contact untold

ROBOT RAPE
The story of Young People Against Heavy Metal T-Shirts

By the Founder and Head of the Movement Matthew Thompson

 

Way back in 1992, in the carcinogenic afterhaze of the Gulf War TV series, and amidst the deconstruction of The Former Yugoslavia, I lamented a popular media that traded on the topics of so-called 'declining moral standards.' These moral standards had nothing to do with the homicidal double standards of the United States, or Australia's weak-as-shit role as US lackey. These moral standards had nothing to do with anything of consequence. 'Moral standards' are just fictional props about youth-run-riot, and why can't today's immigrants be like the good old Greeks, and other such sour cum spat out by overpaid fatuous motormouths like Alan Jones, John Laws and Stan Zemanic - props: cynical, pseudo-conservative, sensationalist drivel used to maintain an air of excitement around their programmes. Ratings and money pour in when the public is told that their interests are under threat - especially when it appears as if Alan Laws, or John Jones, or whoever, is fighting for those interests. And if Mr Big speaks to politicians and 'community leaders' along the way, so much the better. Due to my then-boss' radio habits, I was a captive listener to these maniacs of paranoid materialism.

One morning, Alan Jones was in a deep rant about The Hard Ons, as in the thrash band. Alan did not care for the band's name. He said it was symptomatic of the moral decline evident in a persuasive element of youth culture. Such band names are going to destroy Western Civilisation (t'would be nice if it were so easy). Enough's enough, I thought. I decided to take up Alan's call for the rejection of Hard On culture. In a letter to the editor of Sydney's Daily Telegraph Mirror, I announced that I was "head of a growing movement called Young People Against Heavy Metal T-Shirts" (YPAHMTS). After acknowledging the good work that young people had done for the environment, I wrote that the time had come for young people to "clean themselves up." I exhorted youngsters to "stop socially and personally damaging activities such as smoking, drinking, taking drugs, easy sex and in particular, wearing heavy metal T-shirts," and went on to say that T-shirts "may seem like a small issue, but look at how many people wear them in public. They depict scenes of violence and sex, and in many cases openly incite subversion and a cynical attitude towards the moral guardians of our society, such as the police, parents, religious figures, and law and order in general." I claimed that YPAHMTS was established in New South Wales, Victoria, and Queensland, and finished the letter by saying, "I hope we can improve the moral calibre of today's youth and tomorrow's world." The Telegraph captioned the letter, "Stamp out T-shirt terror," and embellished it with an offending teenage torso shot.

The morning it appeared I fielded calls from Good Morning Australia, the Derryn Hinch show, some Telegraph journalists, ABC radio and others. Everyone was keen for the first coverage in their respective mediums, and they all wanted to know who else had called. It was funny stuff, particularly after having written plenty of letters to the Ed before - about logging, the politics of abortion and organ transplants, the targeting of civilians in Yugoslavia --but what brings on all the coverage? Young People Against Heavy Metal T-Shirts. As all the media crews interviewed me, I ad-libbed. "Mr Thompson, how many people are in your group?" -We're around fifty strong, but growing all the time. "Mr Thompson, are you looking at legislation?" -Not at this stage. "Are you considering moving into politics?" -We reject the political system in its current form.

And because I was self-proclaimed head of some self-proclaimed group, I was presented as an authority figure. No one ever checked out the veracity of my claims about the size or activities of YPAHMTS. Kind of funny, especially when I was claiming to organise youth camps in the desert where youngsters learn to renounce labelism, and vow to read only the books I supply, etcetera. The Telegraph-Mirror followed my letter with an article of their own, in which they added another layer to the YPAHMTS construction by inventing a conflict. They got some angry quotes from HMTS wearers, and claimed that "a storm is brewing among rival youth factions." Then ABC radio rang to arrange an interview. I made a point of telling them that YPAHMTS existed to change people's consciousness, not to have anything banned. They asked if I could send them a YPAHMTS newsletter. "Of course," I replied, then rang off to write one and fax it to them. I gave the bogus newsletter a bogus issue number to add a touch of instant history. Peter Luck interviewed me on networked ABC radio station 2BL. He introduced me as "a bloke who wants to censor T-shirts," then read out segments of the supplied newsletter:

We have taken up the struggle against those elements of our society that would drag us down into an anarchic and murderous abyss. As a family of strong and disciplined youth it is our duty to make our nation's future one in which we can stand proud and strong.

