Australian prime minister Julia Gillard is taken by police to a waiting car during a heated protest at an Australia Day awards ceremony. Photograph: The Sydney Morning Herald/Fairfax Media via Getty Images
If you watch the clip of Australian prime minister Julia Gillard being bundled away from Aboriginal rights protesters in Canberra at a ceremony for Australia Day, you could be forgiven for assuming that a bomb had gone off or that the building was collapsing.
In truth, a couple of hundred protesters, who favour the term "Invasion Day" heard that the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, was present and they were angry at a remark he'd made earlier, about how the Aboriginal Tent Assembly should "move on". They were chanting things such as "shame" and "racist", but nothing was thrown – no punches, not even an egg.
Nevertheless, Ms Gillard was bundled away so quickly that she stumbled, losing a shoe, and, at one point, appeared to be cradled by a bodyguard. The scene evoked a movie, with photographs resembling stills of Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. With her stockinged foot, crushed against her security man, Gillard looked a poor, pathetic, helpless little Sheila. The online forums erupted in mockery: to paraphrase the famous advertising campaign, right now, who would give a Castlemaine XXXX for her chances of re-election?
Ultimately, this episode was a non-event; the protesters even gave Gillard her shoe back. So why was one left with a niggling feeling that some terrible damage had been wreaked? That, brief non-event though this was, it had produced enough vivid imagery, and subliminal messages, to be a boon to Gillard's political enemies – and anybody out there with an interest in undermining powerful women?
How the world loves a reductive visual take on women in power. Remember Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street for the final time "in tears"? Except this didn't happen. To me, in tears means someone who is crying uncontrollably, into sodden hankies – the works. Thatcher's eyes glistened and there was one small tear, maybe a couple. Still, this shot, of her in the back of the car pops up frequently, perhaps less as evidence of Thatcher's innate humanity and more her disappointing femininity. The Iron Lady successfully recast as a big old crybaby.
With Hillary Clinton, some put her success in the 2008 New Hampshire primaries down to her showing her "feminine" side, with some strategic eye-misting. Finally, everyone rejoiced, here was the "real Hillary"! Really? I'd have thought that the real Hillary was not The Crying Lady, but the political fireball who wasn't going to let being female, and being married to a serial shagger, get in the way of her long-held ambitions. When Condoleezza Rice refused to lose self-control in front of the cameras, she was branded a frigid robot.
This is not, I hope, to concoct specious links between such examples and Ms Gillard. Take it, rather, as an attempt to illustrate just how difficult it can be for all politicians, 'especially female ones, when visual images race out of their control. Indeed, this is what felt unsettling about Canberra. In a wider sense, it's good that the world was reminded, at least in passing, of the Aboriginal point of view. However, it was also a gift for those who enjoy seeing powerful women cut down to size.
In the end, it didn't matter that not much happened, or that Gillard's bodyguards probably overreacted. What mattered was the footage of the female PM stumbling along, shoeless, apparently cowering, being "saved" by a male. It doesn't take a genius or a paranoiac to deduce how that played to the macho hordes. In many ways, it was a female take on the Neil Kinnock falling into the sea money shot – footage that fundamentally meant nothing, but could be exploited forever more as "proof" of the subject's inherent unsuitability.
Time will tell whether the Canberra footage keeps resurfacing during future election campaigns. My bet is that, irrelevant though it is, Gillard won't have seen the last of the footage.
via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jan/29/barbara-ellen-julia-gilla...
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