Archive for the 'Culture' Category

Lisa Bufano

Published
by
Kim
1 day, 1 hour ago
in Culture, Disability, Feminism and Video
. 5 Comments

I’ve been wanting for ages to find a pretext for posting this, but I can’t, so I’m giving up and just posting it. Hey, it’s Friday night! Check out the amazing dance work of Lisa Bufano, a quadruple amputee who lost all her fingers and had a bilateral below knee amputation at age 21 due to toxic shock. I’ve been following her work as an artist - including her amazing dolls and her various performance art intertubes endeavours - for quite a few years now. It’s fabulous to see her now coming into her own as a recognised and celebrated dancer. You can read an article about Lisa at Girlistic Magazine’s Feminism and Fashion issue (scroll down through the pdf to page 24) - which looks at the feminist politics of her work - and you can have a look at her more recent dance work via vodcasts downloadable from her website.

Originally focused on animation and doll making as a means to explore her body, in 2005 she turned the tables and made her body the focus of her creative expression, exploring dance and performance.

Image courtesy of Strange Dolls.

She and I share a leg. In a way!

Continue reading ‘Lisa Bufano’

Class and Big Brother 2008

Published
by
Kim
1 day, 22 hours ago
in Astroturf, Big Brother 2008, Blogging, Consumerism, Culture, Politics, Relationships, Sociology, Television and Women
. 91 Comments

You can’t talk about Big Brother without talking about class, it seems. Over at Troppo, Ken Parish, who should be familiar with the BB concept of the grenade lob, lobs one in comments:

Far from being careful, I’ll throw petrol on the fire. I think the phenomenon of people who should have more taste and intelligence professing to like BB is just a pretentious affectation, like ending a post with “just sayin’”. Then again, all these shows (including Ladettes to Ladies and the assorted Gordon Ramsey shows) have a certain macabre fascination, sort of like not being able to resist looking at a particularly gruesome car smash as you drive past.

The really vexing thing is that these shows are also a calculated cost-saving gambit by the free-to-air channels. It doesn’t cost all that much to make them because they don’t have to pay the actors. A truly principled lefty would boycott them (although, as Jen pointed out last night, you can make a similar point about the employment effects of blogging on professional journalists).

I don’t know about the logic of boycotting tv shows for political reasons - I suspect it’s only ever invoked in this sort of context, and one could counter with the fact that a lot of writers and other “creatives” get employed by these mega shows (which are actually far more expensive to produce, but also more lucrative, than a lot of the cut-price free to air drama that’s around). And Corey Delaney is Worth(ington) 10 grand a show apparently. Though there’d be an interesting angle in thinking about how “creatives”, anyway, are self-exploiting - freed of career paths, permanent employment, and all those other things that go with not being a contract for hire and an entrepreneurial micro-business. And the lack of reflexivity that comes with seeing one’s endeavours as a big quest for that one big break has uncanny parallels with the show’s refusal of any solidarity to its Housemates. But, whatever, Ken probably thinks I’m displaying an “affectation” - while I think that the BB hatin’ *and actually I don’t enjoy this season, I just find it interesting* is a classic “that’s for the Bogans” Distinction. Proper people, of course, go to the theatre, dahling.

In a way, though, it was ironic that John Howard was a BB hater, because the Inmates couldn’t be more aspirational and individualistic. Some might even drive utes, and you can bet they’re big alcopop drinkers. I’m sure Brendan probably feels their pain. (And I’m sure that he’d probably jump at the chance to be an intruder. Might be useful training for all those frontbench wars.) But class is at issue within the House too, as another excellent post from Eye on Big Brother shows. Continue reading ‘Class and Big Brother 2008′

Talking heads

Published
by
Kim
2 days ago
in Budget 2008 and Video
. 22 Comments

This video is offered as a response to Brendan Nelson’s budget reply speech. Update: Nelson transcript here.

Bloggers united for human rights

Published
by
suz
2 days, 8 hours ago
in Activism, Blogging, International and The Web
. 4 Comments

It’s Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Day. Here’s a quick focus on two blogs/bloggers:

- Burmese Bloggers Without Borders is an independent voice reaching out to the rest of the world. In March they highlighted the case of two Rangoon journalists who were imprisoned. Amnesty International has also taken up the case of Thet Zin and Sein Win Maung.

- Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer has been in prison for over a year now, for writing about political repression, religious extremism and discrimination against women. Amnesty is also working for his release.

