AFP, December 16, 2008
Australian Hollywood star Nicole Kidman will have no more children after breaking a taboo against women playing the didgeridoo, an Aboriginal cultural leader has warned.
Kidman, who gave birth to her first child in July at the age of 41 after long making clear her yearning for a baby, blew into the traditional instrument while promoting her latest movie on a German television show.
‘People are going to see Nicole playing it and think it’s all right,’ award-winning actor, screenwriter and Aboriginal language teacher Richard Green told Tuesday’s Sydney Morning Herald.
‘It bastardises our culture. I will guarantee she has no more children. It is not meant to be played by women as it will make them barren.’
Kidman, who suffered an ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage during her former marriage to fellow actor Tom Cruise, gave birth to daughter Sunday Rose after marrying country crooner Keith Urban in 2006.
The actress ‘blew feebly’ into a didgeridoo—a long wooden instrument—on the show ‘Wetten, Dass..?’ at the weekend while promoting the Baz Luhrmann film ‘Australia’ with fellow star Hugh Jackman, the paper said.
A cultural officer at Sydney’s Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, Alan Madden, said Kidman and Luhrmann ought to have known better after filming their sweeping romantic epic on location in the Australian outback.
‘I presume she doesn’t know, otherwise she wouldn’t be playing it… . Baz should know something about it, after working with those traditional fellas on the film,’ he told the newspaper.
Complaints by indigenous academics earlier this year led HarperCollins to apologise for including a section on how to play the didgeridoo in ‘The daring book for girls’ and to remove it from later editions.
Kidman, who has two adopted children from her marriage to Cruise, said at the premiere of ‘Australia’ in Sydney last month that she might put further films on hold and have more children.
‘In terms of my future as an actor and stuff, I don’t know,’ Kidman told anews conference. ‘I’m in a place in my life where I’ve … had some great opportunities. And I may just choose to have some more children.’
Original article
(Posted on December 16, 2008)
Comments
The aboriginals of this country never cease to amaze one.
Every souvenir shop sells didgeredoo’s to the travelling public, souvenir hunters etc. Never a word about their culture frowning upon women playing the sophisticated wind instrument. No warning stickers as on cigarette packs!
Yet one celebrity can bring forth all kinds of cultural foreboding………..
Nicole give them a couple of dollars & all will be forgiven.
I would say that claiming that a 41 year old woman will have no further children is a pretty safe bet.
The Maori of NZ have the same sensitivies about woman doing their haka (traditional war dance), they just whine though not so much curse. The Maori were warriors and the Australian Kori nomads, so the Maori were able to negoiate a better legally binding deal (the treaty of Waitangi)http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/category/tid/133.
Why are western feminists not screaming about harsh discrimination against women and girls in Africa, Aboriginal Australia, Middle East, and other primitive societies. These ‘traditions’ block women from participating in ‘manly’ rituals that in the West have been blown to smithereems through lawsuits and lobbying. Blowing didgeridoo makes women barren? Yep, keep them pregnant and working is more like it. I am for equality for women but it should be applied to other cultures as well not just in the West. Muslims in the west shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate against women.
Forgive me for being hyper-cynical about stars and publicity, but I think this is all part of a big, orchestrated publicity campaign. As they say, ANY publicity (for a celebrity) is good publicity. Whatever gets your name in the news.
Here in France (and I was in Scotland last week,) I see Kidman’s face plastered all over every other magazine cover on the newsstands. I was wondering why. What’s up? Obviously, her studio’s publicity department is going all out to get her all the coverage possible. And so she was on German TV last week, blowing the whatever it is.
But why now, so suddenly? What’s the big occasion for all this attention? Oh!!! She has a new movie coming out, that’s what. Well, well, what a coincidence! Who would have guessed it?
I would say that claiming that a 41 year old woman will have no further children is a pretty safe bet.
Problem is, the aborigines will blame the didgeridoo playing and not the fact she is 41 and has suffered a miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy.
