When I was walking down Merthyr Road to get some lunch yesterday, I noticed that the Retro Bar here in leafy inner-city New Farm has a “Free Schapelle - Boycott Bali” poster in its window. I was frankly a bit surprised - but I shouldn’t have been according to the Courier Mail:
The shock waves that followed Schapelle Corby’s conviction have turned into an angry backlash against Indonesia — with Australians cancelling flights to Bali and demanding refunds on tsunami donations.
Charities World Vision and the Salvation Army said callers had begun asking for tsunami donation refunds immediately after the Corby verdict was handed down.
World Vision said it was disappointing and could hamper continuing tsunami aid.
The Salvation Army’s Red Shield Appeal, which raises money for Australian projects, was held over the weekend and many people refused to give a donation until they were assured the money was not for the tsunami relief.
Yesterday, protesters took to the streets, venting their feelings on hand-made signs and banners.
Supporters in South Brisbane hung a sheet proclaiming in spray paint, “She is innocent”.
At Norman Park, in Brisbane’s inner east, a chalkboard read, “F–k Bali — don’t go”.
In a similar argument to some of the points I made about the motivations and effects of the Boycott Bali campaign, Geoffrey Barker in Monday’s Fin writes:
Overwrought TV reporters, playing to Australian domestic prejudice, acted as ringmasters at a circus of their own creation, asking Corby’s friends: How does she feel? Can she cope? Is she prepared? Any Indonesian legal or political inclination to sympathy for Corby could only be diminished by these offensive and banal demonstrations of the great Australian awfulness. The display seems certain to increase South-East Asian scepticism about rank-and-file Australia’s respect for the sovereign rights and institutions of its neighbours.
In case you think there’s an element of exaggeration in this characterisation, you should read Nic White’s excellent post on media and public schmaltz and xenophobia.
In response, perhaps, to the Princess-centred reality of Miranda Devine, Barker correctly states:
Corby’s tears, her claims of innocence, her declared love of Bali and her discovery of religious faith perhaps demonstrated the strain of her ordeal. But they were irrelevant to her guilt or innocence of importing marijuana into Indonesia.
In some quarters, some surprise has been expressed at the fact that Corby is the heroine of a populist campaign, while it’s more usual to demonise and condemn those who are alleged to have committed drug offences. There’s no reason for surprise here, really. Corby occupies the symbolic place of the victim - because her narrative is one of an attractive White woman at risk from coloured Others. The place of the victim is normally occupied by society (as demonstrated in the Indonesian theme that Westerners corrupt their morals through drug use and distribution) or in the case of offences against the person, by the individual victim. As the British sociologist David Garland points out in his excellent book The Culture of Control, there has been a secular shift in English-speaking democracies from a penal-welfarist model in the politics of crime to a punitive-populist model where criminal law is organised around the figure of the frightening Other threatening the social or individual victim, and where law and order trumps the rule of law and dispassionate justice. It’s precisely at emotive times like this that we need to reflect on the underlying politicisation of justice and the departure of criminal justice from liberal legal norms, and how campaigns like Boycott Bali contribute to undermining the difficult task of balancing competing interests through the law. That’s a principle it’s in all our interest to uphold.
Elsewhere: A contrary perspective on Corby at William Burroughs’ Babboon.
Precisely, and the point about the gendered and colonialist narratives that Corby’s story reinscribes is an excellent one. It’s all a bit reminiscent of the American lynch mobs when black men were accused of looking dirty at a white woman. And it has the same effects.
It’s also worth noting that the fact that this nonsense occupies the media is a reflection on how eviscerated our democracy has become - what nothing’s happening in Iraq? No indepth analysis of IR reforms? No - circuses and media clowns.
That’s not the fault of democracy, but of the media.
I avoid the legacy media, preferring blogs for my main information source.
It’s not the fault of the media, but the consumers. We’re to blame for watching this soap opera. To paraphrase that old newspaper adage: If it plucks, it leads.
On this, EP, I think I see where you’re coming from. I much prefer amateur lies to the professional ones.
…
Does it occur to any others that the whole drug-smuggler-who-shall-not-be-named saga fits in to a very old discourse of captive white women? In another time she’d be a frontier settler captured by Native Americans, or a shipwrecked lady living with savages, or a white slave in an opium den.
bloody crap, that Garland book captures the exact argument I made about hoons in relation to the system of automobility for my honours thesis!!! i was going to re-jig it for my PhD, but now i need to find something else to say for that section.
Yes, Liam, very white odalisque, but you’re not the first - and prolly won’t be the last - to say it. Damsels in distress yadda yadda.
Well, she’s not just any damsel in distress. She’s a white damsel in distress in a non-white country. It’s the captive-white-woman bit that invites the anti-Balinese and anti-Indonesian hostility, rather than a simple urge to ‘rescue’, as might have happened if she’d been convicted in, say, Sweden.
No Swedish court would convict a woman. Only males are allowed to be criminals in that country.
Well, I did say “white odalisque”, Liam. Besides, if she were in Sweden the trumped up charge would obviously have been eyebrow-induced sperm theft. Not sure if that’s a capital offence over there, but if not, dagnabit, it SHOULD be.
