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Keywords: Paul Mitchell

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Taller when prone: The contradictions of Les Murray

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 10 May 2024

    Les Murray once confessed it was his mission to 'irritate the hell out of the eloquent who would oppress my people,' by being a paradox that their categories can’t assimilate: the Subhuman Redneck who writes poems. And therein lies the ‘poem’ of Les Murray: complex, contradictory, sublime, and sometimes ready to whip his enemies with a scorpion’s tail.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Why we keep coming back to Groundhog Day

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 22 February 2024
    1 Comment

    Since its release, audiences, critics and philosophers have grappled with Groundhog Day’s take on time and eternity. Like all great art, Groundhog Day resists easy categorisation and is a story that, in a wonderful irony, we can go to again and again.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Best of 2023: In conversation with Helen Garner

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 04 January 2024

    Arguably Australia’s most celebrated living author, Helen Garner has built a reputation as a fearless and unapologetic writer whose work has remained fresh and relevant for over 45 years. We sat down with Helen to explore the challenges of confessional non-fiction, her fondness for church, and her commitment to unsparing self-analysis. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Bridging histories: In conversation with Tony Birch

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 23 June 2023
    1 Comment

    Renowned author and academic Tony Birch is known for his insightful and compelling narrative explorations into societal issues like marginalisation, Aboriginal identity and racial struggles. In conversation with Paul Mitchell, Birch discusses his work, the unique intersection of academia and creative writing, and the profound impact of historical dispossession.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Forgiveness and duty collide in Time

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 13 April 2023

    Prisons are settings to which TV and film writers return regularly. It’s because ‘the joint’ gives them an environment in which they can enact the dramatic principle of the crucible easily: tension between duelling inmate protagonists and antagonists is heightened quickly to boiling point because no one can simply walk away.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In conversation with Helen Garner

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 17 February 2023
    3 Comments

    Arguably Australia’s most celebrated living author, Helen Garner has built a reputation as a fearless and unapologetic writer whose work has remained fresh and relevant for over 45 years. We sat down with Helen to explore the challenges of confessional non-fiction, her fondness for church, and her commitment to unsparing self-analysis. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The book corner: Faith and doubt in American fiction

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 03 February 2023
    6 Comments

    Through exploring the work of nine Catholic American authors — with special focus on Flannery O’Connor, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Don DeLillo — Longing for an Absent God boldly attempts to discover what it is about faith and the desire for transcendence that exerts such influence over the popular imagination. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Seeking meaning behind the monsters in Dahmer

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 27 October 2022
    1 Comment

    At the end of the third episode of the Netflix biopic Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, as the ‘Watch Next Episode’ timer ran down, I turned it off and haven’t returned. At time of writing, Dahmer was the number three-ranked show on Netflix Australia. Why are viewers willing to watch? And against the scale of such horror, can there be any redemption?

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Making My Island Home

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 18 October 2022

    ‘My Island Home’ was first recorded 35 years ago, a song that emerged from a journey and conversation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous voices. It’s helped Australians better understand our home and place in it, and points to the value of enshrining Indigenous voices in our constitution so they can continue to speak to us all. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Franzen and faith at the crossroads

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 10 February 2022
    6 Comments

    American novelist Jonathan Franzen has in his last three fictional works taken words that loom large in the collective consciousness and built worlds around them. First, it was Freedom (2010), then Purity (2015), and now Crossroads (2021). The latter title, of course, refers to a literal and figurative decision-making moment, but also the mythic locale where blues singers, notably Robert Johnson, made their pacts with the devil. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Broken: A profound study of Christianity and the priesthood

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 09 December 2021
    18 Comments

    Broken first aired on BBC1 in England in 2017. Four years to make it to Australia, but it was worth it. The series is a profound and powerful study of Christianity and what priesthood means, whether for the man holding up the bread at the altar, or that ‘priesthood of all believers’ to which Christianity’s adherents are said to belong.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What we talk about when we talk about mental health

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 19 October 2021
    2 Comments

     Millions of Australians are slowly emerging from another lockdown and it’s again reported our mental health has suffered. The Victorian Government recently announced 93,000 hours for mental health clinicians to work across the state, and the delivery of 20 pop-up community mental health sites.

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