Progressive culture since 1954
This time I really did want to be offended. I wanted to be as bold in my rage as Sophia, as reactionary in my justified rebuke. But all I felt was a cold sweat and a sense that everyone else in that plaza was only sorry they hadn’t done it to me themselves. I knew that wasn’t true, but every time something like that happened, it felt like gospel that someone – anyone, everyone – wanted to hurt me.
If a nation is willing to detain and torture innocent men, women and children, for years on end and indeed indefinitely, all to protect its borders, it’s crucial to ask: what is the Australian border? Why is it so important, and so fragile that it needs this incredibly violent, elaborate and expensive protection?
For every extra day of lockdown, for every extra quarantine measure, and for every additional restriction placed on Victorians, it is the corporations pushing insecure work and forcing workers to turn up to work who must bear ultimate responsibility.
Since the recent transference of Sydney ‘Glitter’ cycle film from screen to stage (Muriel’s Wedding, Strictly Ballroom), revisiting the critique of the ‘dumb semiotics’ of Australian cinema in Philip Brophy’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert can widen our sense of how the Australian Dream road-movie is travelling.
While other important labour protests around that time, such as the 1917 New South Wales Strike, were set both inside and outside of Australia’s largest cities, the Victorian police strike offered Australian newspapers the opportunity to capture disruption unfolding in an urban setting, where the vast majority of protests take place today.
We’d like to thank everyone who entered this year for their thoughtful and incredible work. We received an impressive and high quality range of poems, and each and every writer deserves congratulations. We’d also like to thank our judges, Evelyn Araluen and Gayle Allan (Trinity College), for their hard work and dedication to the decision-making process.
As an immigrant from the Middle East, whenever I watch a Hollywood movie set in the Global South I anticipate the reduction of the East into a set of stereotypes in direct opposition to the West. Where the Western self is rational, mature, civilised, the Oriental other is irrational, childlike, savage.
If we properly situate The Last of Us: Part II in the broader medium of videogames, and not just the subfield of Triple-A action videogames, both its accomplishments and failings are better tempered and it is easier to evaluate it for what it actually is.
The privilege of common sense is not afforded to marginalised writers, who are asked to prove even the most observable phenomenon, such as their underrepresentation in the industry. Even our very marginalisation is discouraged from entering the discussion until we have gone through the lengthy process of proving its validity.
The fact of fascism in Australia is quotidian and mundane, creeping insidiously into mainstream culture through policy and broadcast. Most of the time, it is enough to let the logic of a settler colony move to its own authoritarian conclusion. Occasionally, however, things do flare up and remind us of how the table is set. This happened two weeks ago, when the police cracked down on antifascist protesters while protecting the far right.
Please stop walking, and look at us/Raise your head and look at us/Raise your hands and look at us/Look at the life lost in our abode/Look at the tears our eyes have lost.
Despite decades of advocacy, renters’ struggles remain socially marginal, with little scope for renters to self-represent, demonstrate collective power, and exert political force. As the pandemic exacerbates the quotidian struggles of renters and people in precarious housing, it is increasingly clear that a militant collective response is required.
If we use current literary prizes as indicators of literary merit and as generators of reading lists, Australian poetry becomes a near ghost, dancing around the edges of the industry and only sometimes allowed in. A future that truly celebrates and champions excellence in Australian poetry is something to fight for and look forward to.
The battle to save Kelly’s Bush – a public open space on the banks of the Parramatta River at Hunters Hill – is legendary, and was the catalyst that launched Mundey on a path that would bring him international fame, and guarantee him a place in the history of Australian urban political thought.
Sarah Burnside reviews new books by Penny Wincer and Ambelin Kwaymullina and a new essay by Judith Brett, with a focus on care.