Wow, this one knocked me sideways

The feature ‘Another Country’ from the Good Weekend Magazine, gripped me from beginning to end. An insight into Australia’a largest regional Sudanese community in Toowoomba, this article cleverly combined social comment with several very personal stories of survival.  The article looks at the right wing extremist reaction to the refugees, and ways in which the community has embraced their arrival.

Even if a reader was unaware of the despair seeping out of Sudan’s troubled Darfur region, the morbid quote from Corman McCarthy at the start of the article was a clear warning that tragedy would unfold within the lines which followed it:

“He said that journeys involving the company of the dead were notorious for their difficulty but that in truth every journey was so accompanied”

There is however nothing which could prepare for the shock unveiled in the fourth paragraph, which begins…;

“There is no avoiding its immediate cause: on November 22 last year, Sula’s wife Rita bashed their 21 year old son, Jerry, senseless with an axe, then used it to kill their daughter Connie, 15, before dousing the house with petrol and setting it alight”

The placid descriptions in the first three paragraphs lull the reader into false sense of calm, which in turn deepens the effect of the revelations in the fourth paragraph. Once the reader has reached the fourth paragraph there is no turning back, you are hooked.

The journalist, Frank Robinson, very effectively captures Sula’s grief, not just through emotional quotes but descriptions of the physical appearance of his misery:

“Charles Sula appears strangely burdened – as though gravity may have singled him out”

“There is no bitterness in Sula’s tone, only a weariness so pervasive it crushes the inflection of his words”

Interestingly Robinson even brings his own presence into the article on a couple of occasions. This works well, as his awkward appearances in the story effectively symbolise the inability of the Australian people to fully understand the scars these people carry. The feature addresses the difficulties faced by Sudanese immigrants in adjusting to life in Australia and the failure of the local community to really connect with these new comers despite some good intentions. This divide manifests itself in the brief exchanges between Robinson and his interviewees:

“He breaks off covering his face. It’s my turn to look at the wall. (an enraged owl I hadn’t noticed before glares back from it’s tiny portrait above the mini bar”

“I find myself blurting out an invitation for him and his son to visit me in Brisbane. He smiles and grasps my shoulder, yet we both know he won’t come”

The feature begins and ends with the story of Charles Sula, which gives the article a comfortable neat feeling. Furthermore, this return to the tragedy of paragraph four provides a powerful finish.

Homeward Bound

This Weekend’s Sunday Telegraph magazine, provided another angle on the building multicultural debate with the feature; ‘Homeward Bound’. This article takes a closer look at four individuals from a ABC four part series called ‘Family Footsteps’.

 

The feature draws you in by opening with a controversial topic; the rights and opportunities open to women in Arab countries. The description of Sara’s exciting modern lifestyle is juxtaposed to the Egyptian farm girl’s existance and this striking comparison is a strong lead.

 

“Sara El-Gamal had been in Egypt just three days when she came face to face with how her life might have been, had fate taken a different course. A “typical Aussie kid” who grew up in Sydney’s southern suburbs, the 31-year-old had spent her adult life roaming the globe in search of adventure, snowboarding, dirt biking – anything for an adrenalin rush.

Now, however, in a tiny mud hut on an impoverished farm in the Egyptian countryside, she found herself sharing tea with a teenage girl with no education, no career and nothing to look forward to except the chance that a suitor might appear to rescue her from a life of drudgery. “Suddenly, it just hit me,” recalls Sara. “This could have been me if Dad hadn’t migrated. I could have had that life, stuck there in a mud hut, just waiting, minding the cow and the goat. It was scary.”

The lead also constructs the conflict which will be central the whole article: The conradiction created between the western experiences of the Australian citizens and the vastly different traditional cultures which are part of their heritage.

 

This conflict is a personal one for the four people who are profiled in this article, and is therefore approached from four different angles. It is however also some thing which links these four Australians and fits into one big narrative. This narrative is the individuals persuit of a better life, and this idea is refferred to repeatedly in the article.

The feature explores the family background of each character and by doing this, gives the narrative a feeling of progression. The reader is taken on a chronological journey and thus given the feeling of movement or travel, as is the topic of the feature.

