Standing on the Outside Looking In
by Dominic Pettman

I'm not sure I'll be able to ever hear the word "Sydney" ever again without Juan Antonio Samaranch's accent . . . "Sydaneeey." If my 30 cable channels are anything to go by, then it's a pan-European thing; the Italians, the Germans, the Dutch, the Spanish, and the French all pronounce it as "Sydaneeey," a word which constantly leaps out at me from the Babel-babble that makes up the ambient linguistic noise of Geneva.

I've only been living in Switzerland for a matter of weeks, and already I'm getting an eerie persecution complex. It could be due to the fact that Geneva has a distinctly Canberran component, reinforced by the fact that it boasts an identical centre-piece: a giant jet-propelled water fountain which acts as a psychic enema for its docile and obedient populace. Having grown up on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, I read this uncanny parallel as a bad omen. I mean, isn't Switzerland where Australians go to die? . . . flash-floods in Interlaken, tunnel fires in the bowels of Mont Blanc, avalanches near Lausanne. Even the fondues smell dangerously toxic.

On the surface, Geneva looks like it was designed simply to appear on the chocolate boxes that are sold in every third shop, but underneath the graceful swans, unlocked bikes and picturesque peaks lies a more sinister economy. I have it on good authority that the KLA bought most of its weapons here, and that the banks function as the Russian Mafias local launderette. Such clean and efficient cities only support my suspicion that all the evils of the world can be traced back to a conference-room with a large walnut table, neon lighting, half-decent cognac, and a handful of men in suits.

Today, however, is a special day, and the problems of the world are going to be pushed aside for two weeks to make way for the Olympic Games. The eyes of Switzerland - indeed, the eyes of the world - are firmly focused on Sydaneeey. I'm standing in front of a giant pyramid of TV screens in Geneva's largest department store, waiting for the opening ceremony to begin, along with two dozen sober-faced locals (mostly the kind of men who look like they probably time each event with their own stop-watches). Having glimpsed the infamously lame "kangaroos on BMX bikes" at the closing ceremony in Atlanta, I can only prepare myself for the worst, and I'm shocked to actually realize the extent of my anxiety as the moment approaches. My pulse speeds up and settles somewhere in my throat as the giant crowd counts down with the electronic billboard. I feel so god-damn responsible. The sensation is something akin to stage-fright by proxy, magnified 18 million times - one for each Australian citizen - and I pray that no-one asks me something in French, thereby blowing my cover.

Five minutes into the proceedings, and my vital signs return, somewhat, to normal. The spectacle itself seems to be approaching something we antipodeans like to call "world class," and my breathing begins to regulate. It appears that I had been lulled into an insecurity complex after too many episodes of The Games, and I decide to settle into the serious business of ideo-semiotic analysis. According to the story unfolding loosely over the turf of Stadium Australia, we are a nation born from a solitary synchronized swimmer, lost amongst an armada of mythical sea-creatures. After a pompous Englishman appears on the scene in a stylized boat, an over-weight Aboriginal man founds a new civilization with a nauseatingly cherubic eight-year-old girl. He seems to point a lot, and she nods with wide-eyed wonder, as if Stephen Spielberg has personally araldyted her eye-lids to her eye-brows. I presume that this pantomime symbolizes the passing of wisdom from the ancient indigenous culture to the new Aryan one, and I wonder why it can't be the other way around . . . maybe Dorothy Hewitt taking Jamara by the hand and reading him poetry about how horny middle-aged women can really be, while he laughs and claps and kisses a framed photo of Mike Munroe. I silently hope that they are saving the girl for a ritualistic barbecue.

Suddenly all narrative gives way to an orgy of random nationalistic references, exploding in all corners of the stadium simultaneously. Wood choppers compete with sheep shearers, jakaroos with jumbucks, swagmen with cuddlepots, billycans with tuckerboxes, and larrakins with true-blue diggers. (Although there is a marked absence of convicts.) I look sideways at the crowd gathered around the television sets, which has doubled since the beginning of the ceremony. Some of them are beginning to appear non-plussed, furrowing their brows and whispering to each other. I notice that even the commentator is saying very little to accompany the general pandemonium on the monitors.

