Whose light on the hill?
Celebrities, Culture & Cyberspace: The Light on the Hill in a Postmodern World
McKenzie Wark, Pluto Press Australia and Comerford & Miller, 1999
Review by Tim Corney
Zadok Perspectives Issue No. 64
Winter 1999

ALTHOUGH MCKENZIE WARK is better known for his academic work at Macquarie University in media and cultural studies, his undergraduate honours year was in political theory. This fact is worth noting because Wark's latest book is as much about the re-invention of the Australian Labor Party as it is about media culture. In fact, Wark is like that other intellectual celebrity and sometime soul mate, Catherine Lumby, in his ability to publicly dialogue and pontificate outside of the academic discipline which he represents.

Celebrities, Culture and Cyberspace is an interesting, if disjointed and slightly in-house postmodern amalgam of great one-liners, pop culture history and serious critique of current Labor party, economic and social theory. And nobody covers this territory better than Wark: he manages to remain faithful to his Lyotardian and Baudrillardian view of postmodernity by weaving together such diverse cultural entities as the 19th century philosopher Hegel and the dark prince of alternative rock, Nick Cave.

Wark's primary message seems to be that Labor not only needs to reinvent itself, but must look beyond modernist social and economic theories, like those currently being espoused by Federal Labor MPs, Mark Latham and Lindsay Tanner. According to Wark, the party must move toward a new brand of 'third way' politics that intelligently uses the new media "vectors" (pathways) and culture of celebrity to regain power and re-ignite Ben Chifley's 'light on the hill'. Yet found within this central thesis, are engaging subtexts and ironic asides.

The author offers something of a multiple version of Mark Davis' Gangland critique of both new and old Labor. Not only is the Latham and Tanner-led 'Young Turk' brigade under fire as unaware modernists, but so are the Barry Jones-eque baby boomers (interestingly, both Barry Jones and Mark Davis launched Wark's book in Melbourne).

This reviewer sees and appreciates Chifley's 'light on the hill' as an inherently egalitarian and thus modernist vision. Therefore, I can't help but notice an implied superiority in Wark's polarised and hierarchical view of the cultural élites who populate inner urban Australian cities (read 'urbane') and the people everywhere else who do not (read sub-urban(e) & rural Australia). I can't help but wonder what Ben Chifley would have thought about this form of cultural stratification. If Chifley's 'light on the hill' shone for anyone in particular it was for ordinary Australians. It is the 'Aussie battlers' who seem to be missing from Wark's critique and as such one has to ask how will the battlers be better off under Wark's vision?

The author doesn't appear to see the ugly, painful side of the inner city, nor its economic deprivation. His view of Sydney's King's Cross, for instance, is highly romanticised and ordinary people are conspicuously absent from the high-brow guest lists of his pretentious party going Paddington 'putsch'.

It may be true that in the age of political cyberspace that celebrity image has triumphed-and will continue to triumph-over policy substance. However, it does little to reassure those that still believe in social justice that the marginalised and oppressed, homeless and unemployed will be any better off when they can sun themselves in the cyber light of policy-shallow new Labor celebrities.
The other problem with Wark's thesis is the matter of who controls these media vectors? Currently, large multimedia conglomerates wield enormous power to influence and form public opinion, as well as to create and destroy a media celebrity. Even foreign ownership laws have failed to give governments the influence over the media which they desire.

Perhaps the global merging of communication vectors like telephone, television and Internet will weaken localised and individual control of the media. But will the media barons relinquish their power that easily? And how does a political party get access to the process of celebrity construction? These questions must be asked along with questions regarding the frightening prospect of political parties not just buying advertising time on television but owning and controlling television and radio stations. In a democracy, should any one political party own or control a multi-media communication vector?

Wark asserts strongly that the media is not a benign carrier of social and cultural values, but a creator and shaper of values. He also writes that the Labor party should use this vector as the means by which to influence the voting public, presumably with the values represented in slogans like 'The light on the hill'. However, he then suggests that party policies and values should be shaped directly from public opinion rather than party particular ideological beliefs or values. This is presumably the same public that is currently having its values detrimentally influenced and shaped by a media in which the Labor Party does not yet adequately participate. And, of course, these ideas and concepts are being suggested by an ideologically driven academic, influenced by other value-driven academics and so on. Who watches the watchers?

The question that ALP members need to ask of Wark is: Do we really want an ideologically relativist ALP, that rejects its roots and foundational values for commodified public opinion, sold on the net and every where else, just to gain power?

This seems like Lyotardian zero consciousness where voters become consumers. Consumers that don't want or need educating are to be placated; but their desires must be met at all costs regardless of values like equality, equity, participation and mutual obligation. Or perhaps Wark is suggesting the ALP should just play a postmodern game of deceit and say that they are giving their consumers what they want when really they are educating and shaping the values and beliefs of the consumer.

And, finally, what of 'the light on the hill'? Wark never really tells us what he thinks this phrase actually represents, beyond oblique references to "third way" economics. Unfortunately, there is no detailed description of Wark's perspective or commitment to a political or social grand plan. One could counter that this was not his purpose. However, one must suspect that for Wark 'the light on the hill' and "third way" economics are just ways of civilising the capitalist meta-narrative; civilising a grand plan that just won't go away despite postmodern claims to the contrary. Or perhaps, to paraphrase a line from John Button, Wark is not a true believer at all, just a hopeful, waiting to become a member of the management team.

Tim Corney is undertaking postgraduate research in the Faculty of Education, Department of Justice and Youth Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne. Like Wark, he is a member of the so-called 'Generation X' and the Australian Labor Party.