28 June 2009

Vanity Fair Portraits






The National Portrait Gallery in Canberra is showing an exhibition of celebrity portraits from Vanity Fair magazine spanning the 1920s and 30s and the 1980s to the present. These portraits of Douglas Fairbanks Jnr and his then wife Joan Crawford (top), Louise Brooks (middle) and Liza Minnelli (bottom) come from the exhibition. I saw the exhbition this week and it was quite a bit more interesting than the celebrity vanity piece I was expecting.

In reviewing this exhibition, Andrew Stephens of The Age suggests that Vanity Fair's appeal has lain in its promise to get "behind" the manufactured celebrity smiles to the "real" person underneath, which in this age of so-called "celebrity culture" where there is neither privacy nor mystery about any vaguely public figure is really no mean feat. I don't entirely agree that there is any real depth to these photos in terms of insight to the "real" celebrity: you are looking at highly posed, highly structured, highly controlled, generally contrived images of professionals whose job is to project an image taken by professionals whose job it is to capture glossy images of image professionals. In other words, there is no escaping the artifice of the subject or the situation. The photos do not give you any insights to who the "real person" may be beneath the air-brushed, posed image. And nor should they really - celebrities have a right to a public and a private persona, and why should we the masses have any right to see or even glimpse their private selves?

What the Vanity Fair "style" does seem to offer, however, more so than your standard celebrity mug shots, is a suggestion of intimacy and a highly polished presentation that makes the images at once engaging and interesting. All the famous images from the post-1983 incarnation of Vanity Fair are here: the iconic, celebrity-friendly images of Mario Testino, Herb Ritts, Annie Liebowitz, Bruce Weber and David Lachapelle. We have the dancing Nancy and Ronald Reagan, the smiling black and white grainy Princess Diana, Raquel Welch and the naked swimming team, Joan and Jackie Collins in sunglasses in the back of a limo, pregnant Demi Moore, all those "Hollywood" group tableaux.

Most interesting in my opinion were the photos from the earlier version of the magazine: the 1920s and '30s photos of not only movie stars but also writers (many of whom, like DH Lawrence, I had never even seen a photo of before), painters, dancers and other artists, suggesting the far broader palette of popular creative artists that existed in the earlier part of the last century compared to the movie star-obsessed focus of the early years of this century.

27 June 2009

Livable city = unaffordable city?

As a follow-up to my recent post questioning the value of the "most livable cities" rankings, here is an interesting article that raises a very pertinent point that I am embarrassed not to have thought of myself: generally, the more "livable" a city, the less affordable its housing. This does rather suggest a very stratified society in the "livable" cities, does it not?

Interestingly, Berlin, one of my favourite cities and certainly one of the most affordable European cities at present due to its municipal bankruptcy and high unemployment (factors that have contributed to it again becoming a centre for art and culture and nightlife), scraped in at number 22, behind fellow German cities Hamburg and Frankfurt, both lovely cities but also vastly less affordable in terms of housing and cost of living than Berlin.

26 June 2009

Cultural snobbery in planning policy

In defending the annihilation of his own government's long-term planning policy by massively expanding the urban growth boundary to promote urban sprawl as the preferred future urban form for Melbourne, Victorian planning minister Justin Madden has branded anyone opposing those plans as peddlers of "cultural snobbery", a term he obviously likes becuase he uses it no less than three times in this spirited article he wrote for the Age yesterday.

And spirited it should be: an able minister, which by all accounts Madden is, ought to be able to defend his policy positions robustly. And his underlying question - about whether there is an element of elitist "urban cringe" supporting the arguments of those that promote urban consolidation over sprawl - is a valid question to ask. I just happen to be one of the many that disagree with his conclusions.

Madden's position, justified through his emotive recollections of his own boyhood experiences of growing up on the urban fringe, toughing it out with other battler families and determined as a politician not to deny that wonderful formative opportunity to other struggling young families determined to secure their own Australian dream on the urban fringe, seems to be that you should just have an endlessly growing realm of outer suburbia - sprawl ad finitum. He does not seem to consider that the sprawl should end at any point. Since there will always be young families wanting to build new houses on the urban fringe, there should apparently be an ever expanding urban fringe to accommodate those wishes. This is hardly a very sustainable position - does it mean Melbourne should just spread onwards and outwards forever?

I take particular exception to these comments:

Our city is growing and we need to provide housing options so that Victorians have the opportunity to own their own homes.

Why? Firstly, the growth projections are just that, projections, and they should be just one tool employed to shape policy; there ought also to be a component of shaping the sort of future we want, not just reacting to modelling. Secondly, the Australian obsession with home ownership needs to be questioned. In other countries long-term rental accommodation is not only a viable form of secure accommodation, but it is the norm in terms of tenure type. Here, rental accommodation is structured in such a way that it can only ever be a short to medium term option. If we really wanted to innovate, we'd look at a major restructuring to how our rental markets work to make long-term renting a viable option for more people.

Balance is about fast-tracking key building projects to create more jobs to help Victoria through the global financial crisis.

I do not think that planning policy, which more than any other realm of government policy creates a lasting, irreversible legacy in terms of a built environment, is an appropriate conduit through which to progress short-term (and arguably short-sighted) economic development and employment strategies, because we have to live with the results of it for a long time after the short-term benefits have dissipated.

Michael Jackson dies

Unexpected news this morning that Michael Jackson has died. I was never a huge fan of Jackson's but his talent was undeniable, initially as a child performer and then later as one of the true innovators of the "video clip" pop music age of the 1980s. From the peaks of those successes he became, I think, something of a tragic figure, and I've always seen his descent into the realms of the truly bizarre as an indictment of the strange, shallow, invasive and ultimately destructive so-called cult of celebrity that seems to define our times, and of which Jackson arguably was a victim. I wonder what will happen to his unfortunately named children?

23 June 2009

Thinking inside the box

A friend of mine told me a few years ago how he plans to build a low-cost retirement house consisting of 5 shipping containers configured around a central courtyard with one of those Mexican outdoor fireplaces in the middle of it on a rural property somewhere in northern New South Wales. I was not entirely convinced, mainly because of the narrowness of the containers as anything else, but then he is a very capable person and very good at envisaging building projects and then making them happen, so quite probably he is onto something.

Certainly there does seem to be a logical sort of appeal to reusing some of the thousands of shipping containers lying about in retirement around the world. The Dutch seem to like the idea, having set the first ever series of Big Brother inside a shipping container and then constructed student housing in Amsterdam from recycled containers (you can read about it here and here).

