Down Under Chelsea
A recent absence from Sydney prevented me from reading Barry Healy's warmly enthusiastic review in your paper of my play Down Under Chelsea (GLW #20). I am also grateful for your encouraging comments about my long playwright career.
There is one point, though, that I would like your paper to correct, viz. your comment that the Herald has not reviewed a play of mine since 1948. It is an understandable mistake, as that year figures twice in my theatre history, being both the year that my first full-length play Here Under Heaven was produced in Melbourne, and the one that saw the last production by Sydney New Theatre (Sean O'Casey's The Star Turns Red) to be reviewed by the Herald for twelve years — a period during which a number of my plays were performed there.
Since then, when New Theatre productions have again from time to time been noticed by the Herald I have been happy when some of mine have been included, but disappointed when several have been ignored (including two that had earlier been workshopped at Australian Playwrights Conferences): viz Gregg Levy's widely acclaimed 1984 direction at New Theatre of Here Comes Kisch! (subsequently short-listed in the 1985 Victorian Premier's Drama Awards and twice broadcast from ABC Radio), and Sharon Singleton's excellent recent production of Down Under Chelsea at the Stables Theatre.
Mona Brand
Potts Point NSW
Bad science
Leaving aside, or dodging, the moral issues of vivisection (as vivisectors like Professor Steven Rose (GLW #18) typically do), medical experimentation on animals is bad science. Thalidomide was tested on animals and declared safe, whilst penicillin would not have been developed if it had been tested on guinea pigs (whom it kills). Species react differently to different drugs.
Rob McKinnon-Lower (GLW #20) also agrees that vivisection is "scientifically invalid" (as well as "morally bankrupt"). However, if the anti-vivisectionists are to claim the scientific high ground, we should be wary of arguing, as Rob proceeds to do, that because areas of "modern medicine" are vivisection-based, the whole field is invalidated and "alternative" therapies such as acupuncture and homeopathy are legitimate. The evidence for acupuncture is not conclusive and even weaker for homeopathy.
It is prudent, if we wish to understand how the body works, to remain sceptical of the paranormal theories and
pseudosciences based on New Age "human energy fields". Occam's Razor obliges us to eschew theories with more assumptions and unknowns in favour of the simpler explanation (or agnosticism) until validated and replicated studies have established sufficient evidence.
Vivisection and the pharmaceutical influence in modern medicine are both iniquitous, as Rob says, but this doesn't mean we have to embrace the scientifically irrational in response to them. Steven Rose is a crude anthropocentrist practising the cruel barbarism of vivisection but he is also an impressive opponent of sociobiology and racist theories of intelligence. No one gets everything right — homeopathy advocates as well as vivisectionists. In science, politics and the rest of life it is a matter of separating the (morally) good and the scientific from the bad and the bogus.
Phil Shannon
Canberra
Christianity
Julie Senior (GLW #19) is quite correct in her criticism of the behaviour of many Christians past and present. However L. Murrell is also correct that Christianity is based on principles of "non-violence". The only conclusion one can come to from reading the gospels is that Christ would have been horrified by the behaviour of those followers who do not follow the spirit of his teachings but all too often quote him out of context to justify their own misdeeds. To reject the wisdom of Christ because of the behaviour of some of those who claim to be his followers, is as unfair as to reject the insights of Marx because of the behavior of Stalin or Pol Pot. Having said that I should add that I am neither a Christian nor a Marxist.
David Munn
South Brighton SA
Pacifism and Christianity
In response to the letter by Julie Senior in a recent issue of Green Left Weekly, we would like to caution against painting all christians with the same brush, ie as fundamentalists. Julie seems intent on pointing out the worst extremes of "christian" actions throughout history as well as quoting the worst of present day christian writers. We could now, just as easily, make sweeping statements about socialism quoting the murderous history of Stalin, Polpot and others to totally dismiss socialism as an abominable evil. However, the truth is that socialism does have more validity than the enormous amount of blood shed in its name.
Also, the non-violent struggles of christians throughout history, starting with Jesus Christ, prove that not all people calling themselves christians are "psychotic megalomaniacs" as Julie has described christianity. We firmly believe that the teachings of Jesus Christ point to another way for justice — the way of non-violent resistance. Countless christians throughout history have died at the hands of violent governments (including
many "socialist" ones) because of this belief. Many committed christians are in jail around the world for refusing to go to war. Julie has obviously failed to explore the history and writings of pacifist christians, in the same way extreme right wing people selectively choose communist/socialist history and writings to prove its total evil.
