Although the Human Rights Commission spends a lot of its time digging up imaginary wrongs and encouraging people to get outraged and lodge complaints about the silliest of trifles,  it is amazing that it does nothing about the really serious breaches of human rights that go on under its nose.

This shortcoming has been very noticeable in Melbourne recently during Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the sad fact is that the HRC has done nothing about the rampant abuses of human rights on show during the 19 hours of that so- called masterpiece. But the musical elite is so mesmerised by Wagner it is blind to the fact that his Ring Cycle is racist, misogynist, anti-dwarf, anti-giant, anti-animal rights, anti-equality for loving incestuous couples, pro-slavery, and virulently anti-disabled.

There is also a lot in it that is straight-out ableism, a new and virulent form of discrimination recently identified by Senator Lee Rhiannon in drawing up her manifesto Left Renewal to herald the imminent overthrow of capitalism.

Ableism, as you may know, is being condescendingly polite to people with disabilities because you are able and they are not, but with a secret fear that you might become retarded if you associate with them too much.

There is also a lot of youthism in the Cycle, which is the blind adulation of young blond heroes, especially if they are German and  their name is Siegmund or Siegfried, a nasty abuse of their human rights with which I am sadly acquainted due to my misguided promotion of it when I was Minister for Youth Affairs.

Finally, there is a disturbing new breach of human rights in the Cycle, very noticeable because it is the only time in the 19 hours when the audience actually laughs.  I speak of the terrible scourge of transgendering, the offensive practice is addressing a transgendered person using language inconsistent with the gender with which he or she identifies on the day in question.

Some readers may not be familiar with the works of Richard Wagner, apart from his theme music for Apocalypse Now and the march he wrote for Muriel’s Wedding. So I will re-cap some of the highlights (or, in my opinion, the lowlights) of the Ring Cycle to show its disturbing shortcomings in the human rights field and in the hope that, even at this late stage, it might stir the HRC out of its comatose state and into taking some urgent steps to have the entire opera banned.

The saga begins with two ugly, mad dwarfs, Alberich and Mime, both of whom are men, which is not a good start, as women are as good at being dwarfs as men and, anyway, under recent federal guidelines 46 per cent of dwarfs are supposed to be women. Wagner’s depiction of solely male dwarfs is therefore simply barefaced dwarf misogyny, and a backwards step in the fight to break through the dwarf ceiling, which, although it is a fairly low threshold, we were on the verge of achieving, until this opera set us back by years.

Alberich, the taller of the two, and known in dwarf circles as “Albo”, discovers a team of water nymphs training in the Rhine for the new Olympic sport of co-ordinated water ballet, which is apparently all that Wagner thinks girls are good for. Albo cleverly tricks them into handing over their hoard of gold, including a magic ring with which he proposes to rule the universe and become Secretary-General of the United Nations.

His equally mad and odious brother Mime, known in dwarf circles as “Shorty”, is not much better, as he runs a meth lab out in the forest. So there, I regret to say, you have the beginnings of several recurrent and equally reprehensible themes.

Dwarfs are portrayed as stereotypically repulsive and, by definition, dishonest; so there is definitely an anti-dwarf bias in the Ring Cycle which should be worth at least $1m in damages for any offended dwarf who wants to make a claim in the small claims division of the HRC.

Secondly, girls are stereotypically and judgmentally portrayed throughout the opera as frivolous, frolicking in the water and incapable of defending themselves except by giggling when someone comes along to steal their treasure, an equally odious denial of their human rights.

Meanwhile, in Valhalla, the gods are having a bad time of it; power is slipping through their fingers and the god hierarchy’s call for renewal has so far gone unheeded. Even their enthusiasm for ruling the universe has waned. Wotan, king of the gods, is very much aware of the catastrophic fate that awaits the gods if they do not improve their performance and get on with some serious infrastructure building, like a rainbow bridge over the Rhine. “We have lost 30 Newspolls in a row,” he laments one day to Mrs Wotan, “and with no sign of improvement”.

But this is not just a loss of popularity; there is an underlying and, as one of the gods put it recently in a letter to the Valhalla Age, a “systemic” sickness in Valhalla. The gods’ ultimate power and source of life has always come from the magic golden apples that are grown in the adjoining orchard and picked for the gods by Mrs Wotan’s younger sister Freia during the dance party season.

But, regrettably, that life-giving source of energy has come to an end. The root cause of this disaster is that the Valhalla authorities have recently imposed a backpackers’ tax of 39 per cent, and literally no-one will work, particularly up and coming young gods who want everything now and who also want to be king of the gods yesterday. The golden apples are now simply rotting on the trees and the precious bodily fluids of the gods are being steadily diluted.

