ISSUE 8: NEON
NOVEMBER MONDAY
TUESDAY
WEDNESDAY
1
THURSDAY
2
FRIDAY
3
SATURDAY
4
SUNDAY
5 Tsunami Awareness Day
6
7
8
9
10
Melbourne Cup, Yikes
13
11
12
Remembrance Day
14
15
16
17
21
22
23
24
18
19
25
26
Exams Commence, RIP
20 27
28
29
30
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
Do you have an upcoming event? Let us know and we’ll do our best to include it in our calendar. Email grapeshot@mq.edu.au
EDITORIAL & CREATIVE PRODUCTION EDITOR IN CHIEF Angus Dalton
DEPUTY EDITOR Emma Harvey CREATIVE DIRECTOR Brittney Klein NEWS EDITOR Tess Connery REGULARS EDITOR Nikita Jones FEATURES EDITOR Max Lewis CREATIVES EDITOR Cameron Colwell ONLINE EDITOR Erin Christie COPY EDITOR Amelia van der Rijt DESIGN ASSISTANTS Daniel Lim & James Booth MARKETING DIRECTOR Shinae Taylor
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS + ILLUSTRATORS Liam Holt, Mariah Hanna, Georgia Drewe, Cassandra Ngurah, Tamsin McIntosh, Bella Garrido, Patrick McNally, Tieri Cafe, MELTY (aka Spoonty, aka James)
EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD Eliza Kitchener, Jasmine Noud, Mahyar Pourzand, Zwe Paing Sett, Paul Russell, Anthony Ryan
PUBLISHER
COORDINATOR
Kim Guerin
Melroy Rodrigues
Grapeshot would like to acknowledge the Darug people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work, and pay our respects to their Elders, past and present.
ISSUE 8: NEON
CONTENTS 5 NEWS
15 REGULARS
37 CREATIVE
6 NEWSFLASHES
16 CUB SPORT INTERVIEW
38 WILTING
8 RUN DOWN TO RUN OVER
18 UNDERCOVER
40 THE LAST NIGHT
9 I’M NOT CALLING YOU RACIST
20 ILLUSTRATED
10 MACQUARIE’S THREATENED MURALS
22 THE CHALLENGE
12 KING’S X NEON TO REMAIN 14 OLD MAGS, SAME STORIES
24 GRAPEY YEARBOOK
25 FEATURES
41 REPEAT OFFENDERS
26 REMEMBERING THE DRIVE-IN
42 POP-CULTURE REWIND
28 ERIN CHRISTIE VS. THE NDIS
46 MUSIC
30 MEET THE MYTH: SPOONTY 32 GETTING OUR BITE BACK 34 TAKE IT TO THE GRAVE
44 TRAILER TRASH 48 BOOKS 50 FILM 51 HOROSCOPES
36 BALI BOY TO BOUNCER
EDITOR’S LETTER YO welcome to our ‘throwback’ issue, ew, gross, retrospective, n o s t a l g i c, ~romanticising the past~, #vintage, was-borntoo-late-to-a-world-that-doesn’t-care-I-wish-I-was-a-punkrocker-with-flowers-in-my-hair. This issue is dedicated to art, neon lights, decades gone by, myths, murals and old magazines. For the first two years of uni I didn’t give a shit about its history. (I’ve actually always disliked history – I never really bought the ‘we need to learn from our history so we don’t repeat it’ thing, but then BOOM, NAZIS ARE A THING AGAIN, SHOULDA LISTENED). But digging back is fascinating. We’ve got iconic artworks (p 10) here that paved the way for those amazing Kim K and Kanye-themed murals, (and someone, not sure who, has added even more iconic artworks to Macquarie’s collection on the walls of the old Student HQ office... p 22). Our Campus News Editor also found an instance of a dude rushing in to the University Council meeting armed with hot coffee and an old-fashioned expletitive, plus a bunch of other goodies from issues of student mags from 1969.
By looking back on students mags (which I’ve done too with Dr. Sally Percival Wood on page 32) you get a snapshot of what the entire student population was thinking, doing, and concerned about back in the day. It’s so easy for student culture to be lost – murals are knocked down as campuses are redeveloped, trees are felled (p 7), and those adorable ducklings I wrote about last issue for their community-uniting power get run over by a fucking four-wheel drive. I hope these pages can do something to rectify what gets lost with the passing of years and the development around us: individual voices and stories. With that yuckness aside, I’d like to thank everyone who’s ever written, submitted to, drawn for or picked up a Grapeshot. Also, some pretty bloody talented and precious humans put this mag together for you – meet them on page 24. Good luck with the rest of the year, and if you’re stressed, go and watch some crunchy slime videos on Instagram. They are so satisfying. Angus xx
NEWS
NEWSFLASH
NSW GOV REPLACING ICONIC LOGOS
The office of the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has issued a directive that many major Sydney attractions will be ordered to replace their existing logos with that of the NSW Government. The Waratah image is to be used as part of branding for the likes of Sydney Olympic Park, Sydney Opera House, Art Gallery NSW and Taronga Zoo.
lie with the government, but many senior staff are concerned about the consequences of the re-brand. A spokesperson for Sydney Opera House told The Sydney Morning Herald that the Opera House brand has grown to be strong and recognisable, and now has ‘significant international reach’.
The directive, handed down somewhat discreetly in August, stipulates that all government departments and universities (including Macquarie), among other council and state bodies, are expected to feature only the Waratah logo on advertising, project signage and external communications. Although re-branding is mandatory, it has also been announced that exemptions would possibly be available if a ‘compelling reason’ was given.
According to the government, the directive was instated to “ensure consistency across public sector communications and improve the recognition of NSW government projects”. FairFax journalist Michael Koziol, who has been reporting on the issue, has stated in interview that he would be “astounded if the government really put its foot down” when it comes to reviewing the applications for exemptions. He also discussed the recklessness of the decision, stating that those taking this bureaucratic approach “[didn’t] really think through the consequences of this marketing fad,” which will take a degree of individuality from all the institutions affected.
Following the release of the directive, affected companies hurried to apply for exemptions to the new rule in order to keep their iconic logos. Exemptions can be given to agencies that are considered independent, such as courts. Others can gain a partial exemption through co-branding, where the agency will be required to use both the Waratah and their original logo, with the Waratah being the more prominent of the two whenever the logos are used. These decisions
It seems that in an attempt to create a greater sense of a NSW community, the individuality of these establishments will suffer as they re-brand to all share the same logo. Many have commentated that this bizarre directive resembles an episode of ABC’s Utopia, which satirises the inner workings of the Australian government. It does seem a rather comical situation, that a rule aiming to create an image of community is throwing its members into dispute.
COURTYARD TREES FELLED
NOW YOU SRC ME, NOW YOU DON’T
The removal of the trees, which were planted in 1968, conveniently coincides with current developments being made to the Campus Hub as part of the university’s Campus Development plan, which will see the demolition of the Campus Hub building in coming months. Broomfield and Dendy have stated that “regardless of the upcoming works, these trees would still need to be removed.” The university maintains a tree replacement policy which ensures that two trees are replanted for every one removed, and the old trees will potentially be repurposed as furniture and other structures on campus.
“In terms of things we’re most proud of, we worked with the uni to try and open up MUSE on weekends, which is one of the biggest things we were really pushing for,” says Hurrell. “We’re so glad we finally got it from 10-6 on weekends now.”
Nine of the 120 iconic lemon-scented gums in Macquarie University’s central courtyard will be gone by next semester. According to Director of Property, Mark Broomfield, and Director of Sustainability, Leanne Denby, the trees have reached the end of their life cycle and “must be taken down to protect our community from falling branches.” The courtyard was closed on Oct 20 “until further notice”, because of the danger posed.
END OF THE ROAD FOR DUCKLINGS On Monday October 16th, reports were made of a driver running over and killing some of the campus ducklings on University Avenue. The driver of the vehicle did not slow down or stop driving once the ducklings had been hit, and continued to drive through the campus, leaving one duckling dead and another dying. One witness, Eliza, told Grapeshot: “I was sitting down on the grass outside RMC and I saw the cute ducks walking in a line to cross the road. I got my phone out to film them because they looked adorable walking in a line, then I saw a dark blue FWD driving in the direction of the ducks. I held out my hand to say stop while the driver still had plenty of time to slow down, but he continued driving at the same pace. Luckily the parent ducks and all but two of the ducklings ran away in time, but unfortunately two ducklings were run over. One duckling wasn’t killed instantly and died a slow painful death. What’s really upsetting is University Avenue has a speed limit of 30, which would have given the driver plenty of room to slow down if he was driving at the speed limit, but I believe he was speeding.” The ducklings were Australian wood ducks, a protected species. There are a number of instances in New South Wales where people have been charged with animal cruelty and driving offences after running over water birds, and several Macquarie students have called for the driver to be identified and charged. According to the RSPCA, the maximum punishments for a person convicted of animal cruelty is a $22,000 fine, or 5 years prison. Anyone with any information about the event is encouraged to contact Campus Security on 02 9850 7112.
Despite continuing negotiations between Grapeshot and the SRC, our news editors are yet to receive an invite to the representative committee’s meetings due to ongoing concerns from both students on the SRC and university staff about being transparent. Regardless, students are wondering what the fresh cohort of representatives have been up to since their election in May, so Grapeshot met with SRC members Paul Russell and Sam Hurrell to find out.
“And that means the Queer Space and the Women’s Room will also be open on weekends,” Russell adds. The area will be accessible via swipe access using student cards on weekends. Opening hours have also extended to 10pm on weekdays. The SRC are also campaigning to extend the opening hours of the library and the E7B computer labs. They say their most passionate and unanimously supported motion was to push the university to communicate more extensively on the constructions occurring around campus, but have found the experience ‘frustrating’, and feel as if the university still isn’t communicating with students efficiently. The SRC have also been liaising with security and have been informed of a plan to increase lighting on the walk from the university to the train station and in other areas around campus, although a timeline on this is unavailable. In the meantime, security are releasing an app – developed by a group of PACE students – that will allow people to track the complimentary shuttle bus that departs from the library, which will hopefully increase the use of this service and improve safety. A working group has been established for the construction and allocation of gender neutral bathrooms on campus, and discussions have taken place concerning the SRC’s potential joining of the National Union of Students. While some reps support joining the NUS, a majority decided that they ‘couldn’t justify the monetary cost’ of membership fees. In terms of large financial commitments, the SRC allocated $50,000 to RE:Conception, $7500 to the Deadly Ball aimed at supporting Macquarie’s Indigenous students, and a number of smaller grants have been given out to student groups to use up the SRC’s leftover budget for the year. At least $6000 was dedicated to O-Week. When asked what this was spent on, multiple members of the SRC said the money was spent on ‘free hot-chocolate’ and weren’t able to elaborate. Additionally, following the lack of support for the ‘appointment panel’ for E&D reps – which results in almost half of the SRC being selected by a university-organised panel – the current SRC is drafting election reforms to overhaul this process. Reform will be welcomed by those who view the current system as undemocratic.
News || 7
FROM RUN DOWN TO RUN OVER
MACQUARIE’S INADEQUATE SUPPORT FOR STUDENTS APPLYING FOR M E D I C A L D I S R U P T I O N T O S T U D I ES
The last thing anyone wants to do when sick is fill out copious amounts of paperwork, especially considering the almost magical correlation between illness and periods of time in which health is absolutely paramount. It always seems like your immune system is acutely aware of your impending due dates and social plans and decides to abandon ship, allowing your body to careen into icebergs of congestion, fevers and general misery. Adding to this despair is the realisation that your poor health is likely to impact on your performance in upcoming assessments. For the most part, students begrudgingly push through their conditions and ailments, most of which are only temporary thorns in the side, to simply avoid the inconvenience that arises from applying for Disruption to Studies. Due to the stringent conditions that have to be met to establish a claim for Disruption, including the duration of illness impairing students for a minimum of 3 days as well as proof of how such an illness prevented students from completing required tasks or assessments (or at least caused “substantial disruption”), most students suffering from mild illnesses will either tough it out or apply for only the most relevant assessment or task. Some might argue that this rigorous system helps prevent the Disruption to Studies policy being abused by unscrupulous individuals looking for easy passage through difficult tasks or busy periods of assessments. This is probably true. However, when the University screens applications and determines which ones are genuine, the purpose of the policy is designed to help protect vulnerable students and provide equitable solutions when academic performance is likely to be impaired. If the policy sets too onerous a burden on students to prove their medical conditions, or doesn’t provide adequate support to students who face significant disruption as a result of conditions expected to affect them for long periods of time, the policy is no longer effective in meeting its objective. In the opinion of the SRC’s Business and Economics Faculty Representative, Sarah McCabe, the support currently offered to students affected by illness by the university is inadequate. McCabe puts this down to an overly complicated process and the frequent breakdown of communication between the University and students applying for disruption: “[The whole thing was] difficult to navigate. While staff were genuine and sincere, unfortunately they were frequently unable to answer my questions. I was often directed to the wrong form or criteria, which is particularly problematic given applications are time-sensitive.” McCabe also expressed her concern for the lack of mechanisms currently in place to ensure students who are diagnosed with chronic illness don’t slip through the cracks.
