Welcome to Eureka Street

back to site

Keywords: Beat Culture

  • MEDIA

    Putting the soul back in the media carnival sideshow

    • Caroline Zielinski
    • 16 November 2012
    1 Comment

    Speed was a huge factor in the BBC debacle: the story about a senior Tory 'rapist' began on Twitter and went viral. The Australian's associate editor Cameron Stewart recently argued that journalism courses focus too much on 'critical assessment of the media' rather than 'the nuts and bolts of reporting'. But the lack of deep cognitive understanding of the role of the media is precisely the problem.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Mysticism and the Beatles

    • Philip Harvey
    • 11 October 2012
    6 Comments

    It has never seemed just an accident that John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met at a church fete. The broad message of Christianity is at the very front of the lyric concerns of the Beatles, even if Christianity itself is rarely acknowledged. In art and belief, they were never interested in experimentation for its own sake but in how to make something new out of something old.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Curing Kerouac's misogyny

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 27 September 2012
    2 Comments

    The book is essentially misogynistic. Women are objects of hedonistic possibilities in the same way that drugs are. Even the Kerouac figure Sal's self-deprecating account of failing to impress a virginal lover manages to marginalise the woman in question. The film seeks to rectify this by giving flesh to its female characters.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Opportunists could rule in 'nervous' America

    • Tony Kevin
    • 31 January 2012
    9 Comments

    The US today is a nervous nation. The old small town verities and values can no longer be taken for granted in this apprehensive, celebrity-drugged culture. Conceivably, if the economy tanks or there is some destabilising foreign policy crisis, Newt Gingrich could beat Obama.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Making friends not foes of rights and religion

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 September 2011
    5 Comments

    The Church of the 21st century should be the exemplar of due process, natural justice and transparency. While there can be little useful critique of the final decision of Pope Benedict to force the early retirement of Bishop Bill Morris, there is plenty of scope to review the processes leading up to it.

    READ MORE
  • RELIGION

    Beatifying the Polish Pope

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 29 April 2011
    15 Comments

    John Paul II was as much a Polish Catholic as Mary MacKillop was Australian. His moral force eroded the legitimacy of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. The controversy about his beatification is not about his virtue or historical significance, but about his legacy to the Church.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Keith Richards' other church

    • Philip Harvey
    • 08 December 2010

    'When you are growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully — the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you,' writes Richards. Librarians know better than anyone that the library attracts the most unlikely clientele.

    READ MORE
  • EUREKA STREET/ READER'S FEAST AWARD

    Teaching children to read the Aboriginal world

    • Nigel Pearn
    • 18 August 2010
    3 Comments

    The book was banned after parents complained about its anti-authoritarian attitude: 'Wanja [the dog] loved to chase the [police] van ... to bark at the van ... to bite at the wheel. The police van would drive away.' Like Jewish humour, Aboriginal humour is a response to a history of oppression.

    READ MORE
  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Rudd and the art of talking in circles

    • Bill Collopy
    • 05 May 2010
    7 Comments

    Kevin Rudd has raised circumlocution to an art since coming to office. But recently his polysyllabic heart rate seems to have slowed. What's changed? Could it be the patter of Tony feet? Time to restart that 'working families' mantra: plain prose beats purple.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Australian Open's soul is in its tail

    • Michael Visontay
    • 19 January 2010
    6 Comments

    Everyone from Roger Federer to Kim Clijsters would know that when you're in the top 100, tennis is a mental contest. It's when you walk around the outside courts at the Australian Open that you discover the players who really set tennis apart from other sports.

    READ MORE
  • AUSTRALIA

    Carols in the gangland

    • Sarah Ayoub
    • 18 December 2009
    5 Comments

    Men of dark hair and olive skin travelling in packs, bound by an unbreakable tradition. They have found a niche for themselves in South-West Sydney, and no matter how they are stereotyped, they continue to meet, greet and roar as they beat, pa-rum-pum-pum-pum, on their drums.

    READ MORE
  • ENVIRONMENT

    'Depraved' videogames get serious

    • Drew Taylor
    • 25 November 2009
    14 Comments

    The media has labelled them 'murder simulators', linked them to depression and held them accountable for childhood obesity. But there's another side to videogames that the mainstream media doesn't seem to want you to know about.

    READ MORE