No Sex, No Bushmen

In 1962, the Museum of Modern Art, guided by the New York Liberal Establishment Curia on Everything, hung a Matisse gouache. Having thus ascertained the imprimatur, some 116,000 art lovers filed by dutifully, until one of them, purblind to the Emperor’s clothes, noticed it was hanging upside down.

I have here on my desk thirty reviews of the classic Australian film Walkabout, perpetually in orbit and coming around for another showing to this part of the earth (Boulder, Colorado). The earlier Matisse incident compels me to believe that these reviewers, all of them, are standing on their heads watching a film being shown right side up. Though most of these reviews come from the most influential liberal guides to life (there is one review here from the Ottumwa Courier; I have no idea how it got in here), not a single one gives the least hint of what the picture is about. The less courageous—or more cunning—confine their remarks to the beauty of the Australian desert (which really does not appear in the film). The others, presuming upon their intellects, wind up biting the glass and listening for the flavor. Let’s look at a few comments from some of America’s most prestigious critics. Walkabout, concludes The New Yorker, “shows representatives of a rundown English class of sophisticates [any Australians who wear their tails curled up inside their trousers] in collision with the natural elite of the Australian aborigine. It is nominally [sic] about three children— two English, expensively school-trained, one a young abo, who piteously kills himself for love of the sometimes rather prim but intoxicating schoolgirl.” As expected, nearly the whole of this summary is factually wrong, but I am upset only by the sex business, since it is at least latent in the other reviews. There is no sex in this picture. The aboriginal boy is in the last stage of his test for manhood—alone in the desert to prove he can make a living on a land as productive of game as an asphalt parking lot. More to the point, he has just been circumcised and, worse yet, subincised. If, in such a condition, he entertains lustful yearnings, well, he’s a better man than I am, Gunga Din.

JG

About the Author

John Greenway

In 1962, the Museum of Modern Art, guided by the New York Liberal Establishment Curia on Everything, hung a Matisse gouache. Having thus ascertained the imprimatur, some 116,000 art lovers filed by dutifully, until one of them, purblind to the Emperor’s clothes, noticed it was hanging upside down.

I have here on my desk thirty reviews of the classic Australian film Walkabout, perpetually in orbit and coming around for another showing to this part of the earth (Boulder, Colorado). The earlier Matisse incident compels me to believe that these reviewers, all of them, are standing on their heads watching a film being shown right side up. Though most of these reviews come from the most influential liberal guides to life (there is one review here from the Ottumwa Courier; I have no idea how it got in here), not a single one gives the least hint of what the picture is about. The less courageous—or more cunning—confine their remarks to the beauty of the Australian desert (which really does not appear in the film). The others, presuming upon their intellects, wind up biting the glass and listening for the flavor. Let’s look at a few comments from some of America’s most prestigious critics. Walkabout, concludes The New Yorker, “shows representatives of a rundown English class of sophisticates [any Australians who wear their tails curled up inside their trousers] in collision with the natural elite of the Australian aborigine. It is nominally [sic] about three children— two English, expensively school-trained, one a young abo, who piteously kills himself for love of the sometimes rather prim but intoxicating schoolgirl.” As expected, nearly the whole of this summary is factually wrong, but I am upset only by the sex business, since it is at least latent in the other reviews. There is no sex in this picture. The aboriginal boy is in the last stage of his test for manhood—alone in the desert to prove he can make a living on a land as productive of game as an asphalt parking lot. More to the point, he has just been circumcised and, worse yet, subincised. If, in such a condition, he entertains lustful yearnings, well, he’s a better man than I am, Gunga Din.