Luck read out my call for "more" public rallies, and my encouragement to YPAHMTS members to "BE HARD, BE STRONG". Then he said he found elements of YPAHMTS newsletter reminiscent of 1930s propaganda. I replied that perhaps it was time for youth to return to the values of order, discipline, and strength. After a quiet moment, he asked me what had prompted me to start the movement. I spoke of my dismay at seeing two little boys, maybe seven years of age, maybe eight, who were wearing identical T-shirts showing a woman being raped by a robot. What could he say? What could anyone say? That lie won the support of most of the audience. I have never seen a T-shirt showing an act of forced sex. There may well be some, but I haven't see any. It was fascinating to see how easy it is to disable opponents by appearing to be on the politically correct side of an issue. Not many people are going to speak up for robot rapists.

From this position of strength, I accused heavy metal T-shirt wearers of promoting antisocial behaviour, intimidating the mentally vulnerable, and of contributing to the climate of fear in the community. I said that someone who needs to wear heavy metal T-shirts as some kind of coat of arms is a deficient person. My alternative was a model of youth as self-assured, disciplined, strong in self-respect and self-esteem, capable, and emotionally self-sufficient. Luck said he doubted if I would make any difference, and then asked what steps I was taking. "I shall keep speaking to the public," I said, then told him of the coming rallies, before climaxing with "…after that we will be holding a series of youth camps in the desert."

Luck was a bit shocked, asked where the camps would be, said he half agreed with my views, then took half an hour's talkback about YPAHMTS. Eighty percent of the callers agreed with YPAHMTS, and almost everyone missed my point of not wanting to ban anything. They were saying it was high time for sexist and violent imagery to be eliminated from popular culture. A few called me a "fundamentalist loon." It showed how shallow the desire for freedom of speech is, and how shallow the understanding of it is. Most people mistakenly seem to think that there is legally guaranteed freedom of speech in Australia, and then many of those same people think freedom of speech means that people should be free to agree.

To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, there are only two positions on free speech. You either defend vigorously the right of others to express views that you despise, or you are in favour of the standards of dictators. You cannot be in favour of free speech if you only believe in the expression of 'appropriate' or 'decent' views. I suggest to those in favour of censorship: why not show the way by example of your own silence?

All the media attention and the talkback response was a crash course in human nature. If an idea comes along that requires patience and thought, most people will skim straight over it, missing the main points, or they'll switch to something else that offers instant drama. Without the discernment and attention span to think matters through, the average punter's focus is stolen by triviality after triviality. You can go a hell of a long way by using an entertaining delivery of emotive words - regardless of the inherent content. If you can do this, you'll find it easy to manipulate and distract people - make them think it's more important that we debate tax reform in Australia than consider what it means to have our government and some of our large corporations happily splitting the profits from the near genocide of the East Timorese people with the Indonesian government. The war in Bougainville was a laugh, wasn't it? Does anyone remember many hard-hitting inquiries into why a people would stage a revolution and suffer thousands of deaths, instead of allowing an Australian mine to operate on their island. It was probably more important that "a storm is brewing among rival youth factions," and it was probably more important that "the neighbours from hell" wouldn't leave their rented home. It was probably more important that some kid on the dole didn't want a haircut.

If individuals and society are to bring action in line with progressive, or humanist, aspiration, then they shouldn't expect much help from the general media. It's like the difference between a whore and a real friend. A whore panders to your weaknesses, reinforcing them for profit. A real friend wants you to grow out of your weaknesses. The general media has access to information and could be of far more help to society, but why would they? They're just whores.