The language used is very basic and often veryAustralian; “a typical aussie kid”. This adds to the conflict or contrast between the character’s home in Australia and these exotic locations which are part of their history.

The article is very readable, mainly because it has a real narrative feel, with a beginning middle and end and provides interesting and colourful insights through anecdotes into the four destinations.

 

 

Faith

This weeks Godd Weekend Magazine publised an interesting profile hinged on the current fascination with Muslim women. The subject of the article ‘Faith’, Irene Khan, has been Secretary General of Amnesty International since September 11th 2001. The wrap shamelessly introduces the controversy of this article, in an abrupt manner that can not fail to prompt the reader to continue.

“A Muslim women took the helm of Amnesty International just as terrorists too out the World Trade Centre. Stephanie Bunbury talks with Irene Khan about human rights post 9/11”

The bulk of the feature provides a very interesting insight into Irene Khan’s career, it does not however step outside this into her personal life which leaves the reader wondering about this women’s deeper motivations.

 

 

The impression this article gives is that the interview was a defensive one. It seems the Jounalist, Bunbury, is struggling to get a more personal perspective on the life of a Muslim woman dealing with Human rights abuses. It is however clear that Irene gives little personal insight and sticks to the hard stuff.

 

 

“We stay right on message; her secretary sits in , recording the entire interview in shorthand”

 

 

The only point where the article seems to reveal something more of the personal qualities of the subject, feels a little forced:

 

 

 

“She read the Koran. She read, along with the rest of the Empire’s children, Enid Blyton. “That’s right!” she says, her face lighting up. “The Famous Five, The Secret Seven and all that!” It is a momentary glimpse of what I suspect is the at home Irene Khan, who likes to cook great feasts for her family and sit at the dinner table all night.”

Interestingly, Bunbury relies on multiple Bloggers for perspectives on Khan:

Legions of bloggers damned her as “witless apparatchik”, a “dime-a-dozen loon”

 

“Those issues, however, were not half as rousing as her “propaganda for al –Qaeda”, to quote another blogger.”

The feature lacks a real connection with Irene, she was obviously a difficult person to profile and not willing to give away to much of herself. As a result the article is interesting from a political perspective but not a personal one. There is little emotion in the article, which leaves the reader feeling a little isolated from the suject. What we do learn is that Irene Khan has a hard job, she clearly faces a huge amount of criticism and this in turn would make her relationship with the press and strained one.

 

“Amnesty… was an organisation that once knew the meaning of the word ‘gulag’”, wrote columnist Anne Applebuam in the Washington Post. “Amnesty also once knew the importance of political neutrality……I don’t know when Amnesty ceased to be politically neutral or at what point its leaders’ views morphed into ordinary anti-Americanism”. The widespread accusation was that Khan was predictably hard on Americans and soft on “her own kind”.

 

Khan is painted as an unfriendly interviewee; who speaks “crisply” and who could “roll with any number of punches, she is small, compact and resolute”

 

 

 

 

feminism and Multiculturalism

This feature published in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Australian e-journal; OnlineOpinion jumps straight to the point by using two questions to lead the article. “Do multiculturalism and feminism mix? What about feminism and religious freedom?”

Although Abrupt this approach works well in the context of an online publication. As online readers are less likely to have the time and level of concentration as a newspaper reader.

The journalist Leslie Cannold is by-lined in this piece which is essentially opinion based. Leslie lays out a social debate for the reader, inviting them to join with repeated use of rhetorical questions.

“So what should be done when the values we hold about cultural and religious diversity, and our beliefs about equality between the sexes, collide?”

This ‘collision’ or conflict provides the back bone of the article, and around this examples and opinions are brought in. The article is jam-packed with information, which could be expected from an academic writer. There is little descriptive colour to the piece, accept the odd dig at male politicians:

“Certainly it was the first time many Australian feminists heard the fair, fat and 50-ish men who run the nation even mention the word feminism, little less in such impassioned and unequivocal tones.”

This article does, however make use of other sources, mainly academic. Schollars and politicians break up the voice of the author, this gives the article a detached feel. The reader is left wondering what individual women think. This shows the limitations of opinion based features, which in this case despite being well researched lack the insight of a narrative of real life experience.

