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By Helen Razer
“Journalism is not a crime”. Really? I’d say this slogan is hardly unassailable. I’d say this slogan, which began to appear in hashtag and t-shirt form when the Australian journalist Peter Greste was detained for his journalism practice, needs a second, a third, a seventeenth unflinching look. Surely, Sarah Ferguson’s fantasy Putin trilogy, which concluded
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By Helen Razer
The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of ladies struggling to Lean In. This narrow principle informs the ABC’s newest “factual” blockbuster, Back In Time For Dinner, just as it has come to inform all entertainment aimed at the female viewer white and/or wealthy enough not to have noticed that the West
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By Helen Razer
May 1968 was a curiously big month for small forces. To illustrate: The May Offensive fought by Vietnam’s peasant-workers drained more life from an indomitable US military than in any other month of that war; 11 million French workers and countless students paralysed a major state and its partner economy; fifty years ago, a Paris
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By Helen Razer
It is possible that sounds emitted by the mouth of Miley Cyrus bring sincere relief to the dented souls of millions. It is possible that Cyrus is an artist greatly gifted. Don’t ask me. Like any critic beset by a case of advanced midlife, this one is powerless to assess a work like Malibu. Malibu appears
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By Helen Razer
Not every human opinion is published in haste or on Facebook. Some of it is set down after days—even months—of thought. “To find the time for thought on arts and culture”. If Daily Review were the sort of place that printed out mission statements, something like this might have been posted in big red typeface on
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By Helen Razer
For many years, great artists have depended for their flourishing upon the generous patronage of…blah, blah, blah, Leonardo. Give it a rest with the Renaissance Defence. Yes. Of course. We know: all art demands material support for its creation and survival. In this way, it is much like every single part of human life. Art
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By Helen Razer
Your reporter is stricken with head-cold, or, as I choose to know it: the unofficial viral partner of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Thus, all reason is heated by fever and all passion drowned by phlegm. I had intended to bring you account of several Festival performances, but can now recall nothing, not even the
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By Helen Razer
CNN is in urgent need of counselling. Since the 2016 death of Campaign Clinton, the poor old thing has suffered a collapse. Of course, it’s difficult for any of us to face the real life facts of a death, and we are often given in our grief to magical thinking. When, for example, my dear
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By Helen Razer
There are Renaissance Australians who are so moved by sports as they are by the literary arts. There are those universal persons right here on this soil. A morning in gratitude to high art, an afternoon in awe of a half-forward flank. Oh. It’s a magnificent agenda. It’s also a bullshit “classless Aussie” myth, if
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By Helen Razer
Mass culture has produced no form more lifeless than radio journalism. If you’re yet to read this stuff, please, don’t start now. That modest rise in Radio Shitstack’s 18-24 demographic is only of interest to shareholders, and that monumental rise in some twit’s salary can be only of interest to masochists. Reports of broadcast radio
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