2021 Edition Four by Farrago Magazine

FARRAGO E DIT IO N FO U R · 2 0 2 1

NEWS · CULTURE · PHOTOGRAPHY · SCIENCE · POETRY · FICTION · SATIRE · ART

Acknowledgement of Country At the time of writing this Acknowledgement, NAIDOC Week has just come to a close. This year’s theme was ‘Heal Country’, a call for greater protection of the natural environment and Indigenous cultural heritage from exploitation, desecration, and destruction. Across the media landscape, we witnessed countless people sharing posts on their social media accounts and some even turning over their platforms to Indigenous people for ‘NAIDOC Week Takeovers’. All we see now is mostly radio silence. As the media, it is our responsibility to ensure we are supporting and uplifting Indigenous voices all year round, not simply when it is ‘trendy’ to do so. But it is not just the media that is failing. If we look at the calls to heal Country being made by Indigenous people in so-called Australia, we can see that these calls are mostly being ignored across the board. Unsurprisingly, our politicians continue to exploit and destroy land, waterways and sacred sites all for the sake of profits or political gain. Even the ‘ordinary’ person often remains ignorant or unaware of issues facing Indigenous people. Following the murder of George Floyd last year, it became apparent that people in so-called Australia seemed to know more about the deaths of people of colour in the United States than they did about the deaths of Indigenous people in custody on their own shores. Healing Country is an ongoing process. It is simply not enough just to amplify voices, we must also be actively listening to what they are saying. As settlers on this land, we continue to benefit from the continued destruction of Indigenous land and culture. Allyship with Indigenous people is not sharing aesthetic infographics to our social media. It is about actively reflecting on these benefits we reap and how we can use our privilege to minimise further harms to Indigenous people and land. We cannot heal Country if we, as settlers, do not listen and take action. Ailish Hallinan Wurundjeri Land of the Kulin Nation Lauren Berry Boon Wurrung Land of the Kulin Nation Pavani Ambagahawattha Out of Country

CONTENTS REGULARS 03 04 79

Editorial Calendar Flash Fiction

Ava Nunan, Sophie Breeze, Marija Mrvosevic & Elina Pugacheva

For and Against: Period Pieces Hannah Winspear-Schillings &

Reba Nelson

UMSU 06 08

OB Reports UMSU Updates

Southbank Updates

Jack Buksh

NEWS 10 11

News-in-brief Enforcement of UN Treaty Threatens WHO & UniMelb Collaboration Megan Tan Tan 12 OPINION: To Paper or To PDF Charlene Phua 13 University Students More Likely to Face Food Insecurity Jennifer Chance & Aeva Milos 15 OPINION: Danger Ambushing Opportunity? Food Delivery Drivers Need Fairer Treatment Vanessa Chan & Sabrina Lee 16 The 8-Year Lockdown Donna Burroughs 18 Stop the Liberals, Join the Campaign Against the Robert Menzies Institute!

Monica Sestito & Brendan Laws

NONFICTION 24

Scenes from the 73 Supermarket Connor Millsom 74 30 Pseudoscience Sells: Health is not only for rich white 75 women Astri Sanjaya 31 a note on growing up Anindya Setiawan 34 The Cheerful Pessimist 76 Rachel Ko 37 Melbourne’s Last Video Rental Store Christina Savopoulos 40 ADHD, Heartbreak, and a 27 Stream of Consciousness (Barely) Srishti Chatterjee 33 41 Review: Endless Summer Afternoon Joanna Zou 35 44 Overseas Student Update Anonymous 38

PHOTOGRAPHY 49

Featured Photography Candy Chu Sam Hadden Mollie Crompton Ben Levy Abir Hiranandani Mehek Soanes Finley Tobin

Major Character Death Izma Haider

Waiting for the train Frankie Chung

Mount Martha Breeze Laura Bennett

The Piano Iris Lim

SATIRE Satire-in-brief

COLUMNS The Love Witch: Your Ultimate Fantasy Nishtha Banavalikar

On Ordinary Joys and Mental Health E.S.

Slogans and Nonsense Josh Abbey

Perfect Pancake Recipe Steph Markerink

Race Against the Odds ilundi tinga

The Pier Review Torsten Strokirch

The Stone Dragon Zoe Keeghan

The Foggy Shores of Our Bedrooms Charlotte Waters and Lee Perkins

Hecuba

Gen Schiesser

CREATIVE ART

Deep-Fried Sun

Tinfoil Torso

Featured Art

Medusa

Featured Art

Petition Calls for Review of 65 “Transphobic” Melbourne University Subject Mimi Hoffman

VCA Students Lodging 69 Complaint to Victorian Ombudsman in Fight for Fee Relief 70 Joanna Guelas

Tharidi Walimunige Ben Evans

Neha Sharma

Modern Narcissus bite! Aeva Milos

Observations at a Ball Nick Parsons

Illustrated by Annanya Musale

Jasmine Pierce

Featured Art Elmira

FODDER

but one life Nico Lim

Birdy Carmen

Gothic Playlist

Mark Yin & Joanna Guelas

EDITORS Ailish Hallinan Lauren Berry Pavani Ambagahawattha

COVER Alice Aliandy

MANAGERS Elmira Vivian Li Sweeney Preston Charlotte Armstrong Samantha Thomson Pujitha Gaddam Ben Levy Carolyn West Mark Yin Janelle Del Vecchio Joanna Guelas

CONTRIBUTORS Donna Burroughs Jennifer Chance Joanna Guelas Vanessa Chan Sabrina Lee Mimi Hoffman Charlene Phua Jessica Morrison Allie Akerley Vatsal Desai Aeva Milos Megan Tan Tan Monica Sestito Brendan Laws Tharidi Walimunige Ben Evans Neha Sharma Aeva Milos Nico Lim Nick Parsons Izma Haider Frankey Chung Lauren Bennett Iris Lim Ava Nunan Sophie Breeze Marija Mrvosevic Elina Pugacheva Srishti Chatterjee Rachel Ko

Anindya Setiawan Joanne Zou Christina Savopoulos Astri Sanjaya Connor Millsom

SUBEDITORS Finley Tobin Frank Tyson Emma Barrett Sarah Pemberton Tun Xiang Foo Joel Keith Zoe Keeghan Amber Meyer Kate King-Smith Isabelle McConaghy Cassie Starc Nishtha Banavalikar Christina Savopoulos Mickhaella Ermita Lucy Robin Josh Abbey Noa Abrahams Rachel Ko Austin J. Ceravolo Saanjana Kapoor Melana Uceda Chelsea Rozario Ella Crowley Charlotte Armstrong Xiaole Zhan Laura Franks Joel Duggan Helena Pantsis Marcie Di Bartolomeo Claire Yip Sam Hadden Nat Hollis Poppy Willis Ioanna Petropolou Bridget Schwerdt Gwynneth Thomas Charlotte Waters Elizabeth Seychell

COLUMNISTS Zoe Keeghan E.S. ilundi tinga Charlotte Waters Lee Perkins Josh Abbey Nishtha Banavalikar

ILLUSTRATORS

SATIRE TEAM

Alice Aliandy Rohith Sundaresa Prabhu Kitman Yeung Zoe Lau Rachel Ko Rai Melana Uceda Mochen Tang Georgia Huang Rose Gertsakis Michelle Chan Joy Sha Arielle Vlahotis Birdy Carmen Casey Boswell Tereza Ljubicic Nina Hughes Torsten Strokirch Elmira Maddy Cronn Mica McCulloch Zoe Eyles Jasmine Pierce Katie Zhang Marco Sy Alice Tai Cathy Chen Chelsea Rozario Annanya Musale

Charlotte Armstrong Sweeney Preston James Gordon Emma-Grace Clarke Rowan Burridge Chelsea Rozario Josh Abbey Laura Bishop Janvi Sikand Raina Shauki

SOCIAL MEDIA Keely Tzoukos Alain Nguyen Megan Van Vegten Isabella Ross Jenslie George Jessica Seychell Emily Gu Anindya Meivianty Setiawan Janelle Del Vecchio

PHOTOGRAPHERS Candy Chu Sam Hadden Mollie Crompton Ben Levy Abir Hiranandani Mehek Soanes Finley Tobin

GRAPHIC COLUMNISTS Steph Markerink Gen Schiesser Torsten Strokirch

ONLINE COLUMNISTS Srishti Chatterjee James Gordon Lisa Jacomos

Illustrated by Melana Uceda

This magazine is made from 100% recycled paper. Please recycle this magazine after use. Farrago is the newspaper of the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU). Farrago is published by the General Secretary. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of UMSU.

EDITORIAL PAVANI So I’ve decided to make all my future editorials somehow pandemic-related. If you’re currently in Melbourne, which I suppose most of you are, where the pandemic is a constant-but-manageable threat as opposed to a neverending horror that consumes your life and destroys hundreds of lives daily, this might seem odd. Much of the Western world has reached a stage where the worst seems over. You can gather in each other’s homes, walk around maskless, and watch Inside with relief, glad that the claustrophobia of lockdown it beautifully, artistically depicts is finally over. I’m happy for you. Truly. But I hope you reflect on your privilege too. That you remember there are international students in various parts of the world where the curve is still far from flat, barred from returning to Australia due to visa restrictions. Who last saw campus in early 2020, though they are still forced to pay full tuition fees. Some who only got to be on campus for the first month of their first year. Who are still learning virtually, sometimes from lockdown, but are held to the same academic standards as you. Who don’t have a clue when they will return, because the University doesn’t have the courtesy to update us regularly. Who live in nations that struggle to vaccinate their populations due in part to wealthier countries (including Australia) having voted against patent waivers for COVID-vaccines because our lives are less important than your profit. I hope you can empathise with the anger, exhaustion and bitterness we feel. If the pandemic is over for you, I hope you take a hard look around you and ask yourself why it isn’t over for much of the rest of the world.

AILISH Limbo feels like my permanent state of being these days. At the time of writing this editorial, we’re waiting to find out if Melbourne will enter its fifth lockdown since the start of the pandemic. All I do is listen to Olivia Rodrigo and dance around in pajama pants I probably should have washed by now. Farrago deadlines seem to be the only markers of time I have anymore. All I want to do is hug Pavani. I wish she weren’t over 8,000km away. Anyway, I hope you all find some escapism in this gothic edition, I know I certainly have—pretending I’m living out my dark academia fantasy in some Victorian castle while spending days and nights on end formatting texts and art onto these pages. Despite everything we’ve all been through, especially over the last few months, I think this is some of the Media Collective’s best work yet. I hope you enjoy it. Be kind to one another. All my love, A.

LAUREN A chill has settled over Union House. It’s the time of year where Melbourne, still not quite sure how to do ‘weather’, oscillates between fat rain, sideways wind, and sunlit icy mornings. It’s enough to send students—with exams done and dusted—flocking to better, warmer activities. Safe for a few stragglers (mostly the proactive ‘Winter subject’ crowd), tussling with raincoat hoods, and limping under heavy backpacks as they rush to find comfort in a Castro’s borek. To be honest, I like the quiet, and I find a comical fascination with the impending grey clouds that will surely, in an hour or so, see me on par with the Castro’sborekers in my race for the tram stop. It is with this romantic bleakness that we infused our gothic fourth edition. Especially as things, for the most part, seem to be getting progressively worse (yeehaw lockdown no.5!), it appears that embracing our dark sides and exorcising away the many demons to cross our path (see Alice’s incredible cover art for insight into how three Farrago editors spend a Saturday) was a good use of time. And if things still go horribly wrong and you accidentally raise a spirit less like Jennifer’s Body, and more like the Donnie Darko rabbit except her name is Ramona and she likes tequila… pour it up. Then dye your hair pink and remember, in the wise words of Rory Gilmore: “It’s Avril Lavigne’s world, and we’re just living in it”.

Illustrated by Melana Uceda

FARRAGO

AUGUST MONDAY 2

TUESDAY 3 12pm Environment Collective 1.30pm Marketing for Theatre 2pm Craft Time in the Disabilities Space

MONDAY 9 MUDFEST

MONDAY 16

TUESDAY 10 MUDFEST 12pm Environment Collective 2pm Craft Time in the Disabilities Space

TUESDAY 17 12pm Environment Collective 2pm Craft Time in the Disabilities Space

MONDAY 23

MONDAY 30

TUESDAY 24 12pm Environment Collective 2pm Craft Time in the Disabilities Space

WEDNESDAY 4

THURSDAY 5

1pm People of Colour Collective

MUDFEST UHT Legally Blonde The Musical 2pm Game Time in the Disabilities Space

WEDNESDAY 11

THURSDAY 12

MUDFEST 1pm People of Colour Collective

MUDFEST UHT We Will Rock You 12pm Climate Action Collective (Southbank campus) 2pm Game Time in the Disabilities Space

WEDNESDAY 18 1pm People of Colour Collective

THURSDAY 19 UHT Grease UHT Two Nights Out of Bed 2pm Game Time in the Disabilities Space

WEDNESDAY 25

THURSDAY 27

1pm People of Colour Collective

UHT Rupaul’s Dragon Race: The Tupper-wars 12pm Climate Action Collective (Southbank campus) 2pm Game Time in the Disabilities Space

TUESDAY 31 12pm Environment Collective 2pm Craft Time in the Disabilities Space

Illustrated by Mica McCulloch

FRIDAY 6 MUDFEST UHT Legally Blonde The Musical

FRIDAY 13 MUDFEST UHT We Will Rock You

FRIDAY 20 UHT Grease UHT Two Nights Out of Bed

FRIDAY 28 UHT Rupaul’s Dragon Race: The Tupper-wars

WEDNESDAY 2 1pm People of Colour Collective

MONDAY 6

TUESDAY 7 12pm Environment Collective 2pm Craft Time in the Disabilities Space

MONDAY 13

TUESDAY 14 12pm Environment Collective 2pm Craft Time in the Disabilities Space

MONDAY 20

TUESDAY 21 12pm Environment Collective

MONDAY 27

TUESDAY 28

Sailing Stones in Death Valley @ George Paton

Sailing Stones in Death Valley @ George Paton 12pm Environment Collective

WEDNESDAY 8 1pm People of Colour Collective

THURSDAY 3

FRIDAY 4

UHT Disney’s Camp Rock The Musical 2pm Game Time in the Disabilities Space

UHT Disney’s Camp Rock The Musical

THURSDAY 9 12pm Climate Action Collective (Southbank campus) 2pm Game Time in the Disabilities Space

WEDNESDAY 15

THURSDAY 16

1pm People of Colour Collective

2pm Game Time in the Disabilities Space

WEDNESDAY 22

THURSDAY 23

1pm People of Colour Collective

12pm Climate Action Collective (Southbank campus)

WEDNESDAY 29

THURSDAY 30

Sailing Stones in Death Valley @ George Paton 1pm People of Colour Collective

Sailing Stones in Death Valley @ George Paton 2pm Game Time in the Disabilities Space

Illustrated by Mica McCulloch

FARRAGO

SEPTEMBER FRIDAY 10

Farrago Edition 5 Launch!

FRIDAY 17

FRIDAY 24

UMSU

President | Jack Buksh

Welcome to Semester 2! I’m writing this at the end of June, and COVID isn’t going too great. Will it be better by the time this is published? Who knows! This latest widespread outbreak is just another sign that the pandemic really isn’t over, and that the University needs to ensure that it is providing support to students in these times. It also shows the University needs to be flexible and adaptive to the ever-changing situation, especially when it comes to keeping campus open and vibrant when health advice allows. Whatever this semester has in store for us, UMSU will always be here. Feel free to always drop me a line at president@union.unimelb.edu.au.

General Secretary | Allen Xiao No report submitted.

Clubs and Societies | Kalyana Vania and Muskaan Hakhu

Winterfest is almost here! And we are super excited to get Clubs’ Day out in full swing! This Winterfest is going to be all about CLUBS, performances, games, and *surprises* (stay tuned for that!) Your C&S OBs are wholeheartedly and tirelessly working towards bringing back the fun, entertainment, and excitement of Clubs’ Day! So, fasten your seat belts as this Clubs’ Day is going to be a ride that you will remember :)

Creative Arts | Merryn Hughes and Vaishnavi Ravikrishna

Creative Arts invites you to Revel in the Excitment of Mudfest! A student-led Arts festival Teeming with Innovative new works by a Variety of student artists and Encompassing a range of Artistic mediums from film to music to performing arts to visual arts! Responding to the Theme of Home, our 60+ student artworks will be exploding onto our Parkville and Southbank campuses as well as the digital realm from 5-13th August, 2021. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for all the updates @mudfestarts.

Education Academic | Jennisha Arnanta and Planning Saw

Hey everyone! This is Jennisha and Planning providing an update on Education (Academic)! The past month we have launched two campaigns; Extension of Library Hours and the WAM Adjustment for Semester 1, 2021 campaign in response to the ongoing circumstances of COVID-19. While there was no control over the rise in cases and the recent snap lockdown, it should be appreciated how students have been affected and the need for the University to consider that. We launched a petition and are currently having ongoing discussions with the University on this. We are also preparing for Winterfest so see you then! Please feel free to reach out to us and we’ll keep working for students to ensure that education is equitable, accessible and transparent!

Education Public | Hannah Krasovec and Tejas Gandhi

Last time, we hyped you up for the May 27 rally to Defend Our Staff and Education. Unfortunately we had to postpone it because of lockdown but stay tuned! We’ve been planning some exciting things for Semester 2, and started our campaign against the conservative Menzies Institute that will be opening on campus in September. We’ll be doing more about this when semester 2 starts, and leading the fight against staff and course cuts through the No Cuts Campaign. You can stay updated through our Facebook and Instagram pages. You can also message us there to get involved!

Burnley | Kaitlyn Hammond

Out with Semester One, in with Semester Two! We are excited for all the events this semester has in store. We’ve loved seeing so many faces at our R-efreshers series and hope to see even more of you during part two of the series! Stay tuned for fun times doing pottery and some exciting winter activities (all in the works!). Be sure to stay up to date by following our socials: Instagram: @umsuburnley Facebook: facebook.com/burnleystudentassociation

Disabilities | Brigit Doyle and Lindsay Tupper-Creed

UMSU Disabilities has been hard at work during the winter break, making sure everyone has an accessible space to feel welcome in. We’re excited for a bumper semester two full of the things that were fun last semester, like running dedicated Game Time and Craft Time sessions every week in the Disabilities Space. We’re running new events, like hosting our very own Graduation Party. Behind the scenes we’ve been busy fighting for your rights to accessible study. We hope to see you at our bumper Bath Bomb Making and Terrarium Making sessions during WinterFest!

