The disappearance of centre and the emergence/re-emergence of new activism

So how about a post that doesn't relate to representations of women on television or film....I'll even use a show that I like but which has a less than perfect record on that front for some illustrations.

Instead I bring you some thoughts on recent weeks in Australian politics. As regular readers will know, I was less than happy with the result of the last election (I expressed my expected deep disappointment before we even had a result, mainly using West Wing gifs in the post you can find by clicking here). The last few months I have had near daily reminders of my sadness at this result as the Abbott government developed exactly the kind of policy decisions that I had anticipated. The Abbott governments has done many things I disagree with profoundly but today I'm focusing on one negative and one (two sided) positive (yes I found one).

When I say that I focus on one negative, many of you will ask only one? As is abundantly clear from my blog, I live squarely on the left side of politics so you can take it as read at this point that I despise the government's policies on asylum seekers, the environment, education, media funding, health funding, etc etc...right down to and including the joke and mass waste of money that is reintroduction of knighthoods (I've spent a lot of the last week hoping the government was kidding on that). I could write blogs on all of these matters at LENGTH but I'm leaving that for now. My negative for the today focuses on something else...the big question of why did the centre go?

Now part of me would love it if everyone agreed with me politically but that would be boring and also I feel that sometimes we might need the right to pay the bills and make the trains run on time (theoretically at least, years of a Liberal government in NSW and we got a rebrand and are getting Opal cards but the trains and buses still often aren't on time). In the end the important thing is that political views are a continuum, otherwise it is just the middle to far left screaming at the middle to far right and vice versa. We need a political centre, those people who are slightly left or right who are usually left on social issues and conservative on financial matters. They are the buffer for the screams...they keep us balanced, no puns intended they get us centred. The problem is that the policies of the Abbott government have created a void. The left have got mad and often moved further left by the minute. Many of those in the centre have feel so disenfranchised that they have not so much shuffled but more sprinted to the left to join in on the anger. The right have got defensive and have moved further right. There is no centre... there is only the void, the darkness and the anger. Thanks to the T.E.A. party in particular, this has been an issue in the States for a few years now and so I bring you a clip from Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom- the most famous clip from the first season possibly- to show someone who is centre right struggling to be just that...

The thing is there is not one thing in this speech I, as a leftie, disagree with on a basic level and it is fascinating to watch as the show attempts to create a centre right figure in a world where they increasingly don't exist. We even had them in the parliament too...back before the election...

Bring back the centre, please Tony! To quote Newsroom again, "Facts are the centre"!

So that is the negative....you may continue to be perplexed by my finding a positive but it is this. As was noted in V for Vendetta, "People shouldn't be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people". Finally it seems the populace of Australia is waking up to this fact and is calling the government to account on their myriad irksome policies. This means that we are seeing a new form of activism and the rebirth of an old form of activism. Most people I know have political views and they hold them strongly but they are suddenly feeling that this prime ministerial term, or at the very least this year, is the time to take that politics to the streets and to actively engage in social justice. I have gone to more protests/events and signed more petitions and written more letters since this government came to power than I have in all of my previous years combo-ed, and I lived through and occasionally protested, signed petitions and wrote letters about the Howard government for 12 years (especially the last 7 of those years when I was at university). The breadth of the dissatisfaction with this government created a new form of activism, for Australia at least. People who disagree with the government would be unable to work if they were actively engaging in protesting all the policies they are dissatisfied with. The way to respond to this is the March in March protests. Now these protests were flawed and seemed to work on the base line that we could overthrow the government just by protesting (if only), but there is brilliance in the idea too. The March in March protest allowed people to voice their anger on many issues instead of just one (effective!) and it also allowed the protest to be large enough to get decent news cover global so it showed foreign governments that as the government tried to sell their policies overseas Australians weren't happy and it showed ex-pats that the people back home were angry. The second form of activism that I'm happy to see making a reappearance is the religious communities of the country getting vocal on social justice. The leaders of multiple faiths came (or sent people to speak for them) to a vigil I attended in Sydney and there was more solidarity across the common humanity represented there than I have ever seen. Multiple Christian social justice organisations have been started over the last few months to seek to help with the plight of refugees. It is both amazing to see the solidarity and AWESOME to see Christians living out the welcome that they are call to give outsiders.

