Not quite the Streisand Effect

There has been a lot of stuff in the media about the laughable attempt by Gina Rinehart to have a painting by renowned, Archibald prize-winning Aboriginal artist, Vincent Namatjira, removed from the National Gallery of Australia. The image of Rinehart is one of numerous portraits in Namatjira’s first major ‘survey’ exhibition. The National Gallery has rebuffed efforts to have the picture taken down and said in a statement that it welcomed public dialogue on its collection and exhibitions¹.

Back in 2003, the American entertainer Barbra Streisand attempted to suppress photographs of her enormous residence in Malibu, California. She sued a photographer for violation of her privacy. The $US50 million lawsuit endeavoured to remove an aerial photograph from a public collection of thousands of California coastal photographs. Before the lawsuit, the image had been downloaded only 6 times. The lawsuit inadvertently led to vastly increased public attention, with 420,000 people visiting the site over the following month. Attempted suppression leading to the reverse of what was intended, is now termed the Streisand Effect².

There is even a Wikipedia entry for the Streisand Effect. Streisand’s lawsuit sought to remove one aerial photograph from the publicly available California Coastal Records Project of 12,000 California coastline photographs, which documented coastal erosion and was intended to influence government policymakers. The photograph of Streisand’s residence was an inconsequential image among the many. The lawsuit was dismissed and Streisand was ordered to pay the photographer’s $177,000 legal fees³.

With Streisand, it was apparently a wish for privacy and as much as possible, to prevent the location of her massive mansion being widely known, whereas for Rinehart, the driver seems to be her vanity, because she didn’t like her portrayal in Namatjira’s painting. Indeed, the Rinehart story has been widely covered, such that it now is listed as an example of the Streisand Effect⁴.

It has been so widely covered that it has gone beyond Australia and become a global story, with articles from the BBC⁵, CNN⁶, and Time Magazine⁷ among others. It has even been the source of mirth on Stephen Colbert’s US television show, with Colbert joking: “I’m no art expert but in this portrait, I believe the artist really captured her expression at the moment she saw this portrait”⁸. Even more hilarious is that Australian comedian, Dan Ilic, is attempting to raise $30,000 to have the portrait displayed in Times Square, New York⁹.

While I never complain about a person’s appearance because we have mirrors in our house and the carcass I see every morning is less that inspiring, it is Gina Rinehart’s character that is deeply ugly. She is a climate change denier¹⁰, a whiner about paying her employees a living wage¹¹, a funder of the right-wing climate change denying, culture warrior bigots of the ‘think tank’, the Institute of Public Affairs¹², she also rails against ‘socialism’ while receiving subsidies in the millions of dollars from the government¹³, and is an attempted briber of politicians¹⁴, an alleged defrauder of her children¹⁵, and an alleged blackmailer of her son¹⁶. The fact that she is so enamoured of keeping much of her wealth to herself and from her family, such that the family has effectively been destroyed, demonstrates her appalling character.

Some have suggested, tongue-in-cheek that the Streisand Effect be renamed the Rinehart Effect, but it should not be. While Streisand’s effort was seemingly about privacy, Rinehart’s is not. The Rinehart Effect should be a term reserved for such instances based on vanity.

Sources

1. https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/15/gina-rinehart-demands-national-gallery-of-australia-remove-her-portrait
2. https://blotreport.com/2018/02/17/malcolm-turnbull-barbra-streisand/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Streisand_effect_examples
5. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz74ed6yk9lo
6. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/16/style/gina-rinehart-namatjira-portrait-australia-intl-scli/index.html
7. https://time.com/6978709/gina-rinehart-australia-national-gallery-namatjira-portrait-indigenous/
8. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-20/gina-rinehart-colbert-taylor-swift-billie-eilish-cannes/103868748
9. https://www.instagram.com/p/C7JPWRhvjVm/?hl=en
10. https://blotreport.com/2021/10/16/ginas-school-for-climate-change-deniers/
11. https://www.smh.com.au/business/worlds-media-pan-rineharts-2-a-day-african-miner-comments-20120906-25fpq.html#
12. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2023/12/23/michael-pascoe-gina-rinehart-is-being-ripped-off-by-the-ipa
13. https://theaimn.com/gargantuan-greed-gina-rinehart/
14. https://blotreport.com/2017/11/27/the-stench-in-our-democracy/
15. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/14/gina-rinehart-defrauded-her-children-over-iron-ore-assets-lawyer-alleges-in-court-battle
16. https://www.9news.com.au/national/gina-rinehart-court-mining-magnate-pressured-john-hancock-lawyer/25628a29-56a6-4fa8-9dfc-bfd3731f8d2e