Indigenous | Shanysa McConville

UMSU

LOTS happening in the UMSU Indigenous Department! At the start of Semester 2 we were able to release Gundui Bunjil Volume 9 and some awesome branded caps and bucket hats. Our launch event was a big success, with multiple contributors reading out their submissions. We look forward to working on Volume 10–submissions are now open! We are also hosting a number of social events for the First Nations cohort this semester, including a trivia night, a planting session in the MU Community Garden, putt-putt and a book fair for Indigenous Literacy Day.

People of Colour | Emily AlRamadhan and Mohamed Omer

It’s been a busy semester for the PoC department and we’re bringing you even more events and projects in semester 2! we’re currently cooking up a games night for Winterfest, some new PoC branded merch and *drum roll* Myriad submissions are opening up soon! We’ve assembled the dream team and can’t wait to see you all this upcoming semester

Activities | Christos Preovolos and Phoebe Chen No report submitted

Queer | Amelia Bright and Laura Ehrensperger

The Queer Department has capped off its end of semester events, including completing the Queer Gym Nights program with excellent feedback, our regular collectives and G&Ts with the LGBTs. In advocacy, we completed the Report to Request a Review of the Subject PHIL20046 Feminism and presented it to the Dean of Arts alongside our petition. Since then, the Vice-Chancellor, Duncan Maskell, made his annual address to University staff which referenced the “debate” about trans and gender diverse wellbeing at Unimelb. His sentiment demonstrated meaningful progress in the attitude of the University towards this issue, which is promising, but still has some key misunderstandings of the nature of harm done to TGD staff and students. Laura and I, like most OBs, are focusing most of our attention on planning for Winterfest and for Semester 2, including planning some of our biggest events of the year such as the annual Queer Ball —get hyped!

Southbank | Leyla Moxham

The slow and cruel drudgery of bureaucracy has brought us to the cusp of second semester with many of our plans for a socialist paradise at Southbank ‘delayed’. Spending the remaining of our budget on essential food items has been the perfect circumvention of solipsistic bureaucrats. The Bread Bin has brought joy and sustenance to many VCA/MCM students and we will continue this initiative for as long as possible. We would like to thank UMSU Welfare for their support. Plans for Mudfest, our second Town Hall Talk and collaborations with the People of Colour Department are also in the works.

Welfare | Hue Man Dang No report submitted.

Women | Srishti Chatterjee and Mickhaella Ermita

Hello from your Women’s Officers—we’re up to heaps of stuff this semester. Over the last semester and the break, we’ve been meeting with the University to work on a standalone campus safety policy, and an online use safety policy. This semester, we will focus on the rolling out of the National Student Safety Survey, and make sure everyone is safe, loved and heard. On the fun side, we’re organising movie screenings, workshops and collectives— keep an eye out on our socials/website to find out what we’re up to! Submissions to Judy’s Punch: our autonomous magazine, are now open—get creative!

Environment | James Park No report submitted.

UMSU

UMSU Updates G’day and welcome to Semester 2! Semester one was a bit of a time—just as we thought everything was going okay, we got thrown right back into a bit of a pit of awfulness. But this semester, we hope to see a return to some kind of normalcy. So many students have gotten in contact over the last six months about coming back onto campus, and being able to learn in person once again. The University has been really slow on this, with most of us still learning completely online. It now seems likely that the University will finally be allowing us back on campus, and off of the Zoom tutorials. We of course do know that not everyone can be back on campus—and so it is so important that the University shows flexibility and the ability to adapt. Whether by making sure they provide quality online learning options, or being able to quickly adopt changing COVID-19 restrictions, the University really needs to be better this semester at getting the balance right. UMSU is also going to be back on campus in Semester 2! Starting with a big Winterfest program in O-Week and Week 1, with live performances, giveaways, activities and all of our amazing clubs and societies. We haven’t been able to hold an event like this since the beginning of last year, and all the wheels are turning to be able to have some fantastic Winterfest programming this year. All of our departments will be bringing back their events into Union House and around campus once again. It’s a great time to get involved in UMSU—there’s going to be so much happening in and around, so do come get involved and see what there is to offer. But also do not forget that UMSU is here to help you. We’re your voice on campus, so when something doesn’t go to plan, never hesitate to reach out. If you need support, we’re here for you, whether that be in your degree, or life more generally. All students have access to our free Legal and Advocacy service, and our elected student representatives and departments are always happy to help you out too. Stay safe, and hopefully we’ll see you around Union House soon! Jack Buksh UMSU President president@union.unimelb.edu.au

08 01

Illustrated by Jasmine Pierce

NEWS Artwork by Arielle Vhaliotis

NEWS

content warning: death, racism, police brutality

NEWS-IN-BRIEF NEWS-IN-BRIEF Written by Jessica Morrison, Allie Akerley, Vatsal Desai and Aeva Milos

UN calls for end to police brutality against people of colour (PoC)

China’s dominance “undermining Australian Universities”

A United Nations report, which investigated 190 deaths of PoC, has demanded an end to the “impunity” for the police officers involved in these killings. The 23-page report has concluded that police officers are rarely held accountable for acts of violence against black people. The report’s leader Michelle Bachelet contended that “systemic racism needs a systemic response” through dismantling these oppressive systems by listening to black voices, ending police impunity and addressing centuries of racism. By acknowledging and addressing the systemic racism evident in policing, the report hopes to ignite “accountability and real change”.

According to a Human Rights Watch report, many Chinese pro-democracy students and academics teaching China courses in Australia claimed to be pressured by the Chinese government to self-censor. The group also experienced harassment and feared receiving a penalty if they spoke out on sensitive topics. The Chinese embassy refuted the claims and condemned Human Rights Watch by calling it “biased” and a “political tool for the West”. The institution had surveyed nearly 50 students and academics before expressing concerns for the worsening “atmosphere of fear” as relations between the two nations deteriorated.

Florida building collapse On 24 June 2021, a 13-storey seafront building in Surfside, Florida, partially collapsed trapping dozens of residents underneath the rubble. Reports suggest that 24 people succumbed to their injuries, while 121 are still missing. Search and rescue operations for possible survivors has been suspended to carry out a controlled demolition of the rest of the building, which was proposed over safety fears due to an approaching storm. The cause of the collapse is still undetermined but preliminary investigations indicate a warning letter being issued months before the incident.

Philippines plane crash On 4 July 2021, a Philippines air-force plane carrying 92 on-board—mostly military personnel—crashed while attempting to land at Patikul (Sulu Province), in the southern territory of the country. The Lockheed C-130 transport aircraft was called in as a reinforcement in the region where the nation’s army has been fighting a long war against the Islamic militants. So far 40 individuals have been rescued and at least 29 have lost their lives. The Military Chief, Cirilito Sobejana, stated that the plane “missed the runway trying to regain power”.

Great Barrier Reef status to be listed as “in danger” The Australian Government has demanded that UNESCO carry out a monitoring visit to the Great Barrier Reef, as the world heritage site is at risk of being classified as “in danger” as a result of climate change. The decision will be made by an international committee, who have been asked by the Morrison government to visit the reef prior to this decision. The head of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre has described monitoring missions as “not always needed”, and that the “in danger” status will be seen as a call to action. The Great Barrier Reef has previously experienced three major coral bleachings, most recently in 2020, and five leading reef scientists have backed UNESCO’s decision to place the Reef on the world heritage site’s danger list.

Sudden state outbreaks prompting lockdowns Sydney and its surrounding areas have been sent into a lockdown as the state recorded consistently high case numbers. The concern mounts over the Delta variant which is deemed a stronger and deadlier mutation of the Coronavirus. Currently, less than 10 per cent of the country is vaccinated. This comes after Victoria entered a snap lockdown for two weeks in June to stop growing numbers. Restrictions have begun easing in Victoria with interstate travel limited.

Conflicting advice on AstraZeneca With Australia’s vaccination rate still the slowest of OECD countries, Scott Morrison announced on June 28 that people under the age of 60 may receive the AstraZeneca vaccination. Doctors are now waived of an indemnity scheme which would make them liable for adverse effects, allowing patients to request it with informed consent. This goes against the advice of ATAGI and the Australian Medical Association, who have discouraged those under 60 from taking AstraZeneca due to the small risk of developing blood clots. The bulk of supplies for the Pfizer vaccine, the recommended vaccine for younger people, are estimated to arrive in October.

Britney Spears fights to end conservatorship A judge has determined that Britney Spears’ father will not be removed from the singer’s conservatorship, giving him the opportunity to continue delegating her personal assets. A conservatorship is used for those who are not considered fit to make their own decisions. In a testimony, Spears stated, “I just want my life back”, calling for an end to the legally binding arrangement. The movement to #FreeBritney has been sparked by the growing concern surrounding Spears’ welfare under the conservatorship.

Illustrated by Alice Tai

NEWS

Enforcement of UN Treaty Threatens WHO & UniMelb Collaboration Written by Megan Tan Tan A United Nations (UN) treaty enforced at the beginning of 2021 could threaten collaborations between the University of Melbourne and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

lucrative to such companies, as it is the second-highest arms importer globally, according to a 2019 ABC News report.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons has led to the WHO expressing concerns on collaborating with the University, due to its ties to weapons maker Lockheed Martin, reported The Guardian.

Ruff, who is also Co-President of the International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War, believes that opposing such companies is the responsibility of healthcare professionals. He stated that until nuclear weapons are eliminated, they will continue to pose a risk to humanity.

The Treaty, which came into effect on 22 January, “includes a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear activities.”

“That’s simply intolerable. It’s the most acute existential threat humanity and the biosphere face. It’s absolutely core, front and centre of public health,” he said.

The Peter Doherty Institute, which researches treatments for infectious diseases, including COVID-19, is supported by this collaboration. Partnered with the University and Royal Melbourne Hospital, it will also house the Australian Institutes for Infectious Diseases and Global Health. The WHO’s concerns threaten the renewal of this collaboration, which may have an impact on research in combating current and future pandemics.

He also stated that such companies are “not fit partners for a university, or really, for any social institution.” He believes that the University should no longer renew collaborations with nuclear weapons companies and cancel any established collaborations as soon as possible.

According to a University press release in 2016, the partnership between Lockheed Martin and the University was made possible through the Defense Science Institute. Lockheed Martin’s Science, Technology, Engineering Leadership & Research Laboratory is located off-campus, within close proximity to the engineering and science innovation areas. The press release stated that the collaboration would provide opportunities to students in fields like robotics, artificial intelligence, hypersonics, and sensors and communicators technologies. Associate Professor Tilman Ruff, a co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, opposes University involvement with nuclear weapons companies like Lockheed Martin. He explained that the WHO’s current guidelines on working with institutions associated with nuclear weapons manufacturers is unclear. However, the organisation has recently reviewed these guidelines, with changes expected in the next few months, according to Ruff. These changes could potentially affect current and future partnerships between the University and other organisations. Ruff explained that universities often collaborate with nuclear weapons companies due to lack of funding. On the other hand, companies like Lockheed Martin see a benefit in working with universities to further research and scout out potential hires. Such collaborations also enable the companies to establish credibility and gain social capital, further embedding themselves into the Australian political sphere. The Australian market is also

A University student, who wishes to remain anonymous, also expressed concern at the University’s ties to the nuclear weapons industry. “I feel disapproving and uneasy about the University of Melbourne’s involvement with, and as a result, outward support towards nuclear weapons,” they said. They added that they felt such an involvement “diminished” recent work at the Peter Doherty Institute. They were in favour of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, saying, “Use of nuclear arms would have massive, unhumaritan [sic] long-term consequences and thus should certainly be banned for the safety of humanity.” Ultimately, given UN enforcement of the Treaty, the University will only continue to face such issues in future. Ruff recommended that students and staff concerned about the University’s ties to the nuclear weapons industry should make their voices heard. He also said that the University should treat their concerns seriously, and be transparent about the processes behind such decisions. “There’s lots of positives of doing the right thing if people can feel proud and supported by the institution they work and study in,” he added. When asked what the University would do in response to the WHO’s concerns, a University spokesperson said, “The University of Melbourne complies with the WHO’s framework of engagement for non-state actors.”

Illustrated by Marco Sy

NEWS

Written by Charlene Phua It’s essay-writing season: arguably the most intensive and nerve-wracking time of any university student’s life. The usual drill ensues: deciphering the brief, choosing which question to write about (or coming up with your own) and then the most dreaded component. Research! To me, the idea of research has always meant going online and skimming through Google Scholar or the University of Melbourne library website, which has a wide variety of useful research papers and other scholarly debates. At most, I would look through general online search results and see if anything interesting popped up that was of credibility and relevance. Gone were the days of pulling all-nighters at the library, just to find that sacred book needed to write that essay. Why fight with everyone else over books, when the exact same information can be found online and downloaded by everyone? On top of that, there’re a whole bunch of other suggested resources I can refer to. I can get all of them with just a few clicks, upload them to Google Drive and make comments as I go along. Essay writing is tedious enough and the easier resources are to find, the better. In an increasingly digitised world, I always held the belief that hardcopy materials were heading for obsolescence anyway. If we want to find out more about something, we Google it. If we want to read for entertainment, there’re always eBooks and applications like Kindle. We now use libraries as quiet study spaces to use our laptops, not borrow books. There has also been increasing discussion about the environment, and how it’s important to ‘go green’ when we can—so online resources help in that respect. However, I encountered an assignment this semester which required me to use a variety of resources. That meant that I couldn’t rely solely on online academic journals, but had to turn to hardcopy books and memoirs of historical figures. Luckily, we were given a suggested list of books that could serve as a good starting point. I have to admit—I was overwhelmed. I remember that afternoon running all over Singapore to get the books I needed from three different libraries, all the while questioning if the information these books provided was actually of use. But I was mistaken. By reading the physical books, I got a better understanding of many things than online research papers could provide. There were deeper perspectives of historical events that affected the region, and I saw what these historical figures themselves had to say about them, making me able to better position them in history. I couldn’t explain why, but the thoughts of these historical figures being put on paper made everything seem more real and alive—like these people actually existed and weren’t just names in lecture recordings and readings. Most of all, I realised that there was a whole new world of books that could not be found online. And libraries serve the express purpose of categorising them all in a neat, accessible way. When I proofread my essay, I saw how all the different sources I found came together. If I hadn’t used online resources, the essay certainly wouldn’t have worked. But if I were to totally discard the validity of print resources because they’re less convenient, it wouldn’t have worked either. The seemingly neverending sea of words across the paper pages? They contained so many intricacies of knowledge that could not have possibly been conveyed by an online resource! And that’s when I realised—these books (thick as they were) had cemented my understanding of the material, while online resources had supplemented it. Which brings me to the questions we should be asking: Why force ourselves to choose between either print or online? Instead, how can we make both online and print resources work hand in hand? Fair to say, the time for physical books isn’t over. Libraries house so much more than tables for laptops, and there’s something undeniably unique about how physical books engage us. There’s a synergy to be found between paper and PDF, and for now we should embrace it.

Illustrated by Georgia Huang

Written by Jennifer Chance & Aeva Milos A project launched last year by the Melbourne Social Equity Institute found that university students, particularly international students, are more likely to face food insecurity than the general public. The Australian Bureau of Statistics puts the number of students struggling with this problem in Australia to be between 25 and 40 per cent.

“[I] got stuck here with no financial aid,” an international student, who wishes to remain anonymous, said. “Paying rent and paying tuition has been really difficult, so feeding myself has obviously been very difficult. It kind of falls to the wayside...of all the things you have to face it’s kind of an addon issue.”

Food insecurity occurs when a person does not have access to affordable and nutritious food. This heightens the risk of experiencing long-term negative health impacts and mental distress.

The University of Melbourne has, in part, responded to the growing crisis during COVID-19 by partnering with SecondBite to offer struggling students free meal packs. Student clubs have also regularly offered free food during their events.

The research project, launched last year with funding by the Student Services and Amenities Fee, aimed to qualitatively understand and provide solutions for students who are suffering from food insecurity. One of its main observations is that the issue of affordability has worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Young people faced the brunt of job losses last year, with around one in three workers aged 18 to 24 experiencing unemployment. As a result, plenty of students found it more difficult to sustain themselves. “[Students] lost their part-time or casual jobs, and their families back home were also facing extreme stress caused by COVID-19, [so] they could not ask for additional money for food on top of rent and tuition,” Louisa Ellis, a key researcher in the study, stated. Despite the seriousness of the issue, food insecurity is often not talked about. “[For] many students (but not all) there was a shame or stigma associated with these feelings of not being able to eat enough or healthy food,” Ellis said. As a result, there has been low awareness of food insecurity and a lack of substantial changes in affordability policies by universities and state governments. During the pandemic, the problem of not being able to afford food also took a backseat as students struggled to stay afloat and pay for other necessities.

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University Students More Likely to Face Food Insecurity

There is, however, space to grow with these current schemes. Not all students live close to campus and cannot always travel to the University to receive more affordable meals. Even more so, there is a need for these schemes to still be accessible after the immediate effects of the pandemic have subsided. “Many students spoke of how universities (in the US, England, etc.) had cheaper options on campus, such as one meal subsidised on a Wednesday that was warm and healthy from the canteen,” Ellis commented. Currently, the University also partners with many private food companies whose expensive prices are inaccessible for students. Ellis said she believes that the government also needs to take responsibility and create policies to solve the nationwide issue. “[They] should be providing more targeted support for universities through advocating and policy changes. There should be some work conducted in the mental health space to reduce the stigma around food insecurity.” While the University is set to include more on-campus classes for Semester 2, the effects of the pandemic continue to ripple through the student community, emphasising the need for local and national action to improve the wellbeing of students.

