Welcome to GR Online, a series of short-form articles that take aim at the moving target of contemporary culture as it’s whisked along the guide rails of innovations in digital media, globalisation and late-stage capitalism.
Rent-a-grave
Renewable or limited grave tenure is considered a niche burial option by the few cemeteries in New South Wales that offer it. I hadn’t heard of it until I began looking into sustainable deathcare after a conversation with a friend about water cremation (or alkaline hydrolysis): a process whereby the body is broken down in a steel vat of hydrogen peroxide and water, heated to 93 degrees.
A diasporic dilemma
I was confined within the borders of a country, practising a borderless art in the only language I could express myself in: Turkish. Everything I wrote back then merely imitated the works I was familiar with – Turkish classics I had to study in school, and some prominent writers from Iran, Russia and Brazil. It wasn’t until my late teens – when I discovered writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, Amy Tan and Ahdaf Soueif – that I realised there were stories that existed beyond the boundaries of any one nation’s literary traditions.
Ghostwriting in the machine
Ask ChatGPT a few basic questions, and the responses all begin in the same way: That’s a really insightful question! That’s a deep and fascinating question! When asked if it lies to please people, it still responds with flattery: That’s a tough but important question . . . You calling that out is actually helpful. LLMs don’t challenge the ideas and beliefs shared by the humans using them. Their programming won’t let them.
Grin and bear it
Girls are taught to be quiet and competent, accommodating and pleasant, nurturing and helpful. Eldest daughters shoulder the burdens of everyone around them. From the womb to the urn, women fix and soothe; the archetype is wired by social constructs and our environment.
Hold fast to yourself
There was once some reward for effort on social media, when our carefully curated feeds allowed our curiosities to roam and discover points of cultural interest that appealed to us. On today’s platforms, the act of choosing has been ruthlessly substituted by the act of receiving.
Why books burn
Epistemicide is the systemic annihilation and devaluation of knowledge and knowledge systems because of broader political pursuits. These pursuits are sought by a group of people whose aim is to disconnect another group from their cultural identities, histories and futures.
Ladies who doth protest too much
TERFs speak with self-appointed authority about the mental health and wellbeing of trans women but fail to explicate reasons for their own obsession with another’s gender. The real question, then, is why are TERFs so concerned with trans women and the way they live their lives?
Shrapnel
On your way home, a postcard on the footpath. You pick it up. On the front is a photograph of the Goulburn Boer War Memorial (unveiled in 1904): a soldier wears a slouch hat, his arms firmly down by his sides, stuck in time.
All creatures great and small
Most American adults can now identify more corporate logos than native plant species, and primary schoolchildren in the United Kingdom can name more Pokémon characters than species of British wildlife
A storyteller’s journey
You produce content and people say, ‘Oh, you need to tell people about this, or the Stolen Generations, or the stolen wages.’ We’ve still got to repeat that story, which should have been told and embraced by Australia, as ugly as it is, so we can move on. So, I started telling my own stories for me and my people to remind us what a great culture we have. As human beings, we’re pretty deadly.
Unhappy pairings
Arts, creative arts and humanities courses teach critical thinking, civic discourse, emotional literacy and storytelling. Most students are grappling with rent, menial work and advanced study. In a world that seeks to destroy their attention span, arts courses teach young people to read, think critically and provide historical context and sensitivity to complex issues.
The many tragedies of Animorphs
Animorphs has been out of print for twenty years, yet its cult following remains fierce. If your knowledge of Animorphs is limited to the cover art, I’m sure that’s a bemusing claim to read. However, if you did read the books, then the unlikely endurance of Animorphs is really anything but.