Flight of the Conchords

Published
by
Darlene
3 days, 5 hours ago
in Music and Television
. 55 Comments

 

If you’re the sort of person who wakes up at the same time as a rooster, you might be acquainted with the comedy shows ABC Radio National puts on at 5.30am.

These programs are usually ancient English efforts featuring members of The Goodies (I’m Sorry, I’ll Read That Again) or the late Kenneth Williams (Just a Minute*).

Other shows respectively feature experts on language and classical music, the latter group finding music by The Beatles and other ruffians beyond the pale. 

Every so often, the ABC presents a program at 5.30am that’s actually - shock horror - pretty new. 

Continue reading ‘Flight of the Conchords’

Liveblogging Budget 2008

Published
by
Mark
4 days, 7 hours ago
in Blogging, Budget 2008, Economics, Media and Polls
. 31 Comments

I’m going to have a go at it. I’ll leave comments closed on this post until 7pm-ish. Until then, comments can be left on Rob’s speculation thread. Once the liveblogging starts, remember to refresh periodically to see the updates, and please leave your own updates in comments.

A thought to start off with - the lack of a “budget bounce” for the Coalition in recent years led to (accurate, I think) commentary that the importance of the budget as a political event had been massively overplayed. This year, everyone knows the tax cuts are coming, and it’s a much more complex messaging/communications event - as Bernard Keane captures in this piece at Crikey, noting that the leaks have been finely targeted to particular publications covering particular demographics (for instance, “soak the rich” going to the tabloids, climate change for the Sunday Fairfax papers):

Crikey and others have been lamenting the Government’s mixed Budget messages, but we were missing the point. The messages were only mixed for the commentariat itself, which analyses everything the Government says. The media diet of most people is far more limited, and they would’ve only heard what the Government targeted at them.

Similarly, speculation that the budget will establish or damage the Rudd government’s “economic management” credentials is another elite preoccupation. As demonstrated by Kim in this post, that famous phrase is a piece of bad polling anyway - literally asking the wrong question, with endless narratives built on something that has nothing to do with how people vote. It’s much more likely that people are awaiting evidence that Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan will do their utmost to protect them from economic uncertainty, than that there’ll be some sort of collective scoring exercise on what is increasingly a very niche piece of political theatre. The Opposition probably know this as well - though they’re caught in the headlights having set Brendan Nelson up as a bunny who’ll need to perform or face the consequences. They should be much more worried about the polling that demonstrates that “welfare for all, not just the poor” is going down like a lead balloon even among their own voters.

Elsewhere: Riffing off Kim riffing off Zoe’s crystal ball liveblogging, tigtog proposes a budget drinking game. Demonstrating the odd time sense that surrounds budget night, Zoe reports on reports of struggling working families with babies earning more than $150000 already bemoaning how they’ll find it hard to make do without the nanny state. And Trevor Cook deconstructs some of the spin about the budget that’s been going on for quite some time already.

Update: GreensBlog will also be liveblogging from 7.30pm.

Further update: Comments now open. Liveblogging will start below the fold at 7.30pm.

Continue reading ‘Liveblogging Budget 2008′

Big Brother eats its own (princess): a cautionary tale of the S word

Published
by
Kim
4 days, 22 hours ago
in Australiana, Big Brother 2008, Ethics, Media, Television and Women
. 38 Comments

The Big Brother narrative takes yet another snarky turn. As Eye on Big Brother notes, all the glee on the panel show tonight (Big Mouth or whatever) was directed at the hapless Brigitte. The evictee’s privilege of doing something really nasty, not very well justified by the not so redeemed Saxon, was to take away her wardrobe and her makeup for the week indefinitely. This from part of the loathsome “Spa Mafia” whose idea of fun was hiding “Princess Sparkles” - her toy unicorn - as the first of their japes. I can’t help wondering if Brigitte’s failure to fulfil the FHM dream girl role of flirting with the boys - she’s too obviously occupied just being Brigitte (it’s a bit like Being There) - led to this particular nastiness. But as Eye observes, she’s quickly (and predictably) earned the ire of the other women in the House as well. Now Big Brother, in the form of the almighty narrative, piles on too.

And there’s another ethical conundrum here.

Continue reading ‘Big Brother eats its own (princess): a cautionary tale of the S word’

As Homer Simpson says…

Published
by
Kim
5 days ago
in Blogging, Budget 2008 and Life-Levity
. 0 Comments

…”Lisa, you know you can’t change the future!”

Zoe liveblogs the budget on the night before.

