A freer state of being

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Mapping my queer lineage

GR OnlineWhen I graduated from high school, I was finally free to leave – to venture beyond the borders and confinements of my small town to search for something I inherently knew was missing from my life. And so, at seventeen years of age, I sped down the well-worn Carnarvon Highway towards an uncertain future.

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Very online feelings

Non-fictionIn 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary declared ‘selfie’ its word of the year, and Twitter later declared 2014 ‘the year of the selfie’ after the term was mentioned more than ninety-two million times on the platform – a twelve-fold increase from the previous year. It was in this context that influencer selfies provided templates and scripts to spur more consumption and more desire, taking commodification of the body and the self to the next level. For instance, influencers popularised a whole ‘science’ around how to craft the most desirable faces through cosmetics and surgery, how to perform authenticity through ‘casual selfies’ that felt extra sincere but that also required extra behind-the-scenes effort, and how to assuage tensions arising from accusations of excessive plastic surgery and ‘fakery’. Selfies were reclaimed, transformed by their creators from expressions of mere vanity to useful tools of subversive frivolity. Influencer couples also sold us benchmarks of romantic perfection through carefully orchestrated couple photographs, love declarations on social media and ‘rules’ about how to be the perfect partner.

The accidental film school

Non-fictionThe DVD format – the Digital Versatile Disc – was invented in 1995 and reached the peak of its popularity in Australia in the 2000s, before the rise of streaming platforms in the 2010s. During those salad days, Australian entertainment companies started producing and selling DVDs at a rapid rate, building a library of local and international films. The Melbourne-based company Madman Entertainment were competitive players... The extras on their DVDs – making-of documentaries, deleted scenes, audio commentaries – allowed producers to have an active role in the historicisation of film; audio commentaries typically featured directors and actors rewatching and reminiscing together. But companies like Madman (and Criterion in the US), which distributed ‘art-house’ cinema, were more likely to invite film theorists and historians to provide an analytical reading of the film as it played.

Trip Advisor review of a protest

Poetry Firstly, what’s with all the footwork? A downward slope would be an attribute. There’s enough gory fundamentalism without toe jam. On that note, can...