Thursday, 26 April 2012

Triumph of the Bogans


Jeff Blamey, Melbourne, 2012

If you thought the most important events in the non-Aboriginal history of the Northern Territory were the expeditions of discovery of Stuart, or the surveying parties of Goyder, think again. The arrival of the Bogans from the late 20th century is having far greater effect in shaping the Northern Territory than trifling events such as the Bombing of Darwin, Cyclone Tracy or self-government.
We tend to judge Bogans in material terms, but these are misconceived; it is Bogan culture that has been wholly successful. It is not a culture embedded in bourgeois cultural items, such as original books, paintings or music, but in the act of adoption and consumption of a narrow and conformist range of artefacts. Their creativity lies not in the vapid pursuit of “the new”, but in a cultural hegemony through conformity: in remixed songs rather than new ones, prêt-à-porter foods rather than cordon bleu, the derivative rather than the daring.
Bogans have a vital knowledge about the pursuit of happiness which few other Australians have tried to acquire. Other Australians crossing lonely suburbs have died of thirst within a mile of hidden Bundy or VB which, with the aid of Bogans, they could have tapped. Lost, they wander aimlessly through environments which display the hidden signs of plasma televisions. They often conclude that the world is mean and hungry, not realising that some regions in the course of four seasons provide a wider variety of KFC and McDonald’s than a gourmet in Paris would eat in an extravagant year.
Indeed, if a Bogan from Karama in the early 21st century had been captured as a curiosity by a Stokes Hill Wharf cruise ship, and if he had travelled all the way to Double Bay and on to Toorak, and seen how the average Australian lived, he might have said to himself that he had now seen the Third World and all its material poverty, hardship and cultural sterility.
In the Northern Territory, the Bogans have thrived in their newly discovered Eden, nowhere less than in the northern suburbs of Darwin and the pioneering outposts of Palmerston and beyond: this paradise is indeed witnessing the triumph of the Bogans.
As scholars, we must learn to understand the Bogan and celebrate—perhaps even embrace—this way of life: the wearing of high vis chic clothing, their ritual displays of Southern Cross tattoos, their harmony with the environment, and the fact that their apparent wanderings actually form a regular pattern of movements between work and play, between drinks and fishing.
As other researchers have pointed out[1]:
The bogan today defies income, class, race, creed, gender and logic. The bogan is defined by what it does, what it says and, most importantly, what it buys. Those who choose to deny the bogan on the basis of their ... home, their stockbroking career or their massive trust fund choose not to see the bogan. They merely see old class battles revisited. Likewise, the bogan is no mere “tradie”. Even if tradies remained low-income workers, many bogans are affluent. And they set themselves apart by their efforts to stand out by conforming as furiously, and conspicuously, as possible.
… (i)t is time to bring to the world’s attention the means by which we can keep the world’s bogans happy. The word bogan has had a bad rap of late—still associated with wife beaters, flannelette, VB, utes and mullets. But this conceals the new, modern bogan. The bogan with money. The bogan with aspirations. The bogan with Ed Hardy t-shirts.
I can only concur, and the Northern Territory provides the perfect environment for that happiness to be achieved.

List of works

Franck Gohier, Keep Left, acrylics plus mixed media on hand riveted aluminum

Franck Gohier, The bucket, 2007, acrylic on board
Colin Holt, Boganopoly, 2012, acrylic paint on wood, glass top
Colin Holt, Bogan World, 2012, acrylic on board
Chips Mackinolty, Bogan Baby names, 2012, inkjet print on paper 






[1]                   http://thingsboganslike.com/about, accessed 1 March 2012.

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