Student housing is one thing, but would you want to live in a shipping container on a more permanent basis? How do you get cross-ventilation? What about the economics of heating or cooling? The Domain supplement in this week's Sunday Age had two articles about container housing. The first was about a new container called "Small is Smart" designed by Australian firm Fulton Salomon. They propose it be used for holiday homes, granny flats, student accommodation and retirement villages as well as social, worker and emergency housing. It includes an "edible" wall vegetable garden on the exterior, and I suppose you could also include some solar panels, a water tank and a grey water system to make it even more sustainable. It's small, with a Pullman style bed and only room for two chairs at the dining table and one small couch in the living area. Using the salvaged container reduces the carbon footprint of new construction and keeps costs very low. It certainly looks a bit more luxurious than the caravan and annex that my grandparents lived in for many years, but personally I think I'd need a little bit more space.

That bit more space is suggested in the "respod" designs of MG Architecture. I must say I quite like the 3 bedroom C-type design with the corrugated steel cladding. I think it looks great and functional too.

One of the immediate problems with container housing, mentioned in the second article in the Age, is that in Australia at least we are still a long way from accepting innovative approaches to housing solutions, probably because we just don't have the same level of housing shortages evident in more crowded urban areas of the world. In particular, using containers for social housing in Australia would almost certainly contribute to social stigma.

It's certainly an interesting idea though and one which we need to explore further if we want to become more sustainable in our residential building practices.

22 June 2009

In praise of the second banana


A while ago I was watching a re-run of I Love Lucy and I was suddenly struck by an undeniable truth: for all her acclaim and adoration, Lucy Ball was simply nowhere near as funny or interesting as her more subtle sidekick Vivian Vance. Lucy’s broad farce and hammy humor may have won her legions of fans and ensured her several decades as one of TV’s most powerful stars, but the fact remains: to a modern audience Lucy’s over-the-top slapstick is dreadfully dated. Her sidekick Vivian is much funnier. Her droll turn of phrase and eye-rolling runs rings around Lucy’s physical gags, and in retrospect it is clear that an important component of the show’s success was the chemistry between the hammy lead and her deliciously underplayed sidekick.

Edina and Patsy. Mary and Rhoda. Cybill and Maryann. Grace and Karen (and Will and Jack, sort of). The list of female comedic duos whose success is attributable to the star/sidekick dynamic is considerable and traces back to the dramatic “women’s pictures” of the 1940s. The prototype for the sidekick was pioneered by the likes of Eve Arden and Thelma Ritter, women who made whole careers out of playing supporting parts and often stole the picture with their clever characterizations of the sidekick. In her book All About Thelma and Eve: Sidekicks and Third Wheels, Judith Roof suggests that it's the "perversity, middleness and implied queerness" of these minor female roles that makes them so fascinating to viewers.

Eve Arden’s delicious portrayal of Joan Crawford’s best friend in the classic 1945 film noir/melodrama hybrid Mildred Pierce, an interesting film on many levels, not least because of its depiction of a female friendship, is one of the best known early "best friend" parts. As Crawford’s pal Ida, Arden creates a vivid, multi-layered character at once glamorous, experienced, and insightful – she sees the train wreck coming well before the tortured lead Crawford. Ida is totally glamorous and deliciously cynical, speaking her mind in a way the Crawford character is never permitted to do. Because her screen time is so limited, the audience always wants to know more about the rather mysterious and often acid-tongued Ida – we can’t help but wonder, in the back of our minds, about the exciting and man-filled life Ida must be living off-screen.

The Ida prototype became a staple of women’s films, serving the important purpose of speaking for the audience and providing a much-needed confidante for the suffering lead. Thelma Ritter played a sort of Ida without the glamour as Bette Davis’s wonderfully quick-witted and insightful maid Birdie in All About Eve – and her character is the only one to see through Davis’s scheming rival. In women’s pictures the sidekick is always cynical, quick-witted – and wise.

By the 1960s, though, the big screen sidekick had developed some new elements; primarily, she was losing her dignity. Ritter’s sidekicks in the Doris Day sex romps still had the best lines and the subversive cynicism, but she was often a drunk and man-hungry (Ida was man-hungry too, but she really could have had her pick of them). Perhaps the sidekick was becoming too much of a threat to the lead and her appeal needed to be neutralized by making her an alcoholic, emphasizing her comedic appeal?

Through the 1960s and ‘70s the women’s picture died and the sidekick found her way onto TV sitcoms. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was an important program from a feminist perspective, but looking at it today the perpetual doormat character of Mary is just plain annoying and irritatingly naïve. Her sidekicks, however, the blunt Rhoda (Valerie Harper, a fabulously droll graduate of the Vivian Vance school) and prickly Phyllis (Cloris Leachman) were vastly more interesting and doubtlessly underrated factors in the show’s early success and its enduring appeal. Rhoda was everything a woman could want in a best friend: funny, supportive, and stylish. She was also allowed to have a lot of other, more interesting, personality traits which Mary was not allowed to have: she was overtly man-hungry, appealingly self-deprecating, and she could be quite the bitch. She even had a more interesting family than Mary, capitalized upon in the spin-off program Rhoda (and in which, fittingly, the show was often stolen by Rhoda’s own sidekicks, her frumpy sister and her passively aggressive mother). On Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda’s appeal came from the fact that, as a secondary character, she could say and do the things that goody-two-shoes Mary could never get away with, and it is this aspect of the sidekick that is the crux of her enduring appeal: she is more interesting than the lead because her secondary status allows her to be far more multi-faceted, cruder, sexier, and therefore ever so subversive in espousing counter-establishment opinions.

The sidekick never irritates us because she does not have to carry the show: we always want to see more of her and hear more of her homespun wit or her raunchy one-liners, but often we just want the whining lead to shut up. We never see enough of the sidekick to get annoyed with her – that’s also why she usually gets the best lines.

The height of TV’s popularity in the 1980s brought a dearth of female buddies employing the sidekick dynamic. Women were sworn enemies in the popular soap operas of the era (Krystle and Alexis in Dynasty being the most notable example), while the most important female-driven sitcoms featured aloof, acidic career women curiously lacking in female friends (Murphy Brown), or ensemble casts with no second bananas (The Golden Girls) – although Roseanne used the classic sidekick dynamic with its engaging relationship between the crass, overweight Roseanne and her slightly neurotic, slightly sexy and sometimes bizarre sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf).