8 || News
“Generally, when you fall chronically ill, you have no way to reasonably predict that your illness will be long-term. For students who fall unwell, individually applying for disruptions across multiple units is time-consuming. Perhaps more importantly, having to make multiple applications leaves room for inconsistencies across subjects … While it’s fantastic that the University offers support for prior conditions, there is a gap for students that become ill in the long-term during semester.” The primary options offered to students who fall chronically ill during semester are individual applications for consideration per assessment, or to completely withdraw from units without academic penalty. A lack of middle ground may see students forced into situations that cause significant impact to their academic progress. “If a semester is already half-completed, it would be devastating for a student to feel they must withdraw because their consideration process took too long to be processed or their individual considerations were dealt with inconsistently across subjects.” As a member of the SRC, McCabe is focused on improving student welfare and believes that the Disruption to Studies policy is in dire need of an upgrade: “If it is not addressed, we are failing students that fall ill. Not only is being unwell already terrible, you face a second victimisation if your only option is to withdraw.” McCabe believes that the way forward involves a collaborative effort between staff in order to ensure a universal standard of consideration in situations where multiple units are affected. When approached to comment on this article, Pro Vice Chancellor (Students) Leigh Wood said new policy would be taking effect from December 4, with the introduction of a clearer procedure, an online form that “streamlines processes”, and greater flexibility for supporting documents. The name of Disruption to Studies will be changed to Special Consideration “because that is the language that students understand”. Wood continued: “Will this deliver a perfect Special Consideration framework? Most likely no, but a post implementation review of the Policy is planned for the end of Session 1, 2018 and broad feedback will be sought from the University community.” For the time being, keep up your Vitamin C and stay hydrated. It’s a long push to final exams. by Liam Holt
I’M NOT CALLING YOU RACIST In a recent cultural studies class we were given excerpts relating to how celebrities have been guilty of cultural appropriation and asked to discuss why it is important to remember the racial tensions attached to the origins of certain styles of expression. We didn’t get around to discussing this, however, as a boy in my group (we’ll call him Tim) first wanted to refute that celebrities are guilty of cultural appropriation at all. Our primary example was Miley Cyrus, and her appropriation of Black culture. Tim’s argument was that Miley Cyrus can release any kind of music she wants, she can dance in any way she wants, and she can wear whatever she wants because it is something that she likes. According to Tim, Miley simply took something she likes (that something being a part of black culture) and used it in an artistic form, and he “didn’t get why people think that is hating on black culture”. Well, Tim. No one said Miley is hating on black culture by appropriating it. She is, however, completely disregarding the extremely complex and sensitive origins of black culture. Miley Cyrus has taken something inherently black and has turned it into a commodity. She has made money through exploiting black culture, and she has not given back to the community she has stolen these forms of expressions from. She has not raised awareness, she has not been at Black Lives Matter marches, and she has not expressed outrage at the overrepresentation of black people in America’s prison system, or the disproportionate amount of police brutality black people face. Now please, Tim, understand that I am not saying Miley Cyrus is in any way required to be a black rights activist. She has done an enormous amount of work to raise awareness, and to support, the LGBTQI community and women’s rights and she should be applauded for that. However, Miley Cyrus has failed to recognise the intersectional issues within each of those spheres. And to make matters worse, she appropriated a culture that she has forgotten in her ‘Bad Gal Miley’ rebellious phase.
Recently she has shed that image, and returned to her good girl country roots. Tim, if nothing else, please remember this. Miley Cyrus was able to take off the clothes that gave her a bad girl, rebellious image. Black people cannot take off their skin. They cannot remove the bias that is entrenched in Western culture, that people like you don’t even see as an issue. Miley Cyrus was able to take an entire culture and make it into something accessible for white people. She was able to make it ‘cool’ and she gained some sort of ‘street cred’ (mostly from white people), and most of all, she gained a lot of money from it. Meanwhile, black people are racially profiled every single day. They are called ‘ghetto’ if they wear door knocker earrings, or shake their asses in a club. Black men are shot for having baggy pants. At the end of a very long debate in which Tim seemed more content to spout off opinions, rather than listen to where he might also be guilty of forgetting a very long and oppressed history of millions of people, Tim said, “It’s important to talk about all this. And it’s fun to stir the pot. I just don’t like when things get racial”. It is extremely important to talk about these issues, and I feel privileged to be able to have such discussions at university. However, Tim, it’s not fun to stir the pot when it is something that remains sensitive and raw for people other than yourself. And, it is a racial issue. The more you try to pass it off as an issue of political correctness, the more you add to foundations of systemic racism that people of colour are trying to deconstruct. When you say this is not an issue and people of colour have no right to be upset about it, what I hear is that your privilege will not allow you to see that you are a product of a society that has been built off the backs of slaves, and refuses to be sorry about it. by Mariah Hanna
News || 9
Photo by Jozef Vissel
MACQUARIE’S (THREATENED) MURALS Grapeshot talks to the Macquarie mural artist who paved the way for Kanye’s Kiss and Tony Abbott marrying himself A few storeys down from the clinical creativity of the new MAZE student space, in a semi-outdoor area seldom visited by students that currently resembles a loading dock, an important part of Australia’s art history unfolds on a huge wall. Planet Earth is being pumped with industrial waste by a factory with a skull-and-crossbones logo. Star Wars-style jet fighters soar over a version of the old library that looks more like an Aztec temple, with books taking flight from it and flapping into the sky. There’s an army of men with TVs for heads, beetles crawling underground that look vaguely radioactive, and an eye with marijuana leaves for lashes staring up at a tightrope walker spanning a wire cast
10 || News
between a lighthouse and a palm tree. This epic tapestry was painted 40 years by David Humphries, who pioneered the public mural movement in Australia and has worked overseas in London and New York. ‘There’s several theme-areas to it,’ David says of the mural from his studio in Rosebery. ‘There were images of Truganini [an Indigenous activist from the 1800s], and that was to do with Aboriginal culture, going through the desert – it was at a time when there were lots of protests against uranium mining. The library building and books were about knowledge and the destruction of knowledge by war … there were lots of political messages in it.’ David doesn’t consider his murals political in a Labor vs. Liberal sense, but rather as an opportunity for downtrodden communities to make statements, and for use as vehicles for social change.
‘It wasn’t political in the way that others are, painting Tony Abbott as a bride to himself … But politics were different in those early days, they were much more naive. I think if we were at it now, I couldn’t resist doing something very nasty about Tony Abbott, and I’m very proud that people have developed the mural tradition to make those statements. Because in the beginning, nobody knew what murals were, and it was actually very pioneering work that was being done. Nobody had ever thought or heard of doing it until we started – from that point of view, that Macquarie mural is quite significant and important.’
But this mural is all but doomed. The Campus Hub is being slowly expunged of tenants in preparation for its demolition, and the mural will go with it. Tim Guider, the artist who oversaw the mural, is currently exhibiting art at the Florence Biennale and is difficult to get in contact with. But after a quick email exchange, it was unclear whether he has been notified of the impending deletion of his work, which is a violation of usual development protocols. Usually, Guider told Grapeshot, local councils must write to the artist that will be be affected by any planned development before they go ahead.
David’s ideology of using murals as opportunities for instigating solidarity and social change grew out of his time the ghettoes of New York, before he came to Macquarie.
Since our contact with Guider we have been assured that the Macquarie University Art Gallery have made contact with Guider and documented the mural on his behalf before the building’s demolition on December 4.
‘I was working in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and you wouldn’t even get a taxi to take you there back then … now it’s the fashionable place to live,’ he says. David united desperate communities there through mural painting, and saw how encouraging people to paint in public spaces could legitimise the experiences of disadvantaged people and draw much-needed attention and aid to the city’s most vulnerable residents. When he returned to Australia and began working at Macquarie as Artist-in-Residence, he sought the same collaborative and street-style approach. ‘It’s not ever meant to be a sleek, fine art mural that’s perfectly rendered. That wasn’t really the point of it,’ David explains. ‘The point of it was to make a fairly spontaneous but structured statement about issues that were coming and floating around campus at the time. And the campus was very different in those days – a lot smaller, a lot more intimate, and there was a lot more obvious activity – accessible activity – of the students. It wasn’t like what it is now, which appears to be to be a sort of sausage factory.’
Curators are also organising a re-touching of David’s mural, which will thankfully be around for at least a few more years. For David, it will be a rare dip back into the paint tin. ‘I’m seventy now, so I sort of deserve to retire and be gardening,’ he laughs. ‘And physically I’m not really up to scaling the side of an oil tank or climbing scaffolding with buckets of paint all day. Those days were fun, but they’re young people’s games.’ by Angus Dalton
David is renowned as the pioneer of mural painting in Australia, and over his career has painted such famous works as the Peace, Justice and Unity mural in the CBD, which depicts a dove taking flight and hands bound with rope being freed by a sharpened quill. Fortunately, his Macquarie mural is safe, for now. Other artworks at Macquarie aren’t so lucky. In the space below the old Co-op Bookshop, in the strange labyrinth area where a lone Commonwealth Bank ATM stands, another idiosyncratic artwork plays out across the walls. Bizarre, birdlike gargoyles leer out of corners, a six-armed skeleton guards a vending machine, a scarlet whale frolics in a lake, and real banknotes, leaves and sticks are glued to the wall. Commissioned by the Macquarie University Union in 1991, this mural holds a more critical streak; it shows ducks and turtles being shipped in to the university lake from a factory, a criticism of the university’s increasing concern with its image and marketability. It’s called L’amour de la Terre, which translates to ‘Loving the Earth’.
News || 11
A S B U S I N ESSES C L O SE , T H E N E O N L I G H T S O F K I N G S C R O SS H A V E B EE N P R ESE R V E D . B U T W H A T E L SE I S L E F T ? I remember my first experience with Sydney’s nightlife. I was fresh out of high school. I’d taken a half-hearted puff on a joint sitting at a new acquaintance’s shitty outdoor dining table a week ago, so naturally I was imbued with streetwise confidence. At any moment I may have even figured out what sex was and what it was for. (I still don’t know, and nobody will explain it to me.) I hit up Oxford Street with my friends, and we traversed the city freely. The neon lights left imprints in my vision, and that night was the night I learned just how much there was to my city that I had no idea about. Weaving our way in and out of clubs and other joints lit up against the young night, we made our way to the bottom of the iconic Coke Sign. Watching the lights flash, the dancing colours on my skin, I felt a sense of immense and dizzying freedom. Okay, the dizzying part might have been the amyl, but the freedom was nice. I went back to Kings Cross a few weeks ago, to see a play at the Kings Cross Theatre, upstairs in the Hotel – one of the few places that has remained open on the iconic strip.
12 || News
The change in the community was palpable; a painful contrast from the glamorous amorality and optimism of previous years. Windows were dark, lease signs were everywhere, and the few bars that were open past midnight were overcrowded and fronted with menacing security, but the neon still glowed. The city felt like a burnt out husk, a fragile shell of what it was, but the neon grave markers still blazed out against the sky. When the colours of the lights hit my skin, it looked drained under the gaudy, blinking patterns. There’s no denying that Kings Cross has changed. Some may say it’s for the better; as a well-known Red Light district, the Cross was a hotspot of corruption and illegal activity. But since the decline of business after the the lock out laws, over 42 venues on the strip have closed down or moved away – replaced with offices, chain stores and retail venues. Nightclub owners have spoken up about the decision of many of their number to sell their venues to developers to make room for apartments. Recently, the council has agreed to allow the iconic neon from two such closed venues –
Porky’s nightclub and Dreamgirls – to remain after the venues are turned into office spaces, as homage to the kind of business the strip once turned out. The way I feel about this decision is complicated. I’ve never been one to resent or hamper progress, and business owners in the Cross affected by the shifting culture – the ‘End of the Golden Mile,’ if you will – might benefit from having office workers and retail foot traffic contributing to the mix of people that frequent the streets. And even I – a staunch advocate for drug legalisation and the advancement of rights to work for sex workers – would hesitate to say that everything that happened in the Cross back in the day was beneficial. As much as change hurts, I’m glad that, on some level, some aspect of the area is staying. Losing that neon would have meant losing a part of history. On the other hand, the government’s decision to let the neon signs remain adorning the empty streets could be considered a move simply seeking to save face. All these accusations of a city being gutted to its core can be deflected by pollies more easily if the lights remain. ‘What do you mean, Kings Cross is dead? Look at the lights! Does this neon look dead to you?’ The decision to let the street look the same, despite the people and places which made it what it was having to make room for another McDonalds, just adds insult to injury. These neon signs are markers for a city that doesn’t exist anymore. They are hollow, painful reminders of a city that was chopped up and thrown out. Let’s not ignore the reality: King Cross is a Dive, and has always been a Dive. But every city has a Dive. Melbourne has St Kilda. Los Angeles has... The entire city of Los Angeles. Kings Cross was ours. And unlike dodgy areas of other cities, Kings Cross was actually pretty safe to wander around in after dark; after all, that was its main appeal. I think areas like these are essential for a city; there is always demand for things like drugs and sex work, no matter how illegal, and evidence is clear that legalisation actually decreases risk and keeps people a lot safer. Kings Cross might have had a reputation, Underbelly-style, as a place where shady dealings went on, but in reality it was a haven for many. Drag Queens, artists, partygoers and numerous members of the LGBTQI+ community and other minority groups often found a home in the Cross. People that felt excluded and unsafe in the streamlined, hetero-centric nightclubs scattering the rest of the city could always find a place to let loose.
