Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows a re-enactment of a rather one-sided conversation between Michael Blakemore (played by Michael Shearman) and his father (played by Michael Blakemore himself) over the younger Blakemore’s choice of career on leaving school in the 1950s. Much of the clip takes place over a dismal Sunday lunch in the dining room at the elite Royal Sydney Golf Club, of which Blakemore senior was a member. The clip is almost entirely narrated, with Blakemore’s witty voice-over describing the arguments his father advanced to convince him to study medicine rather than pursue a career in film or the theatre.

Educational value points

• The clip portrays the relationship between Blakemore and his father. In the 1950s relationships between fathers and sons were often distant. Blakemore senior is depicted in this re-enactment as both controlling and as an authority figure who intimidates his son. For example, during the discussion of Michael Blakemore’s career plans, the young Blakemore does not speak while his father holds forth. The fact that Blakemore senior takes his son to the formal surrounds of the clubhouse dining room to discuss his career may be indicative of the formality of their relationship.

• The response of Blakemore senior, a prominent middle-class surgeon, to his son’s career choice is reflective of the indifference and even hostility towards the arts, artists and intellectuals that was prevalent in Australia in the 1950s. Australia was widely perceived as a cultural desert by outsiders, and often by those who lived there. As a consequence many creative people, like Blakemore, felt they had to go overseas to pursue a career in the arts.

• A clash of values is clearly evident. Blakemore’s father was a member of the Sydney establishment who had conservative social values. He placed a high value on belonging to the second-oldest and possibly most elite golf club in Australia and in sending his son to the oldest private boys’ school in the country, King’s School in Parramatta. He is insistent that his son have a 'reputable’ career and cannot understand why his son would forfeit his 'privileges’ to pursue a career he dismisses as foolish. Blakemore junior, however, is willing to give up these perceived privileges for a career about which he feels passionate.

• Blakemore’s clash with his father is constructed as a military engagement. The military metaphor pervades the clip, from the shot of the boys in military-style uniform marching to the sound of a military tattoo, to the shot of the clubhouse turret with flag flying, reminiscent of a fortified castle. Blakemore junior refers to 'the field of our second pitched battle’. He tastes 'defeat’ but his father enjoys 'victory’. The rare meat that his father methodically slices may metaphorically suggest the spilling of Blakemore junior’s blood, while the civilised setting plays off the visceral gutting he receives.

• Michael Blakemore acquiesced to his father’s wishes and studied medicine, but then went to London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. After a moderately successful acting career, he turned to stage directing in the 1960s and became one of the most successful Australians working in theatre overseas. At the 2000 Tony Awards he won an unprecedented double as 'best director’ of both a play, Copenhagen, and a musical, Kiss Me Kate. Blakemore has been awarded an OBE and has written and directed two films, A Personal History of the Australian Surf (1971) and Country Life (1994).

• A Personal History of the Australian Surf is an example of the performative mode of documentary. Performative documentaries are often autobiographical, and emphasise the subjective and emotive qualities of memory and experience, rather than factual information, in shaping our understanding of the world. These documentaries tend to employ a free combination of the actual and the imagined, and use the highly subjective and personal perspective of subjects, including the filmmaker, to appeal to viewers emotionally.

Michael stands by a gate. Inside the grounds boys in military-style uniform march to the sound of a military tattoo.
Michael Blakemore I wanted to be a film director. My father wanted me to be a doctor. The field of our second pitched battle was the dining room of the Royal Sydney Golf Club.

Re-enacted footage shows a teenage Michael and his father dining at the golf club. Michael continues to speak in voice-over, with some short audio extracts from the re-enacted scene.
Michael We struggled over one long Sunday lunch here and this time I tasted defeat. He attacked on two fronts – my ignorance of the world and my ignorance of my advantages. My father was able to make the world seem a very dangerous place. He had a line in mordant irony of which Somerset Maugham would not have been ashamed. After 10 minutes conversation with him, staphylococci, streptococci and syphilitic spirogyra were coming at you from all directions.
Waitress Not hungry, dear?
Michael No thanks.
The waitress takes Michael’s unfinished plate away.
Michael As for that most dangerous threat of all, one’s own species, it came in three categories – fools by far the greater number, crooks who battened off the fools and finally, gentlemen. This last group was very small and mainly British.
Waitress Everything alright, gentlemen?
Man Fine, thank you.
Michael I was proposing to join the fools and throw my advantages to the winds. My years at the oldest school in Australia, this club, of which I would shortly be a member, but which for others had a waiting list something just short of 1,000 years. He drove his point home – once out, never in again. Too late it occurred to me that the most exclusive golf club in the world is no advantage if you don’t want to play golf. The meal ended on what I thought was a compromise, he knew to be a victory. I would study medicine. Afterwards, if I felt so inclined, I could do what I liked. In that classic phrase of bourgeois control, I would thus have something to fall back on.