There has also been an outbreak of family friction in Valhalla brought on by Wotan’s philanderings with his harem who are known as the Valkyries, being all members of the same pony club and who, as well as his consorts, are also his daughters. His chief consort and playmate as well as his favourite daughter, if you get my drift, is Ms Brunnhilde Wotan.

Mrs Wotan herself is a Magda Goebbels type, string-lipped and prissy, always wearing cardigans and brogues and ordering her husband around when she is not letting out a contract to have her own son assassinated. She lays down the law in no uncertain terms to Wotan that if he does not get the family a castle of their own, with a fully imported European kitchen and marble bench-tops, she will leave him. Also, she thinks, getting a house of their own might just keep Wotan at home and stop him wandering around the universe at night like an alley cat.

So, what with no apples, the backpacker tax, leadership rivals and a nit-picking wife, Wotan’s enthusiasm for life is distinctly on the wane. As he laments into a mug of mead, “There has never been a worse time to be king of the gods.”

But more importantly and more disturbingly, the message of the opera is becoming painfully clear: girls are only in the universe to pick apples and serve mead to their menfolk and when they get married they are expected to put up with all sorts of immoral misbehaviour from their husbands, without any recompense, and not even in a house of their own with a fully imported European kitchen and, moreover they are expected to stay in the kitchen.

This, of course, is rampant sexism and discrimination against women, as none of the men are treated in this way. The men are allowed to go into the forest and have adventures like slaying dragons, but the girls are expected to stay at home. And Justice Bromberg, properly advised, would have no trouble in finding on the evidence that all girls would be offended and insulted by such a misogynistic attitude or, if they are not offended, they should be, and certainly will be when they hear of the damages they might be awarded.

Anyway, Wotan eventually plucks up enthusiasm, designs a castle and engages two giants, Fasolt and Fafner Pty Ltd, to build it. Fasolt and Fafner, who are brothers, have particularly close relations with the local CFMEU, have never had any trouble with finishing a job on time and within budget and the Wotans’ castle is no exception.

But then comes payday. It turns out that Wotan has signed an enterprise bargaining agreement with Fasolt and Fafner providing that when the job is finished, the giants, who are also sex maniacs, will get Freia as payment for their work, the prospect of which has sent them salivating in orbit around the earth.

But Mrs Wotan will not have a bar of this arrangement, as although she is in favour of flexibility in the workplace, she does not believe in that much flexibility.  As a result of this obstruction from his wife, Wotan has to pay off the giants with the gold, including the magic ring, which Albo still has, but which Wotan plans to steal from him, just as Albo stole it from the water nymphs.

In fact, there is so much money-laundering going on in this opera, it should be called the Rinse Cycle. But here again, the opera disturbingly presents women as mere chattels to be bought and sold by power-hungry men as if they were bags of apples or bars of gold; there are no female giants in Wagner’s sexist and discriminatory universe, of course, as there are in other, more wholesome operas like Xena: Warrior Princess, just as there are no female dwarfs. As Mrs Wotan laments one day: “Oi know all about this and will not be lectured about misogyny by any of youse men.”

And you will notice that even the giants are portrayed with unrelenting negativity as second class citizens simply because they are tall, uglier that the dwarfs and mean and grasping thugs, interested in nothing but sex and money. Wagner has overlooked that giants, like dwarfs and women, have feelings too, but I am confident that the HRC will not overlook it.

Indeed, one of its officials, Tiny Tim, I am pleased to say, has just announced that any woman, dwarf, giant or transgendered person who feels that they are or might, or possibly or conceivably might be offended by their portrayal in such a retrograde manner, should lodge a complaint of discrimination and, to help them, he has already filled out and signed a pile of claim forms to accommodate the large number of expected complaints.

Anyway, the gods buy Freia with the gold, showing yet again that women can just be bought and sold in this misogynistic universe, and Freia is able to go back to work picking her apples, which is apparently all that she is good for and another shocking example of judgmental ableism. This means that Fasolt and Fanfer have the gold, including the magic ring, but Albo has put a curse on it which has already started to work, because Fafner immediately kills Fasolt, seizes all the gold and uses the magic ring to turn himself into a dragon.

You will notice that whenever there is trouble in Wagner’s universe, scapegoats pop up, usually a helpless creature like a dragon who cannot defend himself and this is just another example of it. There are no nice dragons apparently, which is nonsense in itself, but only dragons who want to rape girls, steal other peoples’ gold and kill their brothers. Wagner forgets that dragons have feelings too.