“THE CITY FELT LIKE A BURNT OUT HUSK, A FRAGILE SHELL OF WHAT IT WAS, BUT THE NEON GRAVE MARKERS STILL BLAZED OUT AGAINST THE SKY.” enough to cover it up – not eradicated, as the government would have us all believe. Just moved, and hidden, inside the glittery walls of The Star Casino. If the government genuinely wanted to stop these incidents, they could have looked into why Australians have an alcohol problem, or examine culturally embedded ideas that promote and valorise violent attitudes in young people, or investigate and address the social problems that lead to substance abuse. But they didn’t, because this isn’t about keeping people safe. The streets are no safer than before. Australians certainly aren’t drinking less. This is about an incredibly lucrative business opportunity: to turn the prime real estate in the Cross into spaces for offices and retail outlets and chain stores, and sell off pieces of our history, our industry, and our dwindling number of safe places for LGBTQI+ Australiansmto the highest possible bidder. The Kings Cross neon remains a painful remainder of the city that was, which got sold away, piece by piece. This isn’t some misty-eyed nostalgia to a time where ‘Things Used To Be Better’. This is not a lament of progress, and a desire to keep Sydney the way it was in the faux-golden memories of the people I know who grew up in the vibrant heart of Sydney at its prime. Because what we’re seeing isn’t progress. Looking around the city, there are still crowds looking for a place to have a bit of fun, go to a gig, or have a drink. People haven’t relented on their desire to party. Instead, they get thrown onto the streets; streets lined with square offices and dark windows, but still lit up with flickering neon. by Georgia Drewe
Media coverage of the controversial ‘coward punch,’ attacks that took place in the Cross are missing some crucial details, like the fact the majority of attacks took place before 10pm. Locking people out of bars at 1am would not have made a difference to these incidents. Data from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research tell you straight up that any violence that used to happen on the streets in the Cross has now been moved to the only place in the city big enough and rich
News || 13
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE, THE MORE THEY STAY THE SAME The old Macquarie student magazines are kept in the library storage area, and you can only get to them by putting in one of those irritating hold requests. And so, because I’m a horrible student who never learned how to actually do that in my three years here, I found myself asking one of the library workers to do it for me. “How far back do you want?” “The oldest you’ve got, please.” Macquarie has had a number of student publications – the most recent is in your hot little hands right now - but until the late 90s, we had Arena. I took the broadsheet-sized green book that contained every issue of Arena published in 1969 to a quiet spot in the library and cracked open the cover. I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting - 1969 wasn’t really that long ago after all. On the other hand, I was born in 1996, and anything before 1980 can feel like centuries ago. Maybe I’d find something about Woodstock? Or the moon landing? Whatever was between these pages, I was fairly convinced it was going to either reek of patriarchal bullshit or be endless flower power... stuff. I found nothing of the sort. Within the first few pages, an update was run about a media stir caused by an article that had been written by a student, Karl Evans, in Macquarie’s 1969 Orientation Handbook. The article included some outlandish ideas such as “non-virgin female students are in no way inferior members of the community”, “experimenting students should make a full and proper inquiry into the function and reliability of modern contraceptive methods”, and my personal favourite “an unplanned pregnancy can play hell with exam results”. Turns out The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, and The Daily Mirror had all ripped the article to shreds in their own publications. There are also so many gems that seem like they could have been written yesterday. For example, the Student Council candidates all campaigned for “higher student participation”, there are several articles addressing and decrying racism in Australia (in light of South African apartheid), and even a how-to guide on pot smoking – complete with the instruction “Be cool, smoking is very illegal”. The Letters to the Editor section is a goldmine as well. I lost count of the letters complaining about the “disappointment and boredom” that people felt in in various units, and how much they hated different tutorials (most complaints came from economics
14 || News
students). The SRC also takes a pretty severe roasting in these sections – frequently called “embarrassing” and “miserable”. The one that takes the cake for me though is the woman who wrote in asking what her legal rights were, as she’d somehow climbed up a lamppost as part of an “assignment on wind measurement given by the Earth Sciences Department of this University”, and wound up getting arrested because people thought she was making an attempt on her own life. The one thing that struck me overall, however, is the sheer amount of student activism that was going on. There are little things like letters to the Editor accusing the SRC of being a “closed group” and demanding better representation, all the way through to mass arrests of Macquarie students at rallies opposing conscription and the apartheid – even an incident where around 200 students went and sat on the road intersecting Balaclava Road and Epping Road to demand traffic lights. On a single page of the March issue, there are three photos of students at an anti-conscription protest being dragged away by authorities, a headline screaming “All Coppers Are Bastards!”, and a story about a student who marched into an official university meeting only to throw hot coffee over the chairman whilst calling him a “bungling prick”. He then set off a bunch of firecrackers and left, presumably in the dramatic, badass cloud of smoke that we’ve all dreamed about at least once. During my time at Grapeshot, I’ve heard a lot about the student activism of the past here at Macquarie University, but had never fully appreciated just how politically involved our student body once was. That’s not to say that there aren’t politically involved students on campus today – of course there are – but there’s also a hell of a lot more apathetic students than it seems we once had. I mean, can you imagine trying to muster 200 students today to go and sit on a road in a bid to get traffic lights put in? I can’t. It simply wouldn’t happen. The times we live in today aren’t any more or any less political than in 1969, so what happened? Maybe the University pushed back against our protesting for so long that we got tired. Maybe students today are simply too busy trying to survive day-to-day to protest. Maybe we just don’t care anymore. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert in any case, but I do think it would be amazing to take a leaf from cohort of 1969’s book, and get a bit of that spark and passion back that they exercised. They can keep the hairstyles, though. by Tess Connery
MORE FUN THAN EVER TALKING BATS WITH CUB SPORT’S TIM NELSON
The first word that comes to mind when I’m listening to Cub Sport’s latest album BATS is ‘vulnerable’, a concept that’s explicitly referenced in the second verse of the first track, ‘Chasin’: “I’m trying to be honest /And live deliberately /But my mind’s so scattered /With different parts of me.” From the beginning, we know we’re in for something different and very open.
I first like started to acknowledge I was gay to myself and then another year before I actually came out and Bolan and I got together. The songs are all written from an honest place. It was something I wasn’t really ready to show back then when I was writing and now I feel much more free and open to be my true self. The writing process definitely feels different on this album.”
That’s what I’m thinking about at the start of my interview with Cub Sport frontman, Tim Nelson, and he’s up-front when I ask him about honesty: “It’s the most open I’ve ever been…It feels like a new kind of era for Cub Sport.” A few months before BATS, Tim Nelson came out as gay and in a relationship with Cub Sport bandmate Bolan (Sam Netterfield).
In terms of the physical recording, there was more change: Tim recorded it at home and the other bandmates recorded over it later on. “Drums, and my guitar, that sort of thing. For most of BATS I recorded everything at home by myself and those demos just got mixed properly in the studio with John Castle. We recorded in some live drums and ended up taking it out cos it wasn’t feeling right.”
Has the new honesty changed the music process? “It definitely has, I guess this album was written sort of when
The unforgettable music video for lead single ‘O Lord’ was released in August. It’s the first music video made since
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Nelson came out and — this is the bit where I died— he got engaged to Bolan between the two days of shooting. “We wanted it to be a true representation of where we’re at. We wanted it to be a celebration of where we’ve gone to and who we are.” Far from the strictly electro-pop sound of their earlier music, ‘O Lord’ almost sounds like a gospel song, but this was unintentional: “I wasn’t planning anything when I wrote and recorded it. It was very in the moment. I opened up in the recording session and hit record and started singing. I listened back and then just recorded the harmonies over it and was like…that’s really gospel. I’ve been listening to a bunch of Kanye’s Life of Pablo and Chance the Rapper. They both have those gospel moments. I think it probably came from that. I didn’t think it would be a Cub Sport song when I first started writing it.” On the influences behind BATS, I bring up ‘Solo III’, a direct reference to Frank Ocean’s ‘Solo’, and asked him if there’s anything he looks for in terms of inspiration from other queer artists: “There’s something about Frank Ocean in particular and especially Blonde… You know how there are some albums and songs that you kinda need to listen to a couple of times before you really start to love them? I just feel so connected to Frank Ocean like immediately. There’s a song on the album, ‘Solo III’, which is very directly influenced by Frank Ocean’s ‘Solo’ and I kinda just tried to capture it.” Just because BATS is honest doesn’t mean the band’s earlier work was dishonest, but Nelson’s perspective on his old work has changed: “To look back on it it feels like watching myself trying to figure out who I was, what I was meant to be doing. At the start I was sure that that was the type of music that I wanted to make, I wanted to make it happy and upbeat. I didn’t want to acknowledge any of the stuff that was deeper than that. I see…just this personal development of figuring myself out. I also figured out my musicality a bit more.”
There’s an anecdote that’s stuck in my mind about Cub Sport when I read about it, and I feel compelled to bring it up: Nelson talked about how, when recording the album, he would go for a run and film the bats which flew across the sky and someone from Texas told him the sky looked the same, there. That’s where the album title comes from, and the album art is one of Tim’s photos. “I would always do a demo and go for a run and listen to it and so bats were a constant throughout the writing and recording experience. It felt like the marker of the album. I had all the demos and a working tracklist and I’d add to it as I wrote new songs and it had BATS in all capitals for almost the whole time... It stuck and I feel like it suits the album. I also feel compelled to ask how his dogs, who feature frequently in the band’s social media output, are going: “The dogs are so good. I’m patting Evie right now, I come and visit them on my lunch break and Missy is just lying in front of me looking so beautiful, she’s looking straight into my eyes.” Wrapping up, I ask him what Cub Sport fans can expect of the band’s tour, now we’re in a new era: “I don’t play keyboard or guitar in any of the new songs, I’m just singing. It feels like I can really lose myself in it more… And Zoe is now playing guitar, bass, and a synth and has three different mics with different effects, the live show is developing and expanding a bit. It’s really fun and exciting.” by Cameron Colwell
Is he still having fun, though? To this, there’s no hesitation: “I’m having more fun than ever. It feels like what we’re doing now is true to us as people. It comes with so much more ease than it used to.” We get into the current state of queer politics — at the time of recording, it’d been just a day since ‘VOTE NO’ was emblazoned on the Sydney sky. “From personal experience when you’re realising you’re not straight and you’re coming to terms it can be hard to process and to acknowledge and to have to deal with it. Seeing things like ‘VOTE NO’ written in the sky, it pushes you further from being comfortable being your true self. I think for people who are out and who have been through it it’s important to be a support for anyone who is vulnerable during this time and to be a positive voice to try and counteract the negativity like that.”
