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Kill your darlings

KILL YOUR DARLINGS

Publishing Directors: Rebecca Starford and Hannah Kent

Editor: Rebecca Starford

Deputy Editor: Brigid Mullane

Online Editor: Imogen Kandel

Online Marketing Assistant: Emily Laidlaw

Online Assistant: Jessica Alice

Editorial Assistant: Christopher Fieldus

Social Media Assistant: Samantha van Zweden

PO Box 166, Parkville 3052, Victoria, Australia

Email: info@killyourdarlingsjournal.com

Web: www.killyourdarlingsjournal.com

Published by Kill Your Darlings Pty Ltd

This collection © Kill Your Darlings 2013

Kill Your Darlings 14, 2013

ISBN 978-0-9874213-7-1, ISSN 1837-638X

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise

without the prior permission of Kill Your Darlings.

The views and opinions expressed by individual authors are not necessarily those of

the editors.

Cover illustration: Guy Shield

Design and layout: © Kill Your Darlings

Kill Your Darlings accepts unsolicited submissions. Please visit the website for all

guidelines.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

CONTENTS

5 Editorial

COMMENTARY

9 Gonski-lite: Doing the Sums on School Reform

As the federal election draws near, Ben Eltham examines the Gonski education reforms, exploring what is at stake for our schools' futures.

25 You Know Who You Look Like?: Being a Perpetual Face Twin

Estelle Tang confronts her dubious doppelgangers and urges people to leave her face alone.

33 Water for the Skull: On River Tubing in Laos

Sam Twyford-Moore on Australian deaths in Laos and the search for the Perfect Moment.

45 Weighty Issues: On Fat, Silence and Self-Knowledge

S.A. Jones explores the ideas of nourishment and happiness through her experience with weight gain.

51 Much Ado About Cotton: Marlon Brando, T-shirts and

Sexuality on Screen

Joanna Di Mattia examines the cinematic icon's Method and the importance of costume in character.

65 Dancing the Bodyelectric: A Tale of Transcendence in Lycra

Emily Weekes revisits her childhood obsessions of dance, leg warmers and Wham!.

75 Left Hand Drive: Remembering Australia's Political Past

Award-winning journalist Craig McGregor on living and breathing Australian politics for the past 50 years.

93 In the Kabul Bubble: Ex-pat Life in Afghanistan

Pip Newling remembers living in Afghanistan in the years following September 11. You'll be surprised what she got up to.

FICTION

103 The Art of Preservation Kate Elkington

INTERVIEW

117 Kill Your Darlings in conversation with Sheila Heti

REVIEWS

139 'Can I Take Your Order?': Compliance and Doing

As You're Told Michelle See-Thosometimes break the rules.

148 Remaking Total Recall: Short-changing Philip K. Dick

and Our Cinematic Past

short stories.

EDITORIAL

Welcome to Issue 14 of Kill Your Darlings. As we go to print, divisive and predictable federal Labor

leadership speculation continues to rage across our nation’s media outlets. A few months from an election that will likely see Tony Abbott sweep to power, swallowing dozens of Labor seats in the process, there has been very little discussion of basic policy. Ben Eltham’s lead feature, ‘Gonski-lite: Doing the Sums on School Reform’, is an insightful examination of Labor’s attempts at educational reforms that could genuinely change the shape of education and opportunity in this country. Accompanying Eltham’s lead feature is a chapter from Craig McGregor’s fascinating memoir, Left Hand Drive. McGregor, a journalist and commentator with 50 years’ experience, reflects on Australian society since the 1960s, pondering what has gone so wrong with our left-wing politics.

Elsewhere in Commentary Estelle Tang reveals her frequent (and sometimes bizarre) mistaken identity, which touches on some uncomfortable questions about racism, while S.A. Jones tackles other forms of prejudice in her personal article on weight gain and identity. In the wake of tragic deaths of young tourists in Laos, Sam Twyford-Moore remembers his own travels to Southeast Asia and the tradition of ‘tubing’. Joanna Di Mattia reads masculinity in screen icon Marlon Brando’s T-shirts, Emily Weekes gets her groove on at Bodyelectric, a popular Melbourne-based amateur dance organisation, and Pip Newling

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remembers the ‘Kabul Bubble’ while she lived and worked in Afghanistan.

In Fiction, the issue features a new story from Kate Elkington, entitled ‘The Art of Preservation’, which examines the dynamics of an unconventional couple, while in Interviews we chat with indie darling and renowned interviewer Sheila Heti about her recent books, as well as what it’s like to be on the other side of the conversation.

In Reviews, Michelle See-Tho discusses the disturbing film, Compliance, which challenges our preconceptions of surveillance and authority, while Ben O’Mara discusses the art of adaption and Total Recall.

There have also been several recent exciting changes at Kill Your Darlings. We’re delighted announce that Brigid Mullane has been promoted to Deputy Editor, replacing Hannah Kent who now joins Editor Rebecca Starford as Publishing Director. We’re also very happy to announce Jessica Alice’s appointment as Online Assistant Editor, replacing Stephanie van Schilt, who leaves KYD for a newly created role at The Lifted Brow. We thank Steph for her time with us and wish her all the best. Also in staff news, Samantha van Zweden has been appointed Social Media Assistant and she’s already taken to our Tweetdeck like a duck to water.

We warmly welcome our new staff to the KYD fold and look forward to you getting to know them in the coming months.

Rebecca Starford, Editor

COMMENTARY

GONSKI-LITE

Doing the Sums on Schools Reform

Ben Eltham

I come from a teaching family. My parents met at Burwood Teacher’s College in Melbourne in the 1960s.

You can still see some of the original buildings today, where, perhaps fittingly, I now work, having recently secured a position at Burwood’s modern incarnation, Deakin University.

My dad went on to a varied career in the public service, as a social work lecturer, an advisor to a state education minister, and later, in the private sector. My mum remained a teacher. Over a remarkable 40-year career, she has taught everywhere from country Victoria to Brixton in London. Now, at the age of 68, she’s about to retire as the principal of a primary school, deep in the tough outer suburbs of Ipswich, in Queensland. She’s implemented a national curriculum, secured millions of dollars of extra funding from the state and Commonwealth, and battled a devastating flood, which submerged half the school’s classrooms in a metre of Bremer River mud.

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