ANZAC Infinity War
I remember attending Anzac Day assemblies at school. The day before the public holiday we’d dutifully line up, listen to the Last Post, hear the Ode To The Fallen stammered haltingly out by a hesitant volunteer student (me, one year) and be instructed to observe a moment’s silence during which, we were told, we should “think about what Anzac Day means”.
We didn’t know what it meant, of course. Not really. It had something to do with war, and soldiers, and dead people. We weren’t really taught the details of Australia’s military history, and we knew neither the extent of the courage of the digger or the horror of battle. Whatever individual thoughts we had about Anzac Day, we lined up, listened, and bowed our heads for one reason and one reason only: we had been told to.
That was before Anzac Day assumed its current position as one of the major theatres of the culture war, of course. That was before Scott McIntyre lost his job, and Yassin Abdel-Magied had the hellhounds of News Ltd set upon her trail, for deviating from the Anzac Day script.
Which brings us to the once-unthinkable question, “What does Yassmin Abdel-Magied have in common with Spider-Man?”. The announcement that the much-anticipated new instalment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers Infinity War, would premiere on Anzac Day, brought howls of outrage in some quarters, including breakfast TV face and bon vivant Karl Stefanovic. Fulminating on Today, Stefanovic declared there was no “legitimate reason” for the movie to drop on April 25, and asked, “How are our kids supposed to breathe in the significance of Anzac Day…pretty hard to do with a $25 popcorn and choc top, I would’ve thought.”
Well, first, those who wish their kids to “breathe in the significance of Anzac Day” will most likely choose not to take them to the movies on that particular day. Going to the movies is still optional, and they’re not projecting the thing on the Shrine of Remembrance. Obviously significance-breathing is one of those things that is impossible in a cinema, but facilitated by getting blind drunk by mid-morning or betting on horses: but regardless: nobody who wishes to spend the day in sombre dedication to the Anzac spirit will be in any way inconvenienced by the fact that somewhere nowhere near them, people they don’t know are watching a movie. And nobody who choose the Avengers over the Dawn Service was going to go to the Dawn Service anyway.
The relationship of a silly dispute over a film premiere to people losing their jobs and being persecuted for questioning the Anzac legend might not be obvious. But all of this is feeding into something disturbing about the way Anzac Day has evolved into a demand for conspicuous displays of patriotism and a search-and-destroy mission targeted at anyone who won’t join in. It’s not just about freedom of speech and it’s not just about “what our diggers fought for”. Every time the media flares up over claimed “disrespect” for this sacred day, it goes to the very heart of what Anzac Day itself means.
When we savage someone for criticising the Anzacs, or proclaim that it’s unacceptable for people to go to the movies on the day, we do one thing in particular: we insist on one perspective on Anzac Day. One way to mark the day, one way to discuss the day, one way to decide on its importance. It is a disgrace, the Stefanovics of the world tell us, for anyone to think about Anzac Day in any way other than the way they do.
Maybe you object to the military myth-making of Anzac Day. Maybe you have no strong feelings about it, and simply don’t consider it as important as others. If we insist that such attitudes must be squashed, we’re not just militating against free speech, we’re degrading the very day we claim to revere. Anzac Day should be a day when we talk about war and sacrifice and the men and women who fought; a day when Australians, understanding what they are commemorating, come to their own conclusions about what it all means and how they will recognise that. It should be a day to show respect to our veterans and our history. But enforced respect? That is no respect at all.
If Anzac Day has become something different: a day where even those who dislike what they see as the day’s meaning, those whose spirit rebels against the nature of the day’s events, and those who simply haven’t thought much about any of it in the first place, march in lockstep with the rest of us, simply because they fear the persecution if they fall out of line…then we don’t have a nation “breathing in the significance of Anzac Day”. We have a nation of schoolchildren, standing in lines, just doing what they’re told. And if that’s all Anzac Day is about, we might as well all be at the movies.
