One of the most ridiculous “solutions” to the Sydney race riots is the very boring, very American thing where a couple of actors go for a walk in the area wearing clever t-shirts bought from REMO.
In this case, Cate Blanchett and Claudia Karvan, two Coogee residents, went for a stroll down their local beach. No, not Cronulla. Not Maroubra. Their local, lovely Coogee Beach, where the chance of anything happening is bugger all! It’s like me and a couple of mates walking down Toorak Road to protest the failure of the latest WTO trade round in Doha. It’s like Sean Penn complaining about the response to the New Orleans hurricane by holding a dinner party in New York (not that he did, he actually got on a boat and went to New Orleans to have himself photographed by the three paparazzi he took along). RESPECT.
The funniest thing though is the quote from The Age today, where Blanchett, without the safety of scriptwriters, editors and consultants, comes out with her own pearls of wisdom, her own absolute MAGIC. Who would have thought that someone who makes a living out of reading other people’s writing could themselves have such nous to conjure up such a stream of consciousness and communication to rival the world’s greatest leaders. Ladies and Gentlemen, in an almost Martin Luther King Jnr. fashion, Blanchett springs on us a monologue of magic, a speech to echo through the ages.
Says Blanchett: “Violence and racism are bad“.
GENIUS.