Below are links to all my “Thinking Culture” columns from The Conversation. If you’re looking for my “Opinion Pieces” please click here. If you’re looking for something in particular, please use the SITE SEARCH function on the right – this site has been fully indexed.
“Mr. Mercedes, Masturbation and Madness” (November 5, 2017)
“#MeToo and Modern Consciousness-Raising” (October 19, 2017)
“Unpacking sexually transmitted ethics” (September 28, 2017)
“The Delusions of Christmas Past” (September 21, 2017)
“The Wonderful Weirdness of ‘You’re Not Alone’” (August 4, 2017)
“Mamamia! When it’s high time for some bitch-shamin’” (June 13, 2017)
“Islam and the fine line of academic freedom” (June 05, 2017)
“Manchester’s Blue Monday and the Folly of Cowardice” (May 24, 2017)
“Three Little Words and Best Self Nonsense” (May 4, 2017)
“Trigger Warnings, Evidence-Based Policy and Media Literacy” (April 28, 2017)
“Big Little Lies and the Fly in the Feminist Ointment” (April 20, 2017)
“13 Reasons Why and Ageing Out of Pop Culture” (April 13, 2017)
“The False Feminism of Kendrick Lamar’s Humble” (April 1, 2017)
“Trump and Showering Golden” (January 11, 2017)
“2016: The Year in Film” (December 30, 2016)
“A Very Aussie Christmas?” (December 24, 2016)
“75 Christmas Films Worth Watching” (December 22, 2016)
“The #TrumpTapes: Being (Very) Careful What You Wish For” (October 8, 2016)
“From Presidents to Proxies: Examining the VP Stoush” (October 5, 2016)
“Why Weiner is Wonderful” (August 29, 2016)
“Backstories, Intimacies and the Ghostbusters Dilemma” (July 26, 2016)
“Trump and the Ugliness of the Charm Defensive” (July 23, 2016)
“Dancing Dubya and the Policing of Grief” (July 13, 2016)
“Gina Rinehart, Weight Loss and Women Under the Microscope” (July 1, 2016)
“Warning Sign: Trigger Warnings and Externalities” (June 24, 2016)
“Me Before You Before Fiction” (June 14, 2016)
“Mauling Money Monster” (May 30, 2016)
“Love, Serendipity and Algorithms” (March 15, 2016)
“In Celebration of Rag Tag Posses” (February 8, 2016)
“The Complicity, The Hypocrisy and The Spider’s Web” (February 1, 2016)
“Latham, Lone Wolves and News Lite” (January 23, 2016)
“Good Writing vs Good Storytelling” (January 20, 2016)
“Sexism and Media Bandwagons” (January 9, 2016)
“The Loved and Loathed Films of 2015” (December 30, 2015)
“The Highs and Lows of the Bastard Genius” (October 28, 2015)
“The Intern and Rethinking Intimate Friendships” (October 22, 2015)
“Narcos and the Anal Taboo” (September 24, 2015)
“Peanuts, Panhandlers and Prime Ministerial Pay Packets” (September 28, 2015)
“The Short Conversations Never Had” (September 9, 2015)
“Auster and the Paths Not Taken” (September 4, 2015)
“(The Husband’s) Secrets and Self-Perception” (August 31, 2015)
“Not My Father’s Son, not my brother’s keeper” (August 24, 2015)
“Trump, Misogyny and Menstrual Misunderstandings” (August 10, 2015)
“‘Trainwreck’ and Popping the Cultural Bubble” (August 4, 2015)
“Dr Seuss, Dr King and the Scourge of Posthumous Works” (July 29, 2015)
“The Fat Ugly Truth About Dating” (July 10, 2015)
“Happily, Willingly Manipulated” (23 April, 2015)
“The ultimate multitask: taking a selfie and having an orgasm” (3 March, 2015)
“Memoir and Massaging Rapport” (26 February, 2015)
“The Where of the Watch” (19 February, 2015)
“Love, Sex and Foxcatcher” (21 January, 2015)
“The Interview and a new masculinity?” (11 January, 2015)
“The best of films, the worst of films: 2014” (30 December, 2014)
“The House of Yes and the No of Closure” (12 December, 2014)
“Being Plain. Hollywood-style” (7 December, 2014)
“The Whip, the Lash, and the Blood, Sweat and Semen of Jazz” (19 November, 2014)
“Interacting with Interstellar?” (17 November, 2014)
“Hector and the Search for Colour” (17 October, 2014)
“The Judge, The Old Lady and the Incest Spectre” (13 October, 2014)
“Tammy and Resizing Hollywood” (6 October, 2014)
“Boyhood, Fatherhood and the Conduits of Culture” (30 September, 2014)
“This Is Where I’m Curious” (22 September, 2014)
“Belaboring the Big Black Brute” (18 September, 2014)
“Blind-buying into the theatre of love” (2 September, 2014)
“That’s the time I feel like makin’ love to food” (26 August, 2014)
“Getting Under the Skin of Cinema-Going” (24 June, 2014)
“The Fault in Our Outrage” (16 June, 2014)
“The Secret History of Audiobooks” (14 May, 2014)
“Pop Culture’s Apples and Oranges” (14 April, 2014)
“Nymphomaniac’s Crash Course in Sexuality Studies” (9 April, 2014)
“Neptune. It’s Better In Your Head ” (1 April, 2014)
“That was a joke, Joyce” (11 March, 2014)
“The Dirtiest of Dirty Ditties” (7 March, 2014)
“Reading the Messenger” (5 March, 2014)
“On Cinematic Catnip” (19 February, 2014)
“Her, Hungry Ghosts and Rethinking Intimacy” (11 February, 2014)
“Death and the Fame Game” (3 February, 2014)
“Museum of Hollywood Jerks” (29 January, 2014)
“Looking at Dead Babies” (22 January, 2014)
“August, Accents and Acting According to Ability” (16 January, 2014)