Illustrated by Joy Sha

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content warning: death

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OPINION: Danger Ambushing Opportunity? Food Delivery Drivers Need Fairer Treatment Written by Vanessa Chan & Sabrina Lee For university students, convenience, frugality and promptitude are at the heart of our being. Access to food has had to catch up to the speed of running from lectures to sport to social activities. That warm bowl of Lanzhou beef noodles in between Zoom calls or the late-night kebab on a beloved all-nighter are made mobile, accessible and on-demand by tapping a little icon on the corner of our home screens. The new circulation of gig economy drivers (who often work for multiple food delivery platforms, such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Menulog, at the same time) have become the arteries of our city—bright figures weaving in and out of the dull sea of traffic—delivering ready-made food, groceries and even everyday appliances to doorsteps. Food delivery services married with technological efficiency seem to benefit everyone. Smaller, independent restaurants get more exposure. We get quick and on-demand delivery for a reasonable price. Bluecollar workers get more work opportunities with food delivery platforms’ low barriers to entry for employment. And in the case of a global pandemic, we can have essentials brought to us, minimising our exposure to the virus. But it’s not all peaches and cream. The seamless and highly digitised process of ordering, preparation, pickup and delivery blinds us to the harsh realities behind our carefully packed pancakes and burgers: a lack of labour rights and protection for gig workers. Delivery drivers, who sign with food delivery platforms as contractors, are some of the most underpaid, overworked and unprotected workers in Australia. Since food delivery platforms have to charge lower fees to remain competitive in the market, drivers bear the brunt of our brutal society and average an income of only $10.40 an hour. An anonymous DoorDash driver told Farrago that DoorDash does “not pay for traffic conditions” and drivers are “not paid extra for wait time”. These companies fail to recognise external factors that can affect the income of drivers, who may even be overworking but still cannot cover daily their expenses. Under Australia’s labour laws, drivers working as independent contractors (instead of as employees) for food delivery platforms bars them from entitlement to minimum wage, sick leave and company insurance. The fact that a gig driver has no demarcated workplace and is individually responsible for juggling jobs gives platforms an excuse to legally deny accountability for workplace accidents. In 2020, at least five food delivery drivers died during work in Australia. Michael Kaine, National Secretary of the Transport Workers’ Union, told the ABC, “They’re dying without these companies blinking.” These deaths indicate that clarification and regulation is needed about which party—whether the insurance company, food delivery platform or a third party—the drivers and their families should reach out for compensation. The lack of reparations aside, there is also the issue of the huge power disparity between technology giants and the working

class. Uber Eats and similar platforms use algorithms to track drivers’ movements for optimised efficiency and ratings. An anonymous driver explained: “Good ratings help to get more jobs due to the algorithms of the app. If the riders receive bad ratings (below 86% satisfaction) [they] will be warned, but sometimes it’s the restaurant’s fault and sometimes you don’t know why.” This Black Mirror-esque system pits drivers against each other, putting themselves at risk of running red lights or working while unwell just to stay in the game. Our emerging techno-capitalism is brutal; it controls those at the bottom of the chain, driving them to dangerous and vulnerable situations. COVID-19 has brought the treatment of gig delivery drivers to light. In a New York Times article, delivery driver Mariah Mitchell described herself and her colleagues as “first responders” during the pandemic. Some food delivery platforms have become more aware about creating a safe work environment. For example, Deliveroo pays for drivers’ purchasing of personal COVID-19 protections, while Uber Eats reimburses drivers if they have to isolate. But looking forward, these companies must come up with policies to improve drivers’ wellbeing and address issues such as not being compensated for extra time spent in traffic, which may be resolved by introducing a work hours tracking system. So why don’t we just make drivers the employees of specific delivery platforms to eliminate these issues? Most drivers, when asked, appreciated the flexibility and low entry barrier that typical employment doesn’t give them. Julian, a Deliveroo driver, said that “being an employee means a rider suddenly needs to show up for work at a set time every day… and can’t work for two companies.” Going back to the old ways of takeaway isn’t an option either— like it or not, we have developed a real taste for this type of convenience. The problem is that public policy and ethics haven’t kept up to speed with rapidly developing technology. Ultimately, delivery platforms need to provide accountability and humanity to gig workers. One possible resolution could be having a third-party mediator. At the same time, delivery platforms must also look at themselves and the moral implications of their systems—instead of segregating and exploiting, technology must be a force to build. Ramisa, a University of Melbourne student and loyal customer of food delivery platforms, said that these companies are “employing the riders but not taking the responsibility for them”. And it’s fair to say that we, as consumers, have adopted this same attitude. Behind the bites of your burger is an industry built on injustice and exploitation. So every time you pass a driver, think twice about how you are following traffic rules. Every time an order takes too long, reconsider leaving that bad review. As students, sympathy and tolerance is the least we can do.

Illustrated by Cathy Chen

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content warning: xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism

The 8-Year Lockdown Written by Donna Burroughs 701 Swanston Street, Melbourne—The Park Hotel. Trams rush by, along with students walking briskly on the pavement next to an unending wave of motorists. Two minutes to the left, students of the University of Melbourne flicker in and out of their classes on the Parkville campus. To the right, is a scene of bustling restaurants and bars where Melburnians freely pour drinks and hop from venue to venue each night. The outside freedom stands in stark contrast to the Park Hotel. Around 35 refugees are imprisoned in the building, and most of them have been in detention for around eight years. They have committed no crimes. The men in the building were brought to Australia under the now-repealed Medevac legislation, that allowed refugees detained offshore to come to Australia for medical treatment in 2019. However, this movement to Australia did not coincide with any increased freedom. Their liberties are more restricted than those of Melburnians during the notoriously strict second lockdown of 2020. The ability to do one’s own shopping, or take daily exercise anywhere in a 5km radius, is a luxury not afforded to the men in the Park Hotel. Despite our lived experience with the pains of lockdown, Australians remain mostly apathetic towards the government’s immigration policies that enable such imprisonment, which were recently changed to allow indefinite detention of refugees by the federal government. According to the Department of Home Affairs, Australians value “freedom and dignity of the individual…commitment to the rule of law...compassion for those in need.” In primary school, young Australians are taught to sing “for those who’ve come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share.” Robbing innocent people of almost a decade of their life is evidently not congruent with these sentiments, yet the politicians responsible continue to be re-elected. Why? Australia is defined by its borders; the way we slammed international borders shut without hesitation in response to COVID-19 should come as no surprise. In 2013, the Rudd Labor government introduced a hardline ban on entry to Australia

against people seeking asylum by boat. They were to be transported offshore and would never settle in Australia. Successive Liberal governments’ have upheld this policy. This legislation was justified by reference to the need for secure, strong borders, and the corresponding implication that internal prosperity is dependent on having tough external borders. Politicians inflamed xenophobic tendencies latent in the public by portraying refugees as threats to social and economic stability, but at the same time portrayed themselves as heroic in the fight against the allegedly unconscionable crime of people smuggling. This government’s stringent policies have been condemned as not only immoral, but also illegal—evidently, there’s more at stake than a practical need for robust border control. So, while it might not be worth breaking international law for the sake of security, the proposition becomes tempting when votes are at stake. The Liberals have repeatedly inflamed xenophobic rhetoric to gain votes, portraying refugees as the causes of various social woes, from low wages to congested roads. This sort of racist scapegoating isn’t new. The impacts of neoliberalism were realised in Australia in the late 1980s and 1990s, irrevocably changing the economy in such a way that left blue-collar workers “exposed to the winds of globalisaton,” in the words Denis Muller for Meanjin. Politicians, naturally, would not accept blame for the fallout; disenfranchisement and economic turbulence had to become someone else’s fault. The ‘Other-ness’ of migrants, refugees in particular; their non-white skin, unfamiliar accents, and different cultures, made them the perfect scapegoats in a country founded on racism. That Australia, a country founded on the persecution of Indigenous peoples, should have a racism issue ready for politicians to exploit, is not surprising. Formerly directed primarily toward non-Anglo-Saxon Europeans and Asians, based on cultural and racial grounds, a more specific racist Islamophobia took root in the body politic in the early 2000s, and was increasingly amplified during the 2010s, particularly under the leadership of Tony Abbot. Australian racism evolved, with religion becoming a larger factor in discrimination. Flared by incendiary words of media outlets, the threat of terrorism

Photograph by Jennifer Chance

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and the mere existence of Islam were portrayed to be inextricably linked. As Muller wrote, asylum seekers are “equated with Muslims, Muslims with terrorism and therefore asylum seekers with terrorism.” Such links are demonstrably, and obviously, untrue, and proper education has been found to decrease racist attitudes. But state-sanctioned Islamophobia has merely taken a pause, the government distracted by other issues, rather than reversed. No apologies have been issued for blatantly racist rhetoric, the zero-tolerance policy is still in place, the coronavirus pandemic has only flared xenophobic and isolationist tendencies latent within society, and dozens of innocent men remain imprisoned in an innocuous looking hotel in the heart of the city. Protests take place both inside and outside the Park Hotel. Inside, refugees are locked indoors for 23 hours a day. They have no clue when they will be free to leave, no privacy, or appropriate psychological and medical support. At least lockeddown Melburnians used daily cases as an indication of when they might be allowed to leave their homes; refugees have no such luxury. Frequent posts are made to the Instagram page @our_v_o_i_c_e, showing images of those locked inside holding signs of protest: “Freedom where are you?”, “Let us live like your family”, and “Enough is enough.” From the outside, refugee groups and activists campaign to raise awareness and show solidarity. Every day, activists gather in front of the Park Hotel, holding signs of protest. Bonds are forged between the inside and outside; campaigners’ wave to the men in the building above and communicate with them frequently over the phone. One activist, Rachael, spoke the importance of solidarity when talking about the importance of daily protests: “A big reason for the protests is so you can show solidarity… There’s something to be said about just showing up and making it known that people care.” The protests also work towards putting pressure on the government, by helping “maintain the momentum of a protest

atmosphere”, raising awareness and ensuring the refugees are not forgotten. These tactics have proved successful. On January 21, 2021, around thirty refugees were released from detention in Victoria. One of them, Mostafa Azimitabar, described the moment he received his temporary visa to the ABC as “the most beautiful moment in [his] life.” The temporary visas, however, do not provide certainty. When Farhad Bandesh was released from detention and was granted a temporary visa, he jumped headfirst into his new life. But his freedom remains uncertain. The temporary visa, he told The Guardian, “makes everything hard…you cannot think about your business or your job or your home…I need a permanent home in Australia.” As of March 21, 1,223 refugees are being processed in Australia. The federal government shows no signs of changing course, as shown by their treatment of the Biloela family, and by giving themselves the right to indefinitely detain refugees. Melburnians haved lived through almost a year of lockdown. It is now imperative that those who have lived under worse conditions for nine years are not forgotten, nor our right as members of a free society to protest against injustice. Daily protests take place outside The Park Hotel every 5:30pm on weekdays, and 3:00pm on weekends. Every Wednesday there are protests outside the Home Affairs Office at 2 Lonsdale Street from 12:30–1:30pm. To get involved with fellow students, contact the Melbourne Students for Refugees Society, an affiliated UMSU club. Instagram accounts with information and resources for supporting refugees: @amnestyrefugee @riserefugee @fighttogetherforjustice @asrc1

Photograph by Jennifer Chance

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Stop the Liberals, Join the Campaign Against the Robert Menzies Institute! Written by Monica Sestito & Brendan Laws The federal government, led by the Liberal Party, is bludgeoning universities. Since the onset of the pandemic, they have excluded thousands of university workers from JobKeeper, ramped up fees for select undergraduate courses while slashing funding for tertiary education, and, in the latest federal budget, abandoned universities. They have left staff and students out to dry, because when profits fall, university management does not foot the bill. We do.

The RMI’s board clearly demonstrates the political influence of the MRC and why there is no doubt this institute will operate as a hub of conservatism on campus. At the helm is Georgina Downer, an avid Trump supporter and part of one of Australia’s most prominent conservative families. She has asserted on the record that Australia’s woefully inadequate social welfare system is in fact “overly generous”. She has also argued for the abolition of not only penalty rates, but even the minimum wage itself.

To add insult to injury, the far right of this very government and their business cronies are working to implant a conservative bastion on our campus: the Robert Menzies Institute (RMI). Set to officially open in the East Wing of Old Quad this September, the RMI postures as a research centre, library, and museum honouring Robert Menzies , the architect of the Liberal Party.

Beside her is Peta Credlin, Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff and superstar of the right-wing propaganda machine, Sky News. In a thinly veiled racist tirade, she blamed the outbreak of a COVID-19 cluster in Coburg on poorly “assimilated” Muslim and South Sudanese communities celebrating Eid and flouting health measures (which Credlin herself stringently opposes).

The institute is attempting to hide its reactionary agenda behind the lustre of Australia’s longest running prime minister, but Menzies was no hero. He was a fervent imperialist and Anglophile—the gentlest description of his racism— championing the White Australia policy, South African apartheid, and indeed Nazi Germany. When workers boycotted the sale of military supplies to Japan, he threatened them with mass sackings, ensuring his corporate cronies profited from the Japanese invasion of China. He then sent thousands of ordinary people into bloodbaths in Korea and Vietnam and, all the while, played the ultimate McCarthyite Cold War warrior determined to outlaw the Communist Party and use this as a basis to persecute his political opponents. This is reason enough to rail against the RMI, but the sanitising of Menzies’ legacy is only half the story.

The interference of such a conservative think tank would not be possible without the consent of the unelected, unaccountable corporate executives running universities. The board at the University of Melbourne readily embraced the $7.5 million in funding that the MRC dangled their way, even though staff and students were excluded from the decision-making process. As such, the RMI encapsulates the corporatisation endemic to universities—only this time, our education and working conditions are not subordinate to fossil fuel and weapons industries, but to the right wing of the Liberal Party.

Though universities often hold archival material related to prime ministers (as the University of Melbourne does for Menzies and Malcolm Fraser), or host prime ministerial institutes, the creation of the RMI is unique. No other prime ministerial library within an Australian university is sponsored by an external and explicitly partisan think tank in the same way as the RMI. This think tank is the Menzies Research Centre (MRC), a hardcore conservative centre backed by the far right of the Liberal Party. Despite packaging itself in the vague language of liberalism (purporting to stand for a “free, just and prosperous Australia”), the MRC is a den of reactionary politics. The ‘research’ it produces, events it organises, and content it promotes, reveal an unabashedly anti-union and socially conservative political agenda. In 2018 they produced the report, Casual lies: busting the myths about flexible employment, which claims the trade union movement’s fight against casualisation is actually anti-worker. They actively promote the book, Cancel Culture and the Left’s Long March, an extended diatribe against the indoctrination of school children by a hegemonic, “cultural Marxist” agenda of feminism, gender fluidity, unionism, multiculturalism, and Indigenous history. They even hosted the Gender Agenda event to convince people that meritocracy works (for a few worthy women, that is) and that shielding Liberal Party women from criticism is one of the most important issues in combatting sexism––not systemic inequality.

This is not the first time that conservative forces have tried to broker a deal behind closed doors to carve out a space of influence in Australian universities. Consider the recent controversy over the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation, which intended to design and fund an undergraduate arts degree, “not merely about Western civilisation but in favour of it,” as Tony Abbott put it. This affront to students and staff was met with trenchant resistance from below, something we must learn from as we challenge the Menzies Institute. It was not by deferring to bureaucratic processes of university governance, depoliticising inherently political issues, or readily embracing compromise, that students and staff managed to fight off the Ramsay Centre at the University of Sydney and the University of Queensland. It was instead by building radical democracy within the student body, and a mass campaign galvanising workers and students, that these bastions of conservatism were thwarted. This is what we need to build at the University of Melbourne, and we need your help. Sign the open letter against the Robert Menzies Institute here:https://stopmenziesinstitute.wordpress.com/open-letterto-stop-the-robert-menzies-institute/ To join the campaign against the Menzies Institute, see: https://www.facebook.com/NoMenziesInstitute or contact stopmenziesinstitute@gmail.com.

Photo Source: National Library of Australia

content warning: transphobia

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Petition Calls for Review of “Transphobic” Melbourne University Subject Written by Mimi Hoffman

A petition has been launched by the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) Queer Political Action Collective calling for the review of the second year Winter Philosophy subject Feminism, over concerns that the subject includes transphobic rhetoric. The petition outlines concerns over the subject’s content, as well as the conduct of teaching staff, which the UMSU Queer Political Action Collective claims is a violation of the Student Charter. Their demand for the review of the subject centres on beliefs that its continuation would be harmful to the welfare of Transgender, Intersex and Gender Diverse (TIGD) students. “What we are demanding... is that the subject is suspended until it undergoes this formal review. One of the preliminary recommendations is to change the subject leadership. We don’t necessarily want the whole subject to be scrapped because it could be a good subject,” stated UMSU Queer Officer, Amy Bright. “Dr. Holly Lawford-Smith is the head of the subject and we understand that she has a pretty strong public platform on which she engages in hate speech.” Earlier this year, Dr. Lawford-Smith launched a website where cis-women were able to anonymously comment on times when their experience in “women-only” spaces was impacted by the inclusion of transgender women. The website was labelled “transphobic” by fellow University of Melbourne lecturer Dr. Hannah McCann. Dr. Lawford-Smith finds the current allegations in the petition to be “pretty outrageous” and said, “Philosophy is all about asking questions about controversial things… the issues explored throughout the subject are extremely difficult, highly contested social issues, but ones that we should be talking about.” Srishti Chatterjee, the UMSU Women’s Officerand a trans student, disagrees with Dr. Lawford-Smith’s belief. “After a point of time you need to stop talking about this as a political debate because the identity and the experience of trans people is not a contest.” They went on to say that the subject is “very hurtful and causing trauma, pain and grief to so many.” One of Bright’s and Chatterjee’s main concerns is the readings that Dr. Lawford Smith chose to include in the subject. While Dr. Lawford Smith has included some trans affirmative pieces, Bright takes particular issue with the inclusion of “very clearly transphobic pieces” by contentious authors, Sheila Jeffreys and Janice Raymond. Geraldine Fela, a History PhD candidate at Monash University who writes on LGBTIQ experiences, believes that a blanket ban should not be put on the inclusion of Raymond or Jeffrey’s texts

in the Feminism reading list. However, she emphasised that the context in which they are taught matters. “Does it concern me that an academic who uses their public platform to campaign against trans rights, lining up with right-wing, anti-trans activists like Mark Latham, and sexist commentators like Peta Credlin, is teaching a course called Feminism that promotes these texts? Absolutely.” So, given its growing criticism, how did this subject get approved in the first place? A spokesperson for the University of Melbourne stated that “Every new subject proposal within the Faculty of Arts goes through a rigorous approval process. A student representative from the UMSU is a member of the BA Course Standing Committee, where new undergraduate subject proposals are assessed.” This approval process was criticised by Bright, who argued that “if this subject has gotten through in its current state, then it cannot be that rigorous.” She attributed the subject’s approval to the lack of trans representation in these high decision-making bodies. “I would say that having one student representative on the committee, who is most likely not trans or gender diverse, is not a reliable check and balance.” However, she has hope that the petition will lead to the review of the subject . “I do believe it will happen. We are meeting with the Dean of Arts [Professor Russell Goulbourne] who is sympathetic to the cause… I don’t think he would have much problem with it going to a review.” Dr. Lawford-Smith claimed that “it would be absolutely outrageous and unprecedented for a course that has gone through all of the layers of University bureaucracy to get approved… to then get pulled.” She added, “if they tried to do an ideological review of my subject because a small group of student activists do not like it… then that would open up a lot of courses on campus to be reviewed.” Bright believes that reviewing the subject is the “easy” part, but for the institution to “confront a culture that has allowed and essentially enabled the University of Melbourne to become a breeding ground for trans-exclusionary radical feminists (TERF) ideology… that’s much harder.” Despite the petition receiving over 400 signatures, the subject took place during the University of Melbourne’s Winter break, and the call for its review still remains.

