The burbs

The burbs – it’s a naff term isn’t it. Been thinking about the nature of suburban living lately – prompted by The Slap and by the film My Year Without Sex. “Suburban” – it’s onomatopoeic, I think. I read The Slap a few months ago and then my bookclub discussed it. It was interesting for what it brought up for most of us – there was common view that the characters were awful, they were indicative of the changing times but did not reflect the characteristics of the people that we hang round with. I sat there feeling middle aged – it’s the kind of spin I would have despised when I was younger but have to watch it coming off my tongue so readily. Is The Slap about generational change or class? Or ethnicity? Or gender? I thought it began with great promise but lost some of the gloss about half way through. The women characters seemed like a pastiche of the glossy women you sometimes see in The Age, women in their late 30s with hair extensions and a permanent diet. Not quite real. The men on the other hand seemed entirely believable. And pretty awful with the exception of Ritchie and the indigenous man who seems to be there to fill up the ethnic diversity numbers in the book. An indigenous Muslim. Tick two boxes.

What I connected with was the setting. These characters come from the middle ring of suburbs: Northcote, Hampton. People who’ve done OK materially and are aiming to hang on to every bit of it. The kind of people that my sister hangs out with. They have pools and undisclosed sources of wealth. We joke about these coming from drugs but the sources are more likely to be more banal. It makes my sister envious. These people are competitive and use their children as shining little examples of their upward mobility. They attend private schools and toddler yoga. There’s a brittleness to this kind of existence. And in Tsiolkas’ book, a meanness of spirit. The text is a hugely energetic rampage through the suburbs and through this meanness. I don’t see it in the circle of people I know and maybe that means that I live in a bubble. One of the bookclub members, a woman who has a lot to do with schools, said she was at a meeting of principals a couple of years ago and their main issue was that students are coming to school “under-parented” (to quote her). Their parents are giving them fewer boundaries , spending more time working, and want to be friend rather than adult. Her take was that they were relying on schools to do the tough love. This isn’t necessarily what I see amongst my friends though the extended independent/dependent relationship that kids have into their 20s might be indicative of this.

I could write more about The Slap (the sex they are having doesn’t sound like the sex that a lot of my married friends are having) but I might go to My Year Without Sex, a film which is also set in Melbourne suburbia; albeit a slightly less middle class suburbia. It’s a quirky little film, a lighter take than Watts’ previous film Look Both Ways. Funny. Light. Unsubstantial.

Three things about it. The best scene happens early. The main character Natalie (Sascha Horler) is in hospital hovering in and out of a coma. While she is likely to live, it’s a tense bedside scene, the whole family around her. Her son is transfixed by the television screen. We see him with the earphones on, his face tense; he’s watching the Western Bulldogs at the 30 minute mark of a tight game. He’s holding his breath. I’ve been there – in that moment, forgetting to breathe, everything hinging round a kick at goal. Life or death. For him, like his mother – both in life or death moments. Nicely done. Ordinary but utterly important.

They have so much stuff. In a more heavy handed way, this film is a critique of suburban materialism. They exist in family squalor; made more pronounced by the crappy quality of everything they own. They are swamped by toys, clothes, furniture, accoutrements of modern life. It contrasts with the minimalism of the more wealthy extended family that they hang out with – if you’re richer, your stuff is not as overwhelming.

There’s a fascinating spiritual question embedded in this film. It’s prompted me to ask all my religious mates whether they expect to see me once we are both dead. Clearly some of them haven’t thought of this before which is interesting in itself. Worth seeing for the gentle conversation about the need (or not) for spirituality in the suburbs.

My Year Without Sex is about decent people trying to have a go. Like the latest film I’ve seen, Sunshine Cleaning. Not a lot to say about that film. I liked it. Quirky. Good characters trying to make a go of it. Unlike any of the characters in The Slap apart from the teenagers and the Muslims. Does it matter if you don’t like any of the people in a text? I don’t think so but it clearly matters to some; for most of the people who’ve hated The Slap, I think this has been their primary reason. They feel infected by the meanness. Maybe that means that it is a successful novel?

