Confronting Imagery: Mouths Taped Over and Sewn Together

Without disclosing too much about my job, today I took some time out from regular office duties to help promote an event we’re doing. I had to stand in Bourke Street Mall and hand out flyers. Part of this involved taping my mouth with red gaffa tape.

I was up for it because it involved a bit of a spectacle. As a past drama student, things like street performance or like live theatre intrigue me.

A lot of people walking by found the image of me with the tape over my mouth quite confronting, and even some were a little freaked out. One immediately associated it with protest, which I guess isn’t such a bad thing.

Forced silence is a powerful image, and it’s been playing in my mind ever since and has some significance to the issue of asylum seekers that I’ve been blogging about this week.

During Howard’s reign of terror on asylum seekers in mandatory detention, it was common for detainees to sew their lips together when going on a hunger strike. The images of young adults with their lips sewn together were quite disturbing.

Recently, Tamils have done the same around the world in protest of Western government’s complacency of the discrimination toward Tamils in Sri Lanka.

And the moment that got me involved in politics, when Big Brother Housemate Merlin Luck walked onto the stage after being evicted with his mouth taped over and the words ‘Free Th Refugees’ on a makeshift banner (the E had fallen off.)

This is a perfect strong image to base a story around. It’s horrific and political.

Margo had an idea that she wanted me to use, but I felt slightly bad for using her idea. And then Brenton blogged about a cool dark romance market he found. And with a little bit of Margo’s idea, altered to fit into Brenton’s market and I had myself a short story idea.

I’m not telling you what it involves though until it’s done.

I kind of have a packed weekend though so unless tomorrow at work is devoid of manager’s hovering around my desk, I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to write it down.

The first image is of the character Abe, from the Playstation Game Abe’s Odyssey that was kind of disturbing to play when I was around Thirteen.

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