The hard numbers of sales, downloads, streams, and billboard charts seem to do all the work for us. But do these measures tell us anything meaningful about music’s nature and value in 2015?
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Arts + Culture – Articles, Analysis, Comment
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You might not believe in God, but do you tell your kids about Santa? How do you explain Christmas to your children if you and they are not religious?
The history of disability toys – that is, both toys designed for use by disabled children, and toys that depict disability – reflects the changing treatment of the disabled.
King Lear manifests the neurosis of age and abuse. While his behaviour is dramatically exaggerated, we can read universal lessons on toxic family dynamics in Shakespear’s tragedy.
For those who were there one hundred years ago, Gallipoli was not the stuff of legend that it later became, but a site of regret and despair.
Biblical scholars and theologians have long discussed, debated and disputed the virgin birth of Jesus, with some arguing that there is no imperative to link it to the doctrine of the Incarnation.
The uniquely Australian literary voice is worth protecting, but parallel importation restrictions are not the way to do it. Rather, we should lift those restrictions – and subsidise Australian booksellers directly.
Most modern Christmas films angle for comedy with a touch of schmaltz, but literary Christmases frequently tap into the anxiety and sadness that can accompany the “happiest time of year”.
From Hallmark to Hulk Hogan, we round up classic Christmas cinema. If you’re looking for sweet, schmaltzy or satirical December viewing, start here.
It was the year of the grown-up superhero. Dark, witty and complex, superheroes on the big and small screen have – mostly – matured past mindless violence.
The Book Council of Australia – announced by Tony Abbott just over a year ago – was today scrapped. But we still need a body to advocate for literature and to advise government on policy settings.
JJ Abrams made a terrible Star Trek film that perfectly prepared him to make a great Star Wars movie.
The NGV’s summer exhibition is curated to create a dialogue between Ai Weiwei and Andy Warhol, and this conversation operates on multiple levels on a variety of themes, and across time and space.
To be truly respectful to Australia’s Indigenous heritage, a new Australian flag would need in some way to integrate Aboriginal visual language and symbolism.
There are as many ways to summarise a “year in art” as there are eyes to look at art with. Art had some shining – and not-so-shining – moments in 2015.
Australia’s key foundation stories have a narrative arc based on the slow simmering of social tension and anxiety culminating in an explosive release of group hostility. Was Cronulla any different?
Jazz evolved from the fringes of American society into one of the most influential, and enduring, musical movements of the 20th century. How did it get from what it was to what it is now?
Gough Whitlam’s government paid $A1.3 million for Jackson Pollock’s Blue poles in 1973. But why exactly is this ‘seemingly unintelligible mess of house paint’ revered as a masterpiece?
Lurid Beauty is the first major examination of Australian Surrealism and its profound impact on Australian art from the 1930s to the present day. So how does it all hang together?
The kinds of voices that can be used in a show like ABC’s The Divorce are certainly not typical of those one would hear in Madama Butterfly. But – and let’s be honest for a second – does it matter?
Australia’s defining narratives are apparently, with rare exception, stories by, for and about white cis men. We need more than Screen Australia’s new measures to address gender equity in the film industry.
Drugs scare us and fascinate us. Societies might fight “wars” against drugs – but we also drink, smoke, ingest and inject an awful lot of them. The Ancient Greeks captured this instability with their concept…
Screen Australia has announced a five point plan to promote gender balance, including A$3 million funding for female-led creative projects.
More than 3,000 Aboriginal heritage sites in Western Australia have lost registration status as part of sweeping changes in classifications in the Aboriginal Heritage Register. That needs to change.
Does viewing violent television as a child increase aggression toward women later in life? We check the research.