The 1990s brought the return of the sidekick with the seminal British comedy Absolutely Fabulous. Alcoholic tramp Patsy is totally over-the-top and light years from the wisdom and glamour of Ida in Mildred Pierce. Although Patsy (Joanna Lumley) still fulfils that vital role of gal pal and ostensible second banana (and in classic sidekick style Patsy always steals the show), Patsy’s femininity is totally exaggerated to the point where she looks like a drag queen and behaves like a gay man. This new sidekick persona introduced a new element of subversion: she could be totally immoral and never suffer consequences that the lead would. Unlike the all-talk man-eating Ida or the desexualized Ritter of the ‘60s sex romps, this latter day sidekick drank like a fish and screwed around as much as she wanted to. The female lead could never get away with such immorality without being punished in the end: Edina was usually humiliated in one way or another, but Patsy just went about her business.

This raises the question: when did the sidekick turn into such a lush, and why? Cybill Shepherd’s showcase comedy Cybill proved her a competent comedienne, but it was her hard-drinking gal pal Maryann (the elegant Christine Baranski) that won all the laughs, much as the ever-drunk Karen (Megan Mullally) famously stolen the show from her less interesting gal pal (and series star) Grace in Will and Grace. Perhaps the drinking is another way to neuter the sidekick and ensure the audience never takes her too seriously, but there is something more happening here: nastiness. Maryann and Karen, and even Patsy, are aggressive towards their supposed friends, often belittling and undermining them, often quite bitchy, and not at all like the supportive best friends of Ida or Rhoda’s days. Maybe they are resisting their secondary status? Maybe it’s a post-feminist backlash against the disappointments of sisterhood?

In any case, today it seems that the sidekick has once again been relegated – for now at least. But rest assured, she’ll return some day. Personally I just hope she’s more in the guise of a glamorous cynic like Ida, or a witty sage like Birdie, or even or lovable loudmouth like Rhoda, rather than the nastier, more recent incarnations.

20 June 2009

Down with the muliplexes!


I loathe large multiplex cinema, am left cold by "blockbusters" and "high concept" movies, and I would like to shoot whoever thought it was a good idea to take our cinemas out of our local commercial shopping strips, where they served as both an architectural and a local cultural landmark and community focal point, and decided to instead dump them into bland shopping malls. Along with post offices and town halls, cinema buildings served an incredibly important architectural purpose in constructing the civic identities of our communities. Just as it is a criminal shame that Australia Post has sold off all of their lovely old buildings and moved our post offices into bland retail premises in the local shopping malls, it is also a shame that our cinemas have morphed into "multiplexes" attached to horrid indoor shopping malls, with no individual (or redeeming) characteristics, and robbing us not only of characterful cinema buildings but also, frankly, of good cinema.

In recent years, several of my favourite old cinemas have closed: the Valhalla in Sydney and the Lumiere in Melbourne. Luckily, both cities still have many great stand-alone arthouse cinemas, and I concede that that is thanks in no small part to chains such as Dendy and Palace which saw the niche market for arthouse cinemas and operate several great cinemas in both cities as well as in Brisbane and Canberra. I frequent a number of cinemas in Melbourne, and I'm grateful for them: the Westgarth, Rivoli and Brighton Bay are lovely old cinema buildings that have survived by adding additional auditoria and showing a mix of mainstream and arthouse releases, and by surviving they provide wonderful anchors to their local shopping strips, as to the Balwyn, George and Sun cinemas also in Melbourne. I also go to Cinema Nova, Kino and Como, which all have good film selections but are located inside of shopping malls and have no street presence or architectural identify of their own.

In Canberra, where so many of my formative teenage years were spent going to see arthouse and classic revival movies at the Electric Shadows Twin Cinemas and the single-screen Center Cinema (in pre-Imax days the largest screen in Australia, which made it sublime for revivals of Doctor Zhivago and Gone with the Wind, and which was housed into a truly beautiful Enrico Taglietti building later converted into a nightclub), it was a sad event when both of these institutions closed in 2006 to make way for the Dendy multiplex, located within the gigantic Canberra Centre shopping mall. Dendy shows a mix of mainstream and arthouse films. Their 6 or 8 screen (I forget how many there are) are housed in rather bland auditoria that are undoubtedly more comfortable than the legendarily uncomfortable seats in Electric Shadows' long, narrow red and blue cinemas, although they are really no match for the deep 1960s chic of the seats in the huge old Center Cinema auditorium. What the Dendy lacks, however, is the character and the sense of intimacy, the sense of spontaneous camaraderie that arose with your fellow film goers for the shared experience of a great or awful film in those old cinemas.

Multiplex film going is a strangely detached experience, somehow seeming far more crass and commercial and less special than going to an aged, old, not very luxurious, but deeply authentic arthouse cinema where the quality of what was on the screen mattered more than the luxury of the surroundings or whether you could take your overpriced glass of wine in with you, where there was a lot more attention paid to getting the projection just right and the sound just right than there was to up-selling at the candy bar. The dominance of the multiplex has robbed us of something sacred in the film going experience.

I am very thankful that Melbourne still has so many independent, arthouse cinemas. They serve a wonderful cultural purpose, and of course a wonderful urban planning purpose as they often form the soul of a small, local shopping and dining street precinct, but these cinemas need not be relics: the James Street precinct in Brisbane is a relatively new development of shops and eateries centred around a covered food market and a freestanding cinema building; so maybe there is hope that the multiplexes have had their day? Down with the multiplexes!

17 June 2009

Urban orchards and city permaculture

This weekend's Age had a nice little article about urban permaculture, which mentions the planting of edible landscapes or urban orchards in new housing estate developments around Melbourne. I'm really interested in issues about sustainable food supply and about urban home and market gardening. It seems to me crazy that in this era of concern for "sustainability" we seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak; by increasing residential densities (and average house sizes) and also reducing private outdoor space we are also removing the ability for households to engage in home food production, which is an important aspect of sustainable (and cost effective) food supply. At the same time we are pretty much getting rid of urban market gardens. So planting edible landscapes in new estates and encouraging urban orchards seems to me to be one really good way to address that problem.

My partner Tom is a keen gardener. I am less keen but I like to grow vegetables and compost, something I think is genetically inherited as both my father and grandfather always have vegetables growing in their backyards. Tom's a member of the Digger's club, which I highly recommend for anyone with a garden and an interest, no matter how slight, in permaculture, organic gardening and heirloom plants as they are stridently anti-GM (as am I) and sell a huge range of heirloom seeds. They also have provided this excellent plan for how you can turn an average back garden into your own market garden. I must say the idea of self-sufficiency really appeals to me.

