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Virtue politics can turn into unending claims of individual rights. The teals need grassroots rural and left activists in their offices.
There’s an event in the life of every cineaste or film student that counts as one of life’s great “before” and “after” moments, and that is when one first sees The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, a bizarre hothouse weepie featuring the emotionally entangled Sturm und Drang of a group of women, all taking place in the apartment of the eponymous anti-hero, a fashion designer with a tendency to histrionics, and a shagpile carpet so deep it threatens to swallow all comers. Sadism, masochism, emotional blackmail, blurred boundaries, acting out, psychic fugue and the perverse meanderings of ambition and desire all play out pretty much while you’re still shuffling to your seat, trying not to spill your popcorn.
Throughout two hours of Petra’s monstrous, deranged, pathetic exchanges with her mother, her unrequited love object and others, her much put-upon secretary Marlene keeps typing in the background. In the final scene, after a full crisis has transformed Petra, she tells Marlene of her shame at mistreating her, and how everything will be better from now on. At which point Marlene pulls out her little suitcase and begins packing her few things to leave and never return.
The lesson of this movie for film students is: do a STEM degree. For the mature viewer, it’s a sort of universal workbook; all human love is contained in those two hours of shagpile. For the teal movement, it might serve as a workplace training video, with a warning about how you put an office together. That’s certainly the impression one gets from the very regrettable and utterly delicious revelations in the lawsuit by activist and author Sally Rugg against her former boss, Kooyong MHR Monique Ryan.
Read more about the destructive effect of Rugg v Ryan…
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