The objects of 2024 and the people they made – or brought down

Look, we’ve heard a lot about persons of the year, a category that is surely subjective and has long skewed to the powerful. But I’d like to propose another category, that of the oft-overlooked inanimate object, the symbols and totems of the chaos, disruption, weirdness and humour of the year. The objects that have captured and distracted us, encapsulating the spirit of 2024.

First up, honorary mentions: for sheer oddness, to the street planter box in the suburb of Braddon in Canberra, from which Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce claims to have tumbled while talking to his wife on the phone. He then remained on the phone, lying on his back on the footpath, “mumbling obscenities”, where an onlooker filmed him. Joyce said it was a “big mistake” that occurred after mixing prescription drugs with alcohol.

My alternative person of the year is Gisele Pelicot, centre, but my object of the year is the camera her husband used to record her many rapes, allowing her ultimately to bring him and 50 other men to justice; the other objects, clockwise from bottom left, are: Donald Trump’s ear bandage; Raygun’s Olympic uniform; the planter box that took down Barnaby Joyce; police officer Amy Scott’s courage award; the metaphorical hat of Bruce Lehrmann; and the casings from alleged killer Luigi Mangione’s bullets.Credit: Graphic: Aresna Villaneuva

For courage, the valour award given to police officer Amy Scott for “exceptional bravery” after her pursuit – and shooting – of Joel Cauchi during his horrific stabbing spree in Bondi Junction mall.

Next, the runners-up.

First, Raygun’s Olympic uniform, which will forever memorialise the moment an unknown Australian woman suddenly, unexpectedly captivated a baffled global audience with her breaking performance, resulting in zero points and howls of laughter, horror and outrage. She has lost some sympathisers for some of her post-Games actions, though slamming the fact she wore a green and gold Australian uniform, while her opponents wore streetwear, was a bit rough. She was proud. One X user said: “Australia did B-Girl Raygun dirty with this ugly as sin outfit. Looking like she’s gonna ask if I want fries with that.” Raygun wrote on Instagram: “Looking forward to the same level of scrutiny on what the b-boys wear tomorrow.”

Bruce Lehrmann in Queensland in June this year.Credit: Dan Peled

Second, Bruce Lehrmann’s hat. Admittedly a fictional object, but nonetheless now part of the lexicon. In 2022, Lehrmann’s ACT criminal trial, in which the prosecution alleged he had raped former fellow Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins in parliament house, had collapsed. Lehrmann then continued with a civil defamation trial against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson. When Justice Michael Lee delivered his verdict, he said: “Having escaped the lions’ den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of going back for his hat.”

This is because Lee determined that “Mr Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins”, according to a civil standard of proof – the balance of probabilities. On a couch, in the office of former defence minister Linda Reynolds. This showed that Lee believed that Higgins, who has been to hell and halfway back for going public with her claims, was telling the truth about her sexual assault and had been for years, despite the attacks on her credibility. It also showed that Lisa Wilkinson, also the subject of often obscenely unfair and relentlessly nasty media coverage, had reported on a rape allegation that turned out, in fact, in Lee’s judgment, to be true. Both women have been dogged by paparazzi, targeted and smeared for years.

Lehrmann is appealing the verdict, and the circus rolls on, perpetually muddying the fact that a judge found a rape occurred, and that in the shrill, ugly cultural war that followed, many failed Higgins, vilified the wrong people and severely damaged the innocent.

Third: the bandage on Donald Trump’s ear after he survived his first assassination attempt. This was arguably the moment that his victory in November was assured. The fact that a bullet whizzed past his head, caught in midair on camera, was a shocking moment, underlining the polls showing the growing number of Americans of all political stripes who support violence as a political solution. The way he stood, raised his fist and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight” demonstrated his uncanny political instincts.

President-elect Donald Trump, sporting a bandage after his assassination attempt, with his grandchildren and Lara Trump at the Republican National Convention in July.Credit: Bloomberg

The bandage accentuated his survival, and reminded supporters that a bullet grazed his ear and that some people wanted him dead. At the Republican National Convention, thousands displayed similar square-shaped ear bandages in support.

For horror, and a reckoning: three bullet casings found in Manhattan with the words “delay”, “deny” and “depose” written on them. The bullets were used to kill the CEO of a major health insurance company. Ivy League graduate Luigi Mangione has been charged with this crime and ensuing coverage has focused on the once-subterranean rage of average Americans over a prohibitively expensive and inefficient healthcare system that sends thousands bankrupt and repeatedly denies coverage for crucial care on such grounds as pre-existing conditions or lack of prior authorisation. This lack of care fundamentally weakens American democracy and, despite all the problems we have with our stretched and under-resourced medical system in Australia, we should be profoundly grateful we do not share America’s version.

But the true object of the year is … the video camera Gisele Pelicot’s husband, Dominique, used to film her being raped about 200 times by 70 men over nine years. She has rightly said that she knows there are other women who have been drugged and assaulted, but that the difference in her case is that she had evidence.

Illustration: Simon LetchCredit:

This evidence – the footage of 20,000 odd images and videos, contained in a folder titled “Abuse” on a hard drive in their garage in a quiet French village – exposed not only Dominique’s crimes but most of the identities of the men he told to come and rape his wife. It was this footage that showed an unmoving, drugged, snoring Gisele, usually in the couple’s bedroom, with words scrawled by Dominique on her body, words like “I’m a submissive slut”. He wrote the words “Service slut” and “Whore” on pieces of paper, and propped them against the body of his wife of several decades.

The homeliness of the scene was incongruous: the dim light of bedside lamps, spotted pillowcases, fragrance diffusers, family faces beaming from photographs perched on a chest of drawers, and the murmur of a television in the background.

And in they came. Firefighters, truck drivers, a DJ, a journalist, a soldier. Men who made victory signs as they left.

Gisele Pelicot has been repeatedly nominated on social media as an alternative person of the year (Trump was Time magazine’s), so stunning has been her courage and determination in insisting her trial be public. I agree. I’d also like to tip my hat to the camera that recorded the evidence of Dominique’s criminality, done for the purposes of degradation, but actually allowing his wife to seek, demand and find justice against her husband and 50 other men – and to prove that even crimes as inconceivable as this happen to women more often than we think, in myriad ways.

At a time that many Americans were declaring “#MeToo is dead” with the election of Trump, Gisele quietly lit a fire by which others will see. The shame was not hers, she said, but his. She was right.

Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist. Her latest book is Bright Shining: how grace changes everything.

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