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Article Excerpt
The sacred is commonsensically defined as that which is held by many to be inviolable--sacrosanct through reverence for a particular imputed significance. But as suggested in a recent consideration of the subject (1), it remains an often-vague concept, applied by all sorts of people to all sorts of places, states, experiences and concepts. In Australia, the conceptual complex of history, folklore, commemoration and place known as 'Anzac' is a talismanic mythology powerfully associated with dominant concepts of nation and cultural identity. Anzac is routinely referred to as 'sacred' in the media, in politics, in the public services, in the tourism business and on the World Wide Web. But despite this sacralisation Anzac is, in contrast to the rendering of national commemorative ideals in other countries, light with signifiers of standard religious rhetoric, observance and dogma. Instead, this characteristically Australian mode of public observance, and the considerable state and military apparatus and popular sentiment that surrounds it, has been invested with the sacred through the concept of nation rather than through religion. While we embrace the notion and the power of the sacred in Anzac, we mostly refuse its religious dimensions. This ambivalent situation is characteristic of Australian mythologising. It can be seen in both the tangible and intangible representations and expressions of Anzac, in the history of the term and its uses, in the folklore, rhetoric and rituals associated with Anzac and Anzac Day, and in memorials that commemorate and focus these many meanings.
Many years ago, the historian Ken Inglis drew attention to the sacralisation of the secular that has taken place as an important aspect of 'Anzac'. (2) He has continued this approach, most notably in a well-known study of war memorials and their significance, Sacred Places. (3) Inglis initially began researching and writing at a time when Anzac and its observation was the subject of widespread disinterest and trenchant criticism from a generation brought up on the notion 'make love not war'. But since then, and particularly over the past fifteen years or so, there has been a strong swing-back towards the popular observation of Anzac Day, not only in Australia but also in such originary locations as Gallipoli and the Western Front, on the Kokoda Track and at Long Tan. The Australian War Memorial regularly attracts the largest number of visitors of any tourist attraction in the country and the numbers of Australians and New Zealanders, especially the young, cramming the restricted area of the Gallipoli landings (4) has become a major concern to both the Australian and Turkish governments. This recrudescence of interest has only served to emphasise the strongly secular nature of Anzac and its centrality to widespread notions of Australian nationalism.
The sacred and mythologisation
The sacralisation of the secular is one important element of the larger mythologisation of Anzac, which also involves the folkloric stereotype of the digger and the political-military imperatives of successive national governments. Like all cultural constructs, Anzac is a conflation of history and myth. The history is that of Australia at war from 1914 and through all subsequent conflicts. The myth involves more complex and older processes of the romanticised pioneering experience of the mainly nineteenth century, political and military imperatives, popular notions of national identity and the central role of the larrikinesque digger.
The general shape of the mythologisation process is a familiar one that can be briefly outlined. An event occurs which is invested with unusual, in this case national, significance. The event and its aftermath are the subject of not only historical scrutiny and discussion but also of politicisation, romanticisation and folklorisation, drawing both on pre-existing cultural elements and perceptions as well as the real of imagined aspects of the originary event. As the confluence of history and myth endures, it is further strengthened, in this case by its observance each Anzac Day, and by iteration of similar or related establishing circumstances such as a subsequent world war and a number of other conflicts. These include Korea, Malaya and, most notably it now turns out, Vietnam. Because of its growing power, this mythologisation also draws into itself disparate, sometimes antagonistic elements and players in the cultural script produced. In the case of Anzac, these players include children, women and even old enemies.
The ability of a mythology to continually renew itself in this way is an infallible sign of its health; that is, its propensity to retain significance (not necessarily the same significance) for large numbers of groups and individuals within the community that originates and maintains it. There are early indications that Anzac is absorbing, if controversially, the commemoration of the civilian victims of the Bali bombings through the adoption of the Dawn Service observance. Whatever the ultimate role of such latter elements in Anzac, the mythology has rarely been stronger in the Australian community, except perhaps during and immediately after the two World Wars.
This mythological sacralisation of the secular involves a number of rhetorical, iconographic, ritual and textual elements interacting with the motivating imperatives of national identity to create Anzac as we currently understand it.
Anzac--from acronym to icon
The term 'Anzac' was originally...
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