Of course not everyone has a back garden, including me at the moment as I currently live in a small flat in inner Melbourne with not so much as a balcony. It's frustrating to have no composting faiclities and nowhere to grow so much as a tomato and some basil. This raises the question of what are the self-sufficiency options for an urban dweller? Well, they're limited, but there do seem to a growing number of community gardens in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney. These gardens seem to be as much about building community and social experiences as they are about sustainable food supply, and in this regard they have been shown to be especially helpful in large public housing estates. I'm all for building community, although the closest I think I would get to them myself is buying food at their farmers' markets (and I am conscious of food miles, or kilometres perhaps I should call them, so I do buy a lot of my fresh food at markets). Personally, I just don't think I am cut out for the communal gardening experience, but I do think it's a really great idea and it does seem to be quite a movement.

There are a lot of interesting blogs on the topic too, such as this one, which has a very detailed explanation of the community food growing movement in Melbourne, and this one, which is more of a global blog about sustainable food supply, food miles and that sort of stuff.

The other option for urban dwellers, which seems less common in Australia, is the European allotments idea, where you lease a small outdoor patch for your private use. This does appeal to me somewhat. A few years ago I spent a week in Stockholm in their summer, staying on the island of Södermalm. Stockholm is a really beautiful and interesting city, and Södermalm is a really interesting, vibrant area. It is densely populated and is full of apartment buildings, and I think Greta Garbo was born there. On the southern side of the island is a large park, the necessary green lung that makes a dense urban area livable, called Tantolunden, and that park has a huge area of allotments. It's a real joy to walk through and see the people tending to their little patches. I'm not sure how democratic it is, as apparently these allotments are now very expensive and demand far exceeds supply as you can imagine, but what joy it must be to have one? I think it's a marvellous idea. Here are some more photos and a description of the area I found in a lovely travel blog.

Allotments are a good option for urban dwellers to grow vegetables (if they're lucky enough to get one), and do you know, I could just see myself, as a younger and less depressed version of Arfur Fowler from EastEnders, tending to his allotment on the weekends. It seems a great way to balance an urban lifestyle in the requisite high density apartment as mandated by the consensus of post-Ebenezer Howard urban theorists with the human urge to grow and eat at least some of one's own food.

14 June 2009

Some stuff I liked about San Francisco




















As I have been sorting through my photos from the San Francisco trip and reliving the lovely experience, I thought I might do a post about five things I particularly liked about the city in terms of urban design. If you want to see some more of the photographs, you can look at my Photobucket site.

1. Fast, easy, cheap, reliable transit: I've already commented favourably on their excellent integrated transport systems, the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit ) and the Muni (Municipal Transit Authority) networks, so I'm including a picture of one of the Muni trams here. They call them "trains" in San Francisco but they are really light rail trams (I'll concede though that the BART trains are trains). Unfortunately when we were there it looked as though Muni services were going to have to be scaled back substantially as a result of substantial budget cuts. I really hope they don't stuff it up. The networks integrate and function as well as any I've seen in European systems (think U and S bahn services in German cities, for example), and pretty much cover the whole city and Bay Area. The Muni electric buses were also very convenient and reliable. I think they have a really great system. And with all those hills, the trams and buses come in very handy for the tourists.

2. Charming urban parks: I did a post about South Park, one of my favourite little places in San Francisco. Another stand out in the Mission District, which was an area that was colourful and full of life (also in places full of homeless people, as I noted all of the "flat" districts were, and this was one aspect of the city I found somewhat confronting) and its beloved Dolores Park, a beautiful and heavily used green space in one of the most densely populated areas of this very densely populated city (the second highest population density in the US behind Manhattan, and hardly any skyscrapers, which strongly demonstrates one of my main gripes as an aspiring urban planner: yes, we need to encourage higher densities in our cities, but high density does not have to mean high rise. San Francisco proves that, as do many European cities. I really that our approach to increasing densities in Australian cities is going to leave us with too many over-sized, ugly developments with not enough green spaces - but I am digressing here!) The point is, Dolores Park is a perfect example of a multi-function open space in a high density area that gets used from morning till night by sunbathers, families, students and idlers; on weekends there are fairs and shows, and at night it provides shelter for a lot of homeless people by the looks of it, so the park is getting a lot of use. At the other end of the scale, San Francisco's version of New York's Central Park, Golden Gate Park, is a huge green lung, surprisingly desolate and even a bit scary at the far end towards the ocean but full of life, people and cultural institutions and gardens at the end closest to the city. What a wonderful park to have in such a densely populated city.

Of course the city is dotted with plazas and parks, some more successful than others. I loved the residential squares in the posher parts of town, like Alamo Square and Alta Plaza.

3. Vibrant street life: Like Melbourne, San Francisco is a city of active, vibrant streets of vastly differing personalities. Some that I loved were Valencia Street in the Mission District, which reminded me a lot of Melbourne's Brunswick Street with its great bookstores and alternative shops on Valencia Street; the relaxed middle class vibe of 24th Street in the Noe Valley; the vibrant commercial buzz of Post and Geary Streets around Union Square; the multicultural Clement Street in the Richmond district with its mix of Asian and Russian shops and eateries; the upmarket sections of Polk and Fillmore Streets, the streets around the Hayes Valley and Duboce Park, the lively and colourful alleyways of Chinatown. Speaking of colour, I also loved the murals all over the city. The streets of San Francisco are a big part of its appeal.

4. Interesting traditional architecture: I'm not the first nor will I be the last to comment on the beauty and function of San Francisco's lovely Victorian houses with their narrow, pretty frontages, their bay windows, turrets and curves. It's an intoxicating, lovely style and updated variations of it are evident in most of the city's more recent housing architecture, some of which are not so lovely but almost all of which seem to include the bay window elements. In terms of commercial and civic buildings, the city again achieves with the classical beauty of City Hall, the grand emporium facades of Market Street and Union Square, and the elegant grand hotels and apartment houses of Nob Hill and Russian Hill.

5. Interesting contemporary architecture: When I stop to take a photo of a Safeway store, then you can rest assured it's not any bland old supermarket design. In Australia, we still subscribe to the windowless box idea for supermarket design, but I fell in love with this airy Safeway store in the Marina district. Admittedly, it was surrounded by a car park (a no-no in any urban design manual), but the building itself demonstrates that you can have a simple, quite beautiful design for something as everyday as a supermarket. The glazed frontage bathed the store in natural light, creating a much pleasanter and more energy efficient shopping environment. Of course, there are many other interesting examples of exciting contemporary architecture in this exciting and beautiful city, but for me, this interesting Safeway store, determined to be beautiful and to breath life into its purpose and to make it not just a shopping barn but a pleasant experience, encapsulates something of the city's humanistic, artistic spirit as expressed through its architecture. Which is not a bad accomplishment for a supermarket, really.

