CHEEK POLITICS
Published: Australian Book Review #319, March 2010.
How to Make Trouble and Influence People: Pranks, Hoaxes, Graffiti & Political Mischief-Making from Across Australia by Iain McIntyre (Breakdown Press)
Poor communication has long proven activism’s Achilles heel. Engaging the wider populace and influencing opinion, one might argue, often relies on the effective, relatable delivery of a message as much the ideas or events that inform it. We may be loathed to admit it, but intelligent PR can aid any pursuit – advocatory, activist or otherwise.
It’s within this schema that expansive new publication How to Make Trouble and Influence People: Pranks, Hoaxes, Graffiti & Mischief-Making takes its cues. Compiled and written by Melbourne writer, zine-maker and community radio presenter Iain McIntyre, the vividly illustrated volume attempts to document not only an unofficial history of Australian protest, activism and all-round cheek, but the connections between political troublemaking and its ability to influence the dogmas of the mainstream. It succeeds for most part.
Comprising countless compact, dated, encyclopaedic entries, a wealth of photographs and illustrations, plus fourteen expanded ‘Conversations’ with Australian troublemakers – including John Safran, anti-Apartheid activist Meredith Bergmann and anti-uranium activist and Arabunna elder Uncle Kevin Buzzacott – there are several perspectives at play within How to Make Trouble …. While McIntyre has his own agenda and seems at pains to cast Australian political mischief-making as part of meaningful cultural lineage, ‘informed by a commonly held belief on the Left that social progress does not emanate from … “enlightened” politicians, but instead derives from grassroots resistance’, to his great credit, he is willing to allow the volume’s many voices and interviewees to diffuse his own editorialising.
The question-and-answer ‘Conversations’ are by far the volume’s strongest and most insightful component. McIntyre draws on broad sweep of troublemakers, from public political artists like the Buga-Up collective, who made a name ‘revising’ advertising billboards and disrupting tobacco-sponsored events throughout the 1980s and 1990s, to activist performers such as the John Howard Ladies’ Auxiliary Fan Club and drag satirist Pauline Pantsdown. Interviews with John Safran and The Chaser’s Chris Taylor make for a fascinating read. While detailing the logistics behind some of their most infamous pranks – including The Chaser’s APEC Summit security breach – interestingly, both Taylor and Safran refute the suggestion that their work holds activist implications, instead framing it in terms of entertainment and method acting.
McIntyre’s conversation with activist Dave Burgess, who along with friend Will Saunders made international headlines when they emblazoned the slogan ‘NO WAR’ in red paint on the Sydney Opera House in March 2003, makes for perhaps the most engaging passage in the book. Aside from the thrilling story of scaling the Opera House sails, the dialogue puts a very rational and human face to a deed subject to such histrionics in the mainstream press. Importantly, the conversation also considers the action’s influence and scope of the public’s response.
Any issues with How to Make Trouble … rest with the main body of text; the historical listings and brief descriptions of uprisings, protests, pranks and the like. There are plenty of inspiring, elucidatory and positively hilarious accounts here. The tale of four activists preventing a huge US military aircraft from landing at Alice Springs by riding their bicycles into the runway path, not to mention Magistrate David Heilpern’s dismissal of a charge against dancing activist group the Tranny Cops for impersonating police on the grounds of a ‘Village People-style defence’ are fine examples. That said, the collection could have done with some serious culling. While the anecdotal qualities of the texts give the book its gritty flare, many of the entries take a guise closer to that of undergraduate hearsay, detailing only the mischievous or seditious acts whilst neglecting to contend a meaningful purpose or potential sphere of influence. Entries like that of ‘An imaginative shoplifter’ seem petty examples of sticking it to ‘the man’ ahead anything else, and chance alienating the volume’s potential wider readership.
The book’s foreword, by The Chaser’s Andrew Hansen, echoes the crucial dichotomy between creative and non-creative activism. Protestors ‘who scream … and chuck rocks and smash stuff … will have a hard time changing the average person’s mind,’ he writes. ‘That’s where imaginative, inspiring troublemaking can help.’
While not all of How to Make Trouble and Influence People lives up to both its contended ambitions, the moments that do offer a feisty, perceptive refreshingly rational dialogue on our diverse history of rebelliousness.
Dan Rule is an arts and music writer who has contributed to a host of publications, including The Age, Sydney Morning Herald, The Big Issue, Dazed & Confused, Oyster and Cyclic Defrost. He writes the weekly ‘Around the galleries’ column in The Age, is the senior writer for Music Australia Guide and is a co-founder of independent art publishers And Collective.
(Photo credit: “One Perfect Day” graffiti, Newcastle 1998. Photographer: Ian Sweeney)