Photograph by Finley Tobin

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VCA Students Lodging Complaint to Victorian Ombudsman in Fight for Fee Relief Written by Joanna Guelas Students of the Victorian College of the Arts (VCA) are planning to lodge a formal complaint to the Victorian Ombudsman about the University of Melbourne’s alleged failure to provide the quality of education promised to them. Students have turned to the Ombudsman for help with their fee relief campaign as they believe they have been unsupported and silenced by the University. This comes after the University Academic Registrar twice dismissed a formal grievance lodged by William Hall, a VCA Acting student, on behalf of students undertaking the Acting Lab 1 subject. The grievance was lodged in late December 2020 following almost an entire year of practical Acting subjects taught via Zoom as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Students believe that the online delivery provided by the College prevented learning outcomes outlined in the University Handbook from being achieved. Prior to the pandemic, the Acting Lab 1 unit provided students with a strong physical exploration of Shakespeare and clown-work. Classes began at 9am and concluded at 1pm with students later being in rehearsal rooms at 2pm until 6pm. The original subject outline described 16 contact

hours per week, though student timetables indicated 28 contact hours needed for completion of the unit. The transition to online learning saw contact hours drop significantly with lessons failing to fulfil the original time slot. Four hour Shakespeare rehearsals were often reduced to small 15-20 minute meetings, while student attendance also dropped due to lack of space and resources. For students of the VCA, the decisions carried out by the University Chancellery make them accountable for the substandard education that they experienced last year. “Ultimately, we feel we have been cheated of the true University of Melbourne experience,” read the grievance letter lodged to the Academic Registrar. “There is no doubt that our educational experience was severely diminished this past semester.” After the initial dismissal of the complaint, Hall lodged an appeal and an investigation was instigated by the University. This investigation saw the Academic Registrar approach the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music and ask if they believed that the teaching provided was adequate. The Faculty then responded by producing their own

Photo Source: William Hall

The investigation also utilised excerpts from reflective journals, a required assignment submission, from students and clips from ‘Thank You’ videos addressed to VCA staff to further justify their teaching quality. Hall asserts that the University had taken lines from the reflective journals out of context and printed them to indicate that students were indeed satisfied with the subject quality. Moreover, the ‘Thank You’ videos were deeply personal messages recorded and meant only for the directors of the Shakespeare online performances. The gratitude expressed within those videos were not reflections on the subject delivery but a personal message to convey their appreciation to the directors for their work during a pandemic. The results of the Faculty’s investigation were then sent to the Academic Registrar who saw the Faculty’s positive evaluation of their own work and therefore dismissed the complaint lodged by VCA students. “The online classes provided were of at least an equivalent standard to their face-to-face versions, and the necessary knowledge and skills were taught,” read the Faculty report.

Hall says that this is not enough, and his complaint was not alone in the push for fee relief. 2020 UMSU Southbank Co-ordinators Hayden Williams and Verity Crane filed their own formal letter on behalf of Fine Arts undergraduate students to Tony Smith, Interim Head of Theatre, last April asking for their advocacy and solidarity in their campaign.

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investigation where they asked staff to evaluate their work as teachers without consulting students. A majority of the staff asserted that they believed that their teaching last year online was up to the standard required.

Student representatives also met throughout last year with Smith but were asked not to express their grievances directly to staff as it may give the impression that they were failing. In addition, students hosted online events of collective action to publicly call for fee relief having continued to feel aggrieved by how the University has responded to their requests. Hall hopes of receiving a fair and considerate investigation by the Ombudsman for the fee relief campaign. “I think they’re [the University] gutless. I think their priorities don’t lie with students,” said Hall. “This is a unique place, but it needs to be fought for.”

(This piece was originally published online).

Many students felt frustrated, hurt, and betrayed that the University chose to use their assignment submissions and personal messages as evidence against them to prove that there was satisfaction with the subject. Hall claims that it provided a “wild misrepresentation of what students were actually writing”. One journal excerpt cited in the report is from Hugo Gutteridge who undertook studies in Shakespeare last year. The excerpt used for the report reads: “I had a lot of fun figuring out how we could make the shots look more interesting or how we could use the multi locational arrangement of the characters work for the story … Working with my fellow actors was amazing also because we all tried to be as caring, respectful and enthusiastic as we could be in the circumstances.” However, Gutteridge’s entire statement encompasses his feelings of discontentment studying Acting online. “I guess in the end I was disappointed,” he wrote. “I just wonder at why it is necessary, why they chose to do a bastardized version of the degree instead of starting in July.” Hall’s second appeal was dismissed again without a hearing in front of the Academic Board by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic). Despite this, the spokesperson for the University said that “concerns raised through the Student Complaints and Grievances Policy are taken seriously and are fully considered”. “We have continued to monitor our services closely through the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling further support for students who continue to face very challenging circumstances, and are working hard to ensure they are aware of all the support services available to them,” said the spokesperson.

Photo Source: William Hall

ART 22

Illustrated by Birdy Carmen

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Scenes from the Supermarket Written by Connor Millsom Working in The Supermarket will dispel the myth that an hour contains 60 minutes. Like a casino, it is full of space, empty of time; no clocks, no sunlight, no centre. As a customer entering The Supermarket, you are to walk a predetermined path through the produce, deli, bakery, and meat departments before the dairy and grocery sections open into two alternate paths. The paths ultimately fold back into each other, producing a fake labyrinth that would even make Borges a little proud. But I don’t think the path is inherently nefarious, built to trap or disorientate. It is merely the best way for a customer to spend their time, as dictated by the authors of its design. Time as currency. Currency, the thing you sacrifice time to acquire. Time, which itself becomes incalculable when the electric lights cannot die and there’s no clock to consult. And the fluorescent lights do not go out, believe me. I’ve worked a lot of nights here and they feel just like the days. The whiteblue glow is cast across every surface so there’s barely even a shadow. There is the omnipresent buzzing of the radio, which perverts every one of the store’s 4,972 square metres like the asshole who bothers the girls at the checkouts. The radio is often playing Jessie J’s Price Tag as he makes his rounds past every female employee on the shop floor: “It’s not about the money, money, money…” The Supermarket is a surreal movie set, complete with lights, sounds, cameras, and most importantly, actors. Everyone is being filmed, has been filmed always. But how many times can one employee ask another “how’s it going?” and receive, “you know, living the dream,” before the audience gets bored? How long will The Supermarket tolerate the asshole so long as he faithfully consumes its groceries? How long until you give up reading? Don’t you know that this is a waste of time? I know it is: I am the author of its design. It will collapse before it will finish. I will collapse before I finish.

* One day I’m on break in an outside courtyard with my friend Sam, where the slanting sunbeams are bouncing across metal tables and chairs like stage lights. A little to our right, a man on a phone call says, “we’re probably about metres away from each other, but I can’t see ya,” and I write that down. The Supermarket is surrounded by lots of other shops filled with people my age or younger. Jobs are few in our increasingly gentrified town, which makes it both a privilege to work at The Supermarket, and supremely contradictory. The Supermarket belongs to a multi-billion dollar company, but it caters to the needs of the working class more than the endless stream of breweries, cafes, and boutiques that open each year, many of which pay lower than minimum wage, cash-in-hand. Sam sighs, looks up from her phone, asks me what I’m thinking about. “Just wanna sleep,” I reply, and she laughs a little. It’s time to go back. It can be difficult to resist misanthropy working a minimum wage job. Difficult to behave like somebody I am not, see the same people, do the same thing many times over. It’s exhausting for the body and the mind. I estimate that I can move between 800 and 1000 litres of milk and a few hundred kilograms of dairy products, each hour, on good days. When I first started here,

Illustrated by Mochen Tang

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I would end my shifts with bloody nail beds, the nails pressed back into my fingers by hard cardboard. This is a lot for any body, but the mind is more susceptible; we are living in the attention economy, after all. Our senses are being competed for, through eyes, ears, and noses. The casino part of The Supermarket knows this, of course. Every product is differentiated, but many are differentiated to distract from the product itself. Shopping becomes gambling when advertisements read ‘Millions of $1000 Instant Wins!’ and ‘One in 100 Wins!’ It is a gamble to buy something we’ve never eaten before, to stack too much in our shallow trolley, or to talk to the pretty girl at the pharmacy. So how does anyone make a million choices every day and stay sane?

* One thing you become accustomed to are the customers. One wears his high-vis yellow work jumper every day even though he lost his job ten years ago to an injury. Another, with a rounded Italian accent, always asks where something is just to have words to say and to hear words in return. But really, he always knows exactly where to go for what he wants. Another will hold my shoulder, just for a second, and tell me to “take care of myself”. The older they are, the more they’ll say, and the more they’ll need to hear something. I was clocking the end of my shift in the tearoom last week when Carmen from the checkouts received a phone call: her house had sold. The price, much larger than she or any of us expected, limped out of her mouth as a question. Whoever was on the phone confirmed it, and she squeaked.

[Vanessa and Jules, tearoom right]

Vanessa (produce department): You could retire on that! Jules (deli department): She won’t though, will she. [An invisible cue moves between their faces, travelling by eyes—they both know that Carmen doesn’t work here because she has to. It might be a consequence of habit, or an attachment to the job. Either way, the little ‘20’ label on her badge, meaning 20 years of employment here at The Supermarket, will only grow] [Connor, tearoom left, opens the door to leave. Dolly Parton’s ‘9 To 5’ fades in on the in-store radio] Carmen: I’ve got to call my sister. She won’t believe this. Bloody hell. I don’t believe it. Vanessa: Anyone for the bottle-o? [Jules laughs]

[Nobody disagrees. The employees rise to return to their departments] [Exit Connor]

Illustrated by Mochen Tang

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content warning: mentions of blood, violence, sex, misogyny and suicide

Written by Nishtha Banavalikar Anna Biller’s The Love Witch (2017) waxes poetic about the 1960s, sporting an aesthetic that pays tribute to the iconic low-budget horror films of the period. The aspect ratio is altered, the lens is rose-coloured and overwhelmingly pastel, and the voice of our female lead Elaine drips with honey like an incantation, in the style of the quintessential Hollywood actresses of her time. Everything is delicately assembled and set up, creating the perfect backdrop for her. At a time when conversations about feminism and equality were peaking, Elaine is a woman who simply wants to embody love, and thinks this means serving a man and loving him wholly. The film almost mocks her for it, with friends calling her ‘brainwashed’, but she’s too far gone to heed their words, holding onto some hopeful notion of being loved back. The film plays like one big woozy trip as we watch her descend into chaos, a woman so slavishly devoted to love that she becomes a carcass of a person. The Love Witch is a visual experience. Shot in 35mm, it plays like a technicolour dream, a hallucinogenic that marries absurdity and sincerity in its messaging. Elaine is a stunning woman of vintage glamour; pale skin with blood-red lips and mesmerising blue eyeshadow. She looks like she walked straight out of a fairytale and takes meticulous care of her appearance, morphing into desirable ‘types’ of women daily. Escaping from San Francisco in a blood-red 1960s convertible, we see her drive carelessly through hills, chain smoking as memories of her dead ex-husband flash on the screen. She tells us innocently that since the heartbreak she’s been ‘cured’, but still has ‘intrusive thoughts’ since her husband left her, a failed romance she narrates over the visage of a man collapsed after drinking from a poisoned goblet. She’s uniquely terrible; a serial killer by the end of the film who, though quite obviously in a horror film, insists she is the protagonist of a fairytale romance. When Elaine and her husband Jerry got divorced, she was crushed and only saved by indoctrination into a witches’ coven run by satanists who specialise in ‘love magic’. The film doesn’t hold any inherent commentary on witchcraft or the occult but rather uses them as tools to explore other viewpoints. “Men are very fragile,” she bemoans, smoking cigarette after cigarette. “They can get crushed down if you assert yourself in any way. You have to be very tricky.” It’s in this sense that the film layers sentiments of witchcraft and magic as antithetical to the Man; a tool of mischief that is the only way a woman can survive while protecting male fragility. The aesthetic doubles as not only a beautiful, voyeuristic experience for the viewer but also as a representation of a small, inoculated society where witchcraft runs unchecked, and of Elaine’s obsession with protecting her fairytale. The girl-boss coven of satanists Elaine joins sees women as goddesses, unable to be equal to men because they are inherently above them. “They teach us that a normative

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The Love Witch: Your Ultimate Fantasy human being is a hyper-rationalist stoic male, and that women’s emotions and intuitions are illnesses that need to be cured. We believe men and women are different and true equality lies in that difference.” It’s a refreshing philosophy, quite different from many ‘equal rights’ spiels that litter performative films and media. Elaine, however, never seems to fully fall into this; instead, she holds onto her dream of “being carried off by a prince on a white horse” - one she believes is only achievable when she gives a man everything they want. When asked by her neighbour Trish, ‘what about what we want?’—she dismisses the question. She’s simply interested in the coven’s teaching of “sex magic” as a way to create ‘love magic’. The film toys with the subversive, suggesting that the ‘feminist’ view for a woman—inserting one’s self into the typical male role isn’t true equality and not what every woman wants. But still, the patriarchy is harmful and persists, even for women who wish to exist in its traditional roles. What’s brilliant about The Love Witch is the refreshinging tone and thrum of sincerity that runs deep throughout all the scenes of sex, drugs and glamour. It’s a product of the female gaze for once; Elaine never feels like an object for the camera lens but rather a genuine subject. Even when she naked and somewhat vulnerable, she’s always in control and to us, the audience, she is never less than Elaine. None of the other sexual women are anything lesser, either. The dancers who strip on stage for men are still human in their time on camera. In this respect, Elaine is a fantasy both for men and women—those moments when she is in control are mesmerising and pleasurable to watch in and amongst the softness and glamour of the world. Stylistically, the characters talk in a stilted fashion and have quite stiff mannerisms, emblematic of the ‘bad movies’ the film draws upon. The cheesiness and gaffe enhances the experience. The camera is hardly subtle with slow turns and zoom-ins, emphasising the sense of performance as we watch characters on a stage in their own lives. She finds her first victim in a park, meeting his eyes and immediately bewitching him. He takes her to his cabin in the woods where she insists on cooking him dinner first, attending to all his needs and babying him. She answers his every question perfectly, as though she were straight out of his dreams. She drugs his drink and strips for him, a scene that is testament to the female gaze even though she’s completely naked and he’s fully clothed, it’s evident that she’s the one with all the power. They sleep together and she holds him as he cries, overwhelmed with the emotions her magic releases as he feels understood for the first time in his life by her acting. He wails for her and she holds unti she becomes too tired and leaves. “What a pussy. What a baby. (continued over page...)

Illustrated by Tereza Ljubicic

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(...continued from previous page) I thought I’d found a real man but he’s just a little girl.” She comes back to him after a while to find him dead of heart failure; an interesting commentary on the limitations of a man’s heart. Structurally, the film ambles. The plot is unclear until the end where Elaine’s fate is ‘fulfilled’ ;and she’s ‘at peace’ for the first time in her life. Before this, we see her try and fail to find love again and again, carrying on with her life until another opportunity arises. There’s no overarching plot: the uneasiness seemingly implies something dark and unsettling at play but it doesn’t resolve into anything climactic. Rather, it follows Elaine through to her final moment. It’s quite reflective of the director’s own desires for creating a film about women, or rather, the complex experiences and conflicting existence of women. In a way, I can see the plot as trying to explain to men what it’s like to date as a woman; contradicting the popular notion that beautiful women have it easy because they can get whatever man they want while disregarding the often humiliating and dehumanising ordeal of actually dating men. Elaine’s representation of a fantasy for men and women is explored further when her neighbour Trish sneaks into her house. Having lost her husband after he died by suicide— another conseuquence of heartbreak from being another one of Elaine’s victims—she enters Elaine’s house to return something of hers. There she’s taken in by the array of makeup and accessories, and overcome by temptation, dresses herself to look like her. The scene reflects both Trish beautifying herself out of a need to feel better and also to mirror Elaine; the type of woman who her husband killed himself over. She feels strong, and powerful for a moment, and this is enough for her to turn Elaine into the police.

He calls her a monster and she’s devastated. “All my life I’ve been tossed in the garbage except when men wanted to use my body. So I decided to find my own power and I found that power through witchcraft. That means I take what I need from men and not the other way around.” When the town finds out she was tied to the other men’s deaths they attack her and he saves her, returning to her apartment. She thinks she’s won him over again and offers him a drink, but he throws it onto the floor. She realises the scene mirrors what she painted weeks ago; a split drink, a man dressed in white below her, bleeding out as she holds a dagger to his heart. She tries to bewitch him with her eyes but his gaze is cold; all she sees inside of him is his skeleton and it’s unbearable for her. To protect her fairytale fantasy she fulfills her destiny and murders him. “Only men make us work so hard for love… If you would only love us for ourselves… You won’t.” The film leaves us with the image of Elaine clutching a knife dripping with blood close to her chest in a look of what can only inexplicably be relief. It’s as though she has somehow freed herself of her own psyche - the internalised dream and vision she had for herself that became violent. Ultimately, The Love Witch is an uneasy, hypervisual descent into the chaos and trauma of a woman’s desire to be loved like a person. It combines camp and classicism, oozing sensuality and femininity. Everything from the soft colours to the wardrobes to the set design just screams female gaze, with more being said in scenes without any dialogue than with it. It’s incredibly memorable and horrifying, watching a woman turned monster teeter between apathy and emotional intensity, resulting in a serial killer rom-com fusion that violently delights the audience.

Elaine is almost every modern representation of the femme fatale: hot, serial killer girl-boss, aware of the advantages of her sexuality and knowing how to use them. She’s a self-titled expert in male parapsychology, thoroughly experienced in the act of seducing men by performing their fantasies. For every man she seduces in the film, she becomes what they want—a tempting adulteress for one and a horse-riding girl next door for another. It’s intrinsic to her to become something for the men she wants—to become less of herself for love. This is the crux of her philosophical conflict, a girl who has always dreamed of a fairytale medieval aesthetic romance but traumatised by the reality of actually living by them. She has ingested patriarchal rhetoric for so long that she intertwines her pleasure in seeking and acquiring love with the pain that comes from the misogyny of it, pleasuring herself whilst hateful men’s voices echo in her mind. Her husband’s, “I love you Elaine, but dinner was late three times this week and the house is a pigsty. It’s embarrassing.” Her father’s, “I have a crazy bitch for a daughter. If you’re not crazy you’re stupid. You could lose a few pounds.” Elaine’s final victim is her undoing. He’s a square-jawed policeman who believes love makes a man ‘soft’. They are complete opposites, yet they perform their roles for each other perfectly. Elaine is absolutely smitten and, believing he is her fate, she doesn’t realise he’s planning on arresting her.

