Thank god we got "The Kennedys"

Barry Pepper & Greg Kinnear as two charismatic, over achieving, highly sexed Irish boys watch 'Leave It To Beaver' to get a few tips.

So, Sydney finally got to see 'The Kennedys' (Sunday nights 29 May, 5 & 12, June). There are two versions of the story behind its delayed screening. Both acknowledge that the US/Canadian History Channel commissioned the series, filmed over two years, at a cost of $25 million US, but abruptly dropped it in January of this year with the statement: "this dramatic interpretation is not a fit for the History brand", The first story says they responded to pressure from Kennedy associates and admirers to walk away from the series. The other version is the same except that the reason given by its proponents for the History Channel abandoning their project is that they realised the series was 'completely f***ing terrible' and that the Reelz Channel who eventaully aired it did so because 'they didn’t care that it is completely f***ing terrible' (source: Best Week Ever TV).

Casting doubt on the first explanation is the fact that the series contains nothing that hasn't been public knowledge for aeons i.e. Joe Kennedy was anti semitic and not above rigging a ballot or two, Rose Kennedy was a manipulative and controlling fanatical Catholic, JFK had a bad back yet consistently put it about a bit (well, a lot), Bobby was uber fertile and unflinching, and, in cleaning up one of his big bro's messes, pretty tough on Marilyn Monroe... None this is exactly bombshell material, but perhaps still heresy for canonising Cameloteers.

The charge that the series is simply bad TV centres both on the characterisation and on the dialogue, lampooned as clunky, melodramatic and pregnant with 'prophecy'. This seems a little harsh. 'The Kennedys' isn't a documentary and let's face it no aspect of the actual story of the dynasty, the Rat Pack, the Mob, Cuba, the USSR, the civil rights movement, Dr Feelgood's magical injections, J. Edgar Hoover, the paparazzi etc and of course, the shocking assassinations, themselves is easy to downplay. I expected a certain chilling profundity of tone for these BIG themes and subjects and that's what I got. And what if some of the writing and the portrayals are a bit self conscious? Setting out to capture iconic figures and moments it would be hard to be otherwise. However perhaps that is easier to feel that way when I come to the series as an Australian via the UK and was 6 years old when JFK was assassinated. I wonder if I would be so ready to suspend disbelief if the story were part of my national heritage, perhaps a dramatisation of The Dismissal with say, Garry MacDonald as one of the reporters on the steps of Parliament House. Hey, wait a moment... .


Basically, like US critic Linda Stasi in the New York Post I experienced the series as 'one of the best, most riveting, historically accurate dramas about a time and place in American history that has ever been done for TV'. And as well as being riveting historical drama, the series was a wonderful showcase for some fine character acting from Diana Hardcastle, Greg Kinnear, Barry Pepper, Kristin Booth and, most of all, the wonderful Tom Wilkinson. Katie Holmes was even surprisingly adequate as Jackie but I wouldn't put her in their class.

Mean cartoon from US satirical TV Review Publication Best Week Ever TV).

So, thumbs up for 'The Kennedys'. Damn fine apple pie in its own right and definitely superior to its main competition on those Sunday evenings, that tedious re-evocation of 'Upstairs Downstairs', 'Downton Abbey'.

M'lud experiences a twinge of angst or dyspepsia when a telegram tells him that The Titanic has sunk, the domestics want a living wage and he will need to install a safari park to meet death duties.

L'IL OLE MO(A)NA ME

Is it the best of museums, is it the worst of museums? It is certainly the quirkiest of museums!

I visited Hobart's new and much lauded MONA (Museum of Old & New Art) on Monday. Actually I visited it on Sunday, but that isn't as alliterative. Mid long weekend, with an extra injection of tourists because of the volcanic ash cloud, we should have expected queues. What we didn't expect was that they would be longer at the coffee shop than for admission! Just an aside on the cafe industry in Hobart, it is best to phone ahead if there are more than 4 of you. Large numbers of paying customers upset the staff. They make this clear by being disdainful or agitated or both.

Any way, we posted two of our outrageously huge group of 7 in the entry queue and went to order takeaway coffee. In the next 20 minutes our advance party twice relinquished the opportunity to enter MONA to stand in the brisk breeze awaiting their cappuccinos.

MONA - popular!