In the meantime, several miles down into hell, Alba has started an illegal underground gold mine with hordes of slaves toiling away in loincloths to make up for the gold he has lost. This is all presented as economic progress and legitimate, on the ground that at least they have a job, even if they are slaves and are paid less than the $3.70 an hour that Dr Di Natale pays his domestic servants, which is less than they would earn at McDonald’s.

In reality, of course, it is pro-slavery and a gross violation of the human rights of all slaves. I hope Tiny Tim has a clutch of claim forms ready for this too because there are a lot of slaves out there just itching to file a claim to reverse this injustice.

After this, sexism and racism really rear their ugly heads.  Heroes start emerging from the forest, but only heroes of a certain type.

The first one, Siegmund, is a blond, young Aryan. The second one, Siegfried, his son, is also a blond, young, Aryan. Both, of course, are males. The message is quite clear and it is a message of classic racism and youthism; only blond, young Aryan men can do heroic things, and simply because they are blond, young Aryan men, even if they are dumb as a brick.

They have all the fun for the next few days of the opera as they find magic swords, slay dragons, talk with birds, rape their neighbours’ cattle and steal their women, go to parties, take drugs and do all sorts of other cool things. But the girls are never allowed to have fun; they have to stay at home, have babies, worry about body image, serve mead and generally stay in their place until a blond, young Aryan comes to rescue them. If that is not racial and sex discrimination, I don’t know what is.

That’s where the opera should have ended if you ask me, but no Wagnerian opera ends when it should. So we veer off to see how Siegmund is getting on. Siegmund, as I said, is our first tall, blond, Aryan hero, having been born to a certain Mr and Mrs Woolf, so he says, but he was actually born to Mr and Mrs Wotan of North Valhalla.

One stormy night, he is lost in the forest while out inspecting some old growth forest in a delicate eco-wilderness. During a storm caused solely by the local authorities’ refusal to move from coal to renewables, he stumbles onto a remote house, where lives, believe it or not, his twin sister, Sieglinde who was also born to Mr and Mrs Wotan, but who has been lost in the bush for the last few years.

However, she has just got married to a local big shot, Hunding, who sounds and is a very nasty piece of work. Some idea of just how bad he is can be seen from the fact that he keeps a pack of hounds that he uses for chasing his wife when she runs away, which is often, an idea he got from the last episode of Game of Thrones. 

Things then move pretty fast, I mean fast for Wagner, and Sieglinde, having slipped a funny white pill into her husband’s cocoa, sings for an hour or two about how she wants to have sex with Siegmund because she thinks he might be her brother. ”Righto, Hunding  in” he replies, “What’s your name then?” “Sieglinde,” she replies. He comes back with a very smart retort: “But that’s me sister’s name.” And she replies in turn: “Of course it’s your sister’s name! I am your sister!”

Well, after that, they go at it hammer and tongues in a heavy round of the game the whole family can play, even although they have never been to Tasmania. Siegmund pulls a magic sword from a tree which is growing inside to reduce the Hundings’ carbon footprint and escapes with Sieglinde with Hunding in hot pursuit with his dogs.

They meet in battle, which Siegmund is supposed to win because he is blond, better looking than Hunding and a hero, an appalling example of youthism in itself. But if he wins the fight it will be a victory for incest.

Mrs Wotan, however, has recently been reading Julie Bishop’s autobiography, I’m Right Behind You, and decides to swap sides from Siegmund to Hunding, because Hunding is at least married and Siegmund is only interested in chasing his own sister.

You will note that Mrs Wotan has no qualms about Siegmund being killed, despite the fact that he is her son. Surely Siegmund has a human right to have a mother and one who is not going to have him killed. And if you think that is far-fetched, don’t forget that in that other major denial of human rights, The Sopranos, it was old Mrs Soprano who let out the contract to have her son Tony whacked.

But more importantly, having Siegmund killed because he married his sister is pure old fashioned discrimination against incest that I thought we had left well behind, because if two people are in love they should be able to get married even if they are related and there is already a UN Convention on The Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Incestuous Couples which has been signed in Valhalla, if not ratified.

It is even rumoured that the next Valhallian of the Year, a retired general, will advocate that the Army should set up an Incest Equality Unit to promote the cause, with provision for compulsory apologies and compensation to incestuous couples who feel they have been victimised by missing out on promotions.

She, therefore, forces her poor husband, Mr Wotan, to make sure that his daughter, Brunnhilde, who will be there at the time on her way to a pony club meeting, intervenes, so that Hunding will win the fight in the interests of traditional marriage.