Written by Nishtha Banavalikar

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Illustrated by Jasmine Pierce

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content warning: racism

Pseudoscience Sells: Health is not only for rich white women Written by Astri Sanjaya

What is it with Gwyneth Paltrow and vaginas? From a candle that smells like her vagina, to vaginal jade eggs and vaginal steaming, she brings up taboo topics and masquerades as a lifestyle expert just for recommending eccentric products. While Paltrow is an actress and an entrepreneur, she’s definitely not a doctor or scientist. She raves about products for her own profit, similar to other wellness companies that prioritise sales over the health of their customers. Lured in by influencers’ testimonies, attractive packaging, and false promises, customers unknowingly opt for pseudoscience; a system of thought or a theory that is not formed in a scientific way. People turn to wellness and lifestyle brands when health bills and pharmaceutical costs rise off the charts. This has led to the recent boom of the $4.5 trillion global wellness economy, as reported by the Global Wellness Institute. While the industry‘s growth may be good for the economy, consumers are left to face a grim reality. The industry reveals how money takes precedence over universal health by legitimising pseudoscience and discriminating against minorities. Various wellness companies are based on myths that encourage an unquestioning reliance on their expertise and thus a longterm commitment to purchasing their commercial health ‘treatments’. Celebrities like Paltrow build credibility by appearing relatable and vulnerable, simulating trust akin to a professional doctor-patient relationship. Although they may throw scientific jargon here and there, ‘opinions’ are not ‘facts’ and their ‘healing journey’ remains difficult to verify. The danger lies where pseudoscience is commodified as consumers may not know whether they’re getting their money’s worth until they actually buy the products. Entrepreneurs benefit from consumerist behaviours, rather than healthy bodies and minds, so pardon them for trying to break your bank by getting you hooked on supplements and anti-aging serums (spoiler: nothing will stop you from aging). They’ll invent problems you never thought you had (and chances are you don’t) but it’s their job to come up with solutions that you think are imperative to try. The wellness industry is not immune to racism; in fact, it perpetuates the exclusion of BIPOC. Privileged, white women are the industry demographic, fawned over and catered to by companies. Step foot into a yoga class and you’ll find it to be overwhelmingly white, as wellness companies and participants alike anticipate them to be. The lack of diversity research in this matter speaks volumes, despite plentiful accounts of minorities sharing their exclusionary experiences, showing how insignificant they are in the eyes of the industry. Moreover, western yoga companies and consumers are unaware of what they are branding and buying. The way westerners have culturally appropriated and white-washed yoga is problematic; they ignore its Northern Indian roots which date back over 5000 years, in order to appeal more to Western practitioners and customers. Centuries of culture and heritage have been diluted into a conservative concept of “wellness” packaged into an Instagram feed.

To reclaim this heavily commodified industry, check your sources! Thorough research is required for anything health-related. The corporations that actually care about societal wellbeing are outshined by others whose sole aim is to profit. Backed up by a big marketing budget and picture-perfect influencers, they dominate the industry and possess the power to alter the purchasing behaviours of their target consumers. According to a 2021 McKinsey article, more than 60% of consumers report that they will “definitely” or “probably” consider a brand or product posted by a favourite influencer. The more ‘mind-blowing’ the article that you read is, the more inclined you should be to question it, such as the Paltrow-recommended beevenom therapy which turned out to be unsafe and extremely unadvisable. It’s also important to acknowledge that health looks different for everyone. Health is not about appearing healthy but rather feeling healthy is all aspects; body, mind, spirit, and emotions. It’s not necessary to appear smooth-skinned, skinny, care-free, and white to be healthy. Follow a diet that fills you with nutritious food, not one that makes you feel guilty for a McChicken or eating out with friends. Take the stairs instead of the elevators and do the house chores you’ve been putting off, so you don’t have to worry if your gym membership is worth the money or spend even more on spin classes. Scroll just a bit further to find local or minority owned brands, they don’t get the spotlight but their products might be just as good or more affordable. As nerve-wracking as a doctor’s appointment can be, prioritise reaching out to health professionals regarding your health first. Wellness brands can mislead you to spend money on things you don’t need. Influencers may claim to be nutritionists without having the credentials to share medical advice. An extreme example is Belle Gibson, an Australian wellness blogger who falsely claimed to have cured her brain cancer with natural remedies, including ‘clean eating’. To her 300,000 followers, she not only lied about her wellness journey, but also about having cancer in the first place. Professionals, however, have the knowledge and skills to cater to your personalised needs with the qualifications to back their claims. As much as you despise the wellness industry, you’re still reading this article. In fact, there are hundreds of articles that criticise such companies, Paltrow being an easy target. But they feed off our attention, we include them in our conversations, increase their website traffic, and suddenly “The Goop Lab” is a show on Netflix. Everything comes down to how we as customers perceive them, so if we were to tweak our ignorance and naivete just a little, we’d uncover plenty of their ugly truths. With inadequate scientific foundation and lack of sympathy towards minorities, the wellness industry has shown how it is dominated by a lucrative mindset. This makes our ability to draw distinctions between fact and opinion crucial; fact-checking sources, accepting that health appears different for everyone, and seeking professional help is the best way to go.

Illustrated by Chelsea Rozario

Written by Anindya Setiawan

The polaroids are under my bed. They’re safe inside a shoe box I don’t remember buying. They lie awake with me. I wish I could fast forward through this part.

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a note on growing up My room: dark with the curtains half-pulled, the window cracked open just enough for the echoes of the city and engines roaring from a distance to reach my ears. Now that I live alone, it helps me sleep. The noise is like a song playing in the background. Fifteen-year-old me would be proud—I hope—as back then having the lights on and the blinds shut tight were two mandatory things to check from my to-do list before bed. I think she’d be mostly surprised. A little unexpected twist. In one swift motion, I open my drawer and take a cheeky peek at my old high school journal, and while I mostly cringe, the entries aren’t that bad (by no means are they good, either). I just hold my breath a lot when reading them. A few days before senior year ended I wrote: Things are shit but I want to leave on a nice note. I think about that one line a lot, especially now that I’ve overcome my fear of reading what my angsty teen self had dramatically poured out. In lockdown, I had the choice of staying on top of my lectures or cleaning my apartment. Obviously, I chose the second. But with that came the baggage of facing some unpleasant memories, the guilt of revisiting who I once was and the anxiety that certain memories bring. What began as simply organising my belongings turned into rediscovery and reliving. A lot of feelings, too—yuck, I know. Yet, the thrill was prominent. I quickly put aside the embarrassment and jumped down a rabbit hole of my own life. It’s honestly kind of addictive stalking your past teen self. If you’re thinking of walking along the same path, here’s my advice: have a limit. One or two pages over the weekend, before waiting another couple days to skim through the next. It was the anticipation that kept me going despite some lines being unreadable—and I mean that literally with full-on ink blots and a word that could either have been ‘chicken’ or ‘checkin’. Like many things in life, the ride is fun until it isn’t. This little exploration of mine turned sour a lot of times. As a writing student, I’m used to criticism, yet when I gazed over the words that fifteen-year-old me had written on my bedroom floor, I couldn’t help but overanalyse. The smallest details, I picked up. The slightest mistake, I pressed pause. Certain pages made me smile, but I also found it terribly difficult to move on when the not-so-good entries popped up. Negativity lingers longer, after all. I’ve spent more time in my room in the past year than I ever have in my entire life, and I’m quickly running out of pages to read. It feels strange to put a mirror over who I was back then and who I am now. Maybe that’s why they don’t recommend you doing it, in the first place. It’s something like putting rose-colored glasses on before quickly taking them off. But, there is no competition, no old versus new you. There is only you—you and all your experiences. Sometimes, it gets easy to forget this. It’s different to reading a novel, or watching a rom-com and seeing the protagonist lose the love of her life before realising that she made a mistake. She then runs at full speed trying to find him (somehow one or both of them end up in the hospital before the credits roll in). We tell ourselves we don’t know the ending of these movies, yet we do. We know things will work out, somehow, and we fast forward to the good scenes. But, when you read your own stuff, you’re forced to go back in time and make some stops that might suck. A longing feeling remains—hoping for an alternate ending to some pages, wondering when the credits will show up. For one, you look back on how you’d do anything to relive that day your parents agreed to buy a piano, when your classmates surprised you with a song on your birthday, when you found money in the pocket of your jeans on a random Tuesday. On the other hand, you also get forced to feel the disappointment of thinking you weren’t good enough (I can tell you right now: you have always been more than enough), the moment your friends cancelled last minute on something you’ve spent weeks planning, that one time you cried in the school toilet without anyone knowing and came back to class with a smile. These are the ones that stuck with me the most, the ones I couldn’t fast forward to skip. These are also the ones I’d want nothing more than to let go. But, I can’t. I hold them like the polaroids under my bed, left alone until I one day—while I’m walking around the city—I suddenly remember. Forgotten until I decide for it not to be and dusty until it isn’t. Except you can’t hide memories the way you do with polaroids. When you snap a bad photo, you can throw it out. That one on graduation night that came out blurry? I never took a second glance at it. This, however, isn’t the case in real life. Maybe that’s why it was so important for high school me to say goodbye on a “nice note”, whatever that means. The truth is: I’m still trying to figure out a lot of things, and I have a feeling I’ll keep doing this for a long while. That’s my note on growing up. It never truly stops. And the credits never roll in. The good moments pass, while the bad ones stay just a tad long enough until you start to forget.

Illustrated by Jasmine Pierce

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On Ordinary Joys and Mental Health Written by E.S. This column has thus far spun around the soft idea of joy. Joy in a coffee cup, joy in a surfboard, joy in the little things. Joy in stability, good food and the people we love. And sometimes life goes like this: the sky glitters blue, sunlight suffuses you with a deep and lazy warmth, serotonin floods the body. Joy is a deep-running emotion, like a bubbling river that fills your veins and transforms your heart into a vessel taking flight. But sometimes joy is inaccessible. Mental illnesses can evaporate joy. My own experience with anxiety has taught me this through many stretches of time. When anxiety descends, I imagine a black padded suit cloaking me. I feel the presence of an immediate threat, but there is nothing. A simple walk down the street feels stifling, every incoming thought makes me nauseous. The idea of the yards and yards of life still left induces an elemental panic. I curse evolution and genetics for giving me a brain that makes getting through the day almost unbearable. I try to remind myself that I am not alone. I think of my great-grandmother who couldn’t get out of bed for months at a time, and was sent for electro-therapy. An affliction so heavy no one in my family has ever found the words to explain. I think about some of the greatest artists who were painting, drawing and writing from a hinterland of darkness: Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Sylvia Plath’s poems, Jackson Pollock’s bolts of colour. Just as his incandescent sunflowers show no hint of Van Gogh’s heavy struggle, mental illness can look different for everyone. It can look like someone in foetal position in the bathtub, unable to get out as the water cools. It can also look like the most confident woman you know, clad in a blazer and heels, grinning on her way to work. It can look like your best friend, your teacher, the person working at the Coles checkout, or a presenter on the 6 o’clock. news. 4.8 million Australians are experiencing a mental health condition. Almost half the population will experience one at some point in their life-time. Every day, at least 6 Australians will take their own life. But millions of people don’t get help. I want to haul mental illness out into the sun. People have struggled with debilitating mental health conditions for centuries in the closing darkness of their bedrooms. But we have turned a page. You should never have to suffer alone. If you are experiencing struggles with your mental health, reach out for help. Life is certainly not always joyful, but everyone deserves to feel lightness and ordinary joys each day.

Illustrated by Mochen Tang

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The Cheerful Pessimist Written by Rachel Ko

also accepting and appreciating the same struggles of the everyday listener; ie, all of us.

‘Cause all the kids are depressed Nothing ever makes sense I’m not feeling alright Staying up ‘til sunrise And hoping shit is okay Pretending we know things… Aptly titled all the kids are depressed, Jeremy Zucker’s notso-cheery 2018 hit seems to read our minds. The sentiments he sings about are ones that we all, as a generation, like to joke about, laugh about and, clearly, listen to music about, if my 2020 Spotify Wrapped was anything to go by. Beyond my own taste in music, though, just one look at lyrics sung by the most popular artists today might be enough to paint our whole generation blue. ‘Negative’ lyrics or imagery about depression seem to be key voices in today’s mainstream youth culture, as we embrace heart-wrenching tunes by singers like Billie Eilish and other top-charting musicians, and welcome the discussion of darker themes with open arms into modern popular conversation. Outwardly, we apparently appear cynical. Older generations often call us complainers, collectively unappreciative, and perhaps, at face value, the lyrics we choose to listen to may warrant such judgements. But let’s take a look at why we are the way we are, beyond the idea that we’re just an ungrateful bunch (because, at least I hope, there’s more to us than that). Our youths are unique. Facing an adolescence inseparable from the repercussions of social media, and, now, with a global pandemic keeping us locked up and isolated in our prime, it is no wonder that we are growing up nurturing complicated relationships with our emotions, so it’s not hard to see why sadness and pessimism are themes that overwhelm our artists’ discographies. Despite confronting themes, however, several studies have shown that music driven by darker imagery has no real correlation with having negative emotional effects on listeners. This is an official, empirical conclusion. I came across this in a Music & Health assignment, and it got me thinking why it might be, and the reason I came up with is, ironically, a more optimistic one. In our acceptance and appreciation of music that tackles mental health and artists’ most difficult experiences, we are

Rather than causing us to dwell on negative emotions, or internalise our pain, which surrounding ourselves with darker music may logically be expected to do, it instead acknowledges struggles in people who have never had their internal struggles acknowledged before. The Weeknd reminds us that “In my dark times I’ve still got some problems I know” . Eminem admits “my life is full of empty promises and broken dreams…I feel discouraged, hungry and malnourished”. Ed Sheeran confesses that “life can get you down so I just numb the way it feels”. Whether you’re a fan of their music or not, it’s hard to disagree that these are some of the biggest names in the music industry of this era, and through their music, they remind young people that these feelings are valid feelings; feelings that are perfectly okay. And, if their success on the charts, albums and Spotify streams is anything to go by, we love them for it. Music like this, for many of us tackling the ups and downs of youth, has become a way to connect and validate the feelings we wrestle with, a pathway to discussion, and eventually, growth. After all, these songs are not only sources of relatability, but are also messages of support and strength. Ariana urges us to, while “the sky’s fallin’…Just keep breathin’ and breathin’ and breathin’ and breathin’”. SUGA of BTS, reminds us to “Never mind. It’s not easy, but engrave it onto your chest. If you feel like you’re going to crash then accelerate more, Never mind how thorny the road is.” Just by admitting to their own struggles, by not ignoring feelings that are deemed ‘negative’, these artists acknowledge that your pain is normal, and extend a hand to hold through the microphone. So maybe it’s not so bad to be blue sometimes, or to sing blue, think blue or surround ourselves with blue. As young people, growing up in a world that seems to be becoming ever more complicated, it might be through expressing our pessimism, acknowledging it, discussing it, and sharing it, that we can face life with a little more cheer.

Illustrated by Maddy Cronn

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Slogans and Nonsense: The Perils of Predication Written by Josh Abbey

The copula is a hell-borne Hydra. The serpent in semantics. The bastard link at the heart of our mongrel language. The copula is the “is”. Ever-dependable, just when you think you are without it, it worms its way back in. Philosophers are famously unable agree on whether a chair is real or not, but they tend to agree that there are, all in all, three copulas. Alongside the is of identity (“Twice two is four”) and the is of predication (“Socrates is mortal”), there is the black-coffeeswilling existential is (there is a constitution and it says the Federal Government is responsible for quarantine). Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein—not a law firm—believed the form of ordinary language disguised thought. Analysis of ordinary language reveals the logical structure of language and the real commitments of claims. Though Wittgenstein eventually left this supergroup citing creative differences, he went on believing that similarities in the form of language led to confusions:

As long as there is still a verb “to be” that looks as though it functions in the same way as “to eat” and “to drink” … people will keep stumbling over the same cryptic difficulties & staring at something that no explanation seems capable of clearing up.

Some linguists have taken such sentiments to heart. E-Prime—not a transformers character—is the name of a linguistic program that proposes an alternate version of English wherein the verb “to be” is never used (if you ever see a linguist with an ACAB sticker, they could be a supporter of E-Prime—All Copulas Are Bastards). The removal of the copula would likely ruin Hamlet:

[…], or not […], that […] the question:

Whether […] nobler in the mind to suffer…

But there would be an economic stimulus from all the hymns that need new musical accompaniments. The settingprayers-to-music sector would boom as it did when Hillsong went mainstream. Lines such as:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Will be far catchier once rewritten as:

The poor in spirit receive blessings, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them.

Like all revolutions, E-Prime treads a treacherous path between light and dark. On the path of light, “Honey is sweet” becomes “Honey tastes sweet”; on the park of darkness, it becomes “Honey possesses sweetness.” If, then, honey tastes sweet because it possesses sweetness, we have a world in which sweetness exists apart from taste. Perhaps instead all that honey possesses is the capacity to produce the taste of sweetness in us. This might seem like semantics, but it is not entirely a minor matter. How we interpret language changes our conception of the world. Why do we say that Hamlet is an angsty teen: because it says so in the Dramatis Personae or because Hamlet does angsty teen things? If it is the former, what if Hamlet never does any angsty teen things? Can he still be called an angsty teen? On the latter scheme, Hamlet remains an angsty teen insofar as he does angsty teen things; once he ceases to do them we can no longer describe him as an angsty teen. Again, this is not entirely a minor matter. It cannot be truly said of someone that they are funny if they do not say funny things. But why, then, did publishers print a book of David Koch’s best jokes? Any true fan of Industry Superfund advertisements knows that “past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.” Others say that form is temporary, class is permanent. Well beside class, in the sporting sense, all is temporary, and everything is form. One is funny whilst they are in the form of being funny, of saying funny things. For some reason, society persists in thinking that qualities are immutable and people cannot change. But if we are only entitled to say that one is an X because they express the characteristics of being an X—that John is funny because he says funny things—then it seems we must consider the basis of society. If people are simply the sum of their acts, then they are as they act, and as they may act differently so they may be different.

Illustrated by Arielle Vhaliotis

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Written by Christina Savopoulos One of my fondest childhood memories is going to my local video store each school holidays to borrow videos, and then DVDs as technology advanced. Of course, the ‘local’ in ‘local video store’ changed every few years as the stores I treasured gradually closed. They were replaced with either supermarkets and gift stores or were simply left boxed up, only leaving a handful of operating video stores around Melbourne.