Gomorrah and the doings in Ascot Vale

I am a big Sopranos fan but have long thought it belonged with The West Wing as a study of power and family rather than a focus on organised crime. I think this is because we grow into a kind of affection for Tony Soprano which is at odds with what he really does that is brutal and ugly and evil. Seeing the Italian film Gomorrah has confirmed my thoughts about that. Gomorrah focuses on the ordinary people who willingly or not are caught up in the workings of organised crime in contemporary Naples. It’s about evil, entrapment, poverty and corruption, following five stories of people who, unlike Tony, have little power and authority. One film critic describes it like this: “Gomorrah is the mob movie as postapocalyptic warning, shot with dark precision inside dingy and overcrowded apartment complexes whose crumbling concrete and peeling paint make a mockery of the beautiful landscape outside” and in the New York Times: “no dark jokes; no catchy pop songs; no film allusions; no winking fun; no thrilling violence”. The violence is there all the time in the background, like a horrible sort of tinnitus, not in the forefront of the action.

Gomorrah works on a suburban level. The characters we meet are the kids on the street in Sunshine, the guy who runs the sweated workshop in Maidstone, the collector for the organised crime who operates out of a café in Union Rd Ascot Vale. The café where I buy good home-made tagliatelli to cook at home. In the film, we see the “western suburbs” style housing commission area of Naples. It’s grimy and claustrophobic; everyone seems to know everyone’s business. Unlike Melbourne, these areas of Naples are really run down; people are living in considerable squalor.

The film intertwines the stories of about five sets of characters. My favourite character is the master tailor. He is a middle aged man who has great skills within his trade but, for inexplicable circumstances, is running a sweatshop of workers who are running up designer clothes that will be sold on at very high prices. At one stage, we see a TV shot of Scarlett Johansson wearing one of the gowns. In moonlighting for a Chinese businessman, the tailor’s skills are finally appreciated by the workers he is teaching to make couture clothes but we as an audience are rightly filled with a sense of doom as he goes about his work. He is an ordinary man, attracted by the idea of making more money; the beauty of the film is that we meet him mid story with no idea of how he became involved with the sweatshop business. It is normal.

Two teenage characters help carry the film; they are gangster wannabes who carry out a serious of crimes in defiance of the local crime overlords. They are hapless and stupid boys, full of machismo and adolescence. I’ve taught heaps of them. Some of the kids I taught in the west have ended up in organised crime; some were young apprentices of their older brothers, uncles and dads while they were still at school. A natural kind of trajectory for them, like the kids in Naples. But most of the kids I taught had more options.

Here in Victoria, I think we see organised crime as something that happens to other people; it enables us to follow the stories of the Morans with amusement rather than fear. The Underbelly series has increased the theatricality of what is essentially a world of boguns and lowlifes. In Gomorrah, it seems to overlay life for everyone. Roger Ebert describes it like this:

“You watch with growing dread. This is no life to lead. You have the feeling the men at the top got there laterally, not through climbing the ladder of promotion. The Camorra seems like a form of slavery, with the overlords inheriting their workers. The murder code and its enforcement keep them in line: They enforce their own servitude.Did the book and the movie change things? Not much, I gather. The film offers no hope. I like gangster movies. "

The Godfather" is one of the most popular movies ever made -- most beloved, even. I like them as movies, not as history. We can see here they're fantasies. I'm reminded of mob
bosses like Frank Costello walking into Toots Shor's restaurant in that
fascinating documentary "Toots." Everyone was happy to see him: Jackie Gleason, Joe
DiMaggio, everyone. At least they knew who he was. The men running the Camorra
are unknown even to those who die for them."

I was struck by one thing particularly. Three cultures appear in the film: Italians, Columbians and Chinese. In each case its a bunch of guys sitting around, drinking coffee or smoking drugs (the Columbians). Deals are being done but there is a sense of leisure. Time to talk and chew the fat, eat good food. The women are elsewhere. Not running organsied crime. Occasionally the recipients of the proceeds of organsised crime but more often the widows and mothers worried about their kids. Would the world be different if women were running things? Would there be a Gomorrah? I don't know but I'm grateful I'm not a poor woman in Naples.

In its lack of sensationalism and hype, this is a terrific film.