THE  NAKED CITY: BURNING MAN DOWN UNDER

Australians have always lapped up American culture and looked to the USA for validation of our own cultural success stories. American movies, music, theatre and literature have all found a welcome second home in Australia, often idolised and stacked up against local artistic output for critical comparison. If it’s a sensation in Hollywood or New York, then bring it on down as it’s bound to work here.

When it comes to universal endorsement of our actors and pop stars, success in the USA is the ultimate and without that it’s almost like a career unfulfilled. It seems we are constantly looking to America for that nod of approval, one that extends well beyond top forty warblers and action movie heroes.

Next year for example the National Rugby League has announced it will be kicking off the 2024 season in Las Vegas. Wow! Billed as “Australia’s most exciting sport unleashed on the sports and entertainment capital, Las Vegas”, it’s bound to be a ratings winner here with many Australians disregarding our lousy exchange rate to book a package to sin city. Apart from the obvious novelty, the NRL is promoting it as a showcase of Australian sport to impress the sports crazy Yanks.

It’s a bit like Australian Week, which began as G’Day LA back in 2004 and trots out the usual package of well known Aussie celebs, bottles of up market wine and a few cuddly marsupials. Nobody in the USA gives a hoot and the same will apply to the staging of a helmetless football match in Vegas. You can bet however that the post match hype will extend to reporting like: “the Americans couldn’t believe how tough and fast-moving our game was – hey, you guys don’t even have head gear?”.

Whilst we have gone a long way in resisting American cultural imperialism over the past few decades, often promoting our own unique events, along comes South By South West in October. The annual music, film, and interactive media conference that’s been a huge success in Austin Texas is coming to Sydney and a platinum ticket for the week will set you back a mere $1,695.00 – at least that’s in good old Aussie dollars.

State Governments love these big events — compete like crazy for them — and no doubt the current NSW bosses will embrace this latest corporate enterprise, regardless of where it originated. If SXSW gets a foothold, the inevitable question is surely:  when do we get our own Burning Man? Forget about the mud bath fiasco that took place in the wilds of Nevada recently, the time is ripe for our own version of this remote US Festival. It’s a celebration where up to 80,000 free thinking young people, discarding their worldly possessions (all bar their $100,00 RVs), gather for nine days of music, meditation and assorted bacchanalian pursuits.

Let’s face it, a great slab of this continent is desert and we have no shortage of totally hostile locations. If the annual Birdsville Races can attract a crowd of 5,000 then surely an even more isolated festival site will prove irresistible to a bunch of mad hippies and accountants with the week off. As long as we are not intruding on First Nation lands, any dusty, dry as a bone, stretch of sand or dirt will do.

For starters we should ban all campervans and RVs and make entry by camel only. Australian has hundreds of thousands of the feral critters and they could be rented out for the week. Definitely no mobile phones, hand held video games, toilet paper, tins of Spam and spray on deodorant. Burning Man Downunder should be a slap in the face to those American wusses in Nevada who luxuriated in the air conditioned comfort of their homes on wheels, prior to the heavens opening.

We should also ban all the counter culture parasites who inevitably flock to these events, flogging their alternative medicines, tantric massage and spiritual enlightenment. A huge sign announcing “THIS IS A GURU FREE EVENT” would greet festival goers as they entered the site aboard their trusty dromedaries. You have to keep the punters entertained and rather than paying a bunch of pretentious, dreary old rock bands to perform, we should encourage mass communal singing and that endless beating of home made drums that drives everybody crazy.

When it comes to the actual “Burning Man”, I would not allow personal preferences to intrude – so igniting a sixty-foot Peter Dutton would sadly be out of the question. And does the actual effigy have to be gender specific or even set alight, shamelessly paralleling the American version? Pyromaniacs might be disappointed but why not go for a slow smouldering version, one that might emit an eery haze right through until next year’s event – indicative of the constant rise in global temperatures.

Burning Man? – nah, the Yanks can have that one. The Smouldering Big Thing has a real Australian ring to it, along with the Big Pineapple and the Big Lobster.

And yes, Eskys will be allowed!