The Memes of Production: A cultural studies weblog

Since I originally posted it in June 2006, the most read article on Memes is one called Forever Young and the Politics of Meaning, a short meditation on the way in which context and personal experience change the meaning of a text. It generated a reasonably brisk debate at the time, but then I moved on, and most of the commenters did also.

But for the last three and a half years we have had an average of four visits a week from people googling something like “meaning of forever young.” I’ve visited other sites that come up in this search, and I think that it is time I added my view on the song, because I don’t think many people get it.

The song was originally written by German synth-pop outfit Alphaville, and “Forever Young” was the title track on their 1984 debut album. For me the clue is in the date of the original release: 1984 was smack in the middle of the Cold War and the song captures the sense of existential dread and fatalism that afflicted many young people at that time:

Let’s dance in style, let’s dance for a while
Heaven can wait we’re only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb or not?

This isn’t a political song; there is no advocating about arms reduction or political solutions, just the plea to forget politics and go out dancing. While the songwriters don’t want to die, anything seems better than waiting around for an apocalypse that ordinary people felt they didn’t have a way of stopping.

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Thank you to Jason Gross at Popmatters for naming us alongside writers like Trent Reznor and publications such as Salon and The Wall Street Journal in their 2009 Best Music Scribbling Awards.

It’s nice to get some acknowledgment, especially from a professional in the industry.

The post he liked was this one.

But make sure you visit Popmatters and read the other articles as well—they are some great ideas, well put.

Just over ten years ago now, in the face of the Howard Government’s favouring of private education, I wrote a paper for a little in-house journal which discussed the problems inherent in league tables and their effects on educational, and thus social, equity. Well, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Now under a Labor Government, the same fights are being fought, this time, though, in the name of accountability rather than choice.

As you are probably aware, the government has today launched its MySchool website amid much controversy: it gives data that can enable the ranking of schools due to its publication of, among other things, national NAPLAN test results.

If you want to know why the publication of these results is so problematic, take a look at this paper by Professor Alan Reid, presented to the 2009 Australian Curriculum Studies Association National Biennial Conference in Canberra in October.

The winners of the 2009 Aurealis Awards for Australian Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror were announced at the thirteenth annual ceremony at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts in Brisbane on Saturday 24 January 2010.

BEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL: Andrew McGahan, Wonders of a Godless World, Allen & Unwin

BEST SCIENCE FICTION SHORT STORY: Peter M. Ball, ‘Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens’, Apex Magazine May 2009

BEST FANTASY NOVEL: Trudi Canavan, Magician’s Apprentice, Orbit

BEST FANTASY SHORT STORY (Tie): Christopher Green, ‘Father’s Kill’, Beneath Ceaseless Skies #24; Ian McHugh, ‘Once a Month, On a Sunday’, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #40, Andromeda Spaceways Publishing Co-operative Ltd

BEST HORROR NOVEL: Honey Brown, Red Queen, Penguin Australia

BEST HORROR SHORT STORY (Tie): Paul Haines, ‘Wives’, X6, Coeur de Lion Publishing; Paul Haines, ‘Slice of Life – A Spot of Liver’, Slice of Life, The Mayne Press

BEST ANTHOLOGY: Jonathan Strahan (editor), Eclipse 3, Night Shade Books

BEST COLLECTION: Greg Egan, Oceanic, Gollancz

BEST ILLUSTATED BOOK/GRAPHIC NOVEL: Nathan Jurevicius, Scarygirl, Allen & Unwin

BEST YOUNG ADULT NOVEL: Scott Westerfeld, Leviathan Trilogy: Book One, Penguin

BEST YOUNG ADULT SHORT STORY: Cat Sparks, ‘Seventeen’, Masques, CSFG

BEST CHILDREN’S (8-12 YEARS) NOVEL: Gabrielle Wang, A Ghost in My Suitcase, Puffin Books

BEST CHILDREN’S (8-12 YEARS) SHORT FICTION/ILLUSTRATED WORK/PICTURE BOOK: Pamela Freeman (author), Kim Gamble (illustrator), Victor’s Challenge, Walker Books Australia

Another lip-synching scandal in China (via ABC News):

Authorities in the Chinese province of Sichuan say two Chinese pop singers face fines amounting to around $12,000 for lip-syncing during a concert.