7:49 Partially or Somewhat Working Families who wish to become Fully Functioning Working Families will be encouraged and supported. With cash. Non Working but Caring Families will get some more help.

7:51 No more baby bonus for the toffs! No matter, they’ve already got a plasma telly. What’s this - childcare rebates through the roof! Non Indigenous parents who are on welfare won’t get the rebate because they are not Working Families and don’t use childcare. They may be send to the naughty step clutching their debit card just like the Indigenous parents because they are not Working Families either we are not racialists.

There’s much more at her joint.

Noel Pearson goes to America (well, not really)

Published
by
Kim
5 days, 3 hours ago
in American election 2008, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, Indigenous, Media and USA
. 39 Comments

It must have seemed a bright idea at the time to get Noel Pearson to write an article for The Monthly on Obama. Trouble is - Pearson may or may not know anything about American politics, but almost his entire article is a discussion of Obama seen through the prism of a book written by Shelby Steele. Those who saw the recent (and totally disappointing) Four Corners show on Obama might recall that Steele was the dude from Stanford who kept banging on about how Obama was manipulating “white guilt”. You can watch (if you can be bothered) his entire schtick via this link.

Pearson has the answer for Obama - emphasise “Black responsibility” and end all that liberal rights claimin’… How boringly predictable. Continue reading ‘Noel Pearson goes to America (well, not really)’

Cuts both ways

Published
by
Kim
5 days, 6 hours ago
in Blogging, Media and Politics
. 42 Comments

Remember all the agonising when Tim Dunlop shifted from The Road to Surfdom to Blogocracy under the Newscorp banner? And remember all the loud denouncin’ when Mark wrote *one blog post* for the Higher Education Supplement and some were quick to assume that this meant LP was about to be swallowed by the Murdoch beast? Well, they were assured at the time it wouldn’t mean that, but that didn’t stop all the conclusion jumpin’… As it turns out, I think there was an interesting issue of trust raised - and one that went precisely to some people’s false assumptions about what exactly is at stake when bloggers get co-opted. We’ve always argued here that one of the most important reasons for preserving an independent blogosphere is not just analysis and posting without fear or favour but also the distinctly different nature of the community and commenting it can foster - there’s no doubt at all in my mind that the News Ltd blogs, while they’ve been quite successful in occupying some of the space the independent blogosphere might have taken up (and might still take up - watch this space!), can’t replicate the latter. Aside from the fact that there’s probably little loyalty to most individual MSM bloggers and blogs per se (particularly where - as with most of the MSM columnists who “blog”, there’s zero interaction with the audience and commenters are perceived as “the audience”), the whole set up - seemingly arbitrary deletion or non-appearance of comments, strict barriers for defamation and other legal concerns, time lag between comments being posted and appearing - means that it’s very difficult to lift the threads beyond the bulletin board model and foster genuine interaction and community.

So I think - anyway - the real issue here is not any moderation of the bloggers’ own politics, but the literal difference in moderation on MSM blogs.

What’s interesting to me is that this evidently cuts both ways - left and right. Tim Blair has moved his blog over to the Daily Terror website. And his commenters are well aware of what the implications for them are. If you don’t want to read the whole thread, there’s a neat summary at The Blair/Bolt Watch Project.

Update: More from Jason Wilson at gatewatching.

…In which I loudly condemn narratives of personal redemption on Big Brother

Published
by
Mark
5 days, 23 hours ago
in Big Brother 2008, Life, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology and Television
. 29 Comments

Eye on Big Brother has been keeping a very close eye indeed on the confected narrative of “Corey Worthington (or Delaney) redeems himself as a house guest”, most recently looking at how this narrative has only been maintained with difficulty because of “Nanna” Terri refusing to play the role cast for her, and Bianca’s far too loud condemnation of Corey in his persona of “just an average seventeen year old kid”, and how their refusal or inability to perform as expected has led to the narrative turning on them, in predictable misogynistic mode.

If Rima Haditchi has just decided to leave (rather than retiring hurt), as now seems increasingly obvious, she would seem to have made a sensible decision.