Regulars || 17
UNDERCOVER:
18 || Regulars
FEAR AND LOATHING IN MACQUARIE UNI MAX LEWIS INVESTIGATES THE MERMAID EXHIBITION WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MARY JANE
First and foremost, I want to apologise to my dear mother, whose eyes are probably widening as she reads this. Don’t worry! I’m not dead! I wrote this weeks ago!! I am, however, sorry you must add this article to your scrapbook of ‘Reasons my son continues to disappoint me, parts V-XI’. This article was inspired by a simple yet engrossing question: what happens when a simple boy like me gets high in the middle of the day and visits the Mermaid exhibition (open now!) at the fancy Macquarie Art Gallery and pretends to be a completely sober art/mermaid enthusiast? Does he green out and enter the foetal position in a crowded gallery? Does he pretend to be one of the artists and accidentally sell a painting? With deadlines looming and this age-old question burning in my head, I took it upon myself to find an answer, in the name of student journalism. My first mistake was choosing to do my investigation the day after our wonderful group challenge, wherein many paint-stained glasses of wine were consumed by your stupid author. There was no better start to the most dangerous investigation of my life than waking up at midday still drunk and dangerously dehydrated. After a quick shower to invigorate my senses and wash paint off myself, I slowly got dressed while having an out-of-body experience and wishing I was dead – I hadn’t even gotten high yet. I only had a small amount of the devil’s lettuce left, so I was hoping that, because I was already quite out of it from the hangover and I had not eaten in fifteen hours, I could get a solid buzz on by the time I made it to the gallery When I found the art gallery I was fucking blazed. The half-hour walk did wonders in making me feel progressively higher with every breath. I took pensive steps through the doors of the chancellery, trying to remember if I know how to be a socially functional human being and realising with a start that I never had that knowledge to begin with. It was one o’clock on a Wednesday, and to my surprise/ quasi-disappointment, the gallery was completely empty. I contemplated which was worse as I gazed at the acrylic mermaids littering the room. On one hand, I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody – on the other, there’s nothing more suspicious than a young, sweaty man staring intently at mermaid breasts in a completely empty art gallery. I could hear voices and footsteps echoing around from everywhere and my heart began to pound; how do I explain why the fuck I’m here in the middle of the day all by myself? Nobody entered the gallery while I was in there, but I spent my time amongst the art paranoid and so very confused. The last thing I wanted was to be caught staring at a painting of a murdered, naked mermaid apropos of nothing. I stepped away from the paintings and perused the rest of the exhibition. A thought kept bouncing in my head; why
mermaids? I tried reading the info adjacent to each piece but found myself unable to parse what the fuck they meant. The individual words made sense but together it was like trying to read a book upside-down until you realise it’s in a completely foreign language. I normally like to be very open minded when it comes to art, and I believe it can exist in any form. This time, though, my stoned brain was having none of that. I stared bleary-eyed at each piece. Why is that mermaid using a laptop? Does a pair of oars mounted on a wall count as art? Personal highlights included the video art of a shirtless man dancing to Sade that looked like a deleted scene from Tim & Eric’s Awesome Show, and a piece that consisted of a flattened snake and a bunch of condoms. I think I stared at the latter the longest, confused and a little disgusted but eventually coming to the realisation that that sure is some art. I don’t mean to rag on the artists and their frankly stunning work here; the art was genuinely impressive and shit, it’s just that I could not wrap my head around a single bit of it. I should have let myself go and enjoyed looking at a chair covered in seashells or something, but instead I became obsessed with the minutiae and kind of went a little insane. I spent an unclear amount of time staring at photographic prints on a wall that were allegedly metal, and wanting to touch them to see what they felt like. Particular names cropped up more than others, and I wondered why they had so much work on display. Is there a shortage of mermaid-themed artists? Is this a market just waiting to be tapped? My grasp on reality slowly unraveling, I decided to leave before someone came in and I asked them, wide eyed and frothing at the mouth, if mermaids actually existed. As casually as somebody trying to play off the fact they just tripped over on a crowded street, I left the gallery and found my way back to campus, certain every person I passed could tell I was high. I didn’t feel like I was controlling my legs yet I was hyper-focused on ensuring I didn’t trip over, somehow avoiding anybody I knew. I normally like to have a moral at the end of each of my articles; a nice little knowledge nugget your brain can chew on long after you’ve stopped reading. Instead, I think it’s your turn, dear reader, to find your own message in my semi-stoned ramblings. My words are like individual paint strokes in a beautiful painting, however it’s safe to say on this occasion it’s a painting of some dog shit. What that dog shit represents is up to you! After all, there is no wrong answer when it comes to art. by Max Lewis
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ILLUSTRATED:
TOYS WE HAD AS CAPITALISTIC PRETEENS WHERE DID THEY COME FROM, WHERE DID THEY GO? (COTTON EYED JOE JOKE GOES HERE)
BRATZ
YUGIOH CARDS
TAMAGOTCHI
These Kylie Jenner-looking bad bitches came to our attention in 2001. Apparently, the moral panic around Barbie dolls and body image had died down to such an effect that MGA Entertainment could release a bunch of plastic girl-women with bulbous lips and eyes bigger than their teeny little hands and be met with huge success. Since the 2000s the brand has died down a fair bit. MGA came under fire for copyright breaches and sweat-shop scandals and the fact that the CEO used the phrase “the orient” in an official statement in the year 2006. The brand has tried relaunches to imitate its original success no less than three times, apparently not realising that their original market is now in their twenties and far more aware of the culturally exploitative nature of the dolls’ look.
Look I’ll be honest, I am not, and never have been a mango (it is ‘mango’, right?) fan, but this shit was huge. It was on every Saturday morning and, try as I might to invest in the storyline, it always went straight over my head. According to my research, Yu-Gi-Oh! revolves around a boy who has a “secret gambling alter-ego within his body” which seems a strange premise for a super massive kid’s franchise. From its original manga, the series became several anime shows and films, spawning literally countless spinoffs and, eventually, a card game. The real-world game – clearly profiting off the territory that D&D had already established in the ‘making nerds talk to one another’ world – quickly became a success. Before you knew it, kids were buying those weird card-holder thingos that sat on your forearm and somehow made you look even LESS cool.
In 1996 Maita Aki created the original Tamagotchi for Japanese kids affected by the lack of pet-accommodating living spaces in the city. However, something about the pixelated interactive virtual pet struck a chord with literally every child around the globe and soon 76 million had been sold internationally. In rare interviews, Aki mentions that the toy had originally been designed as a genderless activity, and was surprised to find they were marketed mostly to girls in the Western world. Instead of Tamagotchis, boys were marketed the rival ‘Digimons’ which focused more on violence and competition than responsibility and social relationships. The Tamagotchi all but disappeared in 2008. Despite this, the forum boards on ‘Tamatalk.com’ have remained active in the near decade since. Of particular interest is the thread ‘Tamagotchi fanfiction’, which includes titles such as ‘Tamagotchi Blood’ and ‘Undieing Love- Part 1’. In recent months Bandai has released a new line of Tamas, mostly marketed at nostalgic millennials. They cost $40 if anyone’s interested.
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SCOOBIE STRINGS
BEANIE BABIES
So, in the early 1950s, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for Soviet espionage – bear with me – leaving their two sons to be adopted by songwriter Abel Meeropol. Inspired by these very ridiculous circumstances, new dad Abel wrote his most famous song, ‘Apples, Peaches, and Cherries’ and it was by all accounts a fucking bop amongst the pro-proletariat left. A few years later, Frenchman Sacha Distel covered the song, adding the nonsense refrain ‘Scoubidoubi-ou Ah!’ to the beginning and end. Despite it sounding like Distel was simultaneously having a stroke and an orgasm, the song became popular enough to inspire a ‘toy’ line – you guessed it, thin, brightly coloured PVC tubes which could be tied in knots. Predictably, Scoubidous didn’t do a great job of outliving the fifties. That was until 2005, when a Bristol woman and a small friendship group of 10 year old girls were single-handedly responsible for the bizarre, worldwide resurgence of ‘scoobie strings’. Young sales-assistant Amanda Miles noticed that her little sister and friends quickly became addicted to the string after one of them picked it up on a Nordic holiday. On a whim, Miles ordered literally 100 000 strings from a small retailer in Holland, inadvertently sparking a craze that would move from one small Bristol primary school to the entire fucking Western world.
These things were pure as hell right? They were just little stuffed animals with cute names and backstories. Well sit down and let me tell you about the cult-like multi-million dollar clusterfuck that was the real-life story behind these sad-looking teddies. In 1995 Ty Warner had been trying to sell a stuffed blue elephant by the name of ‘Peanut’ for about a year when, according to his then-wife, a ‘never ending strive for perfection’ drove Ty to change the elephant’s royal blue colour to a baby blue. After only about a thousand of the original elephants had been shipped out, the baby blue Peanuts started arriving on shelves with the famous ‘beanie baby’ tags and the royal blue ceased production. Little did Ty know, he’d just set in motion one of the most successful artificial scarcity scams of all time. Soon, and still to this day, people fork out thousands of dollars for these inane bags of plastic pellets just because there are ‘only 100 in circulation’. The speculative economic bubble created by Ty simply deciding to discontinue some of its own toys at random, has even been said to rival the the first and most bizarre known account of an economic bubble – 17th Century Dutch tulip mania.
Illustrations by Daniel Lim
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CHALLENGE:
‘Mean Girls of Macquarie Marketing’, Acrylic & whiteboard marker on plaster, 2017
‘Cheap Cyndi Lauper Pun’, Fingerpaint on plaster, 2017
‘Kraken Emerges from Macquarie Lake and Attacks Lighthouse Logo’, Acrylic on concrete, 2017
‘Guys, Our Chancellor is the Chair of Newcastle Coal, What the Fuck’ Climate-aware milennial angst on wall, 2o17
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WRITING ON THE WALL
POORLY EXECUTED MURALS SPRING UP IN STUDENT HQ OFFICE We definitely did not break in and finger-paint a bunch of anti-establishment murals in a foreclosed section of the Macquarie hub... But someone did. I bet whoever did it thought they were being pretty sneaky when they met in the Grapeshot office at sundown with several bottles of $5 wine, two jumbo packs of Doritos, and a not-at-all suspicious looking bag of paints. The group allegedly traipsed down to the closed off section of the Macquarie hub with more blind luck than actual espionage skill and ‘busted’ open the building with a legitimate swipe card. Their prime target? The old Grapeshot office - the once battle-ground of graduated heroes. The place had already been gutted by construction crews to make way for whatever corporate nonsense the Macquarie overlords are brewing up, but the mysterious vandals did manage to find a bunch of office supplies and a half-tub of ice-cream to aid their venture. Using an open binder as a ‘pallet’, a dry-erase marker for finer details, and a set of darts for some experimental splatter painting, they set about doing ‘art’. It is quite clear, upon viewing the images, that the group of vandals included a handful of incredibly talented visual artists along with several finger-painting five-year-olds. An uncanny Donald Trump shouting ‘YUGE’, an artsy ibis
sketch, and a gorgeous intergalactic portrait covered some of the walls. Others featured stick figures and the word ‘GRAPESHOT’ but with the last three letters really tiny because the ‘artist’ had run out of room. Perhaps crudest of all, someone had painted over the letters of the ‘CAMPUS ENGAGEMENT’ sign so that it spelt ‘CAMP GAY MEN’ which is not at all hilarious. Though an unlikely match, the Picassos and the kindergarteners apparently drank their way through several bottles of wine and a truth or dare session where someone may or may not have kissed a portrait of the Vice-Chancellor on the wet-painted lips. DNA testing is still in out determine suspects. Preliminary investigations by this very serious reporter have yet to turn up any suspects. However, several anonymous sources have confirmed that the mysterious bunch were evidently pretty fucking cool. I mean, whoever decided to break in and cover the old Grapeshot office from floor to ceiling in murals of varying quality must have been really fun, weird, and amazing. But, in the words of Shaggy, it wasn’t me. by Nikita Jones
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YEARBOOK Behold, gross childhood photos of the editors and designers who pull this mag together for you, sometimes mildly successfully. We know what you’re thinking, yes, this is mildly self-indulgent, and yes, that is Wes Carr in the 8th photo, rightful winner of Australian Idol Season 6. Shout out to Semester 1 Icons Angela Heathcote, Alicia Scott & Paden Hunter. And to YOU, reader! You’re baben.
Tess
James
*Is the double-threat queen of student media*
“Dying in the apocalypse is for poor people.”
“The Jonas brothers are the reason I design.”
Erin “What we doing today, fam?”
Nikita “Grapeshot made me gay.”
Cameron *Is the author of the Gay Agenda*
Daniel *Is perfect, a model, like Linda Evangelista*
Angus “I hate being disobeyed.”
Max *froths* ... “Are mermaids real?”
Shinae “Um, are you from the country?”
Emma *Eats salt n’ vinegar chips*...*sweats*
Brittney
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FEATURES
REMEMBERING THE DRIVE-IN A MILLENNIAL REMINISCES ABOUT THE GOOD OL’ DAYS
I have to repeat my question three times because my grandfather is in his 80s and I think his phone is even older.
assures me she’s a retro car-nut as well, pointing to the VW Beetle parked outside.
“Do you remember ever going to the drive-in!?”
The Australian drive-in is the product of a very specific time in our cultural history; it’s a unique cocktail of post-war Americanisation, the rise of B-movie double features, and, importantly, 1950s family car culture. Outside of this context, the entire concept of the drive-in is absurd and so, like vinyl records, film cameras, and the use of the word ‘dreamboat’, the humble drive-in can’t seem to divorce itself from the vintage niche market.