There is my negative and my positive for this week. If people want the names of the Christian social justice groups that I've mentioned, comment and I'll give you them. Just to finish so you don't think I've forgotten another Newsroom clip that sums up some (those not all) of the anger I continue to have regarding the government's policies on refugees (wait for it as I'm pretty sure it is towards the end of the clip).

"Underneath that angry young woman show, there's a slightly less angry woman who's just dying to bake me something."

Once upon a time I wrote blog posts on things that weren't related to representations of women in pop culture...but it seems my blog has developed a theme and sadly this isn't the post to break it. Maybe next time...

Today I invite you all to get EXCITED! Insanely excited! Ladies and gentlefolk, one of the strongest female characters in TV genre fiction is BACK!

So flashback to 2003...Buffy was ending, Firefly had ended, and we knew Angel was also on the way out. With the Whedon's collections of amazingly complex intelligent female characters on their way off our TV screens, the TV fans who liked a bit of genre fiction were thinking where will we go for smart scripts that include complex female characters who aren't ciphers or manic pixie dream girls? I mean, we didn't have Scully anymore either! Sure, conventional TV was made strides with the female characters on shows like The West Wing, Gilmore Girls, E.R., Six Feet Under, some of the Law and Orders (esp. SVU), and  The Sopranos (to name but a few), but genre TV (your Sci Fi, Fantasy, the more Detective-y/Noir end of Crime etc. brand of TV) was stuck in a feedback loop. I, for one, was at a loss, but it turned out my pain was to be of short duration.

A new show started being advertised that seemed to tick many of the things I like...it had a noir flavour, it was a high school drama with a twist (I like my regular high school drama (I still count The OC as a highpoint of television) but add a twist like teen vampire slayer or teen detective or, even for a brief period, teen witch (less said about Sabrina the better) and I'm glued), it appeared to be sassy and a little cynical, and finally there was an underdog versus the horrible bitchy rich kids vibe. And then the ultimate seal of approval...before it even started on Australian television, Joss Whedon said in an interview that it was the best show currently on television. If you don't know where I'm going by now, I'm very sorry for you as you have clearly never seen the brilliance that is Veronica Mars.

A season 1 cast photo..sadly missing my favourite character who became more prominent towards the end of season 1 and after that became a main character for the remaining two seasons

It was a show that kept on giving. Whedon's endorsement was accurate and all of the elements I listed above were there but it was so much more.

For a synopsis that hopefully avoids spoilers...the show introduces us to Neptune, California which to quote Veronica is "A town without a middle class". It is a town where the (mainly white) wealthy are incredibly wealthy and the rest of the town (many of whom are Latino) cleans up after them. As season 1 kicks off Veronica Mars, a 16 year old high school girl, has got tough after the events of the previous year which included, in chronological order, her being dumped by her long term boyfriend without an obvious reason, her best friend was brutally murdered, her being ostracised by all of her friends, her being drugged and raped at a party, her father being removed from office as Neptune's sherrif, and her mother disappearing into thin air. Her father now works as a private detective and Veronica "does his office work" i.e. helps him with cases as well as doing some paperwork and answering phones. As series one progresses, Veronica and her father investigate the murder of Veronica's best friend, whilst Veronica also solves crimes of week, mainly arising from her classmates. .

At the end of season 1...the murder is solved and all seems right with the world until there is a mystery late night knock on Veronica's door. As season 2 kicks off, Veronica is in her final year of high school. She is working at a coffee shop and life for her is normal i.e. no more PI work for her. By the end of the first episode, on the way back from an excursion a bus of Veronica's classmates drives off a cliff and Veronica decides to investigate. Soon enough it is back to PI work for Veronica.

Season 2 and another crime solved....until a dubious reccurring character knocks on Veronica's father's office door with a crazy offer. In the third and final season, Veronica is at Hearst College in Neptune instead of leaving Neptune for college as she had wished to. She investigates a series of rapes on campus (introduced as a plot when Veronica visits the college in season 2), then the suicide/ possible murder of Hearst's Dean, and another big mystery that I can't mention without there being spoilers.

