There is perhaps no Daily Review correspondent so upbeat as Helen Razer. Her approach to criticism has again been unstintingly sunny in a year she described the Melbourne Cup as “a networking opportunity for those who will cause our economic ruin” that “reeks of death”, or Gwyneth Paltrow as “both tedious shopkeeper and handy personification of the decadence of self-esteem.” Of the enduring political sunshine of the Blair-Clinton era, she wrote in October, “I cannot think of a worse leftist fad in history than the Third Way, save for Stalinism.”
Asked this morning by Ray Gill, DR’s editor-in-chief, how she managed to remain so very positive, she answered, with typical warmth, “Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.”
Our bubbliest critic sees the year out with her account of 2017’s most overhyped and terrible finest cultural moments.
Harvard alumna Kristen Roupenian may be only 36, but she is already showing no signs whatsoever of becoming Flannery O’Connor. Cat Person, the author’s New Yorker short story debut, is cornball narcissism dressed up for a self-involved knowledge class as Literature.
The image that accompanied The New Yorker story ‘Cat Person’. Photograph by Elinor Carucci for The New Yorker.
To criticise the story, which prompted a great recent deluge of the terms, “sooo relatable” and “THIS!” on social media, has become to criticise all women, all women’s writing and all women’s trauma. Even those critics who concede that the story’s ruling class protagonist, Margot, is not everywoman, or that her experience of being unable to say “no” to unpromising sex is one perhaps limited to those few women raised with stuffy ruling class female manners, still insist it’s good.
Well. It’s not. It’s just not good. You can bang on all you want about how its status as fiction elevates it from the sort of dire first-person lady confessional you might read in a mediocre newspaper and you can claim that its affected stylistic restraint makes it Zadie Smith. It’s still a vat of putrefaction gathered entirely to provoke reactions like, “sooo relatable” and “THIS!”
Look. I am sure if one is well-to-do and taught in the traditions of WASP etiquette, this “moving” story of a woman who once had sex with a bloke she wasn’t, like, totally into is emotionally useful. That doesn’t mean it’s good, and it certainly doesn’t mean that many, many of the world’s women were not raised to say to an unsatisfying sexual partner, “get off me, then finish yourself off, dear.”
Yes. I am aware that the toe-curling weepy was published four years ago and that its faithfully poor screen adaptation was, officially, a blight on 2016. Still, the fucking thing refuses, unlike its non-ambulant hero, to die. It’s always on the Netflix or at the local bookstore and I am aghast that there are persons who will publicly admit to enjoying it. Can’t this be your dirty secret? Mine is Sex and the City. I keep this to myself.
Even leaving aside that both text and film were made in the spirit of inspired production normally reserved for Kraft Mac & Cheese—can you twenty-somethings quit pretending that love for this unctuous horror makes you interesting or quirky?—and that the plot makes Twilight seem like Anna Karenina by contrast, why do people have such a horn for suicide? Oh. Excuse me, “dying with dignity”.
You know what? Not every person who regularly uses a wheelchair wants to top themselves. Decreased mobility does not always translate to a withering of the will. You know what does? Two things. First, medical and economic systems that actively excludes participation by folks with one or two dodgy limbs and second, the hateful condescension and pity people with a disability experience every damn day.
We would rather campaign for euthanasia than a society that may lay claim to being genuinely and physically inclusive. We would rather champion the right to death for a few than the right to an endurable life for the many.
Fix our systems of care and community so that these embrace people living with a disability or illness, then you can talk about killing them. It’s not a “choice” to die if life is itself made unendurable by a lack of support.
Yes, it looks good and, certainly, it enflames the political libido of all those who prefer to believe that Donald Trump is the worst thing ever to occur in an otherwise jolly USA. Still. Lovely cinematography and feminist panic porn—am I the only person to feel uneasy about a scene that details the painful extraction of a vagina in the American Psycho style?—does not an enduring classic make.
I will say that Elisabeth Moss is unusually gifted when it comes to conveying female pain in close-up. As Mad Men’s Peggy, here as Offred/June and in that pile of Campion poop released this year, she does trauma-face like no other. But, come on, kids. Can we cease insisting that this masochistic fantasy of enslavement is “as relevant as ever” or “essential viewing for our fractured culture” and enjoy it, if we must, as what it is: erotic entertainment for the mediocre student of gender studies.
The future will not look like this. It will be far less obviously oppressive, and therefore, far worse.
2 Milo, putative human
There was, in my view, little left to be said about this devil-chinchilla in a bespoke shirt following Guy Rundle’s observations in Crikey. Then, a TV makeup artist pal of mine happened to say, “you can’t polish a turd, but you can always roll it in some glitter.” She was speaking of a trade secret: conceal the least telegenic face in reflective material to create the impression of brilliance. We then both agreed she could be speaking of Milo’s career.
There is nothing to Milo’s central thought but waste. He says nothing that is truly appealing, or not otherwise said by many senior libertarians. All he does is reflect, via high-viz high-camp, the false impression of brilliance. He is a turd covered in glitter; he serves to mirror the most ancient and tedious bigoted scorn back to “the kids”—by which we mean Mark Latham—to blind them to the death of their craven ideology.
For what I estimate to be the sixth year in a row, our new palatable and popular feminism, which receives much of its funding from the finance sector and much of its moral instruction from the Clinton Foundation, takes the prize for taking the piss.
Seriously. Have we feminists learned nothing from a past led by ruling class women and racist lady shits? The movement begun in the late nineteenth century by some Protestant ducks who really just wanted to stop the poor from drinking grog has been reborn in a new pink hat.
When the best apparent part of collective energy is given over to “equal pay” for millionaires, to better working conditions for women of the elite media class or to praising princesses, can feminism truly call itself a movement for the masses? When red carpet couture can become a “protest” and when “feminist” writers call upon the state to incarcerate not just men alleged to have committed assault but men who have not spoken out powerfully enough against those allegations, WTF?
Seriously, ladies. You have your empowerment lunches and continue to confine your interests only to your own class. Do us a favour, though, and call what you are perfoming something other than feminism. If only to avoid your inclusion on this list for another year.
PS Remember. If you would like to keep reading Razer’s miserablism cheer in 2018, or any other part of the nation’s only publication devoted entirely to arts and cultural discussion, consider becoming a partner to Daily Review with a small donation. To retain our critical independence, we choose not to accept those funds which may mandate a change in editorial direction. Instead, this site, read by the many, is generously funded by you. We provide this work free to every reader who cares to engage in an ongoing discussion of arts and culture, both popular and fine, in a truly Australian, ergo diverse, context. We uphold this tradition through the kindness and commitment of a few hundred donors.
So, the very best of the season to all DR readers and supporting partners whose contributions, whether as comments or as donation to our modest account, serve to keep us in the office as engaged with arts and culture as you are. This is a difficult time for informed and egalitarian cultural review. With your every page view and comment and dollar, we are reminded that this difficulty can, and must, be overcome.
Even Helen says, “thank you”.