12 June 2009

John Brack exhibition






















Recently I went to the wonderful John Brack exhibition at the NGV in Federation Square. I can highly recommend it (it's on until 9 August).

Writing in the Australian, Christopher Allen suggests that Brack's painting, including The Bar and Collins Street which are included here, suffered for a lack of empathy with their subjects. I never saw these famous and much loved paintings as lacking empathy; on the contrary, I thi nk The Bar empowers its female subject with a fabulous sense of superiority, and I think Collins Street implies a wonderful, somewhat distant other world that all of its subjects are thinking of, their real world, as they wait for their tram to transport them from the necessary daily drudgery of their work lives to the doubtlessly hollow evening home lives, but in their vacant faces I read a certain capitivation of thought and desire for their real, inner, private selves. Apparently, such a reading was not anticipated by Brack, who later regretted his patronising attitude to those subjects, seeing them as vacant and ignorant apparently, according to Allen. I guess it just goes to show that we all read something different out of art. I clearly am "wrong" in my reasing, not being an expert such as Allen. Then again, I do know what I like...

11 June 2009

South Park: A Hidden Gem of San Francisco






During my trip to San Francisco earlier this year I made sure to visit a rather delightful, if slighlty anachronistic, little residential square called South Park located in the extensive SoMa (South of Market) urban regeneration district.

This lovely little park has a chequered history. It was laid out by a developer in the 1850s and patently modelled on European residential squares to provide an upmarket, enclosed neighbourhood of townhouses facing onto a compact little urban park. In the 1890s it became a public park. The 1906 earthquake destroyed the neighbourhood and, while the park itself survived, the area went steadily downmarket and seedy (as indeed much of the SoMA area remains today, at least in my observation; it's a very schizophrenic environment, with huge glass and steel devleopments side by side with homeless missions - but I am digressing). South Park started sprucing up in the 1970s and '80s, as artists and other bohemian types attracted by low rents and its quirky charm, moved in, but they were sadly pushed out by the 1990s "dot com boomers" who took over the neighbourhood - a pity as it would have made a lovely artists' colony. Despite the new money apparently the park itseld remained a popular homeless and/or drug dealing haunt at nighttime. With the dot com bust in the early 2000s this square is now assuming its next personality. It seems an environment in transition - the housing stock surrounding it is nothing special, but there are several little cafes and the park itself is a charming little green oasis in an area of this lovely city that is not exactly blessed with a huge number of green spaces.

The size is just right - large enough for mature trees that provide a leafy outlook for the houses and offices overlooking the square, room to stroll and sit and chat, a small playground and open areas for children to run about or for people to laze about in the sun.

It's a public park so anyone can enjoy it, if they can find it. It is such a narrow little park squeezed into the middle of a standard sized city block and with very ordinary looking street opening, so "stumbling" across it is a little like stumbling across a long forgotten, somehow more genteel urban environment cloistered away from the rest of the modern city - how lovely and restful.
It's certainly not the busiest square in San Francisco, nor the grandest nor even the most beautiful. But it is a real little gem and it is the sort of balanced urban environment that I think comes close to perfection.

10 June 2009

Bitches from hell (or when good girls go mad)


Did you ever think of Fatal Attraction as a serious study of the tragic, largely avoidable mental collapse of an otherwise intelligent, high-functioning woman, probably a survivor of child abuse and possibly affected by bipolar disorder, and a scathing condemnation of society’s failure to help her? No, you didn’t, because that is not the film that audiences saw in 1987. Instead, they saw a violent backlash against feminism, and a bloody reassertion of the patriarchal hegemony facilitated by the agency of a female foot soldier in the form of the yuppie protagonist husband’s homemaker wife, and with it the establishment of what Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe astutely summarised as a “ridiculous, misogynist cycle” of popular thriller movies based on what Phillipa Gates, in her book Detecting Men, refers to as the “fatal femme” concept. More crassly, these films were based around the idea that an otherwise reasonable woman can inexplicably morph into a dangerous, deranged “bitch from hell” whose madness can be cured only by her own bloody death. I'd now like to revisit the “bitch from hell” genre, and ask where did it come from, and why?

Arguably, American film thriller genre cycles develop in reaction to specific social changes: the emergence of film noir in the 1940s is widely seen as a direct response to post-war disillusionment and uncertainty; the political and other thrillers of the 1970s, which so often involved unpunished deception by trusted authority figures, are often seen as a reaction to the Watergate scandals. I’m not exactly sure what the 1980s slasher genre was a reaction to, but I suspect it was something to do with repudiating yuppie and/or emerging youth culture, while the serial killer films of the 1990s seem to have something to say about the violent assertion of individuality in an increasingly ‘politically correct’ public sphere. Using this method of interpreting thriller film cycles as reactions to social developments, we can plainly see this deeply misogynistic “from hell” cycle of films from 1987 to the early 1990s was an overt cinematic backlash to feminism. Arguably, this cycle continues at ever more disturbing and accelerated levels today with the current cycle of masochistic “torture porn” horror films.

What is it about an angry and insane woman on the rampage that movie producers (and audiences) in the late 80s and early 90s loved so much? The harbinger was Glenn Close boiling bunnies and wielding huge kitchen knives psychotically in Fatal Attraction after Michael Douglas ended their affair, while in 1992 Rebecca de Mornay stealing husbands and children and murdering nosy friends in booby-trapped glasshouses in The Hand That Rocked The Cradle and Lara Flynn Boyle may have lost her performance bonus when she pushed boss Faye Dunaway to her death in The Temp. These women were as ferocious as they were lonely, frequently and significantly attacking other women as well.

A bitch from hell is a woman (the one night stand from hell, the nanny from hell, the secretary from hell) whose, usually quite justifiably based, anger boils into a consuming and psychotic rage, compelling her to worm her way into the lives of those who have hurt or deprived her, before setting out to destroy them, initially via psychological warfare but inevitably resorting to bloodshed. The rampage will always end in her own gruesome death.