Synopsis done! Hopefully the lack of spoilers didn't make that too confusing.

So, except for delivering on the things I wanted from it, why was it the show that kept giving? The script was hilarious and smart- Rob Thomas and the rest of the writing team followed in the suit of Whedon's team on Buffy and refused to treat the show's teen/young adult audience as idiots. The characters were complex- there was no pure black from the villains and, with the exception of the adorable Piz (college mate of Veronica's), there is no pure white. Unlike some series that start when the main character is in high school, the adults were fully formed characters in their own right. The acting was great. The soundtrack was awesome. The guest stars...oh the guest stars...Joss Whedon, Kevin Smith, Jessica Chastain, Aaron Paul, Jane Lynch, Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat (in the same episode- yay for the Arrested Development connection), and Paul Rudd, and in more recurring roles, Charisma Carpenter, Alyson Hannigan, Amanda Seyfried (as Veronica's murdered best friend), Max Greenfield (his role in Veronica Mars make me love him in New Girl all the more), Steve Guttenberg, and Krystan Ritter...OK less said about the fact Paris Hilton is in the second episode, the better (to quote a later season, "You know that Hilton girl gives you nightmares"). And now the five best things about the show working to the hilarity from the serious:

• Complex lead female character! Especially in the first season, Veronica was a girl in a man's world as she was at first the only lead female character (the actor playing the high school journalism teacher also landed a photo in the credits but that had to be merely to create the appearance of more female characters as she was in less episodes than Veronica's dead best friend) and she outsmarted them all. She was joined by more female characters in the second and third season but never was there a man (or woman) who could outsmart her. And though there were moments when she was saved by someone else, the weekly refrain from the other characters was "I need your help"...she was essentially the white knight of the show. Thanks for the quality of the writing, she also dealt more horrifying things in her life than most people ever could without seeming for a moment to be soapy and melodramatic.
• Best ever portrayal of a father daughter relationship between a single father and his daughter. There is nothing false nor is there anything that seems creepy in the relationship between Veronica and Keith Mars. 
• One of best ever portrayals of a female/male platonic friendship between a straight guy and a straight girl. Veronica become best friends with Wallace (a new guy at school) in season 1, and though one girlfriend of Wallace's had a brief issue with their friendship, by and large it is never questioned that their friendship is not completely normal and no-one seems to think that is or should be anything other than platonic. 
• Dick Casablancas...Dick is basically the anti Veronica. He is rich, he is stupid and he is sexist...basically he lives up to his name. The show spends most of its three years (he only comes to the fore from the second half of season 1 onwards) with Dick is the butt of many a joke and you just have to love to hate him as there is an awkward adorableness to his horribleness. 
• And this dance... when it comes to the men of Veronica Mars, I'm firmly in the Logan camp (when I'm not speaking of my loving/hating of the amazing Dick)...but this dance from Piz will never fail to draw a laugh from me. That said I can only find a short gif but if you get the chance to watch the whole thing...especially Wallace's reaction...you should!

So why the rant now for a show that a network cut short well before its time? Especially when the axe fell eight years ago. Well unless you have been living in a cave, you'll know thanks to breaking some kickstarter records (and I'm so happy to have contributed to that), it is BACK on FRIDAY! Albeit back as a movie but that doesn't lessen the excitement! I've been rewatching the show in prep for the movie but this is my encouragement for you to watch for the first time if you haven't or to watch it again if you have, because it is quality television to truly deserves the cult status it has and for that cult status to never die. In particular, as after Veronica Mars and before GoT, by and large genre TV women went right back to being ciphers and manic pixie dream girls (there are exceptions but they are few and far between and mainly not from the States).

And just to leave you with something that possibly is funnier than the dance above and something that almost makes me ship DiVe instead of LoVe and also tempted me to buy a "Team Dick" t-shirt (even though you could wear that nowhere without it being inappropriate)...sorry ignore the uber Veronica Mars nerd knowing of ship names and just watch the video. It is Ryan Hansen's announcement that he was going to return to play Dick Casablancas in the film and it pretty much summarises everything I love/hate about my favourite Veronica Mars character:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADKKZA5twgI

So there is my rant of Veronica Mars movie release week...two days to go!