Progressive culture since 1954
It is not just a matter of ‘white over black’ as Fulton tends to stress. The judges and winners are solidly Anglo-Celtic with a few minor variations. It is also notable that they are nearly all creatures of the academic world at some level as are poets of the award-eligible class in Australia generally.
The Battlefield and Call of Duty series are fantasies of empire. America’s Army is literally a recruitment tool. And don’t forget that the storyline in games is all about you the individual: you are there to save the world, get the girl or become the king. But modern players moan about the repetitive nature of these games. As Leigh Alexander says, ‘Traditional “gaming” is sloughing off, culturally and economically, like the carapace of a bug.’
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It’s very common. It happens to millions of women. It’s hard to talk about because you feel culpable. It must have been your fault – you are the slut those men said you were. Or you feel the shame of being made a victim. I never wanted to be made a victim. I am a victim. I am not a victim. It took me a long time to work out that I had agency in relation to men. I was raised to please a man. My mother told me I should take care never to appear more intelligent than a man.
The opening beats to ‘Blurred Lines’ provoke eye-rolling and mumbles – or shouts – about its misogynistic content. Think about all the times you’ve changed the radio station the second you hear those opening bass beats and cowbell rattles. Now think about all the times you’ve danced or sung along to another song, without stopping to consider its content. Recently, Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams made the news again by losing a court case against Marvin Gaye’s family ‘Blurred Lines’. Gaye’s family sued Thicke and Williams for copying the 1977 song ‘Got To Give It Up’. This led to another rise in attacks on them for ‘not getting consent’.
Broad City and Fresh Off The Boat are two exceptional examples of comedy that prevail by taking risks, but they can do so because they specifically speak to demographics television has ignored in the past. In a world where we often live in fear of having our words and lives taken out of context, it is liberating to know there are opportunities for us to work out what we think makes us exceptional, what we have in common with others and create intelligent situational comedy from those connections and disconnections.
In actual fact, the process of easing occurred when national governments supplied these sharks with free money in gargantuan quantity. As well as being off the hook, such institutions were also being further enabled by those responsible for bringing them to justice. For the recipients of this quantitative easing, it must have felt like it was time to party like it was 2006.
Like most online phenomena about gender, the Bechdel test has its critics. A panel at New York’s women-focused Athena Film Festival last year was dedicated to discussing precisely why it was important to move beyond the Bechdel test, seeking to expand the debate around gender and film. They underscored that the Bechdel is hardly a best-case scenario.