“what? You can’t break up this collection”. It was a completely different store back then—all VHS. It was a great collection, they had some titles that were imported that other stores didn’t have. That was the only reason why. I remember making them an offer and thinking ‘what have I done? Now I have to be a shop owner and face the public—be a persona’. That was a bit scary. I just didn’t want it to close, it’s a really good library.

Early last year, I was heartbroken at the closure of the latest video store that I had become so attached to. It was by far the best of the four or five that I had called my ‘local’ video rental store throughout my life. It seemed to have absolutely everything. The owners were kind and always there to help me locate whatever DVD I was looking for that week / And they had so many titles—pretty much everything! Distraught, I frantically searched for another store, hoping that there would be at least one left in Melbourne. Was that too much to ask? And then I found it! Picture Search Video. It was the last one left. The golden ticket. This lone video store in a world of technological advances like the last people surviving after an apocalypse. Flashes of various sci-fi films are hitting me right now–not a pleasant sight. But this store is quite the opposite, it’s nostalgic atmosphere and retro aesthetic sure to entice even the greatest Netflix lover.

What are some of your favourite memories in the store and with customers?

Obviously, there is a reason for the gradual closures of these stores. There is a reason Picture Search Video is the only video rental store left standing. It’s because of a little something called streaming services. Netflix was once the sole service to dominate this market, but then along came Stan, and today others have developed. Binge, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and even TV channels like Channel 10 have jumped on the bandwagon, offering a paid monthly service for access to ‘exclusive’ shows. Now, these services aren’t necessarily bad in their content or cheap monthly prices, I myself have used a few of them. But the fact that their involvement in society has impacted the presence of video stores is tragic. The general adventure of travelling somewhere to pick what movie you’ll be watching that week is no more. Instead, sitting at home in a stuffy, dingy room, you’ll find yourself mindlessly scrolling for hours through endless options before eventually deciding on a film. A lot of fun that is. I met up with Derek de Vreugt, owner of Picture Search Video, who was more than eager to discuss the growing issue of the film and television shows no longer being physically available for rent. Founded in 1983, Derek is the fourth owner of the store and has owned it for 21 years. The store has three levels and an overwhelming number of films. Even if you spent a lengthy amount of time in the store, there would still be sections you’d miss. The collection is impressive and wonderful. Below are some snippets from our conversation. What made you want to buy the store from the previous owner?

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Melbourne’s Last Video Rental Store

Lots of people we get to know on a regular basis. We have conversations about movies and we get to know them, their opinions. We have thousands of relationships. They think of you at Christmas time and give you a bottle of wine and a card. During COVID I had a lot of food donations, and tips which were nice. How does it feel to be the last video rental store left in Melbourne? It makes you think that you’re estranged, but we have to maintain it as long as we can, because we’ll never have a collection come back together like this again if we close. Sometimes the movie experience is life changing and meaningful—it’s art. There are vitally important films that are only here, a select few. And a range of ones you could download but some people like to have the physical ceremony of putting the DVD in and it playing without any problems or any ads. People still hire some VHS films which haven’t been put on DVD, even some Australian films with significant actors and stories that you’re not going to get all back together in one place. Nothing else to do but keep going as long as we can. It’s not a money-making enterprise from a business perspective. What are your thoughts on streaming services? It’s probably good that I don’t have a streaming service and don’t need to. But I think a lot of people keep themselves amused [with them]. If they can’t find what they really want to watch, they’ll watch something else. There’s a lot to watch on streaming services. Maybe people are watching a bit too much of things they wouldn’t usually, or don’t particularly enjoy once they’ve run out of options. You can find particular films here. Why do you want to keep the store open? Mainly to keep the collection going.

* Make sure you head down to 139 Swan St in Richmond to visit Picture Search Video. They’re open from 10am-9pm 7 days a week. You can select your favourite movies and televisions shows from the incredible amount of titles available for hire and sale. There is always that one title missing from a streaming service that you’re dying to watch. Here, there are no titles missing.

Never thought about it before, but they were going to close down. So I guess that makes it a passion project. I just thought

Illustrated by Rohith Sundaresa Prabhu

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Illustrated by Steph Markerink

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Illustrated by Steph Markerink

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content warning: mental health

ADHD, Heartbreak, and a Stream of Consciousness (Barely) Written by Srishti Chatterjee 1. The window outside my office opens into the branches of a big, strong tree. It’s autumn: the season of me staring outside the window and getting lost in its ochre. Sunlight filters through the leaves and falls onto my hand. Ugh, I want to be loved like that - like warmth and fall and softly filtered sunlight on brown skin. 2. My ‘most played’ playlist on Spotify is called ‘angina’—a 7 hour and 38 minute long, meticulous collection of every song I know that feels like being punched in the gut by loss. I play it in the background at work fairly often, especially when that mountain of emails makes me wish for death. 3. I firmly believe that there are two times you die—the first time you refer to him in the past tense, and the last time you hear his voice. As I stare, once again, at the falling leaves outside my window, I remember another time you die —the first time someone breaks your heart that’s not him. 4. I have several emails to reply to, several events that need my attention, several people to message in a paranoid grappling with human warmth that I’m too scared to explicitly ask for. 5. I need to go to the staff kitchen to get some coffee. I’ll stop by and say hi to some of my colleagues. A few “How are you?”s will be answered with obligatory FINGER GUNS - a resounding gesture both my bisexuality and anxiety rolled into one. Coffee makes me want to pee. Someone told me it’s a “diuretic” and I have no idea what that means. 6. Coffee reminds me of long nights, many of which I have spent hoping for sunlight to filter through my windows as a mark of survival—Yay? I made it to another morning? 7. I looked at him like I look at the sun - no direct eye-contact, aggressively squinting, grateful for the warmth. I admire the sun like I needed him, like he was the morning I lived to see, like he was necessary for survival and sporadically absent for half the year. It’s slightly funny that he always broke my heart in winter. Absence of heat, absence of sun, absence of him. 8. Winter was always December where I grew up, and it made sense that Old Monk is as essential in the cold as jumpers and beanies—an aged, dark rum, the symbol of heartbreak, warmth and many things that I cannot trap in words. 9. OHMYGOD WORDS, I forgot the EMAILS I WAS MEANT TO DO. I run down the stairs. The keys that hang from my lanyard jingle like a ringing reminder of capitalism. I grab them, and while I turn on the stairwell, the glass window reflects sunlight onto me. I wonder why I was asked to keep my keys between my fingers, in preparation of flight, when I can trap sunlight in the palm of my hands. 10. Hands—my hands are a bit dry and flaky; I need some hand-cream. The day after I collapsed under the table of my office wishing someone would hold my hand, I bought a very expensive coconut and shea butter hand cream from The Body Shop. Consumer-capitalist culture really does thrive on us filling human voids with heartless products. 11. My mind drifts to this morning in the shower, where I gnaw at my skin, healing in layers. ‘Angina’ is playing in the background, I think to myself, “Hey, that used to be our song!”

“Fools falling in the dark like crazy You know, nothing you can do will save me No, might as well”

All our songs were on my playlist. All our love was in my heart. 12. I finally open my emails and realise that I will always have meetings to attend, emails to respond to and people to love that I will feel responsible for, that will replace me if I die, immediately and easily. 13. It’s ridiculously cliche but I take a minute and feel the sunlight fall onto my palm. I love the sun like I loved him, like it reminds me to wake up, like it’s so necessary and too much of it can cause acne? and burns. “Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, I’m still breathing Ooh-ooh, ooh-ooh, so what’s one more scar Break my broken heart”

14. EMAILS. I FINALLY RESPOND TO MY EMAILS—after having written this stream of consciousness. Probably.

Illustrated by Rai & Kitman Yeung

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Review: Endless Summer Afternoon Written by Joanne Zou

The Long, Long Afternoon by Inga Vesper is both a razor-sharp crime novel and an incisive portrait of race and gender in late 1950s American suburbia. Sunnylakes is an upper-class district on the outskirts of San Francisco, and visions of the town in heady summer suburbs envelop the reader–two-story houses with green lawns and white picket fences, white husbands with white-collar jobs and white housewives. In an environment where appearances are everything, the sudden disappearance of a housewife comes as a shock. The Long, Long Afternoon traces the investigations into this disappearance, and revealing the cracks in the American Dream, and unravelling its plot with admirable precision. Vesper alternates between three perspectives: the white cop/ detective Mike, recently reallocated from New York after sleeping with a witness; Ruby, a young black woman who cleans houses in Sunnylakes; and Joyce, the housewife herself, recounting the afternoon that she disappeared. Flashbacks from Joyce’s first-person perspective are entwined with the main whodunnit plot throughout the novel, an intriguing choice which definitely heightens the audience’s investment in Joyce and her past. Through these flashbacks, the audience is presented with the context for certain clues and pieces of information directly before or after the same events are reconstructed by Mike and Ruby in the present day, allowing us to puzzle out the case alongside the characters. Mike and Ruby’s third person narrative voices unfortunately tend to blend into one another, distinguishable by what they are narrating rather than how they are doing it. Yet, Ruby is, by far, the most compelling narrator, with the most at stake — her determination to liberate herself by attending college may overvalue the education system, but it also makes her a feisty main character, and one easy to support. In contrast, Mike only hopes to redeem his own reputation by solving this case, a circumstance which alternates between sympathetic and insignificant, and his disregard for his wife is mostly contemptible. In either case, the characters in The Long, Long Afternoon are well-developed, turning numerous potential caricatures into people with complex lives and motivations. Vesper weaves a rich tapestry with her vivid depiction of early Cold War America as a stifling and heteropatriarchal environment, one which was just beginning to nurture movements for Black and women’s liberation. The suburb of Sunnylakes recalls the 1998 film Pleasantville, where houses are immaculate and faultless, hiding the more sinister things that lurk underneath. The reader’s relation to the setting is almost voyeuristic, enhanced by the fact that both main narrators are outsiders, observing an almost alien setting. In one instance, Ruby captures the eerie atmosphere when she notes, “It’s like the house is trying to convince you of perfection from the outside in. An imitation of happiness.”

Vesper’s prose remains descriptive, though sparse, throughout the novel, contributing to a tense and unsettling atmosphere: “While Ruby waits for the bus, she checks her nails. There are traces of brown stuck in the grooves of her skin. She rubs them against her blouse, but the blood won’t come out that easily.” Dialogue is equally sharp, making the novel a relaxing and scintillating read. Readers are pulled into a world where secrets lurk in pot plants and are whispered into a listening ear. And, whilst social justice issues can often feel shoehorned into fiction, here they are convincingly and compellingly absorbed. Vesper’s society anticipates movements that will sweep the following decade as she depicts the machinations of the Women’s Improvement Committee which Joyce attended, just one of many committees supporting unhappy housewives; the committee’s treatment of a lower-class woman, who only the president seems to actually care for; the persistence of racism despite desegregation; Ruby’s boyfriend’s involvement in the Black men’s committee, their hopes for equality, their continual exclusion of women, and their protest against forced evictions which police escalate into a riot. Again, Ruby is a highlight here, through whom Vesper examines the intersection of class, gender, and race with nuance. The risk of reading historical fiction about social justice is thinking that such issues are contained to the past. It is not difficult to identify that racism, classism and misogyny present in this novel continue to run through society today. In particular, the scene of a peaceful demonstration being met with police riots should be chillingly reminiscent of the continued global Black Lives Matter movement. Even so, The Long, Long Afternoon is, indeed, a slice of the past, largely unconcerned with allegorizing modern-day society and rather more interested in the personal struggles of ordinary people. In this historical element, it excels. When historical fiction does not go out of its way to be relevant or serve as a call to action, it is the reader’s responsibility (arguably, their duty) not to become complacent, and instead to remain aware and to make these connections. I read The Long Long Afternoon primarily on public transport, on rattling trams and trains. For up to an hour at a time, I slipped into a different time and place, and the book kept me immersed and engaged effortlessly. I could escape from the perils and realities of living in 2021, an Arts student during a global pandemic, and instead distract myself with other people’s emotional and interpersonal dilemmas, and attempts to reconstruct the events of a summer afternoon. At the heart of The Long Long Afternoon lies a crime to be solved, and the resolution does prove cathartic. I found myself both relieved and slightly surprised-an ideal result for a crime and mystery novel. Vesper has written a skillful and thoroughly enjoyable debut.

Illustrated by Casey Boswell

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content warning: racism

Race Against the Odds Written by ilundi tinga Cherry-picking culture Cultural appropriation is like cherry-picking amongst cultures for the parts that interest you whilst overlooking the traditions or meanings behind them. It is when members of, usually, a dominant culture steal or take elements of another culture for aesthetic or economic purposes without any equitable exchange or even acknowledgement. However, cultural appropriation is different to cultural exchange, assimilation or appreciation. Eating pasta or using Korean skincare is not cultural appropriation as they have been fairly exchanged or appreciated and their meanings or origins have not been decontextualised. The problem with cultural appropriation is that it further marginalises oppressed communities and cultures, taking away cultural origins and meanings, whilst reinforcing harmful stereotypes. Cultural appropriation is often used to make money and establish a ‘uniqueness’ that essentially furthers the othering of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour). In Australia, white businesses repeatedly steal Indigenous artwork and put it on merchandise like t-shirts for profit. Most times the original artists do not receive any payment or even credit. A classic example of white Australia capitalising off Indigenous oppression. Changes in beauty standards also seem to encourage cultural appropriation. White women will pick and choose features typically seen on BIPOC, especially Black women, to make themselves appear exotic or racially ambiguous. This is colloquially known as ‘Black-fishing’. To achieve this, they will get extremely dark fake tans, lip filler and surgery to make their bodies curvier. These same women will also appropriate Black hairstyles like box braids or cornrows. The most famous example being the Kardashians, who have been credited with starting “edgy” hair and beauty trends when really, they are appropriating Black culture and bodies. Meanwhile, Black people especially Black women are constantly criticised and marginalised for our natural hair. For example, Zendaya was scrutinised for wearing locs at a red carpet. “It’s just hair” non-Black people often say after a Black person has voiced their disapproval of the appropriation of Black hairstyles on non-Black people. But it’s not just hair for Black people, it’s another part of the Black struggle and an important part of Black culture. Black hair on Black people is considered ‘untidy’ or ‘unprofessional’ with workplaces sometimes even deeming Black hairstyles as unsuitable. In South Africa a few years ago, there was a scandal surrounding an integrated girls high school that deemed Black hair, specifically afros, against the school dress code which meant Black girls had to straighten or braid their hair.

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Illustrated by Kitman Yeung

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At school in Australia, I used to get teased for having braids, so seeing non-Black people get praised and celebrated for wearing hairstyles not even meant for their hair texture is frustrating. It adds to the narrative where everything about Black people from their culture to appearances are ‘cool’ and ‘beautiful’ but only when not on or used in connection with actual Black people or bodies. The erasure of Black people is evident when fashion brands like Marc Jacobs purposefully make White models wear dreads on the runway even though they could easily hire Black models. One of the goals of white supremacy is to continue to redefine what it means to be white so that whiteness always remains in the majority. There are power dynamics at play in cultural appropriation where white people are able to maintain and reinforce their power, control and ideals over BIPOC. The same people who culturally appropriate are not close with BIPOC or people of cultures they are appropriating. They also often don’t actually amplify BIPOC voices or struggles, instead they cherry-pick aspects of these cultures for their own gain. There have been instances when people have argued that Black women culturally appropriate when they straighten their hair. However, straight hair does not belong to any culture—there are people with straight hair in many cultures—but Black women have been forced, or at a minimum, encouraged to straighten their hair due to white supremacy, Eurocentric beauty standards and colonialism. Personally, I used to constantly straighten my hair as a way of assimilating into the dominant white norm. I wanted to be like white girls because they are considered the ‘standard’. Straightening my hair also meant that I would receive less attention and hopefully encounter less racism. Whenever there was a formal event, people would regularly tell me that they wanted to see me with straightened hair because it would make me more beautiful in their eyes. This still happens. By imitating and extracting Black culture, other races can pick and choose the cultural elements of interest and inherently assert their power and privilege. Such choice is not generally available to Black people who do not have racial privilege even in countries like South Africa where they are the dominant race. Claiming that cultural appropriation helps BIPOC is not true as it only further erases our visibility and undermines our cultural values. Whether the intentions are empathetic, cultural appropriation causes harm and it’s important to recognise this as fact. With continued white supremacy, cherry-picking aspects of marginalised cultures will continue to be cultural appropriation due to the unequal power dynamics at play. In this Race Against the Odds, it’s important to understand that cultural appropriation is harmful and only reinforces white supremacy.

Illustrated by Kitman Yeung

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Overseas Student Update Written by Anonymous

Faced with the prospect of yet another semester abroad, overseas international students face immense challenges and uncertainty. At the time of writing, the only international students allowed back into Australia are those ‘nominated by their education institution under an approved International Student Arrival Plan’. This includes ‘final year students who need to complete practical placements and higher degree research students’ but excludes a vast majority of undergraduates, especially those studying Arts. Some of these students are second-years, who spent barely one month on campus before having to return to their home countries. Some are first-years who have never seen campus and do not know when they will. This geographical isolation means most international students are distanced from campus life and the social events that are an essential part of the university experience. While student representatives have been organizing Zoom events, it goes without saying that these are a poor substitute for face-to-face social interactions. Most of these Zoom events have not been well-attended, which is hardly surprising given the prevalence of Zoom fatigue a year into the pandemic. Living a life suspended between two continents, trying to maintain increasingly fragile friendships over Zoom and social media, and keep up with uni work despite the absence of the structure and motivation provided by on-campus learning, has been incredibly difficult for many. Added to this is the intense pressure to succeed, given how costly and rare the opportunity to study at Unimelb is. While overseas students watch from abroad their local counterparts ease back into the rhythm of campus life, there is one thing that hasn’t changed for them. Tuition fees. Though they do not have access to libraries, inperson classes or other campus facilities, the University continues to insist that the quality of teaching has not changed in the slightest, and requires all overseas students to pay full fees, which for those of you who are unaware, is over four times what local students are charged. It’s a gross injustice that no one but the students themselves seem to care much about. With little support from student reps and no one fighting their corner, many overseas students have no choice but to bear it up and keep plodding away at a degree they began under vastly different circumstances. While student representatives have been quibbling at length (and often unpleasantly) during Students’ Council about electoral reform and constitutional changes, much less attention has been paid to the plight of overseas students. Nevertheless, they are held to the same academic standards as local students, who have access to numerous resources and facilities they do not. While UMSU Education have campaigned for WAM (Weighted Average Mark) adjustments for overseas students (as other Australian universities including Monash have), the University has not yet implemented any changes. Overseas students can take on a reduced study load, but not automatically, as they could last year. Instead, they have to go through a time-consuming process that includes submitting documentary evidence. They must do so before the census date; no withdrawals are allowed if your circumstances change after. Finally, while Melbourne is, at least for now, out of the woods, COVID cases are rapidly rising in various parts of Asia, Africa and South America, where most overseas students are located. Many students are stuck in countries such as India, Indonesia and Nepal where the situation has become unimaginably dire. These students have to face the trauma of rising death tolls and prolonged lockdowns on top of dealing with uni work all alone. In sum, it’s not a wonderful time to be an overseas student. The University’s treatment of us has been, at best, appallingly negligent. And yet they continue to market themselves to future students who will have to pay full fees despite studying from home. They continue to act as though nothing has changed, that nothing is wrong.

