Peter Sutton - The Politics of Suffering

Sim lent me The Politics of Suffering after a conversation about how to think about western ideas of improved health and other life outcomes not being an unquestionable objective of white engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities, and it's been a very worthwhile read, especially given my current work.

Its two major challenges to conventional (white) progressive thinking - and my own - are its arguments that:

1. The relative importance of colonisation, genocide and intergenerational trauma to the terrible conditions - in terms of violence, abuse, poor health, overcrowded housing, poverty and suffering (to name just a few) - in many/most contemporary Indigenous communities is typically overstated, and the effects of the interaction between traditional cultural practices and norms (including those which involve sanctioned violence, internal inequality and anti-scientific practices), and the forced imposition of modern technologies, social institutions and conditions (eg fixed housing, with its associated communal and hygiene-related challenges), understated; and
2. Too much weight is given to the 'rights' agenda, including campaigning for land rights, constitutional recognition, 'reconciliation' via treaty and other formal mechanisms, and self-determination, at the expense of action - intervention - much more directly targeted at the ill health, violence and other factors causing direct harm to individuals, including a particular focus on child socialisation as a means of breaking the intergenerational cycle.

Both of those obviously have large implications for how to try to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and indeed for how even to understand the nature of 'Indigenous disadvantage' and what addressing it and 'closing the gap' might mean.

The way it's written, as well as the depth of experience, knowledge and empathy that Sutton brings, makes it clear that The Politics of Suffering isn't meant as an apologia or Trojan Horse for simplistic conservative attitudes to the topic, and having read it more or less twice all the way through, I'm inclined to be at least open to that first argument (although it makes me very uncomfortable, and what its nuanced acceptance means for the messy, contested realm of public debate and policy-making, with all its ignorance, bad faith and vested interests amongst its competing participants, is another question), while less convinced about the second.

One obvious response is that neither question is an either/or - but that doesn't answer either the in-principle question about how to then balance efforts between the two poles of each question, or the practical one of how to contribute to moving the balance of government's and others' focus towards where they best should lie. Also obvious is that there are no easy answers, and at the same time that the recognition of such lack shouldn't be an excuse for diminishing the forcefulness with which any individual/collective/organisation (including, in whatever small way, me) pushes towards what is right, and at the same time again that a constant humility and awareness of the complexity of the terrain is the only ethically responsible course. I think I'll return to this book, because it presents a real and needed basis of tension to force me to examine my own beliefs and assumptions about how 'we' should engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Twyla Tharp - The Creative Habit

This one was a loan from Sara, and I've worked my way through it a couple of times over the past however long it's been - something like a year I think, probably longer. In a genre - broadly, books about creativity and how to practice or acquire it yourself - that I suspect is crowded and full of woolly platitudes, and which I've mostly avoided for that reason, it's refreshing in its combination of practicality and richness. The narrative sections are full of useful ideas and concepts - such as the concept of finding a work's 'spine' - and the exercises are illuminating, and the act of translating them from choreography and dance to other forms of creativity, such as writing, is itself helpful.

The Rise of Skywalker

I was planning to skip this but it came up that Rob was planning to see it by himself, and since he can always get free tickets and I had a free night, I was well pleased to go along to such an event of a film. And I guess it was fine, just a bit weightless; it also gave me a renewed appreciation for The Last Jedi.

(w/ Rob)

Knives Out

I went into Knives Out with no strong feelings or knowledge about its advertised genre - murder mystery / 'whodunit' - but a large amount of faith in Rian Johnson on the strength of everything he's done before (especially, still, The Brothers Bloom), and I think it was equal parts that personal starting point and the way the film itself knowingly both draws attention to and plays out any number of iconic components of its genre which made it impossible for me to disentangle the extent to which Knives Out is traditionalist, as opposed to deconstructionist, in what it does.

In any case, it turns out not to matter because the result is a very entertaining, clue-filled story full of enjoyably performed characters and more-or-less unexpected turns, with a depth that comes from the integrity of its plotting and construction as much as from its thematic treatment of class and race.

(w/ Hayley)

Parasite

Very ferocious, very metaphorical, very good - including in the way it evades neatness in its constituent parts (especially