The genesis of the angry (and therefore inherently dangerous) woman seems to me traceable to the scorned woman parts played by Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in 1940s and ‘50s women’s pictures. When these women got mad, men suffered, and they often died. The cunning seductresses of 1950s films noir were also lethal, with Jane Greer, Marie Windsor and Ann Savage seducing men and manipulating them into killing for them, before double crossing them. They were bad girls, and they enjoyed being bad girls. These women could perhaps be read as feminist warriors, battling against the patriarchy.

Beginning with What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962), however, the backlash to such powerful cinematic females began. A series of films emerged over the 1960s starring former glamour queens in often degrading roles as crazy women. These characters, driven by insanity rather than by passion (as in the women’s pictures) or greed (as in the films noir), were in my mind the prototypes for the backlash bitch from hell movies: Bette Davis tortured Joan Crawford in Baby Jane, Crawford decapitated her philandering husband in Strait-Jacket (1964), Davis decapitated her lover and was then driven mad by cousin Olivia de Havilland in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), Tallulah Bankhead imprisoned Stefanie Powers in the attic in Fanatic (1965), Geraldine Page killed her housekeepers in Whatever Happened to Aunt Alice (1969), and Shelley Winters was driven to madness and rabbit-slaughtering (a pre-cursor to Glenn Close’s antics in Fatal Attraction) in What’s The Matter with Helen? (1971). What was the underlying message – that a post-menopausal woman must as a consequence have lost her marbles, her sexuality and the essence of her very femininity, thus making her stark raving dangerous? From here it could only be a slippery slide from the glamorous 1940s femmes fatale to the 1980s bitch form hell. The inherent misogyny in this shift from bad girl to mad girl is not overtly apparent at first, but it is certainly detectable. The sexuality and cunning of the bad girls has been neutralized because the women are no longer creatures of power, nor are they intellectually equal or superior to their men. Instead, they are just crazy. Sexless, lacking in intelligence, and mad, they are threats to men (and each other) not because they are cunning, but because they are bonkers.

Demented aged movie stars degrading themselves and attempting to kill each other is one thing, but take a seemingly normal youngish woman, make her go crazy and set her loose, and you have the recipe for the modern bitch from hell film. The cycle commenced in 1971 with Play Misty For Me, Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut in which homicidal obsessed fan Jessica Walter terrorizes late night radio disc jockey Eastwood. The message was clear: when a woman with a legitimate problem (in this case, loneliness) goes balmy she will irrevocably turn violent.

The potential of the genre was not truly tapped for another 16 years with the immensely successful 1987 thriller Fatal Attraction. Glenn Close seduces married Michael Douglas into a one night stand, then terrorizes him and his family as his rejection of her drives her to bunny-boiling insanity. Finally, she is shot dead by Douglas’s loyal wife Anne Archer in a ridiculously over-the-top finale.

Fatal Attraction was a very talked about film in 1987. Arriving as it did at the height of the AIDS scare, the film was considered topical as a woman refuses to be discarded after a one night stand. But what is it that the film is actually telling us? That casual sex can be dangerous for men? That a woman who gets angry for a quite justified reason will, as a logical progression of that anger, turn psychotic? That single career women are more than just a figurative threat to masculinity but can also pose a physical threat? That single career women are crazy, in comparison to glamorous stay-at-home mothers? That stay-at-home mothers and single career women are inherent enemies who must battle it out to the death? Read any way (and every way, as this is perhaps the most frequently analysed film of the 1980s!) it is an incredibly misogynist and patronising message – even if smart career woman Close does feel angry, why would she be so unbalanced that her anger would naturally develop into menacing fury? Is she not an adult who can work her way through her emotions sensibly? The answer is no, and we must accept this premise in order to understand the bitch from hell genre. If a woman gets angry, she will very likely go mad and seek to destroy. That is the underlying message of the bitch from hell films.

09 June 2009

Harare 100th most livable city!

There's nothing that appeals to the parochialism of local governments and newspapers more than those dubious "most livable cities" indexes. In Australia, of course, they're seen as yet another contest between Sydney and Melbourne, with Melbourne usually (but not always) coming out on top.

Leaving aside the fact that nobody ever seems to delve too deeply into the methodologies of these indexes, which are dispensed annually to the media by a variety of institutions and who knows how consistent they are from year to year and which supposedly measure and compare quality of life based on factors such as average incomes and costs of living, crime rates, public transport, education levels etc, what really amazes me about these lists is that they are treated as some sort of horse race ("Bratislava cracks the top 100 livable cities"), and they only ever seem to be interpreted as providing good news. Nobody ever seems to question why their own city might fall in a ranking, or ask whether there might be something to learn from the fact that, say, Melbourne, which still uses the "most livable city" tag line A LOT, was last decreed to be the most livable city in 1993. We're not really interested in asking ourselves why other cities may be more livable, we only want to know where we place in the form guide so we can feel smug about it.

It's this lack of questioning of either the methodologies or the reasons for changes in rankings, particularly in terms of what, if anything, we may be able to learn from such changes that I find so funny every year when the results are "reported" in the papers. If we did look a little closer, we might find more than a few questions worth asking.

In 2007, Mercer ranked Melbourne as number 19, behind Sydney at number 9 (somewhat mind boggling given that public transport is meant to be one of the key factors in the index, and let's face it Melbourne's transport is vastly superior to Sydney's shambolic excuse for a "system"). The top city was Zurich, which happens to have the densest metropolitan public transport (trams mostly) network in the world; I visited Zurich for only a few days in 2008 and just from that I can say it is a great city and one that functions very well. Number two on the list was Geneva, and number three was Vancouver. No surprises there for any students of urbanism; Vancouver does not have all those books written about it for nothing!

In 2008, the Economist put Vancouver in first place, followed by Melbourne and Vienna, while Sydney tied for 9th with Geneva and Zurich. Why the huge difference in the space of just 12 months for poor old Sydney and the Swiss metropolises? This year, the Economist puts Melbourne back to third place; Sydney still ties for ninth with Zurich.

It's not that these indexes aren't interesting, but what concerns me is our insistence on treating them like a horse race as it distracts us from learning anything from them; the results are inevitably held up by politicians to justify their inaction on urban affairs, but they should be using them as just one tool for assessing how we can improve our cities and make them better. Instead, all they do is justify the status quo. If it were the Olympics, we would not rest until we'd taken the "Gold" from Vancouver and Zurich and we'd be throwing as many government millions at it as it took to make that happen; as it just concerns something like our quality of life rather than the national pride supposedly imbued in elite sporting success, we'll just congratulate ourselves for making the list at all and leave it at that.