When he finally catches on he calls me by my cousin’s name, but at least he answers the question. “Used to take all the kids, we’d get Kentucky and eat it while we was watching… I remember.” My aunt adds later, “He’d put all us kids up in the front and then lay down on the backseat for a sleep. We’d have to hit him when he started snoring in the good bits.” I have to ask my family because, before setting out to write this article, my only point of reference for the concept of a ‘drive-in’ was that part in Grease where everyone works out that Rizzo is pregnant and then John Travolta whines about not getting some. By the time I came into the world, parents were sitting their kids down in front of televisions and popping in VHS tapes. Now they’re shoving iPads under kids’ noses when they need to shut them up at restaurants. Yet here I am, at a drive-in theatre in 2017, asking a diner waitress for someone named Trudi. The Skyline Blacktown drive-in opened in 1963 near the end of the drive-in heyday in Australia. Thanks to some convenient leasing laws, it’s the last remaining original drive-in theatre in Sydney and has remained a profitable business for 53 years. Today, going inside is like walking into an uber kitschy version of the 50s made for people who didn’t directly experience it. The vintage Coca-Cola drink stands are polished to diamond-like quality and there are bits of mass-produced memorabilia on the walls all artfully rusted to perfection. The décor is a baby-blue and peach combo, all the signs are in neon, and the booths are perfect milkshake-sharing photo ops. It’s as if this place is consciously doing everything it can to play directly into the Grease image in my head, and it’s working a charm. Trudi, the general manager, turns from the counter and waves me over to a booth that’s just begging to be filled with a leather-jacketed gang of rockabilly youths. She’s been working here for over twenty years, and managing for the last three. I ask her what she thinks of higher-ups making the decision to lean so heavily into the vintage 50s aesthetic. “I love that whole scene… they are very culture oriented,” she says, name-dropping several rockabilly scene events she’s attended this year. In her pragmatic drizabone jacket it’s hard to imagine her dolled up in Rockabilly garb, but she
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Admittedly, this niche is rapidly becoming less of a niche – especially with regards to the cinema industry. From the existence of cult-classics and pastiches to straight up reboots, whether out of laziness or sincere reverence to some kind of golden-era, pockets of nostalgia bubble to the surface on the big screen rather frequently. Perhaps at one time the market for nostalgia was exclusive to the pipe-smoking, West Californian mentality that equates antiquity with authenticity, but nowadays filmmakers can expect to take nostalgia to the bank. Quentin Tarantino, for example, shoots on 70mm film and uses vinyl for his soundtracks, and while the use of the word ‘dreamboat’ never crops up, his films don’t seem to shy away from other dated words. Yet while he enjoys the nodded approval of the hipster market, Tarantino’s releases also steal top box office ratings without fail. Perhaps this is why Skyline doesn’t bother all that much with exclusively screening cult classics or showing much of anything outside the standard Event Cinemas releases; the $11 admission isn’t actually for the particular film being shown; it’s for the experience of acting out a time gone by. “You can put nostalgia films on that do really well and you can put a nostalgia film on that just does horribly,” Trudi tells me, citing the recent failure of an Elvis-themed night in contrast to sellout sessions of Pixar’s recent animated flick The Secret Life Of Pets during the holiday season. This is true of any cinema – the holidays roll in and all of sudden places can stand to make hundreds of thousands of dollars off of whichever Pixar movie has the most talking animals in it. It does seem quite strange that a place specifically curated to be the kitschiest interpretation of the 50s imaginable pulls more families than hipsters. We live in an age where children own iPads that can stream any movie in the world and most kids have never have even seen Grease, let alone know what a drive-in is.
Why is this place popular with families? “Basically,” says Trudi, “the 80s didn’t only kill the radio star – it killed family entertainment”. She’s not wrong; the figures for cinema attendance have been declining for years. Sure, new streaming technology sped up the process, but it was more or less just another blow in a series of hits on the industry. “Once all the home theatres and the electronic age of the 80s came about, all your family fun outing stuff just seemed to disappear.” Everyone knows nostalgia is bankable – people will pay hundreds for record players and turn up in droves for reunion concerts –
but what exactly is it about the past that brings us back? Objectively the fifties weren’t a great time for a lot of a people, most of us never even lived them, and yet in the face of rapidly improving changing culture and technology we yearn for the things we’ve left behind: those simpler times when the kids ate junk food and watched movies in the front seat of the car while their dad snored away in the back. by Nikita Jones
PAIN IN THE NECK
ERIN CHRISTIE VS THE NATIONAL DISABILITY INSURANCE S C H E M E I took the call as I drove to my tutoring shift, with Hannah my support worker snapping down the line, wondering why I couldn’t just come in on Friday. I’d decided months earlier, when my first letter had arrived, that the NDIS wasn’t for me. However, being the polite, tolerant, perfect and humble being that I am, I agreed to come in on Friday, and made a mental note to email my boss and change my Friday shift at my third and final job. The call left me frazzled, but within a year’s time, I would be just as peeved with the National Disability Insurance Scheme as Hannah seemed to be, if not more. My disability is so mild that I didn’t know I had one until I started school. When one random kid asked me why my neck was crooked, all I had in response was: “it’s not?” I curiously sought out my parents, who had to explain that my neck was vaguely contorted because I had cerebral palsy. I didn’t know what that meant, just that it seemed to bother my bullies a lot more than it did me. However, things worsened as I hit puberty. The slight bend in my neck became so pronounced that my ear practically touched my shoulder, and a series of spasms began in my knees, thighs
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and back that ranged from uncomfortable to unbearably painful. On closer inspection, the doctors affirmed that the dystonia part of my disability had emerged. The spasms could be controlled with benzodiazepines, and my neck was remedied mostly with a series of injections of botulinum toxin (yep, Botox) in the affected area. We got these through a free clinic at Westmead Children’s Hospital, and the $6 for a bottle of Valium per month barely broke the bank. However, things always become more complicated in adulthood. The National Disability Insurance Scheme was introduced into Federal Parliament in 2012 by then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. It was passed in March 2013 as the National Disability Insurance Scheme Act 2013, and was intended to act as a kind of Medicare for those with disabilities. I remember watching Gillard excitedly on TV at the time of announcement, shaking hands and grinning over her achievement. As a huge Julia fan, I affirmed to anyone who would listen that I was thrilled to see such attention aimed at my community of friends, and the introduction of a scheme intended to help them. However, I never had myself
in mind as a candidate to receive funds. I was always taught by my parents that I was no different from anybody else, and therefore didn’t need preferential treatment unless it was absolutely necessary. We never applied for a pension, or any kind of funding for my issues. I always did my best to put my determination towards acting as though it didn’t exist. Following my graduation from the Children’s Hospital, I was put into the care of NSW’s top neurologist and dystonia specialist. I was sad to say goodbye to the Winnie the Pooh wall murals and plastic cups of jelly beans I was given at the end of every injection session, and also, it would seem, a fair amount of money. My parents are still helping me to afford both seeing my neurologist for check-ups and injections, and the Botox used on my neck – and now my arm – which is billed to us by a pharmacy out of state. However, when a bout of spasms so painful and uncontrollable landed me in hospital in 2015, extra medication was added to the pile. Thinking about life beyond study gave me serious anxiety, knowing I’d have to factor in all this ‘medical shit’, as I often refer to it, with other bills. My obsession with financial independence and tendency towards workaholism seems a little less insane when framed this way. However, with a condition that is constantly growing and changing and finding new ways to challenge me, I supposed some help from the NDIS wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
fed back to another administration clerk, who then made a decision on how much money I would receive. My angst over the lack of funding for medical treatments aside, does this not seem entirely cooked? Where is the team of physios, doctors, specialists – qualified people – helping make a judgment based on their assessments of the individual? What happens to the parents and carers who lack the communicative skills to express how much their loved one is suffering, or how much they could benefit from funding for program X or Y? This flawed system, like so many others, is subject to the same classism and ableism we see in general society. I haven’t spent any of my NDIS money. It is another testament to this disorganised system that no one has ever given me a clear answer on how to do so. I recently spent an hour with my physio just discussing how we could access the money allocated to me in order to pay for our sessions. I apologised again and again for my lack of knowledge, but she eventually shut me up by saying: “don’t worry. I think you came here expecting us to know how the NDIS works, when the truth is, no one does.” by Erin Christie
Hannah had resigned by the time I got there – hopefully because I forgot to attend the Friday appointment. I began detailing my medical treatments to the new case worker, who cut me off swiftly. “The NDIS doesn’t subsidise medical treatments.” I’m sorry, what the fuck? If they weren’t going to help me with this array of treatments, or any I might need in the future, then what good were they? We asked for help with a gym membership, with one of my doctors recommending it so that I could build on my muscle tone and strength. That was shut down as well, and we were left in a minute or two of shocked silence, wondering what the hell to ask for now. If I’d done my research, I would have known that the NDIS is geared towards linking people with disabilities to the community, breaking down stereotypes and ensuring quality assurance and best practice among service providers. Their funding was to better me as an individual with a disability, rather than to help improve my quality of physical existence. This is such a subjective goal that I’m certain I still don’t fully understand it. The tone of the meeting changed as we discussed my life with a disability. My mother beamed with pride as she helped me explain my multiple jobs, my internships, my writing experience, my ability to drive, ride horses, etcetera, all with very minimal help. That information was
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SPOONTY
THE STAND, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND If you take the train to and from uni, you might have noticed a Grapeshot stand at the main entrance to Piccolo Lane. And if you’ve ever stopped to pick up a magazine from said stand (which you SHOULD), you might have even taken the time to marvel at (or puzzle over) its magnificent design. Meet Spoonty. Spoonty is something of a Grapeshot icon. A mascot, if you will. For years now, the entrance to the uni has been guarded by his stoic wooden stature, watched over by his wide, asymmetrical eyes. Spoonty is not like the other stands around campus – pretty, patterned, pastel. His exterior is a feverish narrative of primary colours, nonsensical images, and strange, scrawled inscriptions: “Being Sad part 1” and “Love the Scooter, Be the Scooter”. For Grapeshot’s final issue of 2017, our throwback issue, we decided to track down the painter of the infamous stand, the creator himself – the real Spoonty. Like the investigative journalists we are, we trawled through the back pages of garageband and old, inactive websites, hunting the name ‘Spoonty’ in what was arguably just a slightly more dignified Facebook stalk. We finally managed to get in contact and I arranged to meet for coffee. Going into the interview, I picture a person with thick-rimmed glasses, a scarf, probably, and a booming voice that speaks only in muddled proverb. Basically, I expect to meet the human incarnation of the nutty magazine stand we know and love. Instead, the Spoonty I’m introduced to is soft-spoken, friendly, humble. And his name is James. We start chatting about his artistic influences, which he describes as “80s, 90s video-game-looking pixel art” and “anything that looks like it’s done on MS Paint.” When I ask him to put his own style into words, he gets as far as: “It’s funny. It’s got cubes.” I try to recall if the magazine stand has any cubes painted onto it, but can’t. “Maybe it’s got secret cubes,” he says, slyly. Despite his love for art, James says he hasn’t done much in quite a while. “I’m sad I don’t get to paint anymore… I have all these unused canvases at home.” It’s music that James puts most of his time and energy into these days. Under the name Spoonty, he made tracks that he deems “chill, slow house music”, which sampled from instrumentalists on YouTube. “It’s really boring,” he says, then reneges – “Oh no it’s not really boring! It’s chill, I miss it.”
