Events that attract blanket media coverage only look normal because we usually see them on TV. Through a screen, the unreality is appropriate, the surreal edges smoothed into recognisable tropes, events cut into manageable narrative chunks.
Being there is something else entirely. The slow, quiet strangeness is increased tenfold when the media event is a funeral.
I arrive and immediately join the camouflage of the bank of cameras curled out from the side of St Patrick’s Cathedral, patiently waiting for tearful relatives to enter the church, the better to get a clear shot of the various high-profile attendees. “Here we go,” someone says as Tony Abbott strides in, limping slightly. Peta Credlin is a little behind him. The machine whirs into action, a rat-tat-tat of shutters.
As Guy Rundle sketches elsewhere today, there is a raft of truly bipartisan talent for the assembled media — a modest array of photographers, TV cameras and attendant journos — to capture. Along with what feels like most of the Labor Party, there’s John Setka in cowboy boots and a black button-up with CFMEU lettering, and assorted union tatted types in jeans and with greying handlebar moustaches. The cameras are brought to eye with each, but apart from Setka they hold their fire, unsure whether this is anyone particularly worth recording.
One of the many attendees from across the political aisle, Peter Dutton, arrives and much to the annoyance of the cameraman next to me he’s blocked by some nobody with their back to camera. “Just yell at him to get out of the way,” another in the line teases. A few pics do follow when it’s revealed that the nobody in question is actually Alan Tudge.
Near the start of the ceremony, former Labor MP Michael Danby leads a group of Buddhist monks across the courtyard, carrying a message of sincere condolence for Kitching’s widower, Andrew Landeryou. Nice image, I think. Different beliefs uniting in a Catholic church to say farewell. It gets a couple of cursory snaps — and then everyone’s attention snaps to Michael Sukkar and Sarah Henderson.
It would all feel faintly ghoulish, except the media has from the start been such a key dimension of Kitching’s tragic death, raising an ALP senator little known outside political circles to the status of celebrity and symbol.
Would Penny Wong, say, have cancelled her Northern Territory campaign event to attend had the flurry of media attention not ensured her absence became a statement, confirmation of the bullying narrative that has taken hold in the past two weeks? We can’t turn the cameras off now — it would make everyone concerned look stupid.
The world’s sirens and traffic and construction noise murmur from outside, a reminder of the strangeness of what we’re doing.
At one point between arrivals, I see a group of young people across the road staring not at the cathedral but at us — a line of cameras and suited young professional types with pads, microphone and lanyards milling about outside a stranger’s funeral recording, for the time being, a near empty courtyard.