08 June 2009

Afternoon tea review: Grand Hyatt Melbourne

Today Tom and I took his parents to afternoon tea at the Grand Hyatt on Collins Street here in Melbourne. Recently refurbished and looking very posh, they do a daily afternoon tea which is $40 for the set tea (scones, sandwiches and a cake selection).

On the Scott Scale, I give the Grand Hyatt a 5 out of 10.

The room is a tad on the bland side and could do with a bit of colour to spruce it up a bit, although it is quite interesting to have a view into the totally open kitchen (although my back faced the kitchen). The service was fine, as were the sandwiches and the scones (although they only had plain scones, no fruit, which was a little disappointing). More disappointing was the limited selection of black teas. No Orange Pekoe, no Russian Caravan. How can I say this: two types of breakfast tea (especially the omnipresent "English Breakfast") is not really an appropriate tea to have for afternoon tea, and yet so many supposedly posh hotels seem to think otherwise.

The set tea was $40. This did not include a glass of champagne ($16 extra for a glass of Chandon NV)

Overall, it was a passable, but by no means superior, experience.

05 June 2009

The sexual politics of 'Knots Landing'


I have already disclosed on these pages my penchant for American soap opera Knots Landing which ran from 1980 to 1993 and followed the improbably eventful lives of the residents of a fictional upper middle class suburb in southern California. It was a terribly interesting show, renowned for its wit, clever plots and more “realistic” characters (in comparison to shows like Dynasty which chronicled the lives of the super-rich), as well as its famous end-of-season cliffhangers. It’s been called “the original Desperate Housewives", a comparison that I cannot comment on as I’ve never watched Desperate Housewives. I have started watching Knots again recently on DVD and I am really struck by the underlying sexual politics, and the way in which the rise of 1980s feminism, characterised by the increase of women in the workplace, was so sharply, and sometimes brutally, reflected in this deceptively innocuous little soap opera. So I thought darn it, if it's good enough for Camille Paglia (a noted fan of the melodrama genre), then it's good enough for me!

The show initially revolves around four married couples living in a cul-de-sac. Three of the women are housewives, and the one that works is a school teacher. All of the women are dependent upon men and their stories revolve around domestic concerns, their children and fretting over their husbands. But there is trouble brewing: intelligent Laura is frustrated with her arrogant yet strangely lovable and deluded husband Richard and decides to start working, eventually becoming a successful real estate agent and the primary household breadwinner, much to Richard's chagrin. She is forced to apologise for her success because it has offended his masculine pride, which even takes violent form when he has a breakdown and takes her hostage. His constant attempts to pull her back into his orderly patriarchal existence also extended to accusing her of a lesbian affair with her friend ill-fated Ciji (an affair the program was clever enough to leave ambiguous; Laura may well have been exploring her sexuality as part of her prolonged emancipation). Laura does not give in to Rochard though: she continues to work and her character evolves into a strong, smart and very witty independent woman. Meanwhile, naive but kind country girl Val plays the good wife to her philandering alcoholic husband Gary, but when she finds him in bed with her supposed friend Val finally draws the line, loses her grating Southern accent, throws Gary out, develops some self-respect and becomes a bestselling novelist and a woman of independent means. Val is the program's long-suffering heroine, perhaps the least easily read as a feminist to any extent, enduring many of the staples of soap opera (amneisa, being kidnapped, having her children kidnapped, unfaithful husbands, disappearing husbands, abusive husbands, mental illness, being the victim of stalking, being the victim of attempted murder etc), but she was certainly resilient and refused to compromise her values for anyone. Her best friend, housewife Karen, is probably the character that most reflects the 1980s American zeitgeist: she progresses from storylines in which she is constantly worrying about her brood of children and unpacking groceries, to negotiating the dating world after the surprise death of her first husband, and later becomes a businesswoman, taking over her late husband's business, then, as the 1980s/Trump/Greed is Good era progresses, she became a property developer, and in the 1990s, during the talk show craze, she became a talk show host and an environmental campaigner often involved in politics - although of course Karen's list of maladies was nearly as long as her neighbour Val's (difficult children, pregnancy, miscarriage, prescription drug addiction, paralysis, being widowed, being kidnapped, being shot, being stalked etc). Laura, Val and Karen were all heroines that in different ways reflected the move of women generally out of the kitchens and into the public sphere. As friends, the three of them also depicted something rarely shown on television: female friendships untainted by competition for men or careers. These pals drew their strength from each other and the "girlfriends" aspect was an important part of the storyline.

Just as interesting as the "girlfriends" aspect though was the recurrent theme of mother/daughter conflict: Karen's relationship with her teenage daughter Diana was constantly fraught and they were eventually estranged; Val was estranged from her adult daughter and had a difficult relationship with her own mother, Lilimae, who had abandoned her as a child (they later reconciled as adults). Business tycoon Abby (more of her in a moment) also had a challenging relationship with her rebellious daughter Olivia. So if Knots emphasised the strength of female friendships on the one hand, it also emphasised the fragility of the mother/daughter relationship on the other.

An interesting contrast to the other female characters is, of course, the character of Abby, the conniving, unfaithful, ambitious blonde bombshell unafraid to use sex as a means to getting the money, power and influence she wanted. Glamorous and always heavily made-up (the show even made an in joke of her eye make-up, with one of her husbands joking to her that he would finally see her without make-up the morning after the way were married; he entered the steamy bathroom to find her in a towel and full eye make-up). Abby had no female friends and was openly aggressive with Laura, Val and Karen, even "stealing" Val's husband (deliciously announcing to him after the wedding: "I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I love getting what I want"). An "unlikely feminist icon" (Interview magazine), Abby embezzled money from her various husbands, defrauded her business partners, was compulsively unfaithful, a constant liar, frequently involved in shady business dealings and political skulduggery, and yet she had her ethics: the "how far will she go?" aspect was what made her interesting. Would she allow her love rival Val's children to be kidnapped and say nothing about it, even though it suited her for the children to disappear? No, she would not. Would she bury a body in cement to protect her daughter from a possible murder charge, or would she coerce lovers into taking the rap for her shonky business deals when they blew up on her, sometimes framing them as well? Yes, she would. Through it all, Abby almost always kept her cool and her sense of humour - an admirable trait.

Abby was also a single mother, one of the first working single mothers portrayed on TV. When her teenage daughter developed a drug addiction in the middle of her own scheming and conniving, Abby put aside her business ambitions and devoted herself to getting her daughter clean again. Abby was constantly shown juggling the demands of her work life and her home life in a realistic manner that was not often shown on television, where women tended to either be stay at home mums or effortless superwomen. Unlike those unrealistic women, Abby had to do a lot of juggling.