Why do whites, who created the modern world, feel the need to respect a culture that produced nothing in countless millenium, aside from the ability to live in a desert? Why should the culture that produced Shakespeare show any respect for a culture with no written language?
Please someone explain. I’ve never understood.
Nicole, listen to your Ob-Gyn, not these dusky dim-bulbs with their hysterical superstitions.
Regarding the film “Australia” that Nicole Kidman stars in I urge all decent whites to boycott the film. It is time to make a stand and quit rewarding the multiculturalist propaganda machine. This movie is just another demonization of whites that shows the poor aborigine as being superior in manner and morals to the violent greedy whites. White men in particular are now regularly portrayed in the movies and television as being cowardly, greedy, and often girlish.
The real heroes and protectors of white women are now often portrayed as blacks who against all real experience are shown as being intelligent, brave, considerate and loving towards women. This despite the thousands of violent rapes perpetrated against white women by black men every single year. A black beats a popular white female news reporter to death and sexually assaults her and the media says not one word questioning the disproportional levels of violence by blacks and other non-whites against American whites.
Stop paying the mulicultural media to demonize the white race and brain wash our children.
Nicole Kidman has a history of multicultural dating. After leaving the diminutive Tom Cruise, she took up with Black rapper Q-Tip, probably out of jealousy of Heidi Klum being so lucky to land her Seal. Unfortunately for the race-mixing Marxist media, Ms. Kidman evidently used birth control when she bedded Mr. Q-Tip.
They managed to create fire and religion, but alas, no wheel.
The “cultural officer’ said she (Kidman) should have known better. “Cultural Officer”? What the devil is that?
That’s funny. I play didgeridoo all the time and my wife does too from time to time. We aren’t Aboriginal or Australian. This is a music instrument that anyone if they want to can play it or listen to it in the world. The real question is what was the intent of playing was it for ceremony? No it was not.
Warning! Playing a didgeridoo does not work as birth control my wife and I have 2 wonderful kids proving this. It is just another white man romanticized myth that was injected into Aboriginal culture that has been then twisted by some Aboriginal groups in areas where didgeridoo is not local traditional. All this is a lot more complex to talk about and cannot just be put into a quick sound bite here, if you know Indigenous affairs in Australia you know what I’m talking about.
It is too bad that so called Aboriginal “leaders” are saying this. I have studied didgeridoo in Australia in the part of Australia in the Top End where didgeridoo was created and used over the last few thousand years and even heard and saw women play and make didgeridoos. It is not a problem. I guess the bigger problem is that everyone tries to group all Aboriginal groups of Australia together and as it turns out there are many different regional customs and traditional beliefs where ever people have populated Australia pre-colony times. Oz is a huge place. So when something like this gets on the world stage unfortunately the loudest screaming voice is heard even if it is dead wrong. Most people don’t have the time, interest or passion to dive into the study of the Australian Aborigines so a pan-Australian quick answer is most craved.
By the way if you have seen the segment of Nicole attempting to play the didgeridoo she was not able to play it she was attempting to hum or to sing. She needed to press her lips on it and buzz the lips to get the sound of the drone. Quite a pitiful attempt that most beginners face when first trying, if you think this is a pro performance of didgeridoo excellence you are clueless. But I guess from all the outrage that this is the way a didgeridoo sounds. Not! Obviously these Aboriginal “leaders” don’t even know how the instrument sounds or is suppose to be played.
Talk to the Yolngu people in Arnhem Land, NT where didgeridoo was created and still used in ceremony today and get the real story. Indigenous women in Australia do play didgeridoo just not in a ceremonial function. It is not a matter that women can or not it is just usually women don’t mess with the didgeridooing. No taboos, curses or whatever. It’s all silly stuff that has been made up and turns into some so called tradition.
What the hell was she thinking?
Doesn’t she realize that before she does anything on Mother Gaia that she has to consult an academic scholar of Aboriginal Studies first?
These are a proud people who have what little vestiges of sexism left in this world in which to cling.