The closest the feature comes to touching on the real poeple involved in this debate is very brief and cold:

“A story of an Indian student facing a forced marriage that would preclude her graduation from high school. While the 17-year-old admitted that her parents’ decision had “messed up” her dreams and plans, leaving her “tormented”, she bristled at her teacher’s suggestion that she might resist. “In our religion, we have to think of our parents first … I will do it the Muslim way”.

This story is just a minor part of the feature. It was however, the most interesting part. The debate comes to life fleetingly in these lines before returning to the dry opinion of the rest of the article.

This opinion based feature focuses on a fascinating topic but leaves the reader wanting real life experiences to bring it to life. Although this is the nature of opinion pieces and they still provide a good read if only to find out more about the journalist, who in this cased has written many articles about multicultural issues, most notably To Hijab or not to Hijab?

 

Crime, Cricket and Prejudice

The SMH provided a well balanced article this week regarding the racial tensions which remain unresolved in NSW, and Sydney in particular. The Feature Crime and Prejudice, focussed on the areas of sydney which, rather like parts of the Middle East in international politics, have been labled by politicians; the failed suburbs of Sydney.

A refreshing break from the sensational racial profiling that fills the newspapers, this article was an indepth look at racial relations and crime. The wealth of information in the feature and the use of historical context, is arranged in neat clear paragraghs which are embroided with interesting language and metaphor;

“Equally remarkable is the chasm separating the reality in this generally peaceable, law-abiding melting pot and the “war zone” claims of Debnam and a noisy chorus of former police whistleblowers, politicians and media commentators who feel compelled to call the pot black. Crime and prejudice are like two hotted-up cars, racing along Canterbury Road towards next year’s state election. It wasn’t always so. Bankstown Sports Club, a suburban folly nestling amid an artificial rainforest and Corinthian columns in imitation stone, is the place where Paul Keating delivered his “sweetest victory of all” speech on the night of the 1993 federal election.” 

The article used positive descriptions of areas such as Bankstown, Lakemba and Punchbowl as well as indervidual and statistical evidence to contradict the portrayal of these suburbs as hot beds of so called ethnic gangs and extremism. The article, is not however onesided but seems to address the conflict between reality and perception in regard to middle eastern crime;

“Bureau of Crime Statistics figures show you are more likely to be murdered in western Sydney than in Canterbury-Bankstown; more likely to be burgled in the eastern suburbs; more likely to be assaulted in Gosford-Wyong. The figures for some offences, such as robbery with a firearm and motor vehicle theft, are above the state average, but the picture is mixed. The “war zone” hysteria has no basis in fact.”

“IN GREENACRE, the old fibro bungalows are making way for two-storey brick veneer palaces, often with three or four cars in the driveway. Early in the morning, veiled mothers drive their children to school in four-wheel-drives. But daylight reveals a burnt-out car near Gosling Park, the scene of an horrendous incident in August 2000 when up to 14 males led by Bilal Skaf raped a 16-year-old girl.”

The article is long, and utilizes many sources. The voices of police officers, politicians, community workers and residents are all heard. This gives the article a lively feel, and the reader almost feels part of a debate.

This description It is also a very timely analysis of racial steriotyping, as Channel Ten Commentator and Aussie Cricket legend Dean Jones, admits to calling South African Cricketor Hashim Amla a “terrorist” on air. The Cricket South Africa (CSA) are taking this very seriously. Jones now awaits his fate.

www.therevolution.blog.com

An interesting trend of blog inspired articles are drawing attention to this growing phenomenon. Blogs are piling up in the google directory creating an alternative arena for political debate.

Young media savy politically motivated bloggers are increasingly choosing to voice there opinions and protests online. This boiling pot of cyber concern for political causes has even been heralded in France, the world’s most blog active nation, as a welcome end to street protest as explored in the article french bloggers. 

Similarly the online opinion article taking to the streets in cyber space  makes an interesting comparison between the unwashed weed smelling protestors of the sixties and a new generation of armchair revolutionaries.

In general the potential of the blogasphere is being slowly recognised, and its possible function as a truely peaceful democratic forum realised. I think it is time to get involved.