Brunnhilde suggests to Siegmund that rather than put up a fight, he should exercise the newly discovered human right of voluntary euthanasia, an idea that Siegmund does not think at all a good one and which, typically, Wagner also rejects.  So Brunnhilde agrees to fix the fight for Hunding. But she has also been reading Julie Bishop’s autobiography, and changes sides to intervene to ensure Siegmund will win the battle in the interests of true, incestuous loving couples.

Despite this, Siegmund is killed, traditional marriage wins, Wotan sends Hunding to Nirvana on the point of a spear and Sieglinde escapes with Brunnhilde on her horse. Mrs Wotan, who is very clever, like Julie Bishop, says with a self-satisfied smirk, “I can neither confirm or deny I had anything to do with this shambles, or the resolution on Israel, the South China Sea or anything else and, in any case, I have to rush off now for a Hugo Boss fitting, the launch of the new Este Lauder fragrance, a photo shoot for Valhalla Vogue and then to the polo at Portsea at your expense.” (Six months’ later she was bugged by an investigative journalist on the Valhalla Age saying “I think on mature reflection that making Wotan king of the gods was not such a good idea after all.”)

Several hours later, I mean several hours later in the opera, we find that Sieglinde survived the battle and has had a baby to her brother Siegmund whom they name Siegfried.  Siegfried, one of the Stolen Generation, is put out to foster-care with, guess who, Shorty, the smaller dwarf who has recently expanded his meth lab in the forest and with the help of an Agility and Innovation Grant for Small Businessmen has started a high-tech business making swords for people who want to be heroes, provided of course they are blond, young German men. It seems you could never have a girl who is a hero.

Wotan punishes Brunnhilde for letting the side down and of course what would you expect? Women have to be punished and kept in line. So Wotan puts Brunnhilde to sleep inside a ring of fire on a mountain top and, boy, that fire makes the bombing of Dresden look like Guy Fawkes’ night.

But Siegfried finds her and because he has just been through the Safe Schools Sexual Fluidity course at QUT and now uses the girls’ toilets on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, thinks she is a man, because of all the armour she is wearing. When he takes her armour off and finds she really is just a girl he screams “This is not a man!” which of course she is not, what with all those big breasts and heaving thighs. It is also where the audience laugh and why not? Anyone wearing armour must be a man in Wagner’s world.

Finally, Siegfried goes off to have more adventures which of course the girls are not allowed to have. With the new sword that Shorty helped him make, he finds The Dragon Formerly Known as Fasolt, slays it and seizes the magic ring.

Siegfried then falls in with a bad lot led by Hagen, who is one of the famous Hagen-Hagen ice cream family and also Albo’s son, which can only spell trouble. But Hagen has a darker side as he, also, is running a meth lab in the forest, making the other sort of ice, if you see my meaning. He also has a bigger problem in that he has a half-sister named Gutrune who is hideously ugly, although only in traditional terms, and just cannot find Mr Right.

Here again, you have another regrettable theme; ugly girls are expected to be preoccupied with body image and finding a husband. Wagner forgets, as usual, that ugly girls have the right to be happy too, which is even written into the UN Convention on the Rights of Ugly Girls. But a few million in damages should straighten out all these misogynists, including him.

Anyway, Hagen gives Siegfried some Hagen-Hagen ice cream with special ice on top and before you can say Gotterdammerung, Siegfried is off his trolley, thinks Gutrune is Brunnhilde, falls in love with her, dumps Brunnhilde with a text message and marries Ugly Gutrune.

Hagen marries Brunnhilde on the rebound and to finish everything off kills Siegfried. By this time, Brunnhilde has had enough of the lot of them and decides to do herself in and take her horse with her, the horse being the only creature to whom none of the others is related and/or has had sex with, or at least not yet.

You would think that if she had really had enough of the horse, she would have put him out to graze, like Black Caviar, but oh no! She has to ride the poor thing into the fire, which is still roaring away and which again shows just how prejudiced Wagner is against defenceless animals. One of the gods calls out “Beware of the ring” which must be the greatest understatements of all time, after all the trouble it has caused, a bit like Angela Merkel calling out in a mosque “Beware of the refugees.”

I’ve forgotten who ends up with the ring but, of course, all the girls miss out, as well as the giants, the dragon, the Hagen-Hagens and the mad dwarfs. As usual in this disgraceful opera, the women always come off worst. Typical, if you ask me. The only thing to do with this opera is to ban it and let the HRC clean up the mess and try as best it can to remedy these grievous breaches of human rights by distributing large sums in damages. Tiny Tim has offered to help in this work.

Illustration: Arthur Rackham, Flickr

 

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