Camille Paglia's interview with Donna Mills, who played Abby, is quite revealing in that it explains how the character was constructed. Mills had played many blonde victims in her career and was determined to play Abby as strong and unapologetic, characteristics that reverberated with the female audience. Mills famously declared of early attempts by producers to soften the character that "the last thing this show needs is another sympathetic woman!", and refused to allow Abby to ever cry or show weakness in public situations.

The feminist jury is out on whether Abby was a role model or part of the problem for women. In her book Prime Time Feminism, Bonnie Dow criticises the "competitive individualism" of the "bitch" characters of soap operas such as Abby in Knots or Alexis in Dynasty, who accepted the need to make peace with the patriarchy and learn how to fit in, competing with men and with women to achieve their feminist aspirations. Women such as Abby were powerful figures, but their power came via men (husbands, etc). Dow rejects the potential subversive reading that soaps such as Knots and powerful female characters like Abby undermine the stability of patriarchy; with their aggressive rejection of sisterhood in their pursuit of money and power, these sorts of characters, Dow argues, instead represent backlash thinking.

It's true that Abby's money, and power, came to her via men, but she was always the one with the brains and, as Mills observes in the Paglia interview, no matter what the obstacles, Abby always won. She operated in a male dominated business world, and she played by the men's rules, but she was always victorious. To me, that makes her a feminist role model, even though we may not approve of her methods, especially her casualness about mixing sex and business. On the other hand, JR on Dallas unapologeticly and ruthlessly mixed sex and business.

In conclusion, let's let the lady speak for herself. Here are some wonderful words of wisdom from Abby, the unlikely feminist:
  • Episode 24: “A State of Mind” (1981) Abby establishes herself as an independently-minded woman who works as much for personal fulfillment as for money, telling her ex-husband that she likes being single and defending her decision to her earn her own money rather than living off his alimony because “this is the 1980s”. She rejects his assertion that she cannot be a good mother if she’s working.

  • Episode 36: “The Surprise” (1981) When Abby’s ex-husband Jeff kidnaps their children in an attempt to force a reconciliation with her. Tricking him into believing she has consented to his demand and that she will remarry him, she leaves him at the altar and has him served with a restraining order preventing him from seeing her or his children again. Asked by Karen why she did this so cruelly, Abby replies simply: “He hurt me – nobody gets away with that.”

  • Episode 48: “Shadow Waltz” (1982) Abby sleeps with a senator to get a bill favourable to her business approved and then justifies it on feminist grounds to shocked friend Val, telling Val she could learn from her.

  • Episode 82: “Sacred Vows” (1982) Abby marries Val’s ex-husband Gary, telling him after the wedding “I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you. I love getting what I want.”

  • Episode 84: “Money Talks” (1983) Abby, newly married to Gary, tells Senator Sumner she wants him to assist her in getting a planning variance for a shady real estate development she is secretly undertaking with Gary’s inheritance, in exchange for her directing Gary’s contributions to Sumner’s reelection campaign. She refers to the contributions as an investment she expects to pay off. Sumner says he’s not for sale. She seduces him instead. She later tells him that he is a politician on the rise and she is a businesswoman on the rise and they can help each other and enjoy an affair with no threat to either of their marriages: “I like my marriage, and I assume you like yours. Our lovemaking has nothing to do with that, because if I have to make a choice between love and money, money’s going to win every time.”

  • Episode 96: “No Trumpets, No Drums” (1984) Abby explains to her pre-teen daughter Olivia why people judge her so harshly: “Listen to this, because it’s important. If a man were conducting his business the way I’ve conducted mine, he’d be admired for his aggressiveness. But if a woman does it then she’s a shrew.” Olivia replies that she does not understand. “Neither do I”, says Abby. “But it’s so. But I’ve never let it hold me back and, when the time comes, I really hope you don’t let it hold you back, because a career is just as important for a woman as it is for a man.”

  • Episode 98: “Finishing Touches” (1984) Abby, thinking her husband Gary murdered as a result of her business dealings, explains her grief to those who might call her hypocritical: “I loved my husband. You may find that hard to believe. I had my affairs, skimmed profits and other things, but I did those things for me, not to hurt him. He counted in my life.”

  • Episode 189: “Don Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate” (1987) When younger rival Paige theorizes that Abby dislikes her because she feels threatened, Abby wastes no time putting Paige in her place: “I’m so flattered that you want to be like me, but don’t flatter yourself into thinking we’re at all alike. Everything I have, I’ve earned. Everything you have, you were given. I know it galls you, it galls people of your class, to see a woman like me who’s earned what you think should be yours by birth. People like you are threatened by people like me because, deep down, you’re afraid you wouldn’t be able to cut it without your trust fund. You know something? You’re right.”

04 June 2009

He used to send me roses...

Why, oh why, don't TV shows have theme songs anymore?

I have been thinking a bit about this lately (well, not a lot, just now and then, in the shower usually when I want to sing something to myself, usually The Love Boat theme or similar, because it's camp, snappy and short). TV shows used to have great theme songs, such as the theme to Prisoner - so melancholy, so touching - when you heard it you just knew how awful it must be to be a woman in prison.

This week, while I should have been writing essays, I stumbled across some interesting versions of some of my favourite classic TV themes. First, here is a cover version of the usually hypnotic Prisoner theme song by none other than the Living End. Quite different isn't it?

Second, here is a cheesy disco version of the aforementioned Love Boat theme, "performed" by Charo. It makes me want to get aboard.

Finally, here is the version of the wonderful EastEnders theme song with very clever lyrics, Anyone Can Fall in Love. It was recorded by cast member Anita Dobson who played every one's favourite neurotic alcoholic with a heart of gold worn on her sleeve, unforgettable pub landlady Angie Watts. This song was never used in the actual show, it was just recorded to cash in on the show's success. The lyrics are so cleverly matched to the theme music, offering sage advice about how you must work to keep your love alive - advice that in my memory was seldom followed by any of the characters in the show, whose love affairs were always brief and usually ended with a dramatic revelation of infidelity in the pub in front of all their friends and family. I love how they use the whistling from the actual theme tune - what a shame they could not also have used those famous drums!

And on those drums, apparently the EastEnders theme tune and those dramatic drums that mark the close of each episode, is more recognisable to Brits than their national anthem! Blimey.