Illustrated by Annanya Musale

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‘The Pier Review’ by Torsten Strokirch

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Illustrated by Rose Gertsakis

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Illustrated by Elmira

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Photograph by Finley Tobin

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CREATIVE Artwork by Mica McCulloch

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The Stone Dragon Written by Zoe Keeghan

“La Gargouille was a great dragon who settled in Rouen. He ate livestock and farmers alike, and when he flew, his wings caused gusts of wind so strong all the crops were flattened. To shed his scaled hide, he rubbed his body against a mighty church. Stone crumbled and the spire collapsed. When he lay in the Seine to bathe, he blocked the flow of water as readily as any dam, and the river overflowed and flooded the city.” —A History of Dragons: The Truth in Mythology by Ailuv Drah Gonz Scientific name: Draco lapis. Origin: France. Diet: Carnivorous. Anything that breathes. Life span: 150 years. Size: Up to twenty metres wide and seventy metres long. Colour: Varying shades of grey. Notable features: Pointed wings and five-fingered claws. Stone dragons are large, winged beings with short snouts, clawed toes and curved wings that end in points. They are said to be the inspiration for the gargoyles that have adorned many buildings in Europe from the twelfth century. The most well-known stone dragon is La Gargouille, who caused many difficulties for the French city Rouen. La Gargouille may have been forced to leave his pack after contesting leadership with another stone dragon, or in search for an area with more abundant resources. Looking for a place to stay, Rouen would have seemed attractive, with plentiful food and water. It is often believed that La Gargouille was captured and killed by Romanus, the bishop of Rouen, with the help of an unknown man. However, a recently unearthed diary has revealed otherwise (extract translated from French by Ino Lang-Wijes).

“Night fell as we reached the farm. There was no sound of livestock; a shudder ran through me as I realised La Gargouille had probably eaten them all. I heard a growl, and clutched Romanus’s arm in fright. He pressed his fingers against mine. Though his features were concealed by darkness, I knew them from memory, and I could see his gentle, questioning gaze. Though we couldn’t speak for fear of attracting the attention of the beast, I could hear Romanus’ unspoken words. ‘You don’t have to come with me, if you’re afraid.’ But though I knew he wouldn’t blame me if I fled, I could never leave him to face something so terrifying alone.

The growl came again, and when Romanus crept towards it, I was by his side. La Gargouille stretched in front of us. He was bigger than any house I had ever seen, with each claw as large as a person. Warm breath from his nostrils rustled our clothes and hair. He inhaled with a rumble, and I realised La Gargouille wasn’t growling, but snoring. This was our opportunity.

We drew our swords and stepped towards the dragon. With a sharp crack, a twig snapped beneath my boot. Startled, La Gargouille swung his head to face us. Fear pierced my heart, and Romanus stepped in front of me, sword raised. Our figures were reflected in La Gargouille’s shining black eyes. I clutched my sword in my sweaty palm, waiting for the dragon to attack. He simply blinked at us. I grasped Romanus by the wrist, stilling his sword. La Gargouille was not attacking us because he had already eaten. He killed not for pleasure, but to survive. He had caused the people of Rouen much pain in the process, but I knew I could not murder a being who only wanted to live.”

This anonymous man described how he and Romanus led La Gargouille away from the city to an uninhabited mountain range. Knowing that many of the people would not settle for this solution, furious at the ruin the dragon had caused, they secretly hired a sculptor to carve a stone head the shape of La Gargouille’s. Dragging this back to Rouen, Romanus declared La Gargouille dead. The people were satisfied, and La Gargouille safe. Today, stone dragon packs can be found in the French Alps—perhaps descendants of La Gargouille. It was believed for many years that this carved head was the true head of a stone dragon; some suggest this is how the species received their name. However, there is another possibility. Stone dragons hibernate over the winter months when food is less plentiful. Their hide is so thick, and their breathing so shallow, it seems they are not moving—almost as though they are made of stone.

Illustrated by Alice Aliandy

COLUMN

The Foggy Shores Written by Charlotte Waters & Lee Perkins

Scene: A plain bedroom, still and humming in the half-light. Sticks of dead flowers crumble from a vase on the desk, beside it a half-full teacup forgotten the day before. Flo is fast asleep. Flo throws off her blanket and sits up, gasping for air. Jerry: Sorry to surprise you, I got lost staring at the sun on the brick wall across from your window. It’s put me in a trance of sorts, and I can’t quite tell if I have returned to the right place or not. Jerry is sitting on the open windowsill, one leg dangling down and the other pulled to his chest. He turns his head slowly, not wanting to take his gaze away from the brick wall, to look Flo directly in the eyes. Jerry: Has that happened to you, Flo? Have you opened a door or refocused your eyes to see the change in sunlight’s sort of… scratched the familiarity from something? Flo: I— She shields her eyes from the light, squints and then half-smiles. Flo: You’re back, then. I was hoping you hadn’t sailed away for good. Jerry doesn’t move from the windowsill. He gives a quiet chuckle. Jerry: Oh, you know that I couldn’t leave for good. It’s something in my joints, you know. Up North it’s always freezing. No walls, and people don’t wear scarves there. Here, I can always move a little more. He turns to look at Flo, holding her gaze for the first time in a long while. Jerry: Besides, I felt that tug. When you don’t have enough energy to lift clothes off of the hook, so you yank down. We’re almost telepathic, I felt the frustration of that somewhere near Iceghlear. We’d just left Hulm’s Bay, the sun was directly upon us and the wind took the feeling from our noses. I’m here now because it didn’t stop. I can’t stand it unless you’re calm. Jerry moves to the stove in the corner of the room in a singular swift action to set the kettle boiling. Flo [softly]: I’m sorry. I’ll try harder to move gently, to breathe deep—to drain each cup of tea in slow sips. It’s just that whenever I try to walk, my toes catch in the curves of the carpet, and my hands get stuck in the contours of the furniture. It might seem silly to you, a traveller and all, but this room isn’t as quiet as you think. Jerry takes his own deeper breath, he follows Flo’s gaze but his hand is on her shoulder. Jerry: Yes, we can’t expect it. We stub those deeper parts of ourselves and it’s as if the pain was always there and will never leave. But it fades so quickly. My dearest, this wasn’t a carpet fold. You hit the deck and my heart burst!

Illustrated by Rose Gertsakis

of Our Bedrooms The kettle is gurgling now, and Flo pours the boiled water into mugs. It’s black with a hint of milk and stirred with the tea bag left in for Jerry, and Flo pours the milk in first with one quarter water and the tea bag evicted into the bin across the room.

COLUMN

‘Deep in the Waiting Space’

Jerry lowers himself slowly into Flo’s orange vinyl armchair, not disturbing the tea placed on the pinewood arm. Flo leans against the stove cupping the beverage in her hands. This is wellrehearsed. Jerry: You can tell me, I can hold this for you. Flo passes the mug to Jerry. In transit, its fabric breaks, its outer edges slopping from east to west. Jerry’s knuckles whiten around the handle of his own mug, like the flash of a ghost whose trail is always belated, passing through before Flo can be sure he was really there. She leans against the desk, eyes fixed to the carpet. Flo: Sometimes I think you’re gone, but then, without fail, you manage to carve out some new hiding place. You’re always a measure away from me—I could never move any closer than I am now, and I’m scared to reach out and touch you, but I can always find you sticking somewhere in my periphery, a fly in a web. And every time you find your way back to me, in stumbles or vigils, I ask myself what your fascination is with me. But is it just me, though? Can you be in more than one place at a time? Jerry: Flo, I can’t be anything but fascinated with you. There’s now a mist rising around Jerry. It’s that of a morning shower, the colour of deep breathing, and the holding of a rail and the self at the centre. Jerry: It’s not love, and it’s not the journey from friendship to partnership. It’s the inexplicability of caring for you. From that first cave at Scareace to the beach each Sunday morning, you keep tugging at those invisible strings attached to my mind. And with every tug, it’s only another fateful bash to my bruised heart. Jerry stands abruptly. The air around him tears and boils, his figure becoming a mirage. Jerry: It hurts sometimes, and I get glimpses of the life that I once had before my heart moved here, to yours. I don’t feel wholly here and the walls bend when I’m confused, but I cannot find a hearth warmer than when I am swept to this chair, your hands unclenching and tears draining the life for tugging, and I embrace you with all the giving of my self. Do not hurt yourself wondering why these walls shake, why the world turns and why your thoughts seem to swift right through things. I am here. The boiling fills the space between Flo and Jerry. There is a singular snap that brings stillness. Jerry is gone, the air is clear, and the sky outside is midday blue. A light brown and orange mug of tea sits steaming on the windowsill. Flo is perched next to it, staring at the brick wall across the way.

Illustrated by Rose Gertsakis

CREATIVE

Deep-Fried Sun Written by Tharidi Walimunige

Gritty particles make coarse the mounds and folds of my hand. A cupped desert of breadcrumb dunes and palm-line canyons. My thumbnail strikes the earth and moves mountains. Congealed egg and crumb falter like fraught mirages from the keratin force. Scrape. Flick. Scrape. Flick. Rinse. Desert no more. Rosy flesh dawns on the land. I am the one who holds the desert in her hands. Mum takes in fingers flecked with oil-burns and knuckles nipped by knife. She makes round. My sister receives and cradles in her gentle yet unyielding grasp. She baptises in life-giving yolk. Finally, I welcome in my mineral palm. I grope, roll, pat. The crumb takes. We three erect towers of cutlets. Sunshine soon joins us, seeping across marble and slipping into the pool of oil. We fry in liquid gold.

Illustrated by Zoe Eyles

content warning: death, blood

CREATIVE

Tinfoil Torso Written by Ben Evans

I think there will just be a point where something inside me will slip and everything that I worried about will come true and, like a discarded sandwich wrapper, my tinfoil torso will crumple, my paddle pop ribs, snapping, will pierce my limping heart then, if not dead, crippled, I will let out one last fluttery sigh from my cardiaccavitied chest that as the air escapes sounds not unlike a deflating balloon and which, floating in the thin night, the neighbours might have heard, if only rather than after, it had happened just a tiny little moment before the collapse, and if I wasn’t already fainting at the sight of my blood on the wind I might quite like to have two seconds of peace to be disappointed by everything I missed out on but I don’t, so lying there, alone, just like that I’m gone

Illustrated by Torsten Strokirch

CREATIVE

Medusa Written by Neha Sharma I am watched, I think by love. Accursed gorgon, she is out to enwrap me with her virulent tendrils. Spider mother, witless in her dominion, she hauls my heart through an unknown wilderness. All the while wearing a red smile, cherry lips and a forked red tongue— angels shed their gold before her. Pale medusa on the podium paralyses me with her perfection, wreathed with a halo of hissing thoughts. I cannot break away my gaze, betrayed as I am by my own desire to be blessed into arrest by a cold marble cast, to be transfixed; unflinching, unblinking at last. Concerns fold like cards before the queen of hearts and her pack of furies; such prescient pageantry. Madam clairvoyant, cut the cancerous thread free. O love, deathly calm, lift your eyes to me. Veil me with white smoothness, teach me immortality. I never again want to be alone, so encase my lover and I in your lovely stone.

Illustrated by Katie Zhang

CREATIVE

Modern Narcissus Written by Neha Sharma Narcissus under the nebulous blue, I reflect the lagoon, I am opaque too. I swirl my many selves across silver screens, and as the silt settles, open waters encroach an abyss so cavernous; the machine mouth that filters clean facades is ravenous. Soaking in the sun like a pink lily in mud, my heart lapping up the next bright alert the promise of praise keeps me company, as clock hands blur mindlessly. Round and round, empty carousel, fingers scroll and swipe and surrender, eyes that once leapt now lumber, leaving me voyeur to river Lethe, the white noise stream— that faceless feed nourishing my hunger. Dipping my fingers, soon to dive head-on, to rectify my reflection, riverbank long gone. The echo chamber hides its siren song behind a serenade. The welcome embrace of the invisible crowd will come to suffocate. Still I stir the waters, though I know, below the pool something poisonous grows. I must be infected by it, only then can I be perfected.

Illustrated by Katie Zhang

COLUMN

A CLOUD OF DUST AND ASH LIFTING UP TO THE BLUE HEAVEN ON WINGS OF SMOKE … …WILL TAKE FROM ME THE SIGHT OF MY HOME.

RISE, STRICKEN HEAD, FROM THE DUST.

(Euripides, The Trojan Women, 49,97)

01 66

Illustrated by Gen Schiesser

COLUMN

GIVE ME YOUR COURAGE AS FAVOUR.

WOMEN OF TROY…

…BEGIN YOUR LAMENT FOR ME. Illustrated by Gen Schiesser

67 01

CREATIVE

content warning: violence, drugs, alcohol

bite! Written by Aeva Milos i clean around baby’s mouth wide wide, open wider and bite! my finger bleeds like rhubarb sticky and sweet as it dribbles down baby is a woman twirling and comatose baby baby / bite me bite me i spin drunkenly and she giggles caramel oozing between soft lips baby cries: your love is like squashed strawberries melting in the carnal heat and bite! baby chomps i love you and the banana splits like the crashing of pots and pans in the early morning silence take a bite! of my apple pie i look at my baby that st. sebastian, i think i want to marry him that hellish beauty, angels enraptured and i wonder: is today the prettiest day of autumn? i love you / bite me.

Illustrated by Casey Boswell

CREATIVE

but one life Written by Nico Lim awoke to the sound of rain &barely an ounce of fight within. in the ashtray lay the smouldered remains of moments—seized &the stubbed out luxury of not having to think for myself. awoke to the morning struggling to renew itself &with a dullness in my bones i wonder... if the future really needs us as much as we think it does. sometimes beauty &goodness is nowhere to be found. sometimes life offers both all at once—offering entire futures in a single encounter. this morning i awoke burdened by the weight of all my life could be &for a moment was overcome by panic, a steep dread, &the looming regret— that i have but one life to try with.

Illustrated by Birdy Carmen

CREATIVE

Observations at a Ball Written by Nick Parsons The gaiety of the ball swirled all around me. Girls in elaborate gowns danced with boys wearing well-fitted suits to the crescendo of the orchestra. Others stood around and gossiped about the latest scandals. It was an event exclusively for all the most important people, with scenes of excess and debauchery disguised with the veneer of sophistication and wealth. Someone laughs at a joke that wasn’t funny, another makes fun of people for the things that they also do themselves, and they proclaim the champagne to be “of the highest quality” only because of its price. A girl I knew asked me to dance and I obliged, but my heart wasn’t in it, so I let her lead. We danced to three songs and then sat down to catch our breath. She asked if I had heard about some salacious rumour and began telling me all about it without invitation. I nodded along to what she said, but I wasn’t really listening, as it was much the same drama only with different actors. I looked around the room, seeing people arguing and laughing and…. What now? He looked at the half-filled page on his desk. Ideas swirled around his mind, but nothing fully formed. He stared at the page, spinning the pen in his hand, waiting to be struck by some stroke of inspiration. He read what he had written. He liked the voice of the character, the misanthropic sarcasm. But what else should happen? Why does the character deride everything? What is the point of this story? If the author has so many questions, what would someone else think? The last question made him stop. He put his pen down and reread the story. Was the voice even that good? Is he just seeing qualities that aren’t there? Is the story worth continuing? Maybe it had run its course. Maybe he should throw it away and start anew…. “What to write?” She broke off, her pen hovering above the page. “Should he go on ruminating?” She thought. “Or should he just give up hope?” She let the pen fall from her hand and closed the book, wanting the unfinished story out of sight. The book was filled with unfinished stories. Characters stuck without endings. “Maybe I should change the way I write,” she wondered. “What I do now just leads to—”. She looked at the book. She opened it and flipped through the pages. A man catching a train, a girl talking to her mother over the telephone, someone visiting a stranger’s home. “What is the point of these?” She read one of the unfinished stories. She remembered writing it, but the words seem foreign to her. The handwriting didn’t even seem like her own, rather someone else trying to imitate it. It’s a strange sensation, reading your words when they seem like someone else’s. She closed the book again and threw it to the side of her desk. “Another story unfinished. Maybe for the next one I should work backwards, come up with an ending, and figure out how it should start….”

Illustrated by Rachel Ko

CREATIVE

What next? He stopped writing, unable to decide. He thought, “what could she do now?”.1 He put down his pen and tossed the loose pages to the side of the desk2. He got up, walked across the room, and sat by the window. He wondered, “maybe she could do what she says, and write a story backwards?”.3 He thought about going for a walk to clear his head, but the overcast sky warned him not to. He looked across the room at the half-filled pages4. He decided to risk getting wet anyway—”it’s only water”. He went over to his closet and grabbed his jacket. He5 pulled on his shoes, not bothering to undo and retie the laces. Heading outside, he hoped it wouldn’t rain, or rain too hard…. What to do? She stopped typing. Resting her head on her left hand, she looked around the library. There were people scattered around the tables, staring at laptop screens, typing away at whatever they were doing. A few tables across, a group of friends were making more noise than they had the right to. She blamed this distraction for her inability to write. Looking at the bookshelf directly across from her, she studied the names on the clothbound books. They were mostly works by unfamiliar names, but sticking out like a fire in the night was the name Shakespeare. Staring at the name printed on the book’s spine, she thought about how Shakespeare composed his works. She liked to imagine it was easy for him. That he didn’t pause for a second to think of what the next word should be. That his hand flowed in an uninterrupted motion as he wrote, only stopping when he knew the work was finished. She knew it probably wasn’t true. But the idea of Shakespeare’s ease comforted her. She didn’t know why, just that it did. Turning back to her story, she still didn’t know what to write…. What shall come next? He dropped his pen and leaned back in his chair. “And what now?” he spoke out loud. “Is this supposed to just continue ad infinitum? And what does the author of this part expect from me? To just bemoan my inability to write anything else? And what is the plan of the final author? All they seem to be doing is projecting their faults and uncertainties onto a series of ‘authors’. The story could have ended with any of these sections, yet here we are. Are they just going to keep going until they can’t think of a new variation of the first sentence?....” Maybe I went one too many?

