Review by Garth Jones
BOOK | THE WHITE QUEEN | ONE NATION AND THE POLITICS OF RACE (QUARTERLY ESSAY 65) | DAVID MARR
In his seventh Quarterly Essay, The White Queen – One Nation and the Politics of Race, journalist David Marr examines Pauline Hanson and One Nation’s re-emergence in our current global political context.
Collaborating with a team ...
Review by Nick Mattiske
BOOK | FAITH AND FREEDOM | TERESA FORCADES
Faith and freedom may be thought of as opposites by those critical of religion. But this is certainly not the case for a thinker such as Martin Luther, who thought that only faith can free us from slavery to our self-interest. And it is not the case ...
Review by Nick Mattiske
BOOK | MATERIALISM | TERRY EAGLETON
Terry Eagleton can usually be relied upon for a left-field viewpoint on religion, politics and culture, both in the senses of the political left and the simply surprising. In his latest book, he investigates the concept of materialism (the philosophical concept rather than the idea of hording riches) in ...
Review by Penny Mulvey
PLAY | THREE LITTLE WORDS | JOANNA MURRAY-SMITH
Have you ever experienced a deep visceral response to friends’ news that they are breaking up? Perhaps you have seen them as the perfect couple? You cannot imagine them as individuals.
This is the premise of playwright Joanna Murray-Smith’s latest offering, Three Little Words, currently showing ...
Review by NICK MATTISKE
BOOK | VIOLENT BORDERS | BY REECE JONES | VERSO
IN 2015, 3700 people died trying to enter Europe. In the decade previous, 40,000 people, possibly one-in-four who stepped on a boat, lost their lives.
How do we stop this?
Much hysterical press focuses on deterrence, which assumes refugees have a choice. In Violent ...
Review by NICK MATTISKE
BOOK | OUR MOB, GOD’S STORY: ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER ARTISTS SHARE THEIR FAITH | EDITED BY LOUISE SHERMAN AND CHRISTOBEL MATTINGLEY
IN one of last year’s better books, Position Doubtful, Kim Mahood wrote about how Indigenous peoples don’t just passively receive good and bad elements of introduced European culture, but instead adapt, innovate, ...
Review by NIGEL TAPP
BOOK | CRIMES OF THE FATHER | BY TOM KENEALLY | PENGUIN
RENOWNED author and former seminarian Tom Keneally is no stranger to writing about the Catholic Church as well as the issue of child sex abuse by the clergy.
His memoir Homebush Boy and An Angel in Australia are two examples.
He has returned ...
Review by ANN BYRNE
FILM | HIDDEN FIGURES | PG
IT’S about time – and it’s about space. It’s about gender and it’s about race.
Hidden Figures is based on the true story of three black women working at NASA in the early 1960s – Katherine Johnson (Taraji Henson), a brilliant mathematician/physicist; Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), supervisor ...
Review by PENNY MULVEY
BOOK AND FILM | THE FAMILY
Cult def: a small religious group that is not part of a larger and more accepted religion and that has beliefs regarded by many people as extreme or dangerous.
A powerful light has shone through the gloom, the secrecy, and the layers of subterfuge and power to ...
Review by BOB FASER
TELEVISION | CALL THE MIDWIFE | ABC 1
THE fifth season of Call the Midwife confronts a range of significant social issues with the same honesty and commitment as earlier seasons.
Set in the early 1960s, issues of the day such as the relationship of thalidomide use and birth defects are strongly in ...
TRAINSPOTTING 2 | FILM
Review and digital illustration by Garth Jones
Cinematic history is rife, perhaps even founded on, explorations of white male solipsism.
From Citizen Kane to There Will Be Blood, from Taxi Driver and Midnight Cowboy to Requiem For A Dream and beyond, for well over a century our movie screens have ...
REVIEW BY NICK MATTISKE
BOOK | THE END OF PROTESTANTISM | PETER LEITHART
Peter Leithart’s book The End of Protestantism is not a lament for the decline of Western Christianity or a pessimistic prediction, but Leithart’s hope for the dismantling of denominationalism and the unification of the global Christian church.
It is, as he admits, a rather utopian hope. ...
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