Decluttering, spearheaded by Marie Kondo and Japanese minimalist consumerism, has taken on quasi-spiritual connotations. What are we actually trying to get rid of when we throw out all our stuff?
Depictions of women bullying women are a mainstay of reality television shows, just as reports of Twitter fights between female celebrities are regular tabloid fare. It’s a phenomenon with a long history.
We can pursue our own happiness to the exclusion of the real world, but how meaningful can that be? Far better to engage with life and both the happiness and sadness it brings along the way.
Lynn Zubernis, West Chester University of Pennsylvania
Star Trek fans were especially drawn to Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock – who showed many that it “was okay to be a nerd, that even in the future not everyone fit in, or needed to.”
Art is a cry of distress from those who live out within themselves the destiny of humanity … Inside them turns the movement of the world; only an echo of it leaks out – the work of art Arnold Schoenberg…
In the same week American rapper Nicki Minaj released Anaconda, a music video dedicated to celebrating “the butt”, US singer-songwriter Taylor Swift released a video, Shake It Off, accidentally dedicated…
Give them enough blood and vampires keep on feeding – but give academics Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and the same phenomenon occurs. Much Ado About Whedon: The 6th Biennial Slayage Conference…
And so we wait, anxiously, to see Australia at an event that celebrates the rich cultural tapestry that is the panoply of European states. Nah, who am I kidding? We’ve got a guernsey at the Eurovision…
This year the world’s most popular superhero, Batman, celebrates his 75th birthday. From inauspicious beginnings in a six-page comic to the transmedia anchor of one of the world’s largest media conglomerates…
Australia’s national youth station, Triple J, has come in for some criticism lately, with a spate of articles accusing it of homogenising Australian music tastes or excluding too many local acts from the…
In the world of internet memes, 2013 was without doubt the Year of the Doge. Participants on Twitter, Tumblr and reddit created and circulated their own narrations of this Shiba’s fragmented internal monologue…
In David Foster Wallace’s epic Infinite Jest, a major conceit is a film so good it reduces any and all who see it into a quivering pulp, physically unable to stop watching, wasting away into utter uselessness…
The tributes have been flowing in from friends and art critics for Martin Sharp, who died this week aged 71. The common thread linking all the tributes, all the memories, is that the artist was never alone…
After weeks of hyped-up national pride, the halting speeches are over and the awkward presentations made. The 27th Australia Recording Industry Association Awards (the ARIAs) have passed away, marooned…
The death of Lou Reed today, aged 71, is unquestionably a sad day for popular music. Already Rolling Stone has compiled a genre-defined obit focusing on how Reed worked as a Transformer (pun intended…
When I was a kid way back in the dim, dark 1960s, I collected radio Top 40 charts obsessively. What struck me then – and still strikes me now (yes, I kept the charts) – was the sheer diversity of songs…
Beep….beep……….beep……….beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. “We’re losing him. Out of my way, nurse!” The quick-thinking young doctor charges the defibrillator paddles and places them on the chest of the lifeless…
Professor in U.S. Politics and U.S. Foreign Relations at the United States Studies Centre and in the Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne