Friday essay
Mid-20th century pulp fiction was trashy, tasteless, exploitative and lurid. There’s a lot there to love. You might read pulp as a cultural Freudian slip, loony bulletins from the collective Id.
Music
Since it began in the 1950s, Eurovision has embraced everything from metal to the global juggernaut of Scandi-pop, and of course the Eurodance and disco synonymous with Eurovision.
Frock shock
The cultural appropriation debate has flared after an American teenager wore a qipao, a Chinese-style dress, to her prom. But the meanings around the dress are complicated.
Guide to the classics
In its abridged form, Gulliver's Travels has become a children's classic. But in full, it is a misanthropic satire, scathing of politicians.
Video games
PlayerUnknown's Battleground - a multiplayer, fight-to-the-death video game - was the most downloaded game for the first quarter of 2018. It feels like an immersive experience of today’s nightmares.
Fashion
For centuries, men’s fashion has been part of dynamic social change. Hairstyles, fabrics and suit styles have carried a political charge.
Film
To some, superhero films are the equivalent of fracking. But they offer audiences transcendence, mystery, a moral compass, and even the hope of salvation.
Film
Netflix's Chief Content Officer has said the streaming service is the future of film. But cinemas have survived many other threats to their dominance.
Friday essay
As major publishers chase bestselling books, small ones are leading the way in publishing Australian literary fiction. And of late, they have been sweeping our major literary awards.
Podcast
Essays on Air: how archaeology helped save the Franklin River.
The Conversation23.2 MB (download)
The battle to save the Franklin River - an exhilarating story of politics, cultural heritage and passionate environmentalism - captivated the nation in 1983.
Sexual histories
From injection of a morphine derivative to the administering of electric shocks, gay conversion therapy here has a painful legacy.
Ethical exhibits
Protesters have urged a boycott of Sydney's current Real Bodies exhibition, over claims that it could display remains of executed Chinese political prisoners.
Policy
Economist David Throsby in a new Platform Paper calls for strong cultural policies from the Australian government.
Music
Whether it is art or pop, high or low, terms such as creativity, authenticity, innovation and uniqueness can help us judge a work of music. And Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. brims with these qualities.
Guide to the classics
Dream of the Red Chamber, by Cao Xueqin, follows the travails of a pubescent boy. Somehow, through the spats, crushes and rivalries of a handful of teenagers, the great questions of the human condition are broached.
Friday essay
At 14, writer Tony Birch had rarely travelled two miles out of the centre of Melbourne. Encountering a billabong on the Birrarung River was the first time that country spoke to him.
Graffiti
A walk down Melbourne's streets reveals more commercial street art than the spontaneous politics of years past.
ANZAC Day
During the second world war, a young Aboriginal soldier, Private Clarrie Combo from New South Wales, exchanged mail with Mrs F. C. Brown from Loxton, South Australia — a white woman whom he had never met…
Sexual histories
Sex was central to life in ancient Mesopotamia. And the authors of Sumerian love poetry, depicting the exploits of divine couples, showed a wealth of practical knowledge about the stages of female sexual arousal.
Gilead
In the much awaited second season of the TV series, Offred is more openly defiant than she was in Margaret Atwood's novel. Still, the first two episodes remain true to the themes of Atwood's book.
