Cate Blanchett, eco-campaigner my ass

Green sash on red carpet

Cate Blanchett talks the talk. But she unfortunately flies the walk.

She may be Australia’s most admired woman, yet it turns out Blanchett has been indulging in a bit of greenwash to promote her beloved Sydney Theatre Group.

She gained worldwide coverage last year when she said the Sydney Theatre Group would be “the first major theatre anywhere in the world to go off grid.” But this week she told Marie Claire that she will do little more than install solar panels on the roof of the building, which will then become “the first eco-friendly building on Sydney Harbour.”

She says there is “no greater challenge we face as a species” than climate change. But beyond giving speeches and wearing a green dress – what has she done exactly?

Unlike most professional eco-politicians and journalists one of her homes is partially solar powered — only problem is that she has to fly there from one of her other homes — on a different continent.

Now Cate has turned her attention to water politics – more specifically Australia’s water shortage. She says she will only take two minute showers from now on. Wow.

Blanchett said: “I actually have little races with myself, thinking, oh no I’m not washing my hair, I only need to have a two-minute shower.”

Yet she included a new pool in her $1.5 million home “eco-renovation”. That’s a lot of greasy hair — which, miraculously, Blanchett never has.

When her third child was born this year, Ozzie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had rushed to Blanchett’s birthing suite so significant was the arrival of her third child. Fellow actor Hugh Jackman (who he?) addressed her as “superwoman”, and cried “she is flawless as a person”.
And at a summit meeting, to which Rudd had invited Blanchett as the only woman bright enough to be a co-chair, a crowd that included Opposition Leader Brendan Nelson adored the infant, dandled before them by his dad.
Married, yet with a husband who minds the baby; a jetsetter, yet purely green; toast of the world, yet home in Sydney; a new mother, yet making grand speeches in high heels just hours after given birth.
This is the role of Blanchett’s life, and it means much to many women.
Yet it’s taken a few scriptwriters, not to mention Blanchett’s millions, to knock up this image, because Jackman is wrong — no one is “flawless”.
It suited Rudd, for example, to have Blanchett adorn his summit as the brightest of the bright. But truth is that Blanchett, when forced to use her own words rather than those written for her, is no smarter than you or me.
Take her summit speech: “The arts binds communities, it liberates demons, it challenges authorities, warms our hearts and cools our tempers.”
Hmm. In fact, as you know, the arts can also do the very opposite of all that, and in Australia usually does.
Elsewhere, too, the image of Blanchett as the woman who can have the yin with her yang won’t fit.The same kind of contradictions plague Blanchett when she plays both the Hollywood star and the defender of her culture from American tosh.