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Chequerboard Revisited – Episode 3: I Reckon I’m an Average Australian (2000)

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Original classification rating: PG. This clip chosen to be PG

Clip description

Kevin and Margaret were newly married with four young children when we first met them. It’s now 30 years later and many things have changed. The children have grown up and moved away, Kevin and Margaret have split up and Margaret has remarried. Kevin muses about the past, Margaret about the future.

Curator’s notes

by Janet Bell

Why invent drama when you can have a documentary like this with as many surprises as a good soap opera? Like a well-structured drama, the high point of this remarkable story is that Margaret and Kevin split up over 17 years ago. Margaret changed while Kevin was unable to. But life continues.

This is a good example of how an expert interviewer can extract very natural, personal material from different people. We really feel that all the subjects are being exremely frank and, as a result, come to feel sympathy for them as we are drawn into the story of Kevin and Margaret’s life. The filming and editing technique of the new material is deliberately kept neat and simple, to match the original material. Even though the earlier clips are in black-and-white and the later interviews are colour, the similar styles mean we are not distracted by the transitions between the footage from different decades.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows formerly married couple Kevin and Margaret in 2000 living their separate lives, 30 years after they were first interviewed for the Chequerboard program. Interviewed in their house, Margaret’s new husband talks with warmth about Margaret’s qualities and their relationship of 17 years. Kevin, interviewed in the house he shares with his dogs and while sitting on the patio, reflects on why he has not remarried. A narrator talks about the couple in voice-over.

Educational value points

  • Two perspectives presented in the clip show how attitudes towards marriage have changed in Australia between the 1960s and 2000. Kevin indicates that he believes that marriage is for life but laughs a little at his rather old-fashioned views by saying he once used to play ‘lovey-dovey’ songs such as Stand by your Man. Margaret’s new husband talks of the couple being ‘mates’ in what appears to be a more equal partnership based on their ‘natural affinity’.
  • Kevin’s attitude and language show a man mostly unreconciled to the new gender roles that the women’s liberation movement promoted in the 1960s and 70s. His reference to ‘burning the bra’ simplifies the ideas underlying the movement. For Kevin, men were disempowered, or lost their voice, when women found a new identity and meaning in their lives beyond their traditional gender-assigned roles of wife and mother.
  • Margaret almost certainly initiated the divorce from Kevin, which is a common pattern in divorces today. In Australia 79 per cent of separations are initiated unilaterally and 75 per cent of these are by the wife. Research in 2003 indicated that women are more likely to initiate separation and divorce than men because of their keener perceptions of marital satisfaction and quality and their experience of bearing the greater responsibility for marriage and family life.
  • With the introduction of ‘no-fault’ divorce in Australia in 1975, divorces such as Margaret and Kevin’s became much more common. Society’s attitudes prior to 1975 are expressed in Kevin’s belief that marriage lasts ‘till death do you part’ – until 1975 divorce was far more difficult to obtain and divorce rates were at 16 per cent. In 1984 the divorce rate had risen to almost 40 per cent. The feminist movement made obtaining no-fault divorces one of its priorities.
  • Margaret and her new husband Peter have found contentment and a marriage that seems to be lasting but this is not a common occurrence with second marriages. Remarriage following divorce is common with approximately 80 per cent of men and 69 per cent of women re-partnering within five years of divorce, but according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures of 2000 these marriages have the highest risk of divorce.

In 2000, Margaret is sitting with her second husband, Peter, who is being interviewed.
Interviewer What was it about Margaret?
Peter I always liked her company. She was bright. We seemed to have a natural affinity and, um, the mixture was right. My first wife was a Scorpio. Margaret is a Scorpio. And it seems to work with Capricorns. So, yes, we’re mates, more so than friends. We’re mates, hmm. And it’s now nearly 17 years. It’s quite a while.

In 2000, a car pulls into a driveway. Kevin walks into a house.
Interviewer (voice-over) After the divorce, Kevin left the family and his job in Sydney. With a new job lined up, he moved down the coast to live permanently in the weekender.
Interviewer (to Kevin) You never married again?
Kevin No. No, I looked at the point ‘till death do you part’. That’s the way I always thought of it. And, like, I even, um, got some of these songs together like ‘Stand By Your Man’, ‘I Will Follow Him’, and, you know, a couple of those lovey-type songs, and I used to play it, you know. And then I used to say, um, ‘Ever since the day of burning the bra,’ I said, ‘that’s when we lost our voice – the men.’

Kevin is seated at an outdoor table, flicking through a newspaper.
Kevin (to his dogs) See what’s happening in the local rag, eh?
Interviewer (voice-over) Kevin can now laugh about his old-fashioned views, and his friend Yvonne makes sure he doesn’t slip backwards.
Kevin (voice-over) But that’s the way I was sort of brought up. That’s the way I thought life went around, sort of thing. Then again, I probably learnt too late.