Now, James produces work in a share house in Sydney. Under the alias MELTY, his sound has evolved into faster club music. “But you can still hear my old music and link it back,” he says. James also creates music as part of the duo Third Heaven, which he describes as “poppy, cute and sparkly.” The pair use VOCALOID, a singing synthesiser, in which notes and lyrics are entered and then synthesised to sound like vocals. In his bedroom is a chunky Yamaha DX7, an FM synthesis-based digital synthesizer which smokes profusely when not turned off at the power point. When I ask about his long-term plans, James thinks for a moment. “I’d like to own a luxury store. Selling my own line of luxury items, like sculptures for rich people – it’s so exclusive that you need to have it, but it’s so luxurious that it rules your life. Like a ball that you have to touch every hour or it burns down your house. It would just be funny to scam rich people, don’t you think?” “My long-term goal is to not have to work at anything that I don’t want to do. It would be amazing to make music and art full time. My problem is that I change my mind so much. During one day, my life goal changes three times. Sometimes I decide I’m going to focus on music, and then I see a sign that I like and I go ‘I’m going to make signs for people!’ Last week I walked past a watch shop and thought – I’m quitting everything and becoming a watchmaker.” To find James’ music online, it’s a quick search for MELTY 4EVA on Soundcloud, Spotify, and the usual social media platforms. His Twitter, in particular, I can vouch for. You will be blessed with daily wisdoms such as: “It’s been 7000 years, there are no rules, we can do whatever we want” and “All jaycars are connected. Enter Penrith jaycar and u will exit at Erina jaycar.” My favourite is: “It took two days but I just finished a whole bag of chippies.” His duo, Third Heaven, also has music available on Spotify, Soundcloud, and iTunes. As for the Spoonty stand, James has personally requested that it be “encased in resin, or cast in bronze”. Honestly, it’s the least we can do. by Emma Harvey
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GETTING OUR BITE BACK
SALLY PERCIVAL WOOD ON THE DEFANGING OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS Dr Sally Percival Wood spends a fair amount of time at Deakin University in Geelong, teaching and conducting research into Australia’s post-war relationship with Asia. At the start of the year when she saw a jumping castle inflated on campus for O-week, she cringed. “A jumping castle. At an O-week? You cannot be serious. God, how bloody lame it that?” It’s not that Dr Wood has any particular gripe with inflatable fair-themed fun per se, but after months of researching the fiery student press of the 1960s for her forthcoming book, Dissent, the jumping castle in question seemed to exemplify the infantilised, depoliticised and marketing-mad university campus of recent years. As Wood writes derisively in her book, ‘twenty-first century university students seem to like their O Week with a bit of primary and secondary school thrown in’. “O-Week in 1967 was full on,” she tells me over the phone. Conversations and reportage revolved around the presence of ASIO agents on campuses; at the University of Adelaide, student publication On Dit reported that students on the SRC and members of the National Union of Australian University Students were robbed of important files from their own homes, and that ASIO had tried to recruit a right-wing student politician as an undercover agent. In Canberra, ANU’s Woroni exposed the police brutality at a recent protest where several of the university’s staff and students were arrested. Anti-war sentiment was no longer seething in undercurrents but broiling over; the cover of Monash University’s Lot’s Wife featured a portrait of the then prime minister, Harold Holt, on a poster with the words ‘Wanted for the murder of kidnapped Australian minors; also for complicity in the torture and murder of North Vietnamese citizens’.
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But before all this, at the start of the decade, Sally writes that university students were ‘overwhelmingly obedient’. There were opinion pieces in the University of Sydney’s Honi Soit advocating for the compulsory wearing of academic gowns, and in place of album reviews were considerations of classical music. “University was considered this prestigious, hallowed ground; campuses were sacrosanct,” she explains. “But that completely changed by 1965.” Dr Wood says there was a ‘confluence of events’ that catalysed the radicalisation of students, including the introduction of television, the arrival of Eastern European migrants who tended to be far more politically switched-on than your average Australian-born uni attendee, and the fact that university education was becoming more attainable and was losing its status as ‘province of the elite’. One of the major moments, too, was the arrival of the Beatles in 1964. “Up until then young people were listening to jazz and behaving much like their parents. And then the Beatles came and they all went mad, and suddenly all these rock bands started cropping up … it’s not just political issues that changed. It’s what they’re wearing, it’s how they’re wearing their hair. It’s smoking dope. It was just such a dramatic change, in so many ways, in the space of about 4 or 5 years.” The major issue that galvanised student dissent – and sharpened the pens of student writers – was conscription. The student press had a large pile of bones to pick with the conservative government (including draconian censorship laws, in protest of which students would create gleefully salacious cartoons that often landed them in court), but the anti-war sentiment was one felt keenly and consistently
throughout the student publications surveyed by Wood. “The student press really did give the mainstream press a run for its money, especially as the anti-Vietnam War campaign hotted up,” she says. “Student newspapers were actually revealing a lot of information that the general public wasn’t exposed to. The went to great lengths to find the truth, because they knew they were being lied to by the government. They were pretty courageous in that respect.” Sally says the most shocking content she encountered was the photos from the war that the mainstream press wouldn’t touch. “In Lot’s Wife, they showed really gruesome pictures of what was being done to the Vietnamese. Decapitated bodies. There was an edition of Farrago where they printed photos of decapitated heads on the ground, but the censors went in before the issue went to press and retouched the photos to make the heads look like piles of wheat. It was really awful.” Other battles thrashed out in the pages concerned Indigenous rights, equality for women and gay liberation. Student-written opinion pieces, polemics and reportage were read beyond campus, and Sally argues that the dedication and ferocity with which students wrote had a major role in shaping how following decades played out. She writes: “Australia entered the decade as a mono-cultural, homophobic, patriarchal and prudish nation with a ‘White Australia’ policy in place to preserve its ‘racial integrity’. It exited the decade – in 1972 [the year Whitlam was elected] – with these ideas, if not in tatters, up for serious renegotiation…These transformations were writ large across the student press, where in one decade Australian university students attempted to offload the baggage of an entire century.” So what does Sally make of the student publications of today? “Well they’re pretty lame to be perfectly honest,” she says. “There seems to be this concern about offending anyone… there have been some fairly argumentative pieces about policy change to higher education, and student fees. Students seem to arc up about that. But what I find most striking now is that students seem to talk about themselves a lot … there’s all this self-referential stuff which is so tedious. Students in the 1960s didn’t do that.” However, Sally does find reasons for the apparent rise of the self-obsessed, politically limp student populations of 2017: “It’s the whole corporatisation of the tertiary education sector, which I think has screwed things up as much as anything… And universities have been taken over by marketing, haven’t they? Which just kills the intellectual dynamism.” This speaks truth to what the Grapeshot team experiences; whenever we steer into a more politically engaged, hard-news style, some Macquarie executive or manager
is bound to holler for our print to be halted (most notably when we almost ran an older version of the university logo in a DRAMAC ad – oh, the horror this caused Macquarie marketing). Writing biting news pieces results in letters from lawyers or blatant censorship. It’s no wonder the editors of Grapeshot’s predecessor, Speculum, walked off the job: they were sick of the editorial restriction and their pages being treated as a PR exercise. Part of this stifling brand obsession is the preoccupation universities have with attracting international students, who collectively injected 20 billion into the Australian economy last year. Having political debates and seminars about Australian politics at O-week doesn’t quite grab your average overseas visitor, so carnival rides are wheeled in and Crocodile Dundee is played by the lake instead. Appealing to international students “fundamentally alters campus dynamics,” Sally says. Political potency is dismissed in favour of a high fee-paying cohort. Sally’s book demonstrates the political sway student populations and publications have had in our recent history, and she also believes it’s no coincidence that conservative governments have moved to restrict the power and monetary standing of student unions, who fund student publications. Cut fees paid to student unions, and students lose their voice. “I don’t think Labor governments are so determined to depoliticise university campuses,” Sally says. “The Tony Abbotts of the world, though, are vehemently against student union fees. But it’s wrong to equate student unions with trade unionism, as some socialist plot … it’s about guarding the interests of university students, and providing amenities.” Macquarie is one of the few universities to not have a student union. In its place we have U@MQ, the corporation which the SRC and Grapeshot fall under. They control the five million dollars of amenities fees we collectively fork out each year, and it’s in this way the printing of Grapeshot is funded. Push the envelope too far and it wouldn’t be all that hard for the uni to cut our funding and put a stop to independent student voice; indeed, we know that there’s marketing staff bent on cutting our printing budget and moving Grapeshot exclusively online. Print is our main platform; it’s our visibility and our way of recruiting knew readers – cut our print, and you’re cutting us off from students. “My only suggestion is the power of unity,” says Sally, hopeful the spike in political activism and engagement within university campuses she investigated in the 60s could strike again. “That’s what worked in the 1960s; they knew they were being lied to, they fought to find the truth, and students were so unified on the big issues they tackled together that change was almost inevitable.” by Angus Dalton
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TAKE IT TO THE GRAVE I’d been a quiet girl in high school. As such, I had a reputation of ‘innocence’ thrown onto me unwillingly. But in truth, I was as open to experimentation as I was willing to shake that reputation the first chance I got. One night, I bumped into an old friend at Newtown station who had recently started at USYD. He and I had always been interested in and curious about alternative lifestyles, so a few days later he later sent me an invite to attend a ‘kink fetish night market’ with his crowd of new friends who were heavily into the kink subculture. Kink is like BDSM, but there doesn’t have to be a strict power relationship, and
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it’s a much broader term for people who like to engage in alternative forms of sexuality. If you’ve never been to a sex shop, you’ll be pleased to know it wasn’t populated by creepy old guys with bourbon breath trying to masturbate discreetly in corners. It mainly consisted of average people in their 20s and 30s who had attended with their friends and who, by presence, openly admitted to liking adventurous sex. Sex, its acts, and the associated apparatuses or handheld devices, were spoken about freely between wholesalers and consumers alike without any lewdness or awkwardness at all. As an
outsider who rarely spoke about sex with others, I found it almost comically frank. Someone asked the forty year old saleswoman, who reminded me of my school lunch lady, for a dildo “like that one on your shelf but longer with a shake function, if you have it,” in the same blasé manner as they would order a Subway. I naively perused the dildo aisle, quietly wondering at what point dildos became too large for actual use. My friends confirmed that these were, yes, definitely novelty items. I later shared a changeroom with another girl as we tried on some latex and we had a polite and friendly conversation while doing so. Though I never felt fully at ease there, because of my own private nature, I liked the people and felt accepted by them because they were characteristically nice, non-judgemental, and open communicators. ‘Kink’ culture places a strong emphasis on open communication about boundaries, consent and respect. After we finished at the markets, we passed around the gear everyone had bought for a review. I took a freebie pack from one of the stalls advertising their brand on condoms, rubber gloves and a bottle of lube. My friend and his group passed around spiked paddles, flails, rope sets, syringes. As a needle-phobe, I found it hard to understand the concept of ‘bloodplay’ – in which a partner extracts blood from their partner for masochistic pleasure – and was told by the owner of the syringes that it hurt but that she found it very thrilling. I talked to the owner of the ropes who explained that he was learning an artistic form of Japanese bondage called Shibari. He showed us a book of special knots – it was so intricate, often beautiful in the way the patterns complemented, contoured and manipulated the body of the subject. It was only ten o’clock, so nobody felt like going home quite yet. We tossed around some ideas, and ended up taking the long walk to Newtown cemetery where Shibari boy would demonstrate how to tie someone up. Syringe girl was his volunteer. We watched for a while as Shibari boy restrained her. The two seemed to be enjoying themselves. At some point, she lost her top. As he stroked her neck delicately with a penknife and whispered something into her ear, I grew uncomfortable. People began to break up and do their own thing, so I went for a stroll outside the cemetery gates with a boy who was studying government. We chatted about our mixed feelings for kink, our confusions, and his degree and future plans. No sooner did we step outside the gate did he recognise what he thought could have been an unmarked police car parked at the curb. Unsure if we were breaking any laws – like trespassing or public indecency – we quickly decided over whispers to head back and tell the group. We ran back through the gates and shouted ‘Police! Police!’ – in hindsight, not the most subtle approach. Our friends’ faces morphed into expressions of panic. When we risked a glance behind us we
saw two policemen charging after us at full pelt. Suddenly everyone was running. We ran toward the far end of the cemetery where there was a lot of tree cover. It was dark over there. The cops were surprisingly fast. I split off and found a tree to stand behind while the rest of the group ran ahead followed by the brightness of their searchlights. But our escape was doomed the moment the girl, still tied up, tripped over a tombstone and broke her leg. She could barely move once she’d hit the ground. We all surrounded her to see if she was okay. The cops caught up to us. “What the hell are you kids doing?” “Kink,” said the girl between painful breaths. The cops told us they’d thought we were attacking her. Tying her up, holding a knife to her throat in a cemetery, it would have been easy to assume performing a weird satanic ritual or something. The girl explained that she’d wanted to be tied up. “It’s just kink” she repeated. The cops were no less confused. “What’s that? Is that a drug?” “No, no, it’s like fetish play.” “Fetish play...?” He shone his flashlight around over the girl’s open shopping bag that she’d dropped when she fell. “What are those syringes for?” He asked dubiously. She then unguardedly explained the concept of bloodplay to the police officer. When the cop found no drugs in her bag he was both relieved and somewhat intrigued by our story. He wanted to know what drove a group of kids to tie up a naked girl in a cemetery. “You know, I patrol Newtown and Redfern; last week I had a used dildo chucked at my head. This is still the most interesting night I’ve ever had on duty.” He chuckled, “Wait till the guys at work hear about this one.” We were relieved. He said that he was just glad everyone was okay. In the end they called an ambulance for us and we were let off without any charges. While I can say this was one of the most exciting nights of my vanilla-flavoured teenage years it was probably also one of the most uncomfortable. I can also say that I came to learn I wasn’t the most out-there sexual deviant. I think it must take a certain level of ease with yourself to embrace kink if that’s what you’re into, and personally I think I’d rather explore it in a more intimate context with a long-term partner, in a bedroom instead of a cemetery, and without any needles whatsoever. by Anonymous
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BALI BOY TO BOUNCER
THE STORY OF MY FATHER’S JOURNEY TO OXFORD STREET It was a purge. Censored conversations, tense grins and blood shed were a common sight in Bali during the 1960s. The animosity between political parties had peaked. Communists were hunted; one tried hard not to speak too brashly lest they were branded ‘Komunis’. Any allegation of a communist affiliation led to immediate pariahdom. It’s said that up to one million suspected leftists were massacred in Indonesia, 80,000 of those taking place in Bali alone. During this era of bloodshed, a young, optimistic boy lived among the rice paddies of rural Bali. Irrespective of the turbulent governance and bloodshed consuming Indonesia around him, that young boy, my father, still dreamed of a chance beyond the rice paddies - but a clear future was never certain. In the 1970s, he saw Denpasar as the goal because of the growing tourist precinct of Kuta, fuelled by an influx of Aussie surfers. He then set his sights further, for Jakarta. Jakarta had begun to turn into a booming metropolis, but upon his arrival there, it did not meet his expectations. The bright lights he saw in his dreams were nothing compared to his eventual destination: the neon lights of Oxford Street in the early 90s. My father, known on the street as Subby, ended up standing on the door of Oxford Street’s clubs for almost thirty years. He’s witness to the changes of the street and a testament to perseverance. Upon his arrival in Australia, he hustled his way through the pillars of systematic racism, language barriers and financial burdens. On his back, he carried not only his own dreams but the dreams of a village. After starting a job as part time security at the Hilton and for a few restaurants at the Rocks, his journey finally took him to Oxford St, where he became a bouncer on the door of the infamous DCM. It was at DCM that the future he knew existed beyond the rice paddies was realised. After meeting colourful characters and developing lifelong friendships, he started his own business and now operates a security company responsible for several nightclubs along Oxford Street. These days he reflects on the street with equal parts fondness and melancholy: “Oxford Street has always been good to me. The people, you know? The diversity. There are very few places as diverse as Oxford Street. It doesn’t matter what the colour of your skin is on that street, it doesn’t matter what your gender or sexuality is. On Oxford Street, you learn to respect people for who they are and not who the world thinks they are.” Half the beauty of any journey is reflecting on how far one has come. Prior to his arrival on Oxford Street, the optimistic young boy from turbulent rural Indonesia was close-minded, but his eyes and heart were opened by the community of Oxford Street. Like his own self-journey from the paddies, he looks back at the iconic gay precinct in sadness and concern.