“Adore-ing Pop Culture’s Last Taboo” (12 January, 2014)
“Of Anthems and Advertisements” (7 January, 2014)
“The Fattening-up of American Hustle” (16 December, 2013)
“Just when we thought we’d exhausted all uses for the vagina” (9 December, 2013)
“Like a lightbulb, babe” (2 December, 2013)
“Politics, a Peep and a Pull ” (25 November, 2013)
“Mockery, Mimicry and Grandpas Gone Wild ” (21 November, 2013)
“When cleaning gets creepy ” (12 November, 2013)
“What role the cameo?” (5 November, 2013)
“A lipstick by any other name” (8 November, 2013)
“Making Music Methodological” (27 October, 2013)
“American Apparel and the Selling of Feminism” (10 October, 2013)
“Pepper-spraying Pinktober” (7 October, 2013)
“Thanks for sharing, thanks for not psychoanalysing” (30 September, 2013)
“You oughta know a little better” (24 September, 2013)
“The Day that Music Fried” (17 September, 2013)
“Multi-tasking and Defending John McCain” (7 September, 2013)
“Postmodernism and the Miley Malarkey” (28 August, 2013)
“Bad Medicine and Bad Desires” (11 August, 2013)
“Judging a DVD by its cover” (3 August, 2013)
“Loving, losing and inelegant television departures” (29 July, 2013)
“Monkeys, lady hair and the book vs film rule” (23 July, 2013)
“Because sometimes the Bee Gees don’t cut it” (11 July, 2013)
“Oh, but it’s so much more than that” (6 July, 2013)
“The Art of the Dead” (29 June, 2013)
“The Skinny on Hollywood” (24 June, 2013)
“Baptism by animated genitals” (19 June, 2013)
“Oral sex and the butching-up of Michael Douglas” (4 June, 2013)
“Separting art from artist” (2 June, 2013)
“Permission to laugh, permission to scoff ” (21 May, 2013)
“The Inky Shortcut” (15 May, 2013)
“Knowing when to walk away, knowing when to run” (6 May, 2013)
“A Margaret Cho Outing” (30 April, 2013)
“Making movies memorable” (28 April, 2013)
“Dove and a sketch of faux-empowerment” (15 April, 2013)
“Not quite the rapier wit” (12 April, 2013)
“Sweating the (really) small stuff?” (3 April, 2013)
“Undressing Burlesque” (26 March, 2013)
“The Fine Art of the Edit” (22 March, 2013)
“Take another little pizza my heart now, baby” (11 March, 2013)
“I Give It a Three” (6 March, 2013)
“So long, Hollywood” (28 February, 2013)
“Defending the Boob Song” (26 February, 2013)
“Triumph, tragedy and the Carnival cruise catastrophe ” (17 February, 2013)
“Silver Linings and Trigger Warnings” (13 February, 2013)
“Benchmarking and Fierce Companions” (9 February, 2013)
“In Praise of Crazy Ladies and the Men Who Love Them” (5 February, 2013)
“Flight and Going Full-Frontal” (31 January, 2013)
“The attraction of political apathy” (24 January, 2013)
“Kochie, the boobs and the feminist bait ” (23 January, 2013)
“Armstrong’s Sponsors and the Great Double-Dip” (21 January, 2013)
“The big and booby questions of reality TV” (14 January, 2013)
“Wanking and writing and writing and wanking” (18 December, 2012)
“The upside of being loathed” (9 December, 2012)
“Mastering your domain or drinking the Kool-Aid?” The Conversation (3 December, 2012)
“Bond-age and the meaning of worldly” The Conversation (29 November, 2012)
“Can music save our mortal soul?” The Conversation (26 November, 2012)
“A tale of two hostage situations” The Conversation (22 November, 2012)
“The art of writing about reading” The Conversation (18 November, 2012)
“Delving into dairy advertising” The Conversation (11 November, 2012)
“When jumping the shark isn’t enough of a critique” The Conversation (8 November, 2012)
“Feminism aborted in Bachelorette” The Conversation (4 November, 2012)
“Time travel and bumping into ourselves” The Conversation (24 October, 2012)
“The bliss of bearing bad news” The Conversation (17 October, 2012)
“Not quite Turkish delight(ful)” The Conversation (7 October, 2012)
“Examining Good Sex in Bad Relationships” The Conversation (1 October, 2012)
“A quiet celebration of the horny menstruator” The Conversation (26 September, 2012)
“Happiness and things that go meh in the night” (20 September, 2012)
“More than Men Off the Leash?” (17 September, 2012)
“Guilt, Pleasure and Dirty Pop Culture Secrets” (12 September, 2012)
“Season Finales and Farewelling the Good Doctor” (9 September, 2012)
“The Horror and Hilarity of Schoolgate Politics” (5 September, 2012)
“The Vagaries of Vulgarity and Honour Among Perverts” The Conversation (2 September, 2012)
“Seeking a Friend, Seeking a Genre” (30 September, 2012)
“Monkey Jesus and the Politics of Value” (27 August, 2012)
“The Campaign and the Political Shrew” (24 August, 2012)
“Overthinking Ketut: Sex, Sexiness and the Asian Man” (20 August, 2012)
“Oral Sex and the Quid Pro Quo” (16 August, 2012)
“Where are the Willies? The Missing Penis in “Magic Mike”” (13 August, 2012)
“Subversion, Schadenfreude and Drama Addiction in “Private Games”” (9 August, 2012)
“Whose Story is it Anyway?” (6 August, 2012)
“Sex Motives and Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘Margaret’” (3 August, 2012)