Thoughts from Germaine...2001

I heard a very enjoyable interview with Germaine Greer on Phillip Adams's program on ABC Radio National recently. On Friday nights, the program goes into reflective mode and plays interviews that are a few years old. This particular interview was recorded in August 2001 at Brisbane's Powerhouse.

The entire interview was great. I could listen to Germaine Greer for hours on end. The Bulletin said it well: she has a "drop-dead gorgeous way with words". Anyway, she spoke primarily about Australian Aboriginality (her views on which I have highlighted previously), but several subjects were discussed, including feminism, naturally...

Here are some of the many responses that I found profoundly interesting.

FEMINISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Adams: What part of feminism survives for this shiny, bright new century of ours?

Greer: Well, we haven't got it together yet. Nothing's really happened yet. All that's happened is women have shaken their ears and looked about. They haven't worked out what it is that they want. The most basic questions are still to answer. I mean, I would hope that feminists were pacifists. I would hope that 'women playing a more important part' would mean that war was no longer an option.

Adams: You'd put that right at the top of the list? Pacifism.

Greer: Yeah, I think so. Although 'pacifism' is, in some ways, the wrong word. It seems, to me, madness that we still have war. It's so obviously not a solution to anything. And, to me, it's quite shocking that 'New Labor' in England is incredibly bellicose. They can't wait to get into a fight. But there's lots of things. There's lots more things.

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ART

Adams: You said we've got to reconsider what art is. And you've talked about a mother braiding a child's hair, and how this has got to be perhaps considered art, within a relationship. Not so much the pattern, but the act of doing it.

Greer: It's entirely up to you what you see as a work of art, nowadays. It's got nothing to do with putting colour on a flat surface, or sculpting a lump of something into a lump of something else. It's to do with giving the thing you do another kind of importance. And women are not very good at that. I mean, a woman cooks - we eat. A man cooks - he's a chef. And he's got a series on television. And he can be a frightful cook, as well, as far as I can judge.

Adams: As long as he's cute. Cute as a button.

Greer: And can talk. And presents things in a particular way. I'm not sure anymore what art is. Art is what you say is art. So if you decide that doing your daughter's hair in the morning is your artwork, then that's what it will be.....

Adams: But you extrapolated from this, and you said some things with which I wholeheartedly agree. You implied that a great deal of what is characterised or presented as art in our culture is, in fact, nonsense. And I think you talked about art rushing like a stram engine towards smashing into the buffers. And you said it can't happen quickly enough for you.

Greer: Yeah, something's got to happen to the whole sort of 'gallery business', because it's over-inflated. It's got itself into a mad position; Where one piece of paper that Picasso threw on the floor of the studio and stood on for several years is worth the income of a small African republic.

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MEN THE NEW 'SILENT VICTIMS'?

Adams: Doris Lessing argued that men are the new silent victims in the sex war - "continually demeaned and insulted", said Doris, "by women, without a wimper of protest".

Greer: In England, in particular - but I think in Anglo-Saxon society wherever - , men really dislike women and put them down all the time. There's a whole dimension of their culture which is sneering remarks about women and assumptions about women and so on. And we've just put up with it. We know it's there, and we can't do much about it. We've tried to outlaw it, which I think was a mistake. Misogyny is so real and so pervasive, that for women to at last be public about their feelings about men, and putting their contempt for men into words... It's just much too early to be saying 'Oh, but the balance has shifted in the wrong direction'. Because, basically, the men don't give a fuck what we say about them. The difference between the two of us is that men don't care what women say about them, and women care passionately what men say about them.

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BULLSHIT IN POLITICS

Adams: There's a lot of bullshit about. It doesn't diminish in magnitude. I mean, there's President Shrub and all that brand of bullshit over there.

Greer: Yes.

Adams: I mean, everywhere you look -

Greer: There's Tony 'Blur'.

Adams: Tony Blur, is that bullshit?

Greer: Oh, I can't stand him, honestly. I mean, the problem is that we don't have ideology anymore. We don't have policy anymore. Governments sell themselves like soap-powder. They just find a form of words that the electorate will accept. Which isn't to say the electorate is in favour of it. It means the electorate can't be bothered being against it. So, we have sloppy thinking. We have trendy words used all the time. I mean, it's Ad-Man politics and it is awful.