Visitors are admitted in lots of 14 so again, when we reached the head of the queue, we and our scouts stood back until we could proceed en masse. Inside we were given an orientation talk by one of MONA's youthful staff to the effect that there is no signage in the museum, you use a touch screen MP3 player and headset to locate yourself and access information about the exhibits. You relinquish these when you leave so forgive the lack of any identifying details about the art and artists in this post*.

I have been able to find little online about the building, its site or history but a security guard told us that a European immigrant planted a vineyard on the land (at Berriedale, beside the Derwent) some time in the 20thC, that in the 1980s a house designed by the 'architect of the National Gallery of Victoria' (guess that could be Roy Grounds, Mario Bellini or Peter Davidson & Donald Bates) was built and that MONA's impressive central chimney/spiral staircase structure is part of the original house. At some point all that became the property of enigmatic billionaire David Walsh who has excavated around and under the house to create his subterranean 'anti-museum' or 'subversive adult Disneyland'!

Crikey's coverage of MONA's opening in January 2011 emphasised that the museum echoes Walsh's Darwinianism and belief in life's essential randomness. We all experience, but generally fail to confront, at least in a public gallery, just a few constants i.e. that 'we seek sex, we defecate and we all die'. MONA, with its mixed media, un-labelled, un-chronological exhibits that include Egyptian mummies, taxidermied and skeletal animal remains and a simulated giant human digestive tract certainly make these shared facts inescapable.

Descending 3 floors from the ground level entry to the basement, where it is suggested you begin your tour, juggling your MP3 player and headphones (and in my case your spectacles as well) you notice two more beverage/food outlets whose existence causes you, appropriately enough, to begin an acknowledgement of randomness that will continue for hours to come.

MONA is almost totally underground. That means that there is no natural light. It has an eccentric floor plan and a feeling of being outside time, disorientation sets in quickly. This arguably puts you in the right frame of mind one of the first installations you encounter, a version of Roselands' raindrop fountain propelled into the nihilistic 21stC with the words like "mafia", "Jesse James" and "American Idol" forming in its cascades.

Nearby, between heavy burgundy velvet curtains, is a stuffed raven suspended over a real or reproduction 18thC cabinet containing an urn of human ashes - my MP3 player said human hair was also involved but I couldn't spot any unless it was of a Rapunzel-like strength and supporting the raven.

Then I was mesmerised by a video depicting a young woman undergoing various ophthalmic, surgical, immersive and electronic procedures in a kind of laboratory/conservatory/natural history museum setting - later another woman dismembered a piano and another showed great flexibility on a trapeze. The imagery recalled Paul Delvaux and Louis Bunuel. I would like to have made a note of whose work I was viewing and to record a reaction a little more complex than 'LOVE'/'HATE' but my full hands, the limitations of the MP3's programming and, I'm sure, Mr Walsh's intentions, made that impossible.

The diversity and unorthodox juxtaposition of works I saw over the next 2 hours proved both exhilarating and frustrating. The no signage policy meant I completely missed a Brett Whiteley painting in one of the only parts of the gallery with natural light. I stumbled upon a Russian video triptych quoting mannerist paintings and delivering a truly poignant and chilling Armageddon message. I loved that (and could tick 'LOVE' in all conscience) and also a work I have since heard is called 'Cunts and Other Conversations' which comprised casts of over 100 sets of female genitals. I didn't ever find the much publicised excreting digestive tract or any animal carcasses which form exciting parts of the MONA collection.

MONA is must see. It is very probably unique; there are some amazing exhibits with promises of additions and changes to come. I'm over 50 and do not consider myself a complete luddite. I did however struggle with the touch screen MP3 player as I hadn't used one before and found the earphones competed with the MP3's lanyard about my neck. I only remembered to consult the floor plan when I found a stray copy on the floor towards the end of my visit. I know I was being conceptually challenged and asked to experience art in a fresh way without curatorial interpretation but I can't discard my existing art knowledge and wanted to make connections. I would also rather put my energy into experiencing the art itself rather than into trying to operate the technology. I kept thinking of the Powerhouse where technology is used more sparingly and is much more interactive and user friendly. I don't know what they do for people with actual disabilities but the glasses on, glasses off thing I had to do to find out where I was and what I was looking at was an effing pain.

You can't see the collection in one day nor is it desirable to, but I do feel a bit as if I have only rehearsed for my visit and now need to have the real experience. As our departure from Tassie was not delayed by the ash cloud that opportunity won't come for some time.

Really keen to hear what others who've visited MONA have to say.

*Post script - I am informed I could have saved my tour and tracked it later. Oh, well, I'll know for next time.