Gangland
Mark Davis, Allen & Unwin, 1997
Review by Daniel Batt
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 60
Autumn 1998

Mark Davis has entered an influential but dangerous neighbourhood armed with a baseball bat and a scalpel, unsure of which to use when. His 300 page critique of the cultural élite (Phillip Adams, Robert Hughes, Robert Manne, Helen Garner, Beatrice Faust, etc. etc.) and their dominance of the public spaces of cultural debate has cast him as a lone voice amid seasoned, strident foes. The sparks are flying.

On ABC Radio he ran foul of George Negus on the absence of younger voices in television. Negus revealed his paternalistic stripes when he replied in an outraged voice, "Look, old mate", we have given a bunch of these sorts of people a camera and a stack of airline tickets on Race Round the World. Round one to Davis.

Then against a more formidable opponent in Phillip Adams, he protested too much that he wasn't really criticising Phillip in his book and, at the end of the interview, responded favourably to a Mae West like invitation from Phillip to come up to his farm for a visit some time. And, perhaps, become part of the gang. Round two to Phillip. Gangland is essential reading for anyone interested in the debate in the media over postmodernism, baby boomer ideologies and the future of liberal humanism. Davis is in a fascinating neighbourhood, though in this first venture into the marketplace, he seems unsure which rhetorical weapons to use when.

Davis's critique, that an older generation has "more or less systematically set out to discredit young people and their ideas, even progressive opinion generally", is incisive, though uneven, but always eminently readable. Davis takes a scalpel, for example, to the literary elites to reveal a profoundly interconnected system of mateship, patronage, friendly reviews and, well, what he describes as the "quiet hiss of urine entering pockets" (he doesn't mention the journalists' code of ethics, but there appear as many 'mate's rates' as in Sir Joh's hey day). Davis makes the point that the Garners, Adamses, Nevilles, Hughes, Greers, etc. all gained tenure within the mainstream in their 20s. So why isn't anyone doing that now? And who's stopping them? Gangland began as an analysis of the debate over postmodernism and critical theory. Davis is very precise in correcting the caricatures of postmodernism (he doesn't like the term but uses it regardless) by the cultural élite, who see it as threatening their tenure and undermining "great art". He unmasks a widespread ignorance of primary sources and almost blatant misrepresentation. This is evident in his defence of Foucault and Derrida against being relativists. But this is also where Davis answers the question but not the objection. He admits critical theorists' views of truth are "sophisticated", yet fails to admit that a near impenetrable view of truth might not simply function as relativism.

This is where Davis starts to sound a touch idelogical. He is right to reveal the liberal humanist élite as deeply ideological (though they aver this), but leaves his problems with critical theory to the last page and only a couple of sentences. I'm not sure how you would fire a broadside at a group of people without sounding like an ideologue, but if you are defending a group of theories which have provided an analysis of how ideology, power and language combine, you better do your best to avoid hypocrisy. Davis is rapier-like at pulling up the élites for using guilt-by-association and pejorative phrases such as 'youth', 'postmodernist', 'relativist', etc. Yet will often do the same with phrases such as 'far-Right', 'conservative', 'neo-conservative' and 'Christian right'. In fact he discredits some authors purely on the basis of an association with the 'Christian right'.

Now a case could be made that the Christian right haven't got a worthwhile thing to say. But Davis doesn't even attempt to make it. He just uses a guilt-by-association argument that conservatives wouldn't even use for groups of people infiltrated by the former KGB. (Interestingly, Davis doesn't once mention Jesus, Christianity or the role the churches have played until now. His target is a very secular, humanist milieu. Which either reveals that Davis is uninterested of the influence of the great spiritual stories on aesthetics, or has confined himself to a dying secular world view whose foundations have finally rotted.) Davis similarly uses "morals" or "moral panic" as pejorative terms throughout Gangland. Now I know that, when morals get talked about, it can become one of those binary things that disempower the 'amoral'. Some people smell oppression whenever morality is mentioned. But so what? Davis is familiar enough with liberal humanism to know that discussions of morality are not always about power, and he is familiar enough with critical theory to know that words can be co-opted and loaded.

Gangland surveys well how youth (oh, the word) are paternalised (but so what's new?), and develops a serious critique of liberal humanism, élitism and artistic canons. Davis fails, though, in many of his assertions and definitions. His claim, that "young people today are perhaps more politically engaged than their parents' generation", he fails to prove. When pressed, all he mentions are HIV/AIDS issues and anti-tertiary fee rallies. Which are all well and good, but I think they just entrench the caricature and can't really be compared to political ferment of the '60s. And his definition of the cultural élite becomes so broad (stretching well outside simply baby boomers) as to almost become everyone who is not into 'theory'.

Gangland readers will not discover the new voices Davis calls for in the media or the pop culture analysis he desires in the aesthetic canon (he is, remember, engaging with where the cultural élite is at) but they will read the most incisive critique so far of the cultural high water mark that was the '60s and '70s and the detritus and anachronisms it left behind. Publishers have read Gangland closely; watch for the fall out.

Daniel Batt is a editor of Zadok Perspectives.E-mail: editor@zadok.org.au