The Hinch show asked if they could film a typical YPAHMTS meeting, so I bought some shirts to complain about, then briefed a few friends and built a solid platform of stereotypes: a woman complaining about the T-shirts' misogyny; a guy who used to wear them, but met me, handed in the cloth and turned his life around; an ethnic Australian; a yuppie… We covered a dining table with the shirts, and went for it - pretend conversations, lots of nodding, choked laughter. Everything too challenging was edited out - nothing remained about liberation from label consciousness - and all that went to air were tired old buzzwords like death, rape, destruction.

Those yippie ha-ha fools, JJJ, were next. I spoke with Maynard F# Crabbes on a Sunday afternoon, and then did an half-hour's talkback. As usual it was assumed that I was a fundamentalist Christian. I assured them otherwise - claiming instead to be a socially active Taoist. Finally having the chance to talk directly with an audience, a music-loving and supposedly broad minded audience, I went on the offensive, accusing T-shirt wearers of being "weak, peer-pressured victims of unreflective consumerism" who were lost in "repetitive and unsatisfactory junk culture". I blasted the T-shirts as "walking examples of psychological assault" and suggested they should be kept in a gallery where exposure to them is a matter of choice. Irate artists rang in, and I remember one semi-distraught painter telling me that the wearer of a T-shirt is not responsible for the viewer's emotional condition. I told her that she lacked compassion. Most callers supported me, and in the weeks after the show I received about thirty-five letters from around Australia, vowing support for YPAHMTS, and asking to join or start a chapter in their locality.

Then for a bit of sport, the producers of one of Australia's biggest metal radio shows, on Sydney's 2RRR, invited me to speak on air. One caller threatened to strangle me with my mother's blood stained panties. Another mentioned sticking a guitar up my ass and electrocuting me. But I went weird on them - encouraging them to throw away their corporate slavery, and paint their own extremely offensive T-shirts. By the show's end, one of the announcers converted to YPAHMTSism, causing a rift with the other announcer, whose girlfriend slipped me her number on the way out.

I thought the whole mess may have ended then, but the next day ABC TV called and invited the Young People to appear on the Couchman chat show. Couchman was filmed in Melbourne, and as I had claimed to be all over the Eastern seaboard, they asked for the phone number of our Melbourne branch. I told them it had just changed, so I 'd have to dig it up and give them a call back. After a quick and forceful call to a friend in Melbourne, I rang them back.

The YPAHMTS campaign prompted the ABC to ask whether heavy metal culture should be blamed for youth suicide, drug abuse, violence, dysfunctional relationships, academic failure, and so on. Defensive band members argued with scientists - one old chap claiming that certain experiments carried out in Berlin some years ago proved that extended exposure to loud, low frequency noise, causes serious brain disorder. I felt the topic itself was quite dysfunctional - and after using antigrammar to prove that the poet Keats was a metal head, I turned the YPAHMTS assault on Couchman himself."The problem with these people," I said, pointing to the pissed off rows of metal heads, "is that they feel they need to wear a uniform to be credible. It's the same with TV show hosts like yourself. Why do you need to wear a suit to be credible as a TV show host?"
"That's a good question," replied a rather taken aback Peter Couchman.
"Well, why?"
"That's a very good question." The show ended shortly afterwards.

By this stage a few of my own friends who knew it had been a hoax and who had even been on the Hinch show, started to believe in YPAHMTS. "But you know it's a joke!" I said to them.
"Yeah," they said, "sure, it's a funny way of getting your message across, but I still think it's a valid point."

Group action and a strong delivery is excellent for convincing people of even the most dubious views. Start an Institute, Foundation, or Movement. It gets you coverage and allows use of the royal 'we'.

 

An earlier version of this article entitled TABLOID WHORE appeared in the January 1997 issue of Australian Style, and a more recent version of this article (entitled ROBOT RAPE) appeared in the 1998 publication, Pop Culture Experiment.