Aug 22, 2024
Melbourne's Medically Supervised Injecting Room (MSIR) in North Richmond opened in 2018. This was the result of a years-long grassroots campaign led by the local community, fed up with constant overdoses in the streets. The MSIR operates on principles of harm reduction which simply work and urgently need to be applied throughout the world. The stigma around drug use, and the criminalising of drug users, must end - and that begins with us.
In 1955, Frank Sinatra made a historically significant contribution to the destigmatisation of drug use on film in Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm. In a depiction that is in many ways still radical today, Sinatra's character of Frankie Machine is a regular person who is trying his best to shake off a heroin addiction but is simply failed by a society that does not have the means to support him. A compelling and empathetic performance by Sinatra, and subject matter which openly defied the Production Code of its era, made this a memorable classic for many and contributed to a better world.
This week on SUDDENLY, friend of the show Spike Vincent joins us to watch The Man With the Golden Arm, sharing his thoughts and personal experiences. Meanwhile, Rabia has been reading up on the MSIR and reports back on the experience of touring the facility to see what goes on first-hand. As a thematic wild card, we also watched an Australian DVD of the film called A Night at the Cinema with extra footage intended to replicate the experience of seeing this film in 1955 in a cinema in specifically Castlemaine, Victoria - including "God Save the Queen", a newsreel, cartoon, local ads etc - which leads us to compelling footage of the 1955 Maitland floods. Plus, an update on Bobby Long.
Sources for this episode:
* The Man
with the Golden Arm (1955) (watch in full - public
domain)
* Jack Pearl - Robin
and the 7 Hoods (novelisation) (1964)
* Lou Reed interview, "Reed Goes
Public on Velvet Underground", The Canberra Times, 4
October 1987
* Nobody
Dies Here: Inside Melbourne's Medically Supervised Injecting
Room (2023) podcast
* Judy Ryan -
You Talk, We Die: The Battle for Victoria’s First Safe
Injecting Facility (2022)
* Link to book
tours of the MSIR (Melbourne Supervised Injecting
Room)
* Photo of the
"You Talk, We Die" mural in North Richmond
*
Stimulant Treatment Program at St Vincents Hospital in
Sydney
* A Year to
Remember - 1955 (1965) Newsreel including Maitland flood
footage
* Katie Carr, "The
problem with the 'disabled villain' trope", The Nora
Project, 7 October 2022.
* Detective Pikachu (2019)
*
Where to obtain Naloxone - official advice from Australian
Government
* Brian Jeffery, "Gays come
out of the closet", The Canberra Times, 13 March
1982
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