Australia has moved up in the world – to seventh place on the 2013/14 Soft Power Survey published in the December/January issue of Monocle magazine. The Soft Power Survey is conducted yearly by Monocle…
Academic rigour, journalistic flair
Arts + Culture – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 5001 - 5025 of 5142 articles
Here’s the truth, and if you’re British or Australian, you may not like it: when it comes to the suffix ize, as opposed to ise, the American standard is correct. I have no idea what cultural forces made…
Imagine a scenario where prostitution is not restricted or sanctioned but buying sex is banned. Could such an approach work in Australia? It already has elsewhere, and the evidence suggests it’s worth…
Last weekend columnist and broadcaster Phillip Adams published a piece in The Australian lamenting what he called the “coca-colonial cringe”: Like you I measure my life with American movies, music and…
Have you watched the movie Grease recently? From one perspective, it is a schlocky film about coming of age in the 1950s. From another, it’s a striking representation of post-war America’s romance with…
As part of the wave of Wagnermania currently sweeping Melbourne — including Opera Australia’s Melbourne Ring Cycle and a month-long Ring Festival — a symposium titled Wagner and Us will take place at the…
When I was at primary school in the late 1970s, engaging kids in history lessons meant a good dose of role-play. Each year, on today’s date, it was time to re-enact the Eureka Stockade. It was on this…
A little over a year ago, South Korean singer PSY galloped onto the global pop circuit singing about “sexy ladies” in the Seoul suburb of Gangnam. What followed were a flurry of articles (some going as…
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…
In a cultural milieu dominated by long-form television dramas such as Breaking Bad and Madmen, how has the apparently simple activity of audio storytelling gained such clout? In the US, documentary radio…
You’ve probably heard the news: the Australian media is experiencing the most serious contraction in its history. The rise of online and mobile media has led to the collapse of the classified advertising…
The 2013 winners of the Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA) Awards will be announced this Sunday night, 26 years after John Farnham cleaned up at the inaugural ceremony in 1987. A lot has changed…
When it comes to film festivals, Australian audiences have plenty to choose from. Virtually every week there is a film festival from a different ethnic, national, religious or cultural group vying for…
This week, a US toy firm withdrew a viral ad that used a parody of a song by the Brooklyn hip hop greats the Beastie Boys, after the band challenged the company’s right to use their tune in a commercial…
Tomorrow, a new book by the Adelaide-born performance poet and playwright Christopher Barnett will be launched in Melbourne. Titled when they came/ for you: elegies/ of resistance, it’s the first time…
If the type that surrounds us clamours for our attention, then the space that surrounds it is the silent component: ever-present, but only considered when it imposes upon, hinders or muddies type’s meaning…
2013 will be remembered as the year analogue television was switched off in Australia. The curators of Tele Visions are celebrating the final days of analogue TV with a set of new and historically significant…
The winners of this year’s Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism will be announced in Brisbane tonight. For the first time, the 2013 awards include prizes for Multimedia Storytelling and Podcast…
In a report published this month by the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS), Simon Cowan advocates the downsizing or sell-off of ABC3 – the dedicated channel for Australian school-age children – as a…
The Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was condemned and put to death for “corrupting the youth” of Athens. The same fate is unlikely to meet contemporary philosophers. Indeed, it is much more likely for…
The Bendigo Hotel, a live music venue in the Melbourne suburb of Collingwood, is facing closure after complaints about noise. As an online campaign mounts to stop the Bendigo being closed down, cities…
The Coalition’s pre-election condemnation of ARC research funding in certain areas of the arts as “ridiculous” and a waste of taxpayer dollars has left those of us working in this field feeling under pressure…
Just outside the level-two gallery at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne, four black and white photographs capture young Aboriginal men posing with intricate designs on their shoulders, torsos…
The age of the app has collided with the era of fake designer goods. Firms are now using social media and crowdsourcing to keep track of their intellectual property, but may still struggle in a world where…
Opera Australia is currently performing Richard Wagner’s most famous work, Der Ring des Nibelungen – The Ring Cycle – marking the bicentenary of the composer’s birth, at a reported cost of A$20 million…