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“It’s different now…The generation changed. The crowd changed. There’s more anger towards others now.” Standing on the door of iconic gay nightclubs, his eyes have witnessed the change in crowd. Younger patrons, more free-spirited and accepting of their sexualities, flock to the Street. However, with the destruction of the Cross through over-development and legislation, he fears the sanctity of Oxford Street is threatened. “When people want to go out, the attention is Kings Cross, George Street or Oxford Street. Now everyone heads to Oxford St because the Cross isn’t there anymore. The crowd has changed – the crowd changing has turned the safe space into something different. But Sydney still needs safe places for those who are others “ For the kid from rural Bali, the welcoming neon lights of Oxford Street in the 90s were the sign he needed. The bright lights, in his eyes, continue to glow, despite the looming development and new laws threatening to dim their future on Oxford Street. However, Oxford Street is a family - a community of allies and others. For my father, Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras epitomised the communal spirit of Oxford St. It was also one of the most colourful and most mind-opening experiences of his life. “You don’t realise how different the world is from one side to the other until you see a man slathered in glitter and a speedo dancing to Kylie Minogue. That was the first time I think I had ever seen someone so confident in themselves.” Although he’s heterosexual and cisgender, Mardi Gras became the equivalent of Christmas to my father and our family. Every year my family knew the first Saturday of March was to be kept free for the parade. The Mardi Gras parade is a celebration of LGBT Pride however, for my father, it represents so much more. For a man who grew up in a community where others were massacred, the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras signifies true freedom and diversity – different genders, sexualities and races descending onto one street. “Honestly… Mardi Gras is one of the best parties ever... Also, you learn a few things after a couple of Mardi Gras. Here are three tips for surviving Mardi Gras: 1) Duct tape is the most efficient way to remove glitter. Trust me. 2) Yes, those heels do look good before the vodka and hours of dancing but walking bare-foot at 3am down Oxford Street is disgusting... Be wise, young ones. 3) Learn as many Lady Gaga, Kylie Minogue and Madonna songs as possible.” May the Queen of Sydney’s streets, with her neon lights and glitter, continue to guide the way for all those who need her. by Cassandra Ngurah
REPEAT OFFENDERS
POP CULTURE REWIND:
THE QUEERNESS OF NEON LIGHTS My search for some kind of theoretical framework from which to confirm or deny my idea that there’s something to my idea that neon lights, of all things, have become something of a regular feature in queer cinema comes up with nothing until I come to a chapter in a film theory book: “Sex beyond Neon: Third World Gay Films?” Not much about how the neon aesthetic’s been used in urban first-world queer cinema, but at least I know I’m not the first to have the idea, then. Queer markers in culture are phantoms I’m usually uncertain I’m not imagining; on one hand ‘queer culture’ is a term so broad it’s almost meaningless, and on the other, anything in history that might be deemed as fitting the bill is generally squashed out of history. That said, once I lit up my Google search history with a series of increasingly obscure searches, I managed to track an intertwined history between neon and queer aesthetics.
QUEERS UNDERGROUND
In the early years of last century, Georges Claude shot light through a gas-filled tube and invented neon, amazing crowds with large light fixtures to the point it was dubbed ‘liquid fire’. By the 40s, neon lighting had already become associated with, at best, the glitz and glamour of American nightlife, and, at worst, seedy establishments like sex shops and dirty dive bars. I think more than anything, that’s why there’s so much queer film promo that uses neon: Moonlight did it, First Time I Kissed a Girl did it, and Closet Monster, set firmly in textbook Midwest suburban hell, also did it. All of these are coming-of-age films, and maybe that’s got something to do with it: as we young queers verge into adulthood, nightlife can be the first time we encounter people like us in large numbers, and with sex on the table. Queerness in recent history has a sort of symbolic overlap with neon, as it turns out — California is known for both, and there’s also the suggestion of the underground, the sordid. We modern LGBT+ inheritors can forget that ours was a culture forged in secret: in mob-owned bars like the Stonewall Inn, in toilet cubicles and scarcely inhabited alleyways. Actually, I think, suppressed by boring gays who claim they’re socially progressive but fiscally conservative and write ‘no fats no femmes’ on their Grindr profiles as it might be, the fact the broader LGBT+ movement broke into
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mainstream public awareness due to a riot at Stonewall (which, by the way, faced the world with a hulking neon sign) might have an awful lot to do with the lighting’s lingering influence in queer art.
PARIS IS BURNING
One of those moments where I knew I was on to something solid is when I think about one of the key films of last century for the queer community, Paris Is Burning, documenting mid-to-late 80s drag ball culture with a hyper-lit, ultra-colourful look.
Paris Is Burning was about the struggles of being a person of colour surviving in America, and ball culture was a sort of relief from poverty and discrimination. If you’ve never heard of the film, your vocabulary might have been widened by the culture it depicts: Rupaul’s Drag Race brought ‘shade,’ for instance, into wide usage. Originally a term used in ball culture, RuPaul might’ve first heard it as one of the ‘club kids’: a group of partiers in the late 80s and early 90s who followed the drag ball culture with an even more experimental and wild philosophy of party. Anyway, Paris Is Burning is a documentary, filmed at night, set in the late 80s in New York — naturally its cinematography applies plenty of neon. After all, neon saw a resurgence in the 80s: what better lighting to convey the ethos of a decade defined by maximalism and excess? Sheet lettering — where individual letters are made from neon tubes — came into popularity, and, in 1981, the Museum of Neon Art was founded in California. Overlap by necessity forged on, and a symbolic link was formed.
NOW
In 2013, Stromae released the music video for ‘Tous Les Memes’, which uses pastel green and pinks to externalise bisexual desire, as Stromae dances with a male partner in the pink-lit work, and a female partner in the scenes lit up in green. The following year, Years and Years, fronted by Olly Alexander, one of the most vocal young queer celebrities of our time, released the music video for ‘Real,’ which features a young man in a neon-lit bar having a sexuality crisis. Tentatively glancing at men on the dance floor, there’s a consistent use of contrast between the dark and light to get across the exciting, vivid world he stands on the edge of. Then, in 2016, gay-porn-crime-thriller King
Cobra has, as one of its frequently used promo pictures, James Franco lounging as his perfect abs are accentuated by red neon light. Though queerness is decriminalised and becoming more and more acceptable, we maintain similar visual language, perhaps not intentionally. But it’s interesting to consider the way these associations are formed. Our symbolic memory is filled with strange connections like this: Cigarettes, for instance, became shorthand for sex in cinema because when the Puritanesque Hayes Code was enforced on American film, characters would smoke to imply sex, because directors could no longer show it on film. As someone heavily invested on working out what traditions, if any, I’m embedded in as a queer writer and critic, it makes sense that I’d want to identify what the queer artists before me have used to express themselves. While the idea of an aesthetic for a range of cultures that can be easily defined is laughable, it’s interesting to think about where, as more queer art finds an audience, the broader queer cultural consciousness might converge. I can’t imagine what that could look like or where we’re heading, but after researching this article, I have at least some idea of where we’ve been. By Cameron Colwell
TRAILER TRASH:
GUILTY PLEASURES
WHAT’S YOUR NUMBER (2011) Upon googling, I found out that this film apparently came out in 2011. This surprised me for two reasons: 1. Everything about the movie from its plot, to its cast, to its fashion choices feels distinctly 2008. 2. I have seen this movie so many goddamn times that I shouldn’t have had to google a single detail about it. The premise is everything I disagree with: a young woman who can miraculously afford a large Brooklyn loft despite being unemployed, decides she has slept with just too many men, and that she must go back through the men she has previously slept with in order to find a suitable partner. Despite this awful plot, the movie stars Chris Evans, Chris Evans’ abs, and Chris Evans’ eyes, alongside Anna Faris, Anna Faris’ body, and Anna Faris playing basketball in her underwear. All I’m saying is that it does a damn good job at routinely reminding me just how bisexual I am. My friend and I started watching this movie on the regular during our first year of uni. We are the only ones who enjoy it and one time we watched it twice in one sitting. I think maybe this is why I love this awful movie so much – it’s friendship glue. Or maybe it’s just Chris Evans. by Nikita Jones
SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD (2010) Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is tailored to my teenage self. There’s gays, oodles of references to nerd culture and a soundtrack brimming with mid-2000s indie hits — Metric has a song in there! It’s packed with quips and a high-concept plot, which involves the protagonist having to fight his girlfriend’s seven evil ex-boyfriends exes in order to win the love of his new girlfriend, Ramona. Also, everything looks like it’s set in a weird comic-book video game hybrid fantasy world, because the director lifted the style from the graphic novels it’s based on. It’s through this translation my pleasure becomes guilty. While the logic that a man needs to ‘win’ a woman like a trophy through feats of strength is innately sexist, the novels come to deconstruct the trope. The compression in the film means it loses much of the complexity: One of the common critiques of the film was that it’s never understood why Scott wants Ramona so bad, with their relationship being one of those shitty film relationships where they don’t talk about much but their relationship. Film! Ramona leaves Scott not because he’s a nerdy man-child who refuses to self-reflect and grow as a human, but because she has a mind control device attached to the back of her neck. I’ll still watch it because it’s funny, and takes little brainpower, but I won’t feel good about it. by Cameron Colwell
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MEN IN BLACK (1997)
RAISE YOUR VOICE (2004)
There’s a shelf in my living room; upon it, in a category I mentally label ‘art films’, sits a DVD of the 1997 opus Men in Black directed by Barry ‘Bazza’ Sonnenfeld. When it comes to movies I’ve seen to death, it has to be this one. As a child I literally reduced our VHS copy to digital snow from both overuse and sticking my fingers in the little spindles and manually winding the tape back and forth.
“You’re an artist, and artists feel things differently than regular people.”
Who can resist the comedy stylings of the late great Will ‘Bill’ Smith and Tommy Lee ‘Tolee” Jones, the latter hating the script so much he ad-libbed all of his lines and the former perfectly refining the role of the rookie cop turned intergalactic hero. It’s got Vincent ‘Peffy’ D’Onofrio as the saggy faced bug-man who just loves sugar water, and wonderful character actor Rip ‘Paper’ Torn as himself, whose name was just so endlessly amusing to me as a child.
It’s easy to make fun of this movie. It’s got moody teenagers, bad lip syncing, and low-rise jeans. The first ten minutes delivers a healthy dose of teenage trauma when Terri’s (Hilary Duff) older brother is killed in a car accident they are both involved in. Battling grief and guilt, Terri runs away from Overprotective Dad Trope to study at a music conservatorium in LA.
In hindsight, it was the incubator for the absurdist mindset I now dedicate my life to: humans are tiny and insignificant so it’s up to you to find your own meaning in life, even if that’s as a wise cracking, bug-stomping hero that forcibly erases people’s memories.
