Dark Mofo’s inflicting a world of FOMO for those not currently experiencing the Hobart winter festival. Social media’s currently chokkas full of performance art and music exploring the depths of birth, death, and renewal. It’s all the rage at the present so it’s just a bit of a bummer Hobart’s Lord Mayor could cut its funding.
The council’s sponsorship of the festival – $258,000 per year ($108,000 for venue help and $150,000 cash grant) – is up for review this year and Alderman Ron Christie wishes to “put the brakes” on the festival claiming the event is no longer family-friendly. Rather, Ald Christie described the event as a “shock festival” to the ABC.
Although, it’s not much surprise Christian groups are pissed off by the use of the inverted cross in this year’s festival.
Here’s one of the aforementioned inverted crosses:
Alderman Christie told the Mercury:
“We’ll sit down and ask Dark Mofo what the future of their event is going to be because my personal concern is that each year we get a lot of complaints.”
“It’s possible we may cut funding.”
According to the Mercury a change.org petition with 18,500 angry signatures has been submitted to the council this week.
Per the petition:
“We are asking you to arrange to immediately REMOVE the inverted crosses that were erected by Dark Mofo around Hobart for the Winter Festival. Whatever their intention, the consequence of these Crosses are harmful, hurtful, and frankly, a waste of public funds.
The Cross is a deeply meaningful and important symbol for all Christians in this nation, and indeed across the world. Other religions would not tolerate this type of demeaning behaviour and we request that you immediately have them removed as a sign of respect.”
If you’re scratching your head thinking how an inverted cross could be harmful and hurtful then let me impart some of my lovely religious schooling wisdom on you all. In the ol’ days, the inverted cross goes way back to the Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Peter wanted to be crucified upside down because he didn’t feel worthy enough to die the same way Jesus died. These days, the inverted cross is associated with Satan and you might recognise the symbol from many religiously-themed horror flicks like The Conjuring, Annabelle, and the Exorcist. Long-story short, religious people interpret the inverted cross as an anti-Christian symbol.
Ald Christie went on to say, “Art has to push the boundaries but where is the boundary line?”
Meanwhile, the festival’s director Leigh Carmichael was having none of this talk and was rather unimpressed that a bit of controversy spooked the mayor. Although, he does reckon a funding review might be a good place to argue for more based on the amount of money Dark Mofo brings in each year.
“We haven’t done an economic report for a few years but in 2015 it had a $50 million return and that was when we were selling 20,000 tickets and now we are selling 90,000 tickets.”
As for the criticism, Carmichael told the ABC he was disappointed with the community’s reaction:
“We’re raising issues around symbolism and religion and these are things that I want discussed and we want discussed as a festival.”
The council alone has received 20 formal complaints about the inverted crosses and all of them have been sent off to event-organisers, MONA, to deal with.