IMHO a lot of the controversy is because there is a question of whether she is innocent or not. Buggered if I know. The media can play on the whole innocent thing and make a huge deal out of it, and lots of ratings. Unlike the Bali 9 who were found with the drugs strapped to their bodies and who can’t deny that they had knowledge of the drugs. Her being attractive doesn’t hurt, but I don’t think you can boil it down to her being a white woman in a non-Anglo country. If she was undoubtedly guilty, then the campaigning would be for her to serve her sentence in Australia and not face the death penalty. But because there is still a question of her innocence the whole thing has blown up into a huge media circus. There was a suggestion last night that a Mexican woman caught in 2002 with 7kgs of dope only got 7 years…
I think the damsel in distress is only part off it.
I think there is a bigger cultural element to it.
That is, Australia treats marijuana proportionatly much better than the Indonesians. The idea of shooting or imprisoning for life a marijuana mule is simply ridiculous. We don’t even do that for Herion and the public perception of Heroin is that it is a bad drug, whereas pot is simply not bad - mostly because most people have or do smoke pot, whereas only a few take heroin. The upshot is that Indonesia is seen as a backwards place compared to Australia and that when Indonesia ‘grows up’ it will operate like Australia.
The people asking for their donations back is, well stupid, but supports this idea. (I made sure that the organisation I donated money to was directing it to Aceh.) The donations smack of an older sibling helping the younger with the unspoken expectation that the younger will grow to be like the older. I really don’t think it’s much more deep than that.
But now, with Corby, we have the younger asserting that their ‘backward’ way is superior to the older’s way. The older has responded by saying that the only reason I helped you in the first place was to make you better, ie like me, and if you reject that then you get nothing and you can get stuffed.
The linking of tsunami relief and Corby is nonsensical apart from one thing and one thing only - they are both personalised and they are the only connection the average Aussie has ever had with Indonesia. The donation was from one person to the people. Due to the media attention Corby has been personalised ie we all have buy-in by the same process that makes BigBrother a success. The people marching into court at the start of the trial waving placards reading ‘Shoot her’ were a slap in the face.
Essentially we were moved by compassion to help you with the tsunami and we expect you to show compassion for one of ours. You didn’t, so we strike back.
I got into a punch-up the other day over this issue. Does that count as striking back?
Goddamn pinko/yellow bastards pay out my Shapelle. They didn’t even like her tits for God’s sake. Deviants I tell you. Deviants.
Satan, there’s a ‘c’ in Schapelle. There’s also a ‘c’ in ‘chauvinist’, but none in ‘troll’.
“…but “cunt” is a word with you in it.”
I am hoping like hell nobody writes “Schapelle: The Musical”.
“…brown paper packages tied up with string,
“These are a few of my favourite things!”
Indonesian prison guard: “Consider yourself at ‘ome! Consider yourself part of the family!”
Of course.
“Give ‘em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle ‘em
Give ‘em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate…”
16, going on 17 (years)
We’ve grown accustomed to her face
A large-breasted, over-plucked maid sings from between the bars:
“For I’m called Little Buttercup — dear Little Buttercup,
Though I could never tell why,
But still I’m called Buttercup — poor little Buttercup,
Sweet Little Buttercup I!”
Nothing says “Nerd” like quoting Gilbert and Sullivan.
Me? I was raised on the stuff.
Harry,
I’ll wager your sainted cargo pants that few nerds can name the opera containing the verse I lifted. An obscenely detailed recollection of The Simpsons might prove of some assistance, however.
Anyone care to try for a libretto on the next media circus?
Mmh, that’s a curly one. What rhymes with West Papua?
More importantly, are there any big-breasted [WHITE!] damsels involved?
Doesn’t quite scan, does it Fyodor?
However, Andrew’s point is a good one. Panem et circenses.
I don’t see my posts as contrary, but as perhaps complementary. I’ve no doubt the media circus has played on our xenophobia. I’ve also no doubt that there would be plenty of Indonesians who’d have sympathy for Corby too.
There is (obviously!) great tension between those who want to preserve correct international etiquette above all, and those who prefer to disregard any short-term ethnic sensitivities and deal with the substantive problem in isolation.
The former thus concentrate on the commercial media’s crass presentation and the resulting xenophobic response. The latter, perhaps rashly given the reality of the former’s fears, promote the Corby case in order to attack inhumane anti-drug laws regardless of jurisdiction.
My position was staked out well before the hysteria went critical. It boils down to a repugnance for the tribe sacrificing the few in the name of protecting the many who, however, happen to be in very large part complicit in the “substance abuse” problem. I didn’t even mention Corby’s name in that first post, as my position didn’t originate with her story.
Now the current episode has turned insane. To the point that I very largely concur with Mark’s points - even while finding the “white woman being violated” explanation a bit reductionist - there have been more strands involved than that.
Therefore I propose to follow Andrew Bartlett’s advice from here on in.
Ah bugger it, I will post similar just to wrap it up on my own blog as well.
Fair enough, wbb, sorry if I misconstrued the intention of your posts.