And then, of course, comes the piece de la resistance . . . the moment no Australian will forget. It is, in a sense, our JFK assassination, since we shall all remember exactly where we were when we saw this particular horror unfurl on our screens. An army of "average Australians" break out of makeshift corrugated iron sheds, and begin to mow the grass of the Olympic stadium. A good percentage of the Sydney crowd start guffawing, and I myself have to stifle a titter in awed disbelief. Time kind of starts warping and slowing down - like it does just before a car crash - as my brain registers the fact that thousands of well-fed people are now tap-dancing around, flannelette shirts tied around their waists like improvised kilts. Painters, dockers, welders, and plumbers are cavorting around, enjoying the most highly exposed in-joke in history. My pulse is thumping again, and I have my hand over my mouth like a Toorak mother who has just walked in on her husband having his way with the family red-setter. I search around my immediate neighbours for a flicker of universal amusement, an Esperanto appreciation of the plucky lower-middle-class, but I'm met with a wall of stony faces.

At that moment I have something which theologians call a "negative epiphany" as I realize that culture is something we can't escape, something deep beneath the skin. While I can hide its influence as long as I keep my mouth shut, it colours everything I see, do and think . . .and the mysterious ciphers which transmit cultural identity from one generation to the next are practically impossible to de-cipher when immersed within a different culture. This intangible legacy (some would say 'curse') can move more easily through time than through space. If culture is a medium, and the medium - as McLuhan tells us - is the message, then what the hell is a thousand tap-dancing bogans telling the world?

As the interminable parade of athletes begins, I go for a coffee to steady my nerves, but soon enough I'm back at my spot in front of the Panasonic Plasma Screen watching the torch pass from biddy to biddy in a triumph of tokenism. But who will be the final torch-bearer? Gough Whitlam? Dick Smith? Chopper Reid? . . . But no, it is Cathy Freeman, and the crowd goes wild! Reconciliation is in the air. All eyes turn to Howard and he breaks down, announcing that in his heart of hearts he is sorry for the stolen generation, indeed for all the aboriginal generations since Invasion Day, and, while he's at it, he apologizes for the GST and the ugliest front bench of all time. The overweight aboriginal goes to hug the little girl, but trips and crushes her. Nobody really minds, however, because the whole nation is gripped with a cleansing euphoria.

Everything becomes a green and gold blur as tears well up in my eyes, and I suddenly don't care that I'm surrounded by constipated Swiss people. Is this pride, I ask myself? Am I proud of this fleeting heritage? Will I always call Australia home? Or am I just completely relieved that the fucking cyber-crane which is holding the torch finally starts moving towards the flame, and that the organizers don't have to get one of the jazz-ballet electrician-infantry to spend several hours tinkering with the dodgy circuitry.



There are at least two types of cultural cringe. One is the familiar Australian version, captured in the general anxiety and pre-emptive embarrassment leading up to the opening ceremony. It stems from the sense that Anglo-Australia somehow lacks culture, or is too young and disoriented to have forged anything truly significant to offer the world. A clear example of this perspective was provided by a Francophile friend of mine who never misses an opportunity to loudly announce that Australia is a cultural wasteland, and that anything vaguely interesting which emerges from within its borders is directly derivative of Europe. (If pushed, he would probably add Asia for the sake of keeping the peace at whichever social occasion he is mouthing off at.)

He once told me that, "when you're in Paris, you are always walking in and out of buildings that are hundreds of years old. You can feel the history and the culture always around you, and the people have a direct connection to this heritage. When I got back to Australia, I pushed back the curtains and saw a Holden drive by and the sun glint of the hood, and my heart just sank."

This traditional form of cultural cringe, and the depression that it can produce in those who have been over-exposed to the delicacies of the cultural canon, often leads directly to the other form of cultural cringe (which is, in fact, its exact inverse). In this case, it denotes "old world" people who feel oppressed by too much culture. Such a sense of suffocation and obsolescence led to the great artistic, philosophical, political and social movements of the last three hundred years or so. For every Columbus attempting to spread civilization, there were five families trying to escape the tyranny of that very same process, and the values that it supposedly stood for.¹ Even before Australia was mapped by the English, the fruits of Europe were looking distinctly mouldy, and hundreds of alternative communities were attempting to start afresh on the other side of the Atlantic. It is for this reason that whenever I'm in New York I can't suppress the feeling that Europe is somehow irrelevant, perhaps a hangover of a particularly European sense of linear history and the avant-garde.

