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Keywords: Comic

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Woody Allen's sexist society

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 26 October 2016
    8 Comments

    Perhaps it is the high egocentricity of Woody Allen's films that makes it difficult to separate the man from his work. More so even than Roman Polanski, the allegations of sexual abuse that have been levelled at Allen in life lend an unsavoury flavour to his art. Even revisiting Annie Hall these days, Allen's classic and endlessly innovative 1977 romantic comedy is tainted retrospectively by a sneaking sense of sexism, if not outright misogyny. The same is true of Café Society.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Not-so-nice guys have sexist cake and eat it too

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 26 May 2016

    As is the time-honoured tradition of Hollywood PIs, Holland has long bound the wounds of some unresolved grief in alcohol and cynicism. Notwithstanding individual tastes that are by no means aligned with gender, this is the kind of movie that can tend to appeal to puerile male interests while diminishing respect for women. In this regard Shane Black, a mainstream filmmaker who is more self-aware than most, tries to have his cake and eat it too, by both drawing and subverting the objectifying male gaze.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Setting subeditors' slights to rights

    • Brian Matthews
    • 25 May 2016
    6 Comments

    Under election campaign pressure, some names have been misprinted. Mr Malcolm Ternble of Naracoorte wishes to point out that he has not made any public statements on negative gearing and is unsure what negative gearing means. The error was made by a Gen Y subeditor and should have read 'Prime Minister Malcolm Ternbull'. The Foreign Minister was cited as Ms Julia Bishop. The correct nomenclature is Ms Julia Bronwyn. Ms Bronwyn was inaccurately described as a part-time helicopter pilot.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Changed by faith in a miraculous child

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 06 May 2016

    Despite its epic scope it is also deeply intimate and, dare I say, spiritual. Roy regards his son with a mixture of stern, protective love, and helpless wonder. They are joined in their quest by Roy's childhood friend Lucas, a state trooper converted to Alton's cause after literally seeing the light in his eyes. Also by Alton's mother, Sarah, who of all the cohort has the most direct experience of the 'sense of awe' that ultimately unfolds from the 'mystery' of Alton's story.

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  • MEDIA

    Channel 7 needs to get with AFL's non-violence program

    • Garry Westmore
    • 02 May 2016
    4 Comments

    Arguably, as a society, Australia's tolerance for violence is waning, and both the AFL and the NRL have been proactive in diminishing the prevalence of deliberate and reckless violence that might endanger players' safety. Unfortunately, despite the AFL's desire to stamp out the more dangerous incidents, many televised football commentators are hindering the cause by making excuses for players, playing down the severity of their actions, and failing to condemn them.

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  • MEDIA

    CommInsure exposé proves spin doesn't always win

    • David James
    • 16 March 2016
    7 Comments

    Most spin doctors are either former journalists, who have personal experience in how the industry works. If a story appears in the media, it is more often than not because some spin merchants want it to be there. Happily, there are exceptions. Gold Walkley winner Adele Ferguson did a brilliant exposé of the insurance industry that was definitely not on any spin doctor's agenda. Indeed it was a demonstration that spin has its limitations if the journalist is skilled enough to get beyond the wall.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Puppets' portrait of privilege and pathos

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 11 February 2016

    As screenwriter for comic such oddities as Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, Kaufman delineated a particular type of over-educated, middle-class, white male character. His protagonists are artists whose alienation and self-loathing is at odds with their social privilege, and whose creative drive entails a winnowing for authenticity or immortality that leads them inexorably down the rabbit hole of their own navels: the search for meaning as the ultimate act of self-absorption.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Abuse survivor's other superpowers

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 19 November 2015
    1 Comment

    Following its whitewashing of 'wife-beater' Ant-Man and the Black Widow slut-shaming debacle, Marvel has a long way to go to show it is not one big boys club. Alias, basis of the new series Jessica Jones, is one example of a modern day Marvel comic that, in the words of pop culture critic Roz Kaveney, offers a 'rebuke to the convenient pieties of the comic book', by proving that comics can be thematically rich, and can take serious issues — such as the physical and sexual abuse of women by men — seriously.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    I was a teenage Cold War Russophile

    • Brian Matthews
    • 18 September 2015
    9 Comments

    When Josef Stalin died on 5 March 1953, a couple of months into my Matriculation year, my Russophile leanings seemed about to be intensified. Research in those days was a matter of consulting encyclopaedias, or, if possible, going to the Public Library, but in Stalin's case the newspapers were full of reports, history, anecdote, judgement and various degrees of relief, so there was suddenly plenty of information.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The gloriously flawed humanity of our federal politics

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 20 August 2015
    9 Comments

    Recent weeks' events in federal politics stretch the imagination. The search for historical parallels brought me to the start of the Burke and Wills Expedition to the Gulf of Carpentaria, the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain, and the race that saw Fine Cotton unravel. Each of these events was characteristically Australian. In Les Murray’s memorable phrase, they all had sprawl: the mingling of excess, overweening self-confidence, and the cutting of corners. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    When life and death break into the game

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 09 July 2015
    8 Comments

    Because football and other large sports are an image of life, they are safe spaces in which loss is never final and youth is never lost. But occasionally, as in the death of Philip Hughes and Phil Walsh, real life breaks into the image. Death and horror have to be grappled with.

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  • ECONOMICS

    Management thinking in schools is a bad business

    • David James
    • 09 June 2015
    19 Comments

    Allowing such a flimsy discipline as management to co-opt an area as important as education, as appears to be the trend, is as absurd as it is saddening. Education has been with us for thousands of years and encompasses some of the most profound thinking the civilisation has produced. Management thinking has been with us for a few decades and has accomplished next to nothing.

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