The Third Man - why Willie Mason and John Howard have embraced postmodernism

When prime ministers and footballers refer to themselves as commodities, it’s time for the alarm bells to start ringing loudly so that we can take a long hard look at the extent to which postmodernity has completed its invasion of our modernist lives.

Richard Stanton provides a "please explain".

Most of us don’t know or don’t want to know what this thing called postmodernity is.

We don’t want to know because it’s perceived to be some wanky rubbish that’s been dreamed up by wanky academics who wouldn’t know the difference between the real world and their bum cracks.

Postmodernism is an interesting thing. It has given us chaotic capitalism and globalism. It has turned the citizens of the western world into consumers rather than producers. It has commodified everything from soap powder to speech.

Some of this is good.

Globalisation has the potential, in theory at least, to float the boats of the poverty stricken and the diseased. Chaotic capitalism moves swiftly across geophysical and geopolitical boundaries, forcing innovation where it may have previously been resisted.

The commodification of society means we now look for as many choices as we can when buying goods and services. And this should be a good thing, because more choice usually means cheaper prices and better quality.

Television current affairs programs, however, tell us that maybe we are not getting the choices we would like when they report that unscrupulous postmodernist players are substituting nasty overseas food for the nice stuff and not telling us.

In their desire to remain in modernity, television current affairs programs are missing the point. Even the greatest supporters of modernity are demonstrating that they are strategic when it comes to giving their constituents more choices than they deserve.

In this, one of the Western world’s best parliamentary debaters thinks the same as one of the world’s greatest rugby league players. They think the same because they have learned to commodify themselves.

A commodity is something that can be produced in bulk. It is a thing of value or a thing that can be the object of trade. It is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as a thing one deals in or makes use of.

We can see the benefit of commodification when we think about rugby league players.

They are considered by team owners as things of value, things that can be the object of trade. So it would not be out of the ordinary for one of the world’s greatest rugby league players, Willie Mason, to be the object of trade.

He would himself see the benefit and refer to himself in the third person as a commodity, as he did on the Footy Show on April 19.

Willie and his Australian teammate Nathan Hindmarsh were being interviewed by the Footy Show panel live from Brisbane on the eve of the Australia New Zealand test match.

Willie was provided with a choreographed opportunity to apologise to a woman journalist with whom he had had a run in some days earlier. Willie was then asked a questions about his performance on the field.

He described it and concluded by saying that “Willie Mason” would play his best.

This postmodern response reveals a great deal about Willie the person and Willie the commodity.

Willie on the field is one of the best. Willie off the field however, is a public relations nightmare, a disaster wherever he goes. But is he really such a disaster?

What we had on the Footy Show was a glimpse of the very clever Willie - the Willie that knows his value as a commodity, the Willie that knows whatever he does off the field is calculated to provide maximum media coverage of “Willie the Commodity”.

Commodified Willies are things we expect from postmodernity.

Footballers change teams every year. Supporters, rooted in the idea of continuity and familiarity have learned to deal with this.

But how do they react to the same commodification of politics?

Hot on the heals of Willie’s acknowledgement that he is a commodity came the prime ministerial revelation that he too, is thinking the same way.

The following morning on the Alan Jones talkback breakfast radio program on 2GB, John Howard commodified himself. The idea of political leaders as commodities is something new in the Australian political landscape. What is does is provide political representatives with a means to avoid blame for things that go wrong.

New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma was spectacularly successful in this when he asked the electorate to vote for him because he had been in the job a short time and everything that had gone wrong before that was Bob Carr’s fault.

On the Alan Jones program, the Prime Minister said Kevin Rudd’s changes to workplace legislation were negative and “John Howard’s” existing policy was good.

In this John was revealing as much of his persona as Willie did. He was asking listeners to think of him not as a man in the twilight of his life but as a commodity.

He was asking that we accept the postmodern condition and that when we think of our choice of leader, we think of the value in the commodity on the field rather than off.

What a choice.