Hate for Australia Drawn on the Public Purse

It’s possible to prosecute a case for improved outcomes for the minority of Aboriginal people severely disadvantaged relative to the vast majority of their countrymen (which includes 80 per cent of fellow Aborigines). Further, to acknowledge that the process of establishing and building Australia brought trauma and suffering to Aborigines without, at the same time, hating the country we have become.

You would think that the ABC, funded by Australians to showcase the best of our achievements, might be able to manage that. But increasingly it seems otherwise. On that note, courtesy of the UTS and the national broadcaster, let me introduce Jake Duczynski:

Gamilaraay and Mandandanji artist and animator Jake Duczynski is the creative brains behind the ABC animation series Cooked. In this illuminating Q&A, Jake shares the story behind the series and why animation in the art of storytelling can shape powerful Indigenous narratives.

In 2020, Prime Minister (PM) Scott Morrison publicly declared he would sail the Endeavour as a way to honour the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s arrival in Australia. At the time, the PM said the plan would “help Australians better understand Captain Cook’s historic voyage and its legacy for exploration, science and reconciliation” and “rediscover him a bit because he gets a bit of a bad show.”

Cooked, which is equal parts provocative and hilarious, turns the government’s memorialisation plan and the legacy of Captain Cook on its head, while amplifying a perspective that needs to be heard. The online animation series, which was funded by Screen Australia, was created by Jake and his team at Studio Hackett. Thirteen of the crew who worked on Cooked are UTS alumni or current students, with seven identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. 

This extract is from an online article titled ‘The power of storytelling through Indigenous animation’.  So now we can add animation to the raft of disciplines, such as astronomy, chemistry and mathematics, with which Aborigines have endowed us.

Cooked, jointly funded by the Screen Australia, Create NSW and the ABC, is a five-part cartoon series, each episode of roughly six minutes, that is certainly provocative, but such hilarity as it engenders belongs more to the Wollongong High School Boy’s dunny than Australia’s established comedic tradition. So, if you watched any of the ABC’s At Home Alone Together (which I reviewed here) you will realize that Cooked is right at home there. I thought At Home Alone Together represented the nadir of ABC attempt at ‘humour’, but not by a long chalk.  Cooked makes Home Alone Together look like The Life of Brian.

The basic premise of Cooked is that Captain Cook arrives in Botany Bay, where one of his sailors promptly shoots dead a local Aboriginal girl.  Cook goes ashore and expresses his regret but as he is doing so, the renegade sailor aims for the second girl.  Fortunately for her, the ship’s goat, Nanny, has somehow got ashore and puts herself in front of second girl to protect her.  Frustrated, renegade sailor puts a ball in the leg of a warrior who retaliates by planting a spear in renegade sailor’s forehead, who, as he expires, exudes a malevolent curse upon the land.

The name of this murderer?  Wyatt Gildt – geddit?  Subtlety or nuance is not Jake’s strong suit, as you will discover.

Meanwhile the spirit of first girl, Mahnra, being denied access to Aboriginal nirvana, takes refuge in the body of Nanny.  The rest of the series is devoted to the efforts of Manhra, aided by Cook’s ghost, to rid the land of Wyatt Gildt’s curse.  And if you think it unlikely that either Gildt or Aboriginal warrior could inflict fatal wounds from ship to shore using musket and spear, that will be the least of your quibbles as you watch the whole series, whose Facebook links are pasted below.  Prepare to be gobsmacked. If ever in need of an emetic, these will do the trick.

This series is no longer available on ABC iView, and you may think it is water under the bridge.  What’s the point of dredging it up now?  Well, the Left are very adept at dredging up the past to suit their ends, however innocuous they may be and however far in the past.

I don’t know how much public funding Cooked received, but whatever the sum, it was too much.  One dollar would have been too much. It is unutterable garbage from start to finish.

Setting aside the divisive political rhetoric, which we have come to expect as par for the course from Their ABC, what offends me most, and mightily at that, is that the series is totally incoherent and irredeemably puerile.  Did Ita Buttrose, or David Anderson, or Paul Barry watch this show?  Can you imagine that, if they had, they would have discerned any artistic merit whatsoever?  Would they have recommended it to their family and friends?  Ms Buttrose is a Companion of the Order of Australia, the highest honour you can now be awarded for services to this country. Surely that honour imposes some sort of obligation to prevent this sort of gross insult from going to air.  Kerry Packer would have punted Cooked in a heartbeat, plus anyone associated with it.

If any Australian media or arts organisation caricatured Aborigines in the same way Cooked smears non-indigenous Australians — one of the series’ depictions of Australia, Land of Yobbos, is reproduced atop this page — the outrage would know no bounds. ‘Artistic licence’ would get very short shrift and lawyers would be sharpening their pencils.

Peter Dutton might want to urge the appropriate senator to raise this matter next time David Anderson appears at an Estimates hearing.

https://www.facebook.com/cooked.animation/videos/2492012101094937

https://www.facebook.com/cooked.animation/videos/184664503444114

https://www.facebook.com/cooked.animation/videos/424609998989204

https://www.facebook.com/cooked.animation/videos/241587954141447

https://www.facebook.com/cooked.animation/videos/4078484325519245