…It’s interesting, in this context, to see how Saxon the UFO lover failed in his own quest for redemption. Although apparently he got some kudos from the eviction night crowd for overcoming his admitted racism and homophobia by cuddling up to Nobbi (aptly named, as has been said before) and the bizarre though rather likeable Travis, the screen time given to his aggressive defence of what seems core to his sense of self - his belief in a conspiracy that hides the evidence of aliens from the rest of us (”the truth is out there”, one imagines) - surely doomed him. Saxon was actually displaying one of the key fracture lines in the postmodern personality of surfaces, and the culture of individualism as it affects civility - on one hand trying to defend his “passionate” “beliefs” with reference to protocols of truth and evidence, and when called on it, falling back on the default position of “how dare you diss me - my strange beliefs are myself?”… But what he didn’t realise was that Franz Kafka might have been writing about him when he said:

There’s infinite hope, but none at all for us.

Continue reading ‘…In which I loudly condemn narratives of personal redemption on Big Brother’

Lazy Sunday! (Keating! The Musical edition)

Published
by
Mark
6 days, 6 hours ago
in Brisbane, Culture, Food, Howardia, Life and Politics
. 28 Comments

Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!

Unfortunately, I forgot to recharge my camera battery, so no pics this week. We’ll have to content ourselves with an image from Keating! The Musical, which I took my mum to see last night for Mothers’ Day (she’s a big PJK fan). Apparently, I’m not alone, as Paul Keating also took his mum to see it. I’d be really interested to know what non-Labor folks would think about it. They’d have been lonely in the audience at the QPAC Playhouse last night, surrounded by a gallery of Labor luminaries from Anna Bligh down. It’s also interesting to speculate whether a hypothetical Howard! The Musical would get much of a run - and I’m not sure Terry Serio would be cast in the eponymous role - his portrayal of Howard was cruel in its verisimilitude. Alexander Downer, in Rocky Horror style fishnets and corset, came off much better.

I also enjoyed catching up with a couple of friends who’d been at the matinee for a drink at The Point on Grey Street at Southbank first, always a good spot for a glass of wine or a cocktail, and while I’m doing recommendations, I went round to some other friends’ place for dinner on their back deck on Friday night and ate a very scrumptious lasagne concocted out of the pages of the Veganomicon - best. cookbook. eva! Today? Well, it’s been a lazy Sunday!

Would judicial activism have saved the Howard government?

Published
by
Mercurius
1 week ago
in Government, History, Industrial Relations, Law, Politics and Uncategorized
. 12 Comments

While I’m quite a fan of allohistory, I rarely engage in it because (a) I’m not very good at it and (b) it’s rather self-indulgent. But like most indulgences, it’s a bit of harmless fun and it won’t make you go blind.

So here goes: This letter in today’s Oz alerted me to the intriguing possibility that a bit of judicial activism by the High Court over WorkChoices might have been enough to save the Howard government from electoral oblivion.

While the High Court’s 2006 judgement on WorkChoices makes an unassailable case for the legal correctness of upholding the legislation, let’s pretend things were different. If the High Court judges had gone all activist and concocted a convoluted Constitutional argument to strike down WorkChoices, then the result of the 2007 election might have been very different.
Continue reading ‘Would judicial activism have saved the Howard government?’

Celebrity Gossip Friday

Published
by
Darlene
1 week, 1 day ago
in Culture
. 32 Comments

On a recent comments thread on LP, it was argued that LP readers are political types rather than Big Brother sorts. Well, I don’t think many people are either/or about such things, and at any rate I’ve been yearning to lower the tone of this blog for a long time. With this in mind, I’ve decided to do a celebrity gossip post today.    

madonna_candy.jpg

Madonna’s new CD: blech

Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god (not sure why I wrote “oh my god” three times other than that celebrity gossip is usually replete with repetition and hyperbole), Mariah has gotten married again.

Celebrity gossip fans will know that Mariah used to be married to some bloke and then she stopped being married to that bloke. Now Mariah is married to another bloke.

No word as yet about whether she looked too skinny and/or too fat in her wedding gown, but if I was a betting woman I’d suggest (insert body fascist comment here). 

Continue reading ‘Celebrity Gossip Friday’

Look familiar?

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 1 day ago
in Advertising, Blogging and Queensland
. 17 Comments

I’m pretty sure, as I’ve mentioned before, that I was the first to dub Queensland’s National Party leader the Borg when I was covering the Queensland state campaign for Crikey in 2006.

Now have a look at Laurence’s new website banner.

He’s stolen our bridge!

Note also the Liberal blue. The Nationals’ Green is entirely absent from his increasingly self-centred branding. And he’s obviously trying to position himself as an urban (and urbane) man. Sharp suit, no tie in a lot of the pics, new haircut, and symbols of Brisbane surrounding him constantly. The moleskins and the rural signifiers have been banished.