From Brian Cox to burnout: six things we learned at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival | Books

Brian Cox: ‘You don’t decorate with Logan Roy’

Brian Cox said that with Logan Roy, the menacing patriarch he plays in the hit HBO series Succession, it’s not just about the words in the script, but the pauses and the look. “It’s as much about what he doesn’t say as what he does … you don’t embellish with Logan.”

Cox says he doesn’t think Logan is evil, but says the pain in the character’s life that formed him is “great fodder for an actor … There are depths to him. You realize he’s a abused person, so he develops that person. That’s what makes Logan this tough.”

Logan is not based on Rupert Murdoch, he says, noting that Logan is a self-made man. Cox reflected that there could be similarities in the children – but then had the room erupt in laughter when he added: “I think Rupert is an angel.”

There had been disagreement among the cast as to whether the show is a comedy or a drama; Cox believes that Succession has a comedic sensibility, but he doesn’t play it for laughs. As to which of Logan’s children he should leave his company to, Cox gave the only answer he could: a long pause followed by the trademark “fuck off!” – Josh Taylor

Individual ambitions are out; collective ambitions are in

The word ambition is usually used for personal or career aspirations, but the present moment calls for something much greater. On the festival’s opening night, both Jennifer down and Aileen Moreton-Robinson required action for a better world.

Ned didn’t mince words. Her wish list: abolishing racist police, judicial and prison systems and replacing them with community care, early intervention and rehabilitation programs (rather than just “pastel Instagram infographics”); investments in health care, housing, education and the arts; compassion for asylum seekers. She also expressed solidarity with workers fighting for better wages and conditions at Readings, the festival’s official bookshop – a theme that continued throughout the weekend.

Moreton-Robinson focused on the ecological crisis caused by colonial and patriarchal forces. Tracing history, from the slave trade to the Industrial Revolution, the Talking Up to the White Woman author pointed out human follies along the way and called for an abolition of the ego.

“We must ambitiously cultivate empathy for the earth, which provides the life force that sustains everything. This requires accepting that humans are no more or less valuable than any other living thing,” she said.

In short: “It is fine – even healthy – that our personal ambitions remain modest. However, our collective ambition should be limitless.” – Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

‘Burnout’ was coined about healthcare professionals

In a session discussing The Great Resignation – an ongoing global trend of workers quitting – doctor and author Melanie Cheng told us that the term “burnout” originally referred specifically to the distress faced by healthcare professionals. American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger coined the term in the 1970s to describe the stresses faced by those in “helping” professions, before it entered the everyday lexicon of general worker exhaustion. Fellow panelist Emma Fulu shared that she didn’t have the language to describe burnout when she experienced it in 2015 — she just knew she felt “broken.”

The brutal experiences of medical workers during the pandemic “revealed the fault lines that were there to begin with,” Cheng said. One in ten healthcare workers now experience suicidal thoughts; during the vaccination rollout, she saw a poster of a noose with the words “easy and effective” stuck to a doctor’s office wall and for the first time considered leaving the profession.

The pandemic has exacerbated burnout for everyone, especially healthcare workers. Cheng encouraged nurturing creativity and spending quality time with loved ones as two balms, but stressed the need for structural changes to better support workers. – GN

The Internet is radicalizing us all

“I got Twitter for a few months and it was a terrible experience,” said Mohsin Hamid. The author of The Last White Man now avoids social media, comparing the platform to a digital drug. “Its purpose is to make us into performative versions of ourselves,” he said. “What I started to become was someone who acted Mohsin, and ideally performed Mohsin for likes … It felt like I was this addicted, shamelessly self-promoting and also bizarrely rigid person.

“When we think things in a non-performative environment, we iterate through,” he continued. “You are not defined by the position you have taken. The position you have taken is part of the investigation you are engaged in as an organism.”

On social media, he said it’s different: “You take a position and then you kind of have to defend that position — which is a real change.”

Technological algorithms have encouraged the essentialist categorization of people, bringing out “unacceptable differences,” Hamid said. “Fifteen years ago they were talking about how young Muslim men were being radicalized by the internet. Now they talk about how old white pensioners in America or Australia are being radicalized by the internet. We are all being radicalized.” – Donna Lu

Young people cannot solve gender-based violence alone

Almost 31 years after the American lawyer and educator Prof Anita Hill testified about his sexual harassment allegations against then-Supreme Court Justice (and now Justice) Clarence Thomas, little seems to have changed — and public confidence in the US Supreme Court is at an all-time low. The court’s recent decision to strike down constitutional protections for legal abortion has paved the way for other civil rights to be curtailed, including same-sex marriage — but, Hill said, there is reason for hope. “The court is only one branch of government. We have Congress, we have presidencies, we have elected officials … and we have to pay attention to them to balance what the court does.”

Hill watched in awe as a new generation started the #MeToo movement, decades after women inspired by her own testimonies sent telegrams to Washington DC with their own stories of sexual abuse. But when asked by author Sarah Krasnostein why gender-based violence persists among Generation Z and millennials, she said nothing would change as long as powerful institutions and society accepted it as normal.

“It’s not just a behavior problem. It’s not just a mindset problem,” she said. “Millennials come and go into systems and institutions where the problem is accepted, where people are still … not taken seriously [their] workplaces; where people’s allegations are not investigated in schools where powerful people are protected,” she said. “And as long as these systems exist, no generation will be able to overcome this problem.” – Jane Lee

Older women need a rent reform

“I actually really like being invisible,” said Michelle de Kretser, in a discussion about women and aging. “I think for many migrants of color, invisibility is something we value, not to… stand out in the crowd for the wrong reasons. For writers, invisibility is a great thing. Don’t look at me; I want to see you.”

Women over 55 are the fastest growing group of people experiencing homelessness, Jane Caro pointed out. “These women have … put their duty to care for others ahead of their right to earn an income,” she said. “The way our society rewards [these women] is putting them in very great danger, at the end of their lives, to live out of their car and worse.”

De Kretser continued to call for stronger protection of tenants, citing the tenancy laws of Germany and France. “How wonderful it is to be able to grow old if you have not been able to afford housing and know that your rent will not increase and you will be thrown out onto the street.

“It just drives me crazy that every day in … media there will be a piece about the unaffordability of housing … but no one is talking about rent reform.” – DL