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A daily annoyance of the lockdown has been an advert at a nearby bus stop. It uses convict imagery and a clever hologram effect to sell a wine. In normal times adverts change regularly. Because it has stuck around it has really bugged me. I decided to investigate 1/17
I am not a historian, but I am familiar with some of this history. Even so, the ads draw on something that is darker than I expected and led me to question why it’s acceptable to use race, class, and empire to sell a wine? 2/17
The ad is for an Australian wine brand ’19 Crimes’. The 19 Crimes refers to prisoners who were sent to Australia in the 18th century because they broke one of '19 crimes’ the brand claims were cause for transportation https://www.19crimes.com/the-19-crimes 3/17
To much acclaim, this brand has an interactive website and has created a successful adult-targeted VR https://www.forbes.com/sites/zarastone/2017/12/12/19-crimes-wine-is-an-amazing-example-of-adult-targeted-augmented-reality/#490c827c47de which led to a surge in Australian wine sales in 2017. 4/17
The brand appeals to a particular demographic, “millennial men, especially those who see themselves as a bit of a rogue. Outlaws…who identify with others who defy convention.” https://wineeconomist.com/2018/05/08/19-crimes/ 5/17
This brand sells images of individuals who lived under the British empire, broke often unjust laws, and were forcibly transported to Australia so that it would be populated with white people. So, these are not ‘rogues’, but victims of an unjust system and tools of empire 6/17
On the site you can engage in a prurient thrilling historical experience that celebrates derring do and flattens out the true meaning of the “crimes”. Many of those photographed were born in Ireland (then part of the British empire) and many were Irish nationalists (Fenians) 7/17
There is something very odd in how these “rogues.” and crimes are presented. Take Michael Harrington, one of the criminals whose sentence can be found here: https://www.nationalarchives.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Ireland-Australia-transportation_DB.pdf Sentenced for Fenianism, that is, 8/17
he was “a member of a secret 19th century Irish and Irish-American organization dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland”, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Fenian I want to say that I am not a nationalist, but am familiar with a long history of what Irish=rogue means. 9/17
In case you don’t know, transportation was not a fun adventure to the other side of the world. To get a sense of what transportation was like, take a look at the BBC bitesize child-friendly version: https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z8bd3k7/revision/5 10/17
And, this, via @digipanoptic transportation of people from one part of the empire to another “involved mass exile, coerced labour, invasion, dispossession and genocide” that led to the creation of a white settler nation. 11/17
Further, “The British government had landed some 160,000 criminals in Australia’s convict colonies, and commenced a process that dispossessed perhaps one million indigenous people.” 12/17
This is not just historical, “Persisting consequences across the centuries make Australia’s colonial history a live political topic.” https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/Convicts_and_the_Colonisation_of_Australia,_1788-1868 13/17
The photographs were taken without consent, used as evidence and surveillance. Photographs like these were often used to prove very dodgy race theories. Take a look here https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/on-the-application-of-phrenology-to-criminal-legislation-and-prison-discipline 14/17
The photographs produce the criminal as a socially constructed entity and are often proxies for evidence inviting you to look at the subject as a ‘natural’ criminal, “Because these representations are sites of tremendous social importance, 15/17
to produce and interpret them is to participate in cultural constructions of normalcy, deviance, gender, and race and moralistic debates of right and wrong”, https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/capturing-the-criminal-image 16/17
I'm left with more questions than answers. What is this brand doing? celebrating empire? criminality? settler colonialism? All this through exploitative use of a troubling archive of individuals who did not consent to being photographed. My irritation has turned to anger. 17/17
