Inglis, K.S. This is the ABC Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983.
Ken Inglis' book has been in circulation for some time and is still receiving enthusiastic reviews (Breen, 1984). It's not difficult to see why Australian reviewers are so fulsome about the book. It is, after all, about an institution that the cultural elite hold in high esteem and with affection, for very good reasons one must add, because the ABC, at a very critical time in the Australian cultural formation seemed like an oasis in a cultural desert (a metaphor many reviewers have implied or evoked). Moreover, Inglis has written a complex narrative about a complex institution that is easy to read, enjoyable, well organized but above all else anecdotal. This is no doubt that This is the ABC was not an easy book to organize and write, Inglis acknowledges this implicitly in his introduction; and given the scope of the enterprise, the wealth of information, the bureaucratic impedimentia placed in his path, the missing archival material, the strong popular memory about the ABC current in significant cultural groupings, and the fact that two of the Directors-General are still alive, the generally warm reception given to the book is understandable. In most respects it is an exemplary piece of conventional social history with its emphasis on individuals and events. However, in this review I want to argue that This is the ABC is a seriously flawed work in both its conception and execution precisely for the reason outlined above and more significantly for its lack of theory. There is no acknowledgement whatsoever that media history is undergoing something of a revolution in its conceptualisation and execution. This is the ABC seems to have been composed looking in the rear-view mirror!
There is a multiplicity of books in This is the ABC, a fact which becomes apparent when one surveys the various reviews of the book and examines the sort of book the reviewers thought they had read and then wanted to have written in their reviews. Hugh Stretton has done this (1984). He identifies two basic types of reviewers/readers of the book: the outsider and insider in respect to the ABC and the three major positions they adopt. The first group, exemplified by Sir Charles Moses, praise the book grudgingly from an insider's point-of-view and use that privileged position to criticise points of fact implying that they could construct a better, more truthful narrative than Inglis. The second group, exemplified by Alan Ashbolt and
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Myles Breen, are very enthusiastic about the book, praising its mastery of detail and narrative flow and its sense of truthfulness. A third group, with Dame Leonie Kramer to the forefront, admire the book but want another book written, one which emphasizes the political over the historical, the cultural over the sociological. The constellation of competing views and cultural positions implicit in these voices which have always clustered around the ABC have contributed to Inglis' problem. One thing is clear from his account, the ABC has always been a site of struggle, between politicians and broadcasters, between broadcasters and broadcasters, and in this case between author and reviewer, for like Dame Leonie Kramer, I would prefer another book to have been written with the title of This is the ABC.
My real problem with the book is its formal structure. All of its problems, it seems to me, stem from this. Inglis has attempted to provide the history of a complex institution in one volume. This constraint has determined the narrative organisation of the book. Wisely Inglis has avoided as far as is possible, the great man syndrome of writing history, although Sir Charles Moses dominates the first five chapters and his presence implicitly disrupts the last three chapters. Rather he has opted for a simple chronological progression from 1932 to 1983, the material organised into chunks of time wherein major or dominant issues, themes and individuals are explored. For example, chapter 4, 'Liberal Dilemmas 1945-1956' is sub-divided into 'From Chifley to Menzies', 'Serious and Light' and 'How Independent!'. Herein, it seems to me, lies the flaw.
The period 1945-1956 is marked by readily identified and widely accepted historical facts; from the end of the War to the introduction of television; or is the Olympic Games the 1956 marker? Or are the Olympic Games and the introduction of television one and the same thing? Like all periodizations, Inglis' have more than a little of the arbitrary about them. Or to put it another way, in going for what seems to be a transparently obvious historical process, one can obscure more than one reveals. In discussing the ABC, Inglis doesn't convince me that 1956 marks any great shift in the institution from any perspective, despite the introduction of television. The institutional practices then current in respect to radio were barely modified and transposed, there was no clear-cut ending to one set of practices and the introduction of another set, there was no revolution or for that matter much change in the ABC in 1956. Moreover, the bureaucracy stayed firmly in control. Periodization is as much a matter of authorial convenience as a methodological tool that elucidates shifting patterns and events and thus provides understanding. In other words, we must question, whereas Inglis seems to assume and not question, whether the introduction of television really did change very much
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in Australian media institutions, whether it represented a continuity or discontinuity in media discourse. I suspect if researched, we would find changes but not of the kind imagined or suggested by Inglis.
I suppose what is at stake here is a fundamental issue: how do you write history? In choosing to write an orthodox account of the development of the ABC, Inglis has created and inhabits a secure space in the Australian cultural environment. As far as I can discover, nobody has yet questioned his methodology. On the contrary, all of the laudatory comments imply that Inglis has, through his mastery of detail and synthesis of competing knowledges, achieved an exemplary piece of historical writing. That is, his historical technique is seen as transparent and normal. Why then has there been no comment on the absence of a bibliography, surely a deficiency in a book of this sort, although the presence of a mass of footnotes mostly drawn from archival and primary sources may be judged to compensate for this lack. Inglis has written a good, old-fashioned history that is devoid of any theorization whatsoever, which in the eyes of some may be no bad thing. However, the upsurge of interest in the historical formation of media institutions, especially the film industry, but also radio and television (Tulloch, 1983; Counihan, 1983; Johnson, 1983; Moran, 1983), make it surprising that Inglis doesn't at least gesture in that direction. The absence of the bibliography provides the clue to this gap: Inglis sees institutions as essentially dynamic, autonomous and curiously romantic. Contextualization, other than the unavoidable intersection with politics, would obscure the dynamic of romanticism that is at the heart of Inglis' account of the ABC. It is this romanticism characterized by a struggle against insuperable odds led by two knights in shining armour, one a romantic and rumbustious figure in his own right, and the second, the heir apparent, rational, cool, sophisticated, that has made the book so popular among reviewers.
Inglis' language and narrative technique underscore his romanticism. Moses is described as 'tall, powerful, handsome, charming and English' (p.45) which he may well have been, but, at one level, so what. Duckmanton is introduced to us as an 'all rounder', Dux of his school and a champion athlete (p.73), and later, in discussing his ascension 'Duckmanton would be more of a bishop, management, he would say, works these days largely by mediation, and not decree' (p.256). The opposition between Moses and Duckmanton is one of the underlying explanatory categories employed by Inglis: this emphasis on individuals and their role, no matter how crucial that role is to the functioning of the institution, is fine to a point, especially in the small pond of the ABC. But in this case it is more than just a
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partial explanatory mechanism; it becomes the very motor of events. One citation doesn't prove a case, but suffice it to say wherever possible, Inglis invokes the romantic image in regard to Moses and Duckmanton (see pp.73, 197, 253-254).
Of more concern is the influence this romantic vision has had on the narrative organisation. Themes are explored willy-nilly, issues rushed up to, outlined and then discarded. Quite unrelated events, or so it seems, are crowded together in the narrative. For example, the middle section of chapter 7 'Serious and Light' fails to explore in any sustained or analytical way the crucial debate about culture that seems to have preoccupied the ranks of the ABC. That is, the ABC is accepted and portrayed as the cultural arbitrator of the period, an assumption that surely is open to question. In this section of forty-seven pages (141-186) we traverse the years 1945 to 1952, and cover an array of issues and themes from the notion of a 'balanced cultural diet' (p.145) to Quality Street (pp.164-165), including other programmes such as Guest of Honour (p.170) and National Forum of the Air (pp.170-171), taking in sport (p.177) and imported British comedies (p.181), and ending in a quote that the ABC was cherished for its
persistent faith in good drama, good literature, good music, a faith maintained despite the public's huge preference for good cheapskate, good brummagem, good quizzes, and eternal racketing of good cool noise (p. 186).
T.S. Eliot would have approved! This progression from organising broadcasting practices and policies to ensuring that the cultural tastes of a minority are catered for and ideologically justified in terms of their goodness is both unified in its range and stately when compared to later chapters.
Consider the concluding pages of chapter 7: 'Radio: Innovation.' We race from Radio Australia's service to Papua New Guinea (p.369), to a discussion of the ABC orchestras (pp.369-37l), the case for and against the introduction of FM Radio (pp.371-375), 2JJ and alternative programming (pp.375-377), 3ZZ and ethnic broadcasting (pp.377-378), and finally the complex relationship that emerged between an interventionist and determined Minister of the Media, Dr. Moss Cass, and Duckmanton and Clement Semmler, Deputy Director-General of the ABC (pp.379-380). In lesser hands, entropy would have taken over but as it is Inglis, despite his ability to synthesize, hardly does justice to any one of these topics, individually or collectively.
The last three chapters of the book repeat this technique of linking
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together chronologically related events in thematic patterns. The consequence is a headlong and breathless rush crowding as much as possible into as short a space as possible. In this case, it is entirely counter-productive. Inglis' methodology manifested in This is the ABC has projected us into a dream-like world that is ultimately divorced from the other forces at work within Australian society in the period 1932-1983. After all, more people have consistently listened to and watched other media forms in that period. The ABC had to interact with those forms, they did impinge upon its practices: even a decision not to pander to the 'lower common denominator' and maintain a Reithian elitist attitude to culture is in most respects the product of the complex relations between the ABC, the commercial media and other forces in Australian society.
Like Kramer, I want another book: one that is less concerned with the pyrotechnics of traditional historical discourse and one that is more concerned with explanation and understanding, taking on board recent developments in historiography. Hayden White (1978) could be a starting point. Tulloch's work on the Australian cinema also springs to mind. I want to understand why it is with the ABC (in Hugh Stretton's words) that 'if the bureaucracy was so bad the programmes were so good'; why these programmes are remembered with so much affection and were possibly influential in forming a major fragment of Australian society's imagination? I learnt a great many things from Inglis' book but they were neither answers to the above questions nor things that I suspect I should have learnt. From Inglis' account I find that the ABC has always been a site of struggle where the elitists, sexists and parochialists have always held the upper hand; that political interventionism has always been the order of things and handled within the institution with great timidity; that like their commercial media counterparts, the ABC's programming policies and ethos have, with rare exceptions, always been derivative; that the ABC has always been subjected to the severest kind of parsimony by politicians. Inglis can only alert us to these issues, and at best provide partial answers, but then like the ABC itself, that's better than nothing at all.
Brian Shoesmith teaches at the Western Australian College of Advanced Education.
References
Breen, M., (1984) 'The Other ABC Journal of Communication, Autumn 1984, 34, 4, pp.196-198.
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Counihan M., (1982) 'The Formation of a Broadcasting Audience-Australian Radio in the 1920 V Meanjin, 41, 2, June, pp. 196-209. '
Johnson, L., (1982) 'Sing 'em Muck Clara:' Highbrow and Lowbrow on Early Australian Media', Meanjin, 41, 2, June, pp.210-222.
Moran, A., (1983) The Bellamy Project, Sydney: Currency Press. Stretton, H., (1984) The Age Monthly Review, 3, 9, January.
Tulloch, J., (1983) Australian Cinema: Industry, Narrative and Meaning Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
White, H., (1978) Topics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
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