Now that the so-called "new world" is looking decidedly tarnished, Australia offers something of a last hope for those who don't want to feel smothered by the weight of stern looking ancestors in oil paintings or Harvard class photographs. The mistake of the first cultural cringe is to believe that "culture" is only found in the fetish objects which comprise the mainstream: paintings, books, plays, operas, etc. The mistake of the second cultural cringe is to believe that you can escape the world-view bestowed on you by your fore-mothers and fathers.

Living in Geneva, I suddenly feel exposed to not only the cross-currents of these conflicting cultural cringes (and the alliteration it produces), but also the geo-political climate of the new millennium. One major psychological advantage of being in Australia is the illusion that we are somehow immune to global disasters and military hostility. The folklore follows the logic that the more wretched and peripheral you are as a nation, the less likely that you are going to be the target for a hailstorm of nuclear weapons. I've heard several people say that South Africa, Tierra del Fuego and Tasmania are the best places to be during a nuclear war; the implication being that you wouldn't be caught dead in these places in peace time.

In order to clarify some of these issues, I've recently resorted to reading a lot of books and articles on the subject, many of which confidently await "the inevitable withering away of the nation-state." Watching athletes from around the world wrapping themselves in their country's flag and running around the stadium, I'm not so confident that globalism will erode the imaginary communities which galvanize around anthems, flags and appalling local musicians. I certainly wish for a day when culture accedes to a more nuanced sense of identity and solidarity. Why can't we, for instance, see Olympic competition fought along the lines of, say, "people who are allergic to tomatoes" verses "people who named their children after 1970s newsreaders." Or "people who weren't disappointed by the last episode of Seinfeld" verses "people who have never used fruit or vegetables to achieve orgasm not even once." Maybe we can then root for a team we can wholeheartedly identify with, on a more progressive level than blood, soil, or passports . . . .

. . . . and yet, I'm beginning to realize that there is something to be said for cultural arrogance. As much as we loathe the chest-thumping and smug grins of certain Americans, the sheer confidence of their can-dooness has lead to some astonishingly great things. In its pure form (i.e. New York) such blinkered faith leads to an intoxicating sense of purpose, excitement and drive. The same applies to the great centres of Europe and Asia, for while things could always be better, there is a general conviction which perhaps passes for something like a raison d'etre. This confidence may bug the hell out of your average Australian, but I would say that it ultimately leads to a healthier disposition in those that have it.

Compare this with your local wankers at any given inner-city café in Australia, where everybody is wearing the latest fashions, toting the latest and tiniest technologies, and desperately pouring over air-freighted lifestyle magazines to try to anticipate the next direction in designer can-opener. What is the point of being on the pulse when we don't actually feel alive? What is the meaning of the new-found Australian confidence - trumpeted all over the local media - when it evaporates on contact with the genuine article? ("Australian": one who mistakes inertia for contentment.) And we can't believe it ourselves, trapped in a postcolonial mimesis-loop and disingenuously denying it through a pathological attention to empty gestures and false security. Meanwhile, the dollar plunges through the floor as if it were the stock exchange's answer to the portrait of Dorian Gray, barely worth a third of an English Wimpy burger.

Home sickness can therefore be two opposite maladies: one being the yearning for home, the other being the yearning for anywhere but home. Moreover, each can potentially lead to the other in a grass-is-always-greener spiral. But what happens when home and not-home begin to blur, and you don't feel a sense of belonging anywhere? John Saffran said something at the end of Race around the World which hinted at an answer, while simultaneously capturing the bottomless horror of globalism: namely, that "everywhere is just like Melbourne." Everywhere, that is, except Sydaneeey.

¹I can't actually back this statement up with any statistical data or anything, but you get my point.