How will the English chattering classes handle warts and Oz reality - or is it?
By JOHN LONIE from The Alliance, November 1992
SYLVANIA Waters was made, claim the English producers, to see if Australian life was more complicated than Neighbours although I've yet to read if they came to a conclusion.
The point is however. that they feel able to claim SW to be some sort of acid test of the reality of Australian life unlike poor old Neighbours which manages to infuriate the English chattering classes so much.
Paul Watson for example, claimed his verite-documentary. The Family, made for BBC, was like Neighbours but with the truth.
While I doubt that SW is the wave of a vérité future: it needs to be examined in the light of these claims. Ever since Flaherty made Nanook of the North documentaries have staked the moral high road because of the notion that they film reality and reality equals truth.
There's an army of philosophers of every hue out there who would challenge this of course but the equation documentary = true is a potent weapon.
The documentary-style is often simulated by film-makers as if to say, look, this is not pretend, this is real, it's true. Woody Allen does it in his latest. Husband and Wives though the irony in his case is delicious
In the first place, we should get rid of the documentary's superior claim to truth because like roads to Rome. truth has many paths. Of course writers and actors in poor old-fashioned drama manipulate reality
There's nothing real about an actor's performance - it's all contrived, even the most Method of the Method-istes, as is drama great and not so great. But who would deny that they don't arrive at truth As Cocteau said: "I lie to tell the truth".
The matter of reality is tougher but ever since I found out that Flaherty rehearsed Nanook and his friends. I've been sceptical of the idea that documentaries are in some sense more real
No one has suggested the Donahers were rehearsed but we must ask that old documentary perennial - how much effect does the camera have on the behaviour of the subjects?
How real, in other words, is real As real as it can be is always the answer.
After two weeks, the Donahers were said to be totally relaxed before the cameras
It's a question one really can't answer without knowing the Donahers very well. However, yould have to be some sort of automaton to ignore the prying eye totally.
On just one point, for example, the presence of cameras tends to make the shy shaver and the extrovert even more so.
The torrent of talk that came from Noelene and Laurie is possibly an indication
But in two areas SW had a decided advantage over Neighbours though I'd argue this has nothing to do with any inherent moral superiority in SW as a vérite documentary
First, in Noelene Donaher, despite her Kiwi origins, SW had something the soaps inexplicably never have a full-blown, marvellous warts-and-all. lovely and unlovely Oz working-class matron.
Is it that soap creators think archetype means stereotype? The other is that basic tool of drama, the dreaded sub-text
No one's talked about it in relation to SW except the Federal Health Minister who made oblique reference only to back away in the face of possible legal action from Ms Donaher herself
In SW. the sub-text was pain and it made for compulsive, if uncomfortable, viewing.
But you only need to sit through a good production of Three Sisters to know this isn't the monopoly or the documentary
The problem with most series. particularly the soaps. is not that They're created but that their creators make an anodyne world of cotton wool in which in the end everything, even death, is nice and Nafe.
But again this doesn't indicate the inherent superiority of real documentary or necessarily a lack of imagination and skill of senes creators.
It's their immature view of the world, a lamentable part of these 'kidult' times.
Since we're on morality. there's that other great documentary question one must ask in relation to SW - did the subjects realise w they signed up, how it would affect their lives?
My life is ruined says Noclene! screamed one headline Well, they asked for it. some would say. Yet that's no answer. The Donahers have been held up unfairly to ridicule and contempt for being who they are
There is a definite line between the public's right to know and the individual's right to be free from shame, humiliation and indignity and in this sense, Sylvania Waters comes perilously close to being exploitative
We didn't come here to laugh at Australians say the English producers of SW
Please, pull the other leg
The Donahers are both working class and Australian, the two things the peevish English chattering classes love to hate.
To top it off, they are rich. materialist and not short of views which will eause delicate Hampsteadites to reach for a stiffening sherry
But will the chatterers turn off Sylvania Waters - or Neighbours for that matter? Not on your nellie. Which means business as usual for all of us:
Life is a hundred times less dramatic or interesting than both SW or Neighbours - in the one additional writer and script-editor SW, all the dull, boring bits, the longueurs of suburban life. are edited out. And in the other, the form itself concentrates life's dramas
The most the moral high-roaders can say about verite documentaries is that their raw material comprises events filmed as they happen with as little intrusion as possible.
TO is then edited into a naturally dramatic sequence or to suit the director's intent. Fine. No problem if you leave it at that it can be great drama
Writer of the AFI-Award winning series The Paper Man, involved as on The True Believers also an AFI Award winner and more recently on Frankie's House. John worked with the State Theatre in South Australia as writer dramaturg before attending the Australian Film and TV School Since then, he has written widely for the small screen and recently for radio His Incarnations of Isabella, a dramale portrait of five leading women in Hispanic America, was on Radio Helicon in October. He is writing film script for Jackie McKimmie whose last film was Waiting
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