In light of recent events
Who’s preferencing whom?June 2005
Arts & Letters
'A Current Affair' on Channel Nine / 'Today Tonight' on Channel Seven
Among people who get their current affairs from the ABC or SBS, the consensus is that A Current Affair and Today Tonight rate their socks off by relying on stories about neighbourhood feuds, sex scandals, dodgy salesmen, weight loss, welfare cheats and bras. It’s true: people watch these shows because their taxes, their sex lives, their cars, their weight, their neighbours and their own or other people’s breasts are what they think about most on a day-to-day basis. If the lofty types were being truthful, they’d admit the same goes for them too. For better or worse, the content of these shows is really just democracy at work.
Both shows are pitched, through the vectors of their respective hosts, at a hypothetical family of viewers who never cheat, lie or let their children or their lawns go feral. Both promote an adversarial, punitive, self-righteous, us-and-them view of the world. “We” are the chaste, law-abiding, honest Australian citizens and taxpayers; “they” are everybody else. On September 21 A Current Affair ran a sympathetic story about a real-estate salesman who’d been injured when he was thrown by a bouncer down the stairs of a nightclub. The bouncer got off with a mere fine, said the victim indignantly. No attempt was made to give the bouncer’s side of the story, much less to summarise the legal arguments. The real agenda was un-spoken but clear: “we” should get tougher on law and order. It is not the content but the angle, and the motives behind the angle, that critics of these shows should be worried about.
Ghost notes: Simon Tedeschi’s ‘Fugitive’
A virtuoso memoir of music and trauma, and his experiences as a child prodigy, from the acclaimed Australian pianist
The quip and the dead: Steve Toltz’s ‘Here Goes Nothing’
A bleakly satirical look at death and the afterlife from the wisecracking author of ‘A Fraction of the Whole’
Election special: Who should you vote for?
Undecided about who to vote for in the upcoming federal election? Take our quiz to find out your least-worst option!
Tip of the pops: ‘This Is Pop’ and ‘Song Exploder’
Two Netflix documentary series only manage to skim the surface of pop music history
Life in isolation: ‘Nine Days’ and ‘Bo Burnham: Inside’
A comedian’s isolated self-examination is more profound than Edson Oda’s confused film about what makes a good life
Pride and prejudice: ‘It’s a Sin’
‘Years and Years’ creator Russell T. Davies turns his attention to the despair, anger and protective humour of the gay community in HIV/AIDS-era Britain
Eye to eye in the wild: ‘Australia Remastered’
The continent’s natural wonders – some now gone forever – are celebrated in a series that uncovers footage from the ABC’s disbanded Natural History Unit
‘Loveland’
Robert Lukins’ second novel takes a Brisbane woman to Nebraska, where an inheritance sparks a change in character as well as in fortune
‘We Own This City’
David Simons, creator of ‘The Wire’, returns to Baltimore for a present-day examination of rapacious police corruption
‘Slow Horses’
A sardonic Gary Oldman heads a misfit branch of MI5 in Apple TV+’s thrilling exploration of personal motivation and political expedience
‘The Golden Cockerel’
Barrie Kosky’s Adelaide production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera satirising the Russo-Japanese War came with uneasy resonancesElection special: Who should you vote for?
Undecided about who to vote for in the upcoming federal election? Take our quiz to find out your least-worst option!
Remembrance or forgetting?
The Australian War Memorial and the Great Australian Silence
Property damage
What will it take for Australia to fix the affordable housing crisis?
Present indicative: Daniel Johns’ ‘FutureNever’
The former Silverchair frontman’s second solo album lacks cohesion, but affords him space to excavate his past