At this point in history, christians have been a large force behind the fall of the regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, toppling the Marcos Government in the Philippines, and non-violently struggling against the apartheid laws in South Africa to name some. The protest and outcry against the Gulf War was often led by christians and in fact Bush's own church condemned the war.
We hope Julie and others can take a look at another side of christianity than one that conveniently allows them to totally write it off.
Leanne Murrell and Jim Dowling
West End Qld
World cop
The role of the US as a world policeman is actually the role of a Gestapo representative. If one looks at the emerging evidence of massive CIA support for the Salvadoran deathsquads, the grudging approval of Chile's shaky democracy combined with the cosy relationship the White House has with Pinochet, the Contras' war and the aid given to Pol Pot the picture becomes clear. Add to that the fact the administration is packed with oil men including Bush, the US Gestapo ensures crucial environmental reforms are stalled.
America's ambiguous foreign policy is easily explained by events on the local front where women's rights and other civil liberties are kicked by a bible swinging president and a Supreme Court now dominated by reactionary Christian fanatics. In this context I would like to express my total support with the views of Julie Senior (GL July 3). Christian fundamentalism is now hovering over NSW like a toxic cloud.
Michael Rose-Schwab
Rapid Creek NT
Women and cars
Phil Shannon (GLW #14) says that life can go on in a "healthier, wealthier and (hopefully) wiser way" by relinquishing the use of the car. However for women who relinquish their cars the risk is of rape, assault and murder.
For a woman to be without a car in our society is to be without one of the few things that offers a small measure of security when travelling alone or at night. The fact that owning a car is not open to all women points to the class inequality in our society as well as the gender inequality.
While public transport is seen as a partial solution to pollution this is very problematic. Women are the first to bear the brunt of inaccessible, expensive and unreliable public transport
which for cost cutting reasons dispenses with conductors. Most women raped outside the home are attacked either walking to or from, or waiting at public transport stops.
Political action for more accessible, cheaper and safer transport may be part of the solution to environmental and travel problems for women but this will not be effective until the societal acceptance of violence against women is challenged and overthrown.
Personal solutions are "unfair" and "impractical" when they are solutions for only a privileged few and don't address the real problems or causes of oppression. Just as women should not be blamed for a society that fosters violence against women, individual people should not have to sacrifice cars etc. when the major pollutants worldwide, the manufacturing, chemical and agricultural production industries can carry on undisturbed.
While I agree that there needs to be an end to wasteful consumption of resources and pollution there needs to be comprehensive analyses looking at the major causes and viable alternatives for working people.
Philippa Stanford
Brisbane
[Edited for length.]
Madonna
Elayne Rapping's article on Madonna (GLW #19) was generally interesting and well thought out, and I grudgingly accept that the image of this "star" has done some good things for feminism. In terms of assertiveness and self-confidence Madonna creates a very appealing role model for young people, especially females.
However there's nothing new here — for decades, people have lapped up the products and personas of movie and pop celebrities, trying to tap into carefully marketed self-confidence and glamour and being persuaded to consume as a cure-all for our self-doubts, frustrations and the mundanity of our working lives.
Madonna certainly appears different from tragic Marilyn Monroe or Janis Joplin-type figures in being more "in control" and comfortable with the whole stardom and media deal (no doubt this concept has been carefully nurtured and marketed also), but ultimately her appeal to young women is no different to that of the smug Tom Cruise to young men.
David Young
Alice Springs
Pathology unit
It was chilling to read in the Bankstown Torch Newspaper July 3, that the pathology unit at Bankstown Hospital is to close.
This will mean that those needing a transfusion urgently
will have to wait while their blood sample is taken by road to Liverpool Hospital, the blood cross matched and the blood for transfusion returned by road also. This would take about an hour at least, maybe more in peak traffic periods. As the closure of the pathology unit is a cost cutting measure there is no way a helicopter would be used.
Lives will be lost in cases of sudden severe haemorrhage or trauma if there is not time, or it is not clinically indicated, for the patient to be transferred to another better equipped facility.
The NSW Government is now openly dismantling the public hospital system.
Barbara Wright
Secretary, South Western Area Health Service Community Consultative Committee
Miller NSW