The two women are alleged to have mimed through a concert last September.

A ban on the practice was brought in after a young girl was embarrassingly revealed to have lip-synced at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Just whose version of authenticity is this? The integrity argument in pop music authenticity—that the output of the artist is the sincere expression of their effort and lived experience—derives directly from the Enlightenment and, especially, Romanticist philosophies. That is, strongly Western forms of thought that have never had much purchase in Eastern philosophies.

I wonder why the Chinese are importing these outmoded and largely irrelevant themes along with the genres and structures of Western popular music?

A Seven Network poll shows that 71% of respondents want Prince William to be next king, rather than Prince Charles.

Why do supporters of the monarchy have so much trouble with the concept of succession? It’s one of the fundamental aspects of a hereditary system: the succeeding ruler is the eldest male offspring of the monarch. It’s not a democracy, you don’t get to choose, and the heir can’t just decide to let it skip a generation.

Assuming there is no accident or fatal illness (or the admittedly unlikely chance that Elizabeth II is actually a cyborg who will live forever), the next British monarch will be Charles III. Get over it people.

Of course, if you really don’t want Charles as Australian Head of State, there’s one simple thing we could do, isn’t there…

It goes without saying that y’all should read Mel Gregg’s excellent article for New Matilda, Why Academia Is No Longer A Smart Choice. Try to ignore the comments, though. I gagged just a little when I came across the phrase “peer reviewed [sic] objects”. The contributions by commentators — some of whom really didn’t seem all that interested in engaging with Mel’s actual argument — make it clear that being a successful Fungible Industrial Knowledge Delivery Unit has very little to do with being a good researcher, writer, or teacher.

A group of researchers I know are building a website to gather personal recollections of Australian television. The site is currently small, but growing, and they would like your input.

Access is free (register to contribute) and the entries so far are very interesting. Well worth a look…

http://tvlandaustralia.com

From the “About” page:

The project focuses on the popular experience of television and its role in forming national culture. As well as the usual academic sources, our research includes people’s memories and personal collections, and ‘ephemera’ like popular publications.

Australia – you’re looking at it

We’re using this site to build up an archive derived from interviews, oral histories, memorabilia, published materials, cultural institutions, fans and online sources. It represents Australian television from the point of view of those who have made and consume it. Once we’ve gathered sufficient materials, we want to use them to investigate questions around: the place of television in popular memory; and the versions produced by fan and ProAm memorialisations; the ‘insider’ perspective from people who have worked in the industry; and the collection of photos and stories about the significant television places, set design and TV-related objects; material that will help ‘map’ TV Australia. Last but not least how national icons and mythologies are produced (not least by audiences) through particular television programs and genres.

Thanks for the nod, OnlineCourses, I hope we can live up to the endorsement.

100 Best Blogs for the Literati

If you feel that you’re destined to be an intellectual long after you graduate from college, you’re going to have to work a little harder to keep up with high brow culture and scholarly debates on your own. These 100 blogs will help you jump in on the discussions influencing the art, literature, political and culture worlds, even without the support of your professors and fellow classmates.

“High brow culture”? That reminds me: I better get to work on the next Eurovision post…

A short snippet from my thesis:

What I have been talking about here is the opposition of nature and culture, and while a little culture is a good thing—very few of the champions of natural food actually want to eat everything raw, and even the most dedicated blues guitarist will play the most carefully crafted instrument that they can afford—the over-produced or the processed product is to be avoided. As Frith puts it, “the continuing core of rock ideology is that raw sounds are more authentic than cooked sounds” (“Art Versus Technology” 266).

The raw and the cooked: one of the defining dichotomies of popular culture, and a central metaphor in many areas of value creation.

Vale, Claude.