Opinion: North Melbourne players kick a goal for morality

Sydney
7 April 2002

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Opinion: North Melbourne players kick a goal for morality

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Opinion: North Melbourne players kick a goal for morality

By Richard Leonard SJ

Now that the dust is settling on Captain Carey, his mate, their wives and his lover, we can start to analyse what lessons this tragic personal story might offer us all.

I have never been prouder of a football team than I was of North Melbourne when it made it clear to the club's management that in the face of Carey's betrayal it could not have him as their leader or a player.

Despite the fact that this might mean football oblivion for the Kangaroos in the coming season, they excommunicated Carey.

Here was a group of young men standing up for one of the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.

Leaving aside some of the patriarchal rhetoric of wife-as-possession that got going in the media and the way we would like this principle to be enforced more consist ently towards everyone's wife and everyone's best friend, it was salutary and satisfying to see young men take a strong stand not just on any moral issue, but on one concerned with sexual morality.

Just when we might think that 'anything goes' is the guiding principle in sexual ethics, North Melbourne tells us there are boundaries that have to be defended.

One of the things that was said often in the days after Carey's resignation was that this mess was going to be difficult to explain to young children; and that Carey's behaviour had compromised his role-model status for his adolescent fans.

It doesn't strike me as difficult to tell young children that because Carey did some terrible things to his best friends they would not play with him anymore.

Indeed, it might be good for children to understand that the ruthless justice of their playgrounds applies to grown-ups as well.

Whether one needs to go into details about his adultery is a matter for the child's age and maturity, but it could be an excellent opportunity for Christian families to talk about why we believe in faithful, lifelong marriage.

The role model argument is the one I find more spur ious if it takes seriously the heroes and celebrities our teenagers admire and the television shows they watch.

In the past year the highest rating programs on Aust ralian television for 12-18 years old have been Neighbours, Home and Away, The Secret Life of Us, Temptation Island, Survivor I and II, The Weakest Link, Big Brother and The Villa.

The 'reality' presented on these last six shows portrays temporary alliances taking the place of loyal friendships, personal ambition winning out over fidelity to the group and the eventual 'victor' being the one who betrays everyone else.

Let's take some examples.

'Fat Rich' from Survivor, which was the third most watched program on Australian television in 2000, received $US1 million for seducing his colleagues into believing he was their friend and then regularly switching his allegiances to various members of the group until he was the last one standing.

Big Brother, the second most watched program last year in Australia, rewarded the same behaviour; and a similar dynamic is operating within the quiz show format on The Weakest Link.

Temptation Island, which is presently rating its socks off within this age group, is entirely predicated on how previously committed couples can be unfaithful to each other. While on the island, if one or both partners did not go off with someone else's partner, there wouldn't be a show.

The soap operas make real TV even more realistic. To sustain their story lines with a limited number of characters they have a never ending succession of partners and spouses.

We have come to know that the 'I do' professed at a soap opera wedding really means, 'I do, until someone better comes along'.

This is consistent with the lifestyles of the television and film stars our young people admire. It is hard to think of a hit media celeb rity whom our adolescents like who is happily and faithfully married. It is easy to recall others who are unfaithful, adulterous and much married.

Carey's behaviour is entirely consistent with the betrayal promoted on real life TV and the way many celebrities live out in the real world.

What is astonishing about Wayne Carey's story is not that he was unfaithful or that he got caught, but that his friends around him disapproved so strongly they took a stand against him and his behaviour. What Carey was doing might have been legal, but his mates judged it to be so immoral they gave him the toughest possible sanction, one that hurts all of them.

The North Melbourne football team has done us all a favour. It has announced that there are boundaries to moral behaviour and con sequences to the sexual choices we make. They have highlighted the social dimension to all sin, even those we often consider most private and personal.

In doing so they have been part of a melodramatic story that even soap opera writers could not have invented and given all of us a reality check on the fallout that comes from the destructive behaviour which un real TV often presents as normal and glamorous.

North Melbourne provides a counterpoint to the messages our media culture has been peddling for decades.