1 The characters ask this question too much. 2 All these locations seem the same, like they’re all occurring in different instances of the same room. 3 Maybe they could talk about things other than their failed stories. 4 Must everyone handwrite their stories? 5 Too many of these sentences begin with “he”.

Illustrated by Rachel Ko

CREATIVE

content warning: blood

Major Character Death Written by Izma Haider She could see where she stepped out of her sandals for the last time. One in front of the other, she stepped out of them one at a time. One foot on the cool tile, then the other. She leaned on the doorbell, breath bated like she had a choice. The TV is going inside. I don’t want to lean on your shoulder. I want my crutch. They drink coffee under ruined lime trees. There is a goat on the roof of the car. Three faces. One for me, one for you, one for everyone else. She’s got a couple joints loose, she said. His forehead folds like a concertina. He told her to stop being unsympathetic to the situation of others. People are so like their cars. She tries to maintain her sovereignty in the conversation. He thinks about the blood snagging over in his wrist. She realises she hasn’t filled the boy’s glass and does so. She hoses the car off with dirty water. A thing is said to be finite in its own kind—in suo genere finite—when it can be limited by another thing of the same nature. For example, her body is said to be finite because we can always conceive of another body greater than it. So, too, her thought is limited by another thought. But body is not limited by thought, nor thought by body. It shouldn’t be. She walks quickly to keep off the cold, but it creeps in like ants at a picnic. This is an easy bite. He walks fast, too. It’s one of the few things they have in common. He follows her until she passes the window frame. The evening swells like a rotting snowball. Like a deer bloated with sleep, the snowball is a body in itself; mixed with other things. The body blisters. She drives back to the city. She is walking down the street when a woman grabs her arms and starts screaming hysterically. She wants her to stop, but the woman is not herself. The goat is not hers. She is a mother with three daughters and a storm approaching. Is the mother mocking her? Should she? His jacket is apple green, the colour that isn’t real but sounds pretty. Talking to him is like doing the sky in a puzzle. What does that mean? It means you will spend your entire life trying to be like that. Who’s dancing with you? She is Sisyphus on that inclined treadmill. What does that mean? If someone painted her, it would be a still life. It means she will spend her entire life trying to be something else. So, this is the gloaming. Hospitable though he may be, glorious that he is, He already knows. All flesh is weak. O God, you already know. All flesh is grass. O God, I’m the serf, pouring out basins and poured out like old water. At least it’s a role. At least I’m playing. Are you ready, Abel?

Illustrated by Alice Tai

content warning: racial violence, racial slurs

CREATIVE

Waiting for the train Written by Frankey Chung As far back as I can remember, my favourite birthday was wrapped in a family road trip from Melbourne to Brisbane. Slow hours of gleeful exhales filled Mum and Dad’s silver Holden Commodore as the sky morphed from Wonga Pigeon-grey to Kingfishergold. Green signs of Wangaratta and Jugiong dotted the highway landscapes. Matt and I caught countless geodudes and machops against the blurring scrim of honeyed fields. I will never forget the night we took rest in a caravan park, huddled into a trailer, stuffing spongy, thick-crusted pizzas covered in pineapple into our wide, dribbling mouths. In Brisbane, Uncle Ahkiew fed us with his cackling laughter, pushing pins and needles into our sides. He showed us Movie World, where Matt and I sprinted backwards through queues for ‘Lethal Weapon – The Ride’, pulling funny faces for ride photos on repeat. All day, we searched for chances to hold preInstagram poses alongside my superheroes. Everything else was a champagne haze. Decades later, while strolling towards Flinders Street Station, slurs were thrown at me in aggressive timbres from the safety of a passing car. All I could remember then was the dusk filling with electric heat on my favourite birthday. Walking through the loud of Surfers Paradise. Tall, white figures gathering slowly behind us. Their breath scratching the back of my neck. Murmurs bubbling and crescendoing into high-pitched squawks: cackling, pointing, and dispersing. Waves of bloody Chinks and go back to where you came from rippling in circles and lingering in a heavy fog. The ground shivering. Gravity tightening like a vice against my throat. Huddling together in the middle of the street as the surrounding world emptied. The night losing its warmth and succumbing to ocean freeze. My favourite birthday. ** pink and blue raincoat trembling last train to Sandringham **

Illustrated by Rai

CREATIVE

Mount Martha Breeze Written by Lauren Bennett It’s Mount Martha breeze, fresh cut grass and salty seas. Wine glasses clinking— sauv blanc spills over into everyone singing “Happy birthday to you”. Sun slants low over the kidney shaped pool, and with cake crumbs wiped from empty plate edges, you close your eyes. A willie wagtail sits on the edge of the birdbath in its usual spot, next to you in yours. “Grandad”… The tug of a sleeve, the wag of a tail, but your nap under the wisteria is the forever kind. I’ve tucked this away where a memory lay— replaced hot tears and Betadine with fresh cut grass, and salty seas. Willie wagtail and you, asleep, under the wisteria, rustling, in Mount Martha breeze.

Illustrated by Nina Hughes

Written by Iris Lim

CREATIVE

The Piano Sprawling from the floorboards, the monochrome floorboards, sounds of a dead girl singing. It belonged to the house. The house with the girl, the house with the monochrome floorboards. Some called it the black coffin. Now, peer into the coffin, testify to its contents— the many, many ridges of a human spine. (Into the house of Mason & Hamlin) The autopsy takes note of sharp staccato beats pumping a syncopated rhythm. The embalmer, with whispered breath: “The spine is still dancing.” Metronome coroner, he walks back and forth and finally concludes what was under the floorboards. Pour forth from spines, the dead girl singing, pedalling back, asking you, again, and again, Does this strike a chord?

Illustrated by Michelle Chan

SATIRE

content warning: references to the Israel-Palestine crisis, drugs

SATIRE-IN-BRIEF Written by The Satire Team

TRENDING | TRENDING | TRENDING | TRENDING | TRENDING | TRENDING ‘Rumours’ by Fleetwood Mac Finally Moved to Self-Help Aisle World Argues Over COVID Vaccine Patent, Diabetics Everywhere Confirm Zero Issues with Patented Insulin. ZERO Make your next book club exciting: Ten books guaranteed to see at least one person throw hands Heartbroken Person’s Instagram Post Captioned with Mitski Lyrics Extreme Cause for Concern Existence of Headline Implies Existence of Beautiful Person Reading It —Chelsea Rozario, Charlotte Armstrong, Raina Shauki

Physics student creates a time machine to give self more time to study for quiz

Only way to attract better teachers is to remove their salaries entirely, says Minister for Education

Second year science student Hayley Bennett has recently built a device capable of bending pulsations of quantum matter so that she can have an extra day to study for her upcoming physics quiz. As Bennett was originally refused an extension for the assessment, she resorted to spending all her free time in the following two weeks building the time machine. Unfortunately, despite the extra day she gave herself to study for the quiz, she still failed.

Minister Alan Tudge has last week proposed a bill making it illegal to pay teachers. He argues the scheme will attract only the most passionate potential teachers and weed out those who are only there for financial incentives. He even suggested charging teachers $100 a day to make the profession seem even more desirable. “Economic theory has shown us that the higher the price of a product or service, the higher quality we perceive it to be”, Tudge said.

—James Gordon

Student deciding whether to care for their house plants today remembers it’s called a “watering can” not a “watering can’t” High out of his mind from all the bongs, Dimitri Pascal (22) was in the middle of a couch session at his share house in Carlton North this past Saturday when a thought struck him. “Shieet… I haven’t watered my plants in a week. Time to get the watering can… heheh… get it? ‘Can’… cos I ‘can’ water the plants… heheh.” —Sweeney Preston

Person still hasn’t paid you back that $25 from 2 weeks ago may as well have killed someone at this point

Influencer suffers serious injury after fence-sitting accident Prominent influencer Phil Esteen has suffered a serious injury after slipping whilst sitting on a fence. The accident occured at a border fence between Israel and Palestine. A spokesman for Esteen said that Esteen believed the activity was safe because the U.N. and some Western countries were so successful at the activity. —Josh Abbey

Hannibal Lecter set to be the focus of new Disney feel-good film, “Lambchop”

“It’s like, if you’ve got money problems, that’s fine, but like, just let me know?” recounted Natasha, who claims Bernadette still hasn’t opened her message about the Tequila shots from the other week.

Following the success of Cruella—a Disney film that seeks to humanise a woman whose only goal is to skin puppies—Disney has decided to continue down the same road with a funky new retelling of everyone’s favourite cannibalistic serial killer, Hannibal Lecter.

—Sweeney Preston

—Charlotte Armstrong

Illustrated by Elmira

SATIRE

Wanker wins Nobel Prize for driving like a wanker Since the start of his driving career, Harold Donnelly has accumulated over twenty years of extra time from every instance of speeding, pushing in, and cutting off other cars. It’s an impressive feat, especially considering he’s only been driving for five years. He’s since been awarded the highest humanitarian honour for his admirable decision to spend his extended life assisting those in poverty and coordinating peace treaties between countries engaging in military conflict. Well done, Harold. Big claps.

Scientists consider the possibility that Mercury has been in retrograde since late 2019 A string of global disasters over the last eighteen months has left scientists considering the possibility that Mercury has been in retrograde this whole goddamn time. Commonly associated with breakdowns in communication, relationships and decision-making, researchers have postured that Mercury being in retrograde provides one possible explanation for the current state of the world. —Raina Shauki

—James Gordon

Breaking: If you don’t tip your UberEats driver, you’re a dog Farrago has it on good authority that if you don’t tip the person who is paying for their own fuel, working without insurance, who likely doesn’t have Australian citizenship and therefore no access to Medicare, and whose occupation denotes no standard hourly wage, then you need to take a good hard look in the mirror. And then apologise to your mirror for making it reflect such a poor excuse for a human.

Local group member would love if just one other person could answer a fucking email please and thank you Having done the lion’s share of the final Cultural Revolutions And Revolutionaries project, member of project group 7 Chloe is on the verge of an emotional breakdown after hearing nothing back from any member of her supposed “team”. “Fuck this, I’m just putting my name on it,” she was heard declaring into her tear-damaged laptop.

—Sweeney Preston

University of Melbourne tutor becomes building in order to be treated properly, pilot-scheme to be extended The University of Melbourne’s part-time-serfs have once more demonstrated their expertise. Recognising that the University’s administration is governed by the maxim: “people are replaceable, buildings have swag”, a pilot-scheme has been established to transform part-time staff into buildings. The scheme’s guiding hope is that once part-time staff have been transformed into buildings, the University will start treating them properly.

—Charlotte Armstrong

Student hypothesises that the existence of “alternative” rock implies the existence of “normal” rock A University of Melbourne science student has recently submitted his controversial thesis topic, which aims to explore the scientific implications of the ‘altrock’ genre. “What the Arts are missing is a scientific lens of analysis. If ‘alternative’ rock exists, then we must be ready to accept the fact that ‘normal’ rock is the basis of an important scientific benchmark.”— Drew Lam (22). —Raina Shauki

—Josh Abbey

Novelty bag talk of the office as soulcrushed workers reminisce on when they too once enjoyed life

Woman reaches final straw after accidentally putting in the wrong passcode to unlock phone

After spotting a co-worker sporting a funky little peach-shaped bag on Wednesday, a local office has quickly found itself in turmoil as workers try to remind themselves of what it felt like to have a soul. Candy, owner of the bag in question, made the purchase reportedly for its “fun colour”. Other workers are now crying in the aisles, with one sobbing into the communal tea. More at 5.

After a long week of work and study, a 19-year-old woman has finally succumbed to the stresses of modern life after failing to unlock her iPhone. Her fingers, exhausted from the difficult week, failed multiple times to accurately enter the correct fourdigit passcode. Following several attempts, the woman was finally able to unlock her device only to have forgotten why she even picked it up in the first place.

—Charlotte Armstrong

—Raina Shauki

Illustrated by Elmira

FODDER

GOTHIC PLAYLIST Complied by Mark Yin & Joanna Guelas

1. Kingston – Faye Webster 2. All My Weight – Hollis 3. Nighttime Drive – Jay Som 4. Youth – Daughter 5. Kyoto – Phoebe Bridgers 6. Vacation – Hippo Campus 7. St Clarity – The Paper Kites 8. Our Time Is Short – Gang of Youths 9. Strawberry Blonde – Mitski 10. Punisher – Phoebe Bridgers 11. Just One Sec – The Antlers 12. Tea, Milk & Honey – Oh Pep ! 13. Monster – Lola Kirke 14. oh baby – LCD Soundsystem 15. Pink in the Night – Mitski 16. Dance Yrself Clean – LCD Soundsystem 17. Devil That I Know – Jacob Banks 18. Smother – Daughter 19. Motion Sickness – Phoebe Bridgers 20. If Only – Raveena 21. First Love / Late Spring – Mitski 22. Hearing Your Voice – Omar Apollo 23. Space Cowboy – Kacey Musgraves 24. Chinese Satellite – Phoebe Bridgers 25. Go Farther In Lightness – Gang of Youths 26. Norman fucking Rockwell – Lana Del Rey 27. happier – Olivia Rodrigo 28. Self Control – Frank Ocean 29. Supermodel – SZA 30. Last Words of a Shooting Star – Mitski 31. Space Song – Beach House

Illustrated by Katie Zhang

content warning: death

FARRAGO

Money Meal

Written by Ava Nunan Money tastes like sweat dripping from the armpit of a vogue model. Rarely does one get the opportunity to savour such a distinct flavour—like how the poor love oysters. I have always fancied the rare, the refined; despised the ordinary and its proponents. Today, I can smell the tantalising history residing in my money-meal. Filtered from a small busin My boss died on the 17th of February 2021. I found his diary when I was cleaning out his office. As it turns out, choking on a $100 note wasn’t a freak coincidence.

Redeath

Written by Sophie Breeze The bedroom was dead. She had no way of knowing when this had happened, or what the cause had been, but she glanced up to see photographs leached of their colour, bookshelves caving in, and trinkets disfigured in dust. She might as well have been sitting smack bang in the centre of a casket. In the black screen of her laptop, she could make out a reflection. One face, leached of colour; one ribcage, caved in; one body, a mangled heap of limbs. She stared at the walls of her bedroom. She realised she was cold.

Pixie

Written by Marija Mrvosevic Pixie’s soft fur felt wet under my fingers. She’s getting sicker. The vet said it may get worse before it gets better. I’m waiting to send her back out there to find my baby—she will show me what happened to Daisy. I never should have let her walk Pixie by herself. I thought with a dog as protective as Pixie nothing could ever go wrong. Eventually, Pixie shows me the way. And my baby is fine! But as we go back, Pixie tumbles to the ground. Later, the vet will say it was an aneurism.

My Tragedy or An Argument with Vogue Written by Elina Pugacheva

If Vogue were to shoot me for a cover story about home, it wouldn’t be here. The homeless dogs ruin the landscape, they’d say. The apartment is too Soviet-y. Slush on the pavement? But we Westerners can only stomach snowy fairy tales in this godforsaken country. But this is my home, I would plead. If only your home was in Moscow! Or even St. Petersburg. Does Russia even have other cities? Yes, it does. And one of those unpronounceable cities with depressing courtyards is the only place I’ve ever truly felt at home. Isn’t it tragic?

FARRAGO 01 80

For and Against: Period Pieces For

Against

by Hannah Winspear-Schillings

by Reba Nelson

Some critics may call the humble period drama boring. Some might even say old hat. To which I remove my white silk glove, slap the naysayers across the chops with it, and challenge them to fisticuffs at dawn. Yes, every single naysayer. Yes, even if they number in the thousands. I’ll fight them all. Who wouldn’t want to see endless parades of interchangeable withered old white people careen rhythmlessly through room after room after room after—you get it. Absolutely scintillating television. Riveting stuff.

Period pieces are inherently tied to nostalgia. But nostalgia is sedative, derivative, a dead-end. Something described as ‘nostalgic’ is always referred to as what it is not–namely, current, tangible experience. Remember how many of us mocked the phrase “only 90s kids remember”? “Only 90s kids remember breathing”, “only 90s kids remember sleep”. Nostalgia is intoxicating because it is universal. The loss which stems from aging is inescapable–we all yearn for what we once had, or never had at all.

First, it should be noted that not all period dramas are exclusively set in grand mansions servicing a specific niche category of British aristocracy. Phoebe WallerBridge in Fleabag quipped that Carrie is the greatest period drama of our time (if you know, you know). As hilarious as that pun is, the official definition of period dramas is plain and simply a movie set during a period of time. This of course provides the perfect escapist coping mechanism for jaded history nerds disillusioned with the drudgeries of the 21st century (Who, me? Never!). Regency England? Check. US Civil War? Done. Middle Ages? Yup! Roaring Twenties? Sure! Whatever wibblywobbly-timey-wimey stuff Outlander had going on? Aye lassie!

Period pieces stagnate in this vague space of reflection. Watching them I can revel in escapism: Pride and Prejudice restores the sex appeal of touching another’s hand, The Queen’s Gambit uses the fashion, music and politics of the cold war era to glamorise the sport of chess and Stranger Things adopts the familiar visual language of 80s sci-fi to increase its bingeability. What period pieces also do, however, is shrug responsibility. They don’t have to make statements surrounding modernity because they aren’t concerned with our current lives. They don’t challenge or subvert norms and because they are preoccupied with reconstructing history. They avoid specificity in favour of the universality of the past. Perhaps this is excusable: entertainment can exist to, well, entertain. But, the paradox persists that an absence of works that do accomplish the above things means that a period piece set in our era might bore me to tears. From one girl to another (genre): to grow, you gotta leave the past behind.

Illustrated by Zoe Lau

Radio Fodder SEMESTER 2 SCHEDULE Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

12:00

Student Showcase

crushcrushcrush

1:00

The Witch’s Hour

PB & Jams

What’s All This?

2:00 Mx Congeniality

3:00 4:00

(3:30pm)

Joanne’s Jukebox

5:00 6:00 7:00

Mariah Mondays

Rumours

//Week 3 & 11

Album Analysis

Drama Dive/ Kdrama Stew

(Odd Weeks)

SEAS

(Even Weeks)

Spinning Ignorance

Radio SciLens

Jazz Room

MWTB

Weekly Song

sad boi hours

Troubles amd Nibbles

R U Really OK?

sad boi hours

The Pet Sweat Variety Hour

// All other weeks

8:00 Illustrated by Jasmine Pierce

UMSU and the Media Office are located in the city of Melbourne, on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders—past, present and emerging—and acknowledge that the land we are on was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.