There, she meets a bunch of brooding artists who think that breaking out into song over lunch and joining in with a busker down the street is normal and cool. She flirts badly with a guy who has bleached tips and they go for walks on the beach and write a really cringey song together. Duff does a lot of stuffing her hands in the back pocket of her jeans and smiling her famous Lizzie McGuire half-smile. But as much as all of this can be cited as good reasons not to see the film, they are also reasons why it’s just the best ever. Mock it all you want, but when Hilary Duff cries, you’ll cry too. And when those music montages get going, man they are uplifting.
by Max Lewis
by Emma Harvey
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MUSIC:
5 ALBUMS YOU SHOULD’VE HEARD IN 2017 SAMPHA
Process
Artists often utilise their music as a means of processing emotional events and situations they have experienced, and on Process, Sampha provides an insight into the emotional journey of processing his mother’s battle and death from cancer. Blending ballads with lush RnB beats, Sampha’s ability to capture vulnerability is exemplified from the very first moment, with album opener ‘Plastic 100°C’ discussing the fear surrounding the first detection of cancer. Creating an album that will speak straight to the soul of anyone who has ever lost someone close to them, this record serves as a perfect example of how to transform pain into art and overcome adversity. Listen To: Blood on Me, Timmy’s Prayer, (No One Knows Me) Like the Piano.
GORDI
Reservoir
Gordi’s debut album possesses a confidence and maturity that is often not seen this early in an artist’s career. Composed from songs written throughout her life, Reservoir sees Gordi explore the intricacies and difficulties of platonic friendships. Not only is she exploring a topic very often ignored in song writing, she goes on a sonic adventure through different genres in songs that seem to effortlessly transition from one to another throughout the album. The album also boasts a self-produced track in the form of lead single “Heaven I Know”, built from layers of looped sound, highlighting just how talented this Australian artist really is, and leaving this listener excited to see what comes next. Listen to: On My Side, Bitter End, Long Way.
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METHYL ETHEL
Everything is Forgotten Methyl Ethel have extended upon the unique and intelligent sound of their debut album with songs inspired by everything from theatre to a Japanese parade of spirits. Lead vocalist Jake Webb showcases vivid imagery and clever lyricism throughout the record, calling out unnamed Cardinals for their actions and describing relationships as car accidents. It becomes clear that whether you leave this album inspired to research a new topic or just wanting to ask everyone you meet why they had to cut their hair, it is a surreal insight into the kind of pop genius we can expect from these Perth locals. Listen to: Ubu, L’Heure des Sorcières, Hyakki Yak.
THE PREATURES
Girlhood
After losing band member Gideon Bensen, the much-anticipated new record from Sydney indie-rock superstars The Preatures delivers the kind of old school vibes and witty lyricism we’ve come to expect. Diversifying the sounds explored in their debut, Isabella Manfredi uses this second record to explore the social expectations and experiences of women. Album highlight ‘Yanada’ demonstrates exactly how to pay tribute and represent indigenous culture and language – the chorus is sung in the Indigenous Syndey Dharug language – with the band seeking all the necessary permissions and working with the Darug community on the song. All round this album sees The Preatures getting even better and smashing the patriarchy in one fell swoop, so what’s not to love here? Listen To: Lip Balm, Girlhood, Yanada, Magick.
LORDE
Melodrama Let’s be honest for a moment here, if you haven’t listened to Melodrama yet at this stage of 2017 you need to stop reading this review and start doing just that. Lorde’s debut captured the teenage consciousness and propelled her to international success, and Melodrama sees her delve even deeper and provide a series of anthems to the emotionally damaged and unsure world of being a 20-something in 2017. Extending upon the minimalism of Pure Heroine, the maximalist nature of Melodrama sees Lorde exploring everything from the existentialism of party culture to the exact moment of feeling like you’re destined to be alone forever. So go out there and run through the rain listening to ‘Green Light’, cry to ‘Liability’, or just take a sweet joy in the ‘Louvre’ replicating your current love for someone; whatever moment of 20-something existentialism you’re feeling right now… there’s a Lorde song for it. Listen to: honestly everything on this album is pure gold, so just hurry up and listen to the whole thing. Words & Illustrations by James Booth
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BOOKS:
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW: MORAL PANIC 101 Benjamin Law
To a crowded Newtown Neighbourhood Centre, Benjamin Law, creator of the ABC Comedy The Family Law, writer of Gaysia and a weekly column in Good Weekend is explaining why he elected to begin the latest Quarterly Essay with the suicide of Tyrone Unsworth. “It was not a light decision… I did not want to have someone’s life and death as a narrative device.” But the suicide of Tyrone, at just thirteen, memorialised in its singular tragedy an experience so needlessly ubiquitous that describing merely as a ‘narrative device’ would diminish the central message of Quarterly Essay 67: Moral Panic. This installment of the Quarterly Essay is an analysis of the storm that swirled around the Safe Schools program and how this benign, federally-funded initiative to counter homophobia in schools ended up squarely in the beaten zone of Australia’s reactionary conservatives. Benjamin Law illustrated the attack that was levelled on the National Safe Schools Coalition Australia after its launch in the winter of 2014 to the packed crowd, by holding up his key prop – a bound wad of double-sided A4 paper that, at over an inch thick, contains every article The Australian had published in its sixteen-month war on the program.
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The essay itself details the conception, birth and violent mutilation of the Safe Schools program in the media while existing as an artifact of this time in Australia and the vast gulf of understanding and sympathy that our political order has plainly failed to bridge. Unlike his colleagues in the conservative mainstream, in the process of creating his essay, Law interviewed those involved in drafting the program. Crucially, he also reached out to the young, queer youth that Safe Schools was initiated to protect. His essay makes the point that this obvious and necessary step in writing the Safe Schools story was totally absent in the 90,000 words that The Australian expended on its coverage, and it is these interactions (ranging from warm and insightful discussions with trans youth to sterile-yet-revealing recounts of political intrigue) which form perhaps a third of the work. Most significant, though, is Law’s ability to pare back and explain the program itself. Though some might say this is speaks to Law’s own background, having grown up at a time when Queensland still criminalised homosexuality, it is more properly a function of his shoe-leather journalism and the broad canvas of opinion and ideas that he has given voice to in his work. In this process of paring back the white hot hysteria of much of the mainstream around Safe Schools, Law gives a spirited defence for the aims of the program. He correctly delineates the core elements of the Safe Schools Program (a pledge, signed by a school principal to ‘make a genuine commitment
to building a school that is free from homophobia and transphobia and to support gender diversity, intersex and sexual diversity’) from the optional resources supplied in the ‘All of Us’ booklet. It was this booklet, along with the constellation of supporting online resources, that became crystallised in the mind of the the prophets and disciples of the conservative Australian right as the program itself. To this end, George Christiansen’s wilfully misleading oratory under the veil of parliamentary privilege – in which he carried out a spot of red-string-on-the-corkboard conspiracy investigation to draw a link between a program to protect queer youth and a Melbourne BDSM club – comes in for rightful scorn. But it was precisely this kind of misinformation that warped the public image of Safe Schools. Referring to the the 56-page All of Us booklet and its confronting-to-some exercises (which included such controversial activities such as getting children to role-play same-sex couples), discussion, and reflection on gender and sexuality, the reader is told first hand by those involved in the program’s drafting that the resource was never meant to be applied in all schools, despite opponents claiming these activities would be mandatory. Instead of an Alex Jones ‘turning-the-frogs-gay’ stab at queering the youth, what emerges is a thoroughly planned and research-based program to encourage the development of a safe environment for transgender or gender-questioning students. Needless to say, when at the end of the essay we learn that the future of Safe Schools is uncertain (in NSW the program will be bundled into a generic anti-bullying program – an approach that has been shown to be ineffective in improving outcomes for LGBTQI youth) the importance of the program, as a tool for educating all of us becomes abundantly clear.
“WELL-MEANING ADULTS ACTING WITHOUT THE RIGHT RESOURCES CAN STILL SCREW UP CHILDREN’S LIVES”
As Law pointed out to the audience, “well-meaning adults acting without the right resources can still screw up children’s lives”. It becomes evident from Law’s writing that Safe Schools provides a way to make these children’s lives better, and to consign to history the experience that lead to the tragedies that this work began with. by Patrick McNally
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FILM:
BLADE RUNNER 2049 I think it’s because I don’t live my life entirely up Ridley Scott’s asshole, but I did not care for the original Blade Runner. Despite the original reception, cult following, and reputation of the pinnacle of neo-noir sci-fi, Blade Runner (1982) is hella dated. Despite being set in 2019, the attitudes towards women and racial minorities are distinctly 80s, and I challenge anyone to watch the ‘sex scene’ between Harrison Ford’s Deckard and co-star Sean Young without cringing yourself light-years into the future. Speaking of the future, Blade Runner 2049 is set a good thirty years after the original film and based around new, rival models of replicants that apparently obey without fail. Tyrell Corp has fallen to bankruptcy since the first film and all previous models are being hunted for extermination. Cue Ryan Gosling, the newest model of replicant hired by the LAPD to ‘get the job done’. The film is undeniably gorgeous. Coming off the back of Arrival, Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins (of Coen Brothers fame) have pieced together a visually magnificent film, rivalling the recent atmospheric likes of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). Hans Zimmer brings his typical a-game with a soundtrack that falls shy of the original film, but not by much. Just like its predecessor though, Blade Runner 2049’s narrative coherency is often sacrificed for the sake of lengthy aesthetic shots. The film tries to hide its plot holes and inconsistencies behind hazy neons and dwarfing long shots, and the last act really ticks on in terms of runtime.
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Ryan Gosling’s tendency for dry, and sometimes stilted, delivery is well suited to the role of Officer KD6-3.7, aka K. However, alongside Harrison Ford, whose alcoholic drawl is par for the course, Gosling seemed near ecstatic for the entire film. Jared Leto, as the face behind the Wallace Corporation, failed to hold a candle to Joe Turkel’s original Dr. Eldon Tyrell, and I was mostly underwhelmed by the supporting cast – with one exception. Sylvia Hoeks as Luv is deliciously psychotic and she really gave an edge to the entire film. She brought depth and an occasional sympathetic lilt to her character, adding a much-needed dynamic female presence to the masculine franchise. Far from just a homage, Villeneuve has made the sequel his own. Despite this, traces of Ridley Scott lurk in the background like a Nexus-6 replicant. He’s there in the eclectic character work, and in the violent deaths, and, most notably, in the extended philosophical monologues that could put an insomniac to sleep. Tears in the rain anyone? I guess the main reason I warmed to this film as opposed to the original was the inclusion of the replicant freedom movement. It provided an interesting allusion to social paradigms and actually managed to steer clear from the worst clichés. Ultimately though, trying to improve society on a dying planet is like changing all the batteries in the fire alarms in a burning building. by Tieri Cafe
HOROSCOPES GEMINI
SCORPIO
LEO
When one door closes, another one opens. It’s starting to become a problem. Either you’ve got a real drafty hallway or you’ve got ghosts. My bet is ghosts.
At times like these, you’ve just gotta lick pussy and suck a dick.
I know that some say legalising gay marriage will lead to people declaring their love for inanimate objects but who knows how long that’s gonna take? Don’t let the slow tide of public acceptance hold you back, you and your jafflemaker were meant to be.
AQUARIUS
CAPRICORN
PISCES
I know I’ve been quite rude to you this year Aquarius, but now that my time as a divine interpreter is coming to an end I just want you to know from the bottom of my heart that it was because I hate you. Personally. Every single Aquarius offends me by their very existence.
Hello? Yes, this is the kitchen maintenance people. Is your fridge running? It is? Well, you better go catch it before it gets too far. *stifled giggling*
Y’all remember the movie Look Who’s Talking? You know, that movie where Bruce Willis voices a newborn baby who keeps making inappropriate quips about adult womens’ breasts? John Travolta was in it.
VIRGO
LIBRA
TAURUS
Try as you might to find the one, no one will ever truly ‘get’ you the way that one Buzzfeed quiz did.
Listen, not everything is written in the stars. Stop looking for Game of Thrones spoilers in there. Also, shut the fuck up about Rick and Morty.
It’s time you started treating yourself like royalty, Taurus. Treat yourself to the finest goods in the land, raise taxes on the poor to fund for your lavish lifestyle, get beheaded in the town square.
ARIES
SAGGITARIUS
CANCER
There are more than 4000 adult Snow Leopards in the wild, meaning that they’re no longer on the endangered list! Fuckin YEE-HAA, what cool cats.
When things get tough, try to remember that the universe is billions of years old and constantly expanding at an infinite rate and in one solar system, on one planet, a sentient race was able to luck itself into existence through years of evolutionary fiddling to create you.
Snip snip. You’re a crab.
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