I recently watched The Bra Boys, a movie about a notorious surf culture in Australia. I guess that if I had to identify the theme of this movie it would be a defence of localism, from the smallest unit of family through to the larger concepts of geography, social class and the international surfer brotherhood.
The most noticeable and least surprising aspect of this film is that there is little female presence, apart from the saintly grandma. This is the meta-level of localism and is not addressed because it assumed.
The next layer of localism is that of geography..the old concept of locals gathering together to defend their scarce resources from outsiders. That’s why we have borders and passports and workpermits. I guess the interesting thing about geographical localism is that the locals get to let people into their territory when they need them. There is strength in numbers after all. The Bra Boys made a big show of pointing out that they were not racist and that when they had to defend their beach in 2005, half the defenders were “ethnic”.
Large groups don’t seem to satisfy the need for security so people divide into smaller and smaller units and in this case the next layer is the “boys” who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and hangout at the beach. There was a lot of defence of this type of localism in the movie. The argument goes that no-one else takes care of these kids and everyone is against them so they have to gang up together and take care of each other. This leads to all sorts of bonding rituals involving drinking, violence, vandalism, etc. This is a guy culture after all.
I am not going to describe the over micro groups, which were basically based on age, or proximity to the Abberton brothers because it is all just part of a continuum.
The tightest grouping in the movie was the brothers. It was explained that they took care of each other because their mother didn’t. There was the saintly “ma” but it appeared that all she provided was food and a place to hangout. The “boys” created their own culture and group structure based on the imperative of being one’s brother’s keeper. Brothers can do no wrong… as long as they are still “brothers”.
This is what interests me about the movie. That it reflects what I see in my own very “local” town. After all, this is the town where people ask “What school did you go to?” and where house prices are determined by school zoning. We all know about the Old Boys’ network and Rangi girls. This is the hardest place to get a teaching job and it is socially acceptable to beat up tourists and tell coloured immigrants to go home. That last sentence wasn’t incongruous because “having an accent” is sufficient evidence of incomptence in a teacher…unless it is a white accent.
My town works on “knowing someone”. That’s how one gets a job, into a school, a non-notified building consent, police diversion, etc. If it goes too far we call it corruption but we are the ones who define “too far”. That makes us powerful, but also desperate to stay in the “in-group”. This need to be the innermost of the inner group and immune from being cast out into the unprotected “other” is why people participate in bullying, either actively or by turning a blind eye. Broad geographical localism may convey rights of residence in a locality but so many other rights are conferred by smaller groups.
I saw a news headline this morning, quoting a US soldier as saying “Another dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi.” The fact that he feels it is socially acceptable to say that is evidence of localism. One doubts he would say “Another dead American is just another dead American”. That is what Islamic terrorists say.
The film justified localism on the grounds that there have always been tribes. This is true. My society is built on tribalism, and even worse as an immigrant society it is made of groups still actively competing for advantage and redefining what it is to “belong”.
I am not going to end with any hippy “brotherly love” philosophy because the effect of the movie was to subvert the “I am my brother’s keeper” message by taking “brother” literally and establishing concentric circles of “other”.
