Progressive culture since 1954
Since learning that we are to lose $80,000 a year in funding from 2021, we’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on contemporary literary culture and its public perception.
To put this figure in perspective, $80,000 is about three editions of the print magazine each year or three roles at the magazine (we only have four positions, or the equivalent of 2.2 full-time staff).
The tabloids revert to tired tropes: Stacey’s ‘heartbroken family’ had been unaware she was supporting herself by stripping; she was a ‘party girl’ whose friends had warned her against working at the club, described by News Corp as ‘a seedy underground den where drug use was rife’. In Daily Mail Australia, Antoinette Aparo, the sister of Salvatore, the club’s owner, insinuated Stacey’s own culpability: ‘I know strip clubs and I know the type of girls who work there.’
In 1995, comedian Denis Leary recorded a track called ‘Asshole’, a song about an all-American guy who likes ‘football and porno and books about war’. It concludes with a monologue:
I’m gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac
Eldorado convertible
Hot pink, with whale skin hubcaps
This sounds cheesy, and in a way it is. And sometimes it doesn’t work. A lifetime in a racist society is hardly undone by one conversation at a door, no matter how convincing. But it is drastically more effective than dismissing or lecturing. If I were to hazard a guess at how the left can win over right-wing voters – and, for that matter, Labor voters who need more than a simple alignment of policy positions with personal concerns – it would be in the articulation of a broad, transformative vision for changing society. This is otherwise known as a politics.
Whether through place names, physical monuments or memorial events, the way a country celebrates its heritage sends strong political messages about its identity, as well as those of its inhabitants. It doesn’t take much to realise the symbolic power of historical monuments: some of the most powerful images of the last century show victorious crowds toppling statues of authoritarian leaders after an oppressive regime has collapsed; those doing the dismantling are fully aware that such monuments represent more than the individual depicted.
For years now, I have listened to first-hand accounts of the dangers of being overly connected: strangers, acquaintances and friends who either lament their troubled relationship with the internet and its various contributing technologies – email, social media, smartphones, connectedness in general – or who report great benefits to their complexion and psychological health after spending time offline. I believe all these feelings to be plausible and true, even as I am sceptical about the sometimes tacit, often explicit claim that social activities carried out online are inherently less authentic.
Television has always been a medium that brings people together. Even when watched alone, it is simulcast into millions of locations, bonding far-flung audiences in a shared zeitgeist. The idea of ‘water-cooler TV’ captures the sense in which we’ve understood TV as a medium experienced simultaneously and reflected upon immediately, among people whose social ties are otherwise loose.
Digital technology has multiplied and amplified these loose ties.
Two years ago, two weeks after Christmas, he stops talking to me. ‘Your body has become too depressing to look at.’ One year later he emails to say I’m not to use the word ‘father’ when writing for publication unless a pseudonym is used. He says this after reading a personal essay where the word ‘father’ appears twice.
The stories submitted for the 2019 VU Short Story Prize were incredibly impressive. Even the long list I read would make an amazing snapshot of the short story in 2019. In the end, I chose the stories that moved something inside me – a twist that made my stomach drop, a perfectly imagined moment that moved me to tears, a clever wit that made me laugh out loud.
The victim’s stomach is filled with water.
A hose is placed
in the throat.
A plank is then placed
across the distended stomach.
And the kempeitai soldiers,
one on each end,
On the southern edge of the Nullarbor we stop to stretch our legs and I find phone reception strong enough to call my father. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘have you considered changing your name?’
His messages have been banking up for several days as the tour weaves in and out of range. We haven’t spoken more than once, I know, since I got out of prison.
Afterwards, a counsellor came to school to follow us around. Her name was Klara. Our headmaster introduced her to our grade at assembly and told us why she was here, then at lunch she zeroed in on our table and came and plopped herself down, right next to me. I thought about messing with her, saying that I’d once strung Max along for months, pretending I was into him till I finally told him he was a loser, a weirdo, not worth my time.
One of the exciting aspects of reading the entries for this year’s Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers was the breadth of writing, the range of voices, subjects and styles, which is reflected in this year’s winners.
Sure enough, he would discover a patch of green grass in the grey dust, a shady willow springing out amongst the gumtrees like an oasis. Sometimes, they were able to hear the Darling River nearby if they paused in carving out arrows and swords for their next game.
ENTRIP does not contain any safe benefits.
It is not approved for use in hives of aggro child
-ren. Yellow tongue, nose-bruising, swelling of the eyes
The picnic moves in laconic circles the
roast chook, dry and masticated, forms a
pillow. Children aggravate ants at this rug’s
Somewhere between spirit
and appetite, a boy
untangles teabag strings, lifts
the moment a tree
consoles with its rooted
stem that
Toad in the garden, which is the same as
a snake in Eden or a crack in a mirror.
Inexpungable blot of evil but
Often theatrical skills aren’t as valued as methodical ones
& as our spending on apparel declines, retailers claim
it’s the fault of the weather – tonight, it’s broiling & the drying
AUSTRALIA POSTAGE TWO POUNDS AUSTRALIA AGE D A TR U S
NEW SOUTH WALES POSTAGE TWO PENCE
W ES
H AL
Shiḥa Jamaluddin flew*.
(ṭar shiḥa.)
The legendary hero flew to the battlefield
we had a student from the middle kingdom stay with us for
three weeks and she was perfectly happy here despite the
multitudes of bullocks and a malfunctioning body scanner.
there is a species of tavern where drinkers make
disparaging remarks about chinese immigrants. it is patronised
by a squadron of pirates of otherwise sweet temperament,
Cover and cartoons for this edition by comics journalist and labour organiser Sam Wallman.