’s far too late for that; in Sri Lanka, we could do nothing; and in Syria, we weren’t exactly on speaking terms with the Assads. This would be to ignore history. For how long were we part of a power bloc that supported Saddam Hussein? How long did we sit on the sidelines of the mess in Sri Lanka without expressing more than mild concern for Australian tourists that might venture there? What about the countries in the Middle East that would benefit from support in strengthening government – Tunisia for example? Lebanon perhaps – goodness knows there are enough Lebanese Australians to make this relevant.

But no; we are making ourselves the political victims, in international terms, of following the same tired ideas that we always have. And at home, if you know any Syrians, ask them what they think about bombing Syria and taking refugees at the same time. I don’t personally know any Syrians, but I used to know the son of Saddam Hussein’s primary school teacher: apparently Saddam was a nasty customer right from the start.

Should we not have known how that was going to turn out?

So you’ve joined jihad -now what ?

22 Monday Jun 2015

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Story by Scott Probst

Debate, or rather the get-tough bidding war, on the subject of radicals continues here in Australia. For some weeks now the idea that anyone from this country that goes to certain areas for any reason can be cut adrift from Australia has been out in the open.

There is a certain appeal in this. If you go to fight a war somewhere else (except in our army of course), you should just stay there and be damned. After some thought however there seem to be some problems with this approach.

First, not all of the Australians are fighting on the same side. In other words, some are on the ‘good’ side, say with the Peshmerga. Still others might not be fighting at all – they might be acting as medics, or they might be women going to be so-called ‘wives,’ whatever that might be. So we might be condemning all kinds of people to not ever returning to Australia, even misled and victimised young women and their families who have gone to retrieve them. It’s hard to see how this will decrease radicalisation: leaving people with no choices but bad ones rarely has positive result.

Now, even if all the people going over there were really fighting in the war, and in fact are basically  wrong-headed in their approach, would we really want to cut them off from ever returning? What would happen if we did? What would happen if every country in the world did this?

It seems the most obvious result would be that there would be a large pool of young, disenfranchised, uncared for, trained killers. They would be mobile, have no state loyalties, be embittered and easily led, as they would not be in touch with any influences other than whatever pseudo-religious propaganda the current warlords wanted to feed them. And if none of them had a state to return to, where would they go? They would go anywhere there were aimed at, and cause trouble there.

And when they caused trouble, what would happen? We, or others, would have to send troops to stop them. The whole cycle would start again. I can’t see this doing anything except starting another, more serious, episode of war and destruction.

If they were in a proper country, they would be getting more balanced information, be subject to the rule of law, and we would be in a position to re-influence them away from whatever garbage their heads had been filled with.

I’ve been just this morning encouraged to see a political party, the Greens in this case, coming out with some thoughts along these lines. Logical thinking seems in short supply amongst the majors at the moment on most issues, and some considered debate is most welcome.

Is there any such thing as ‘radicalisation’?

05 Friday Jun 2015

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Scott Probst asks the timely question … Is there any such thing as ‘radicalisation” ?

These days in Australia we hear a lot about ‘radicalisation.’ This is supposedly a process where bad people, mostly outsiders on the internet from the Middle East, get into the ears of innocent young locals and turn them into bloodthirsty marauders who want to go into the streets of Australia, or the war in Syria, and murder others.

This does not seem to be a realistic description of what happens, for a few reasons.

First, the only way that these online extremists can come into contact with the young person via the internet is for the young person to search for them, or open a link they have been sent by someone else. The extremist cannot just broadcast into their phone or computer without any warning.

Second, the young person, for some reason or more than one reason, must be receptive to what they see and hear. Why would this be so? There are a number of obvious possibilities:

  • they are alienated in some way – isolated socially or physically
  • from a minority group
  • unemployed or with poor job prospects
  • social and educational disadvantage
  • mental health issues such as depression
  • drug use, leading to destabilised behaviour

Some of these issues have great relevance to young people. For example, a substantial percentage of young people suffer some form of significant mental health challenge at some point in their lives. Some estimates of this range to above 30%. Mental health services for young people are well documented to be insufficient, particularly in socially disadvantaged areas. Drug experimentation is common amongst young people, often leading to social and educational problems. The punitive/law and order response to this, rather than health-based response, leads to under reporting and surreptitious use, preventing this issue from being properly addressed.

Poor education also must be a risk factor amongst youth; education is chronically underfunded in Australia and recent political issues mean that this will get much worse in the future rather than better.

Migrant communities are commonly poorly connected to the rest of our culture. Recent political responses to multiculturalism, refugee issues and terrorism threats have only reinforced this isolation and made a number of ethnic communities feel mistrusted and this further alienates them.

All these conditions predispose the young people to listen to simplistic messages that tell them how to give meaning to their lives or right injustice, or take revenge on the people who have caused their problems. Added to this is the apparent romance of fighting for a cause and being part of a brotherhood – aspects which are only emphasised in recent celebrations of ANZAC day in Australia and repetitive message about the ‘glory of mateship in war’ and similar ideals.

Don’t forget, Australia itself has a long tradition of young men going to fight in foreign wars, from the Sudan in the late 1800s, to the Maori War in New Zealand, the Boer War, WWI and so on.

Combined together, all these factors are a heady mix of  ‘pull factors’ for young, somehow disaffected or romantically inclined men who want to prove themselves, to go to a war in a far part of the world to fight for a cause, no matter how misrepresented or manipulative.

Rather than make more noise about radicalisation, we should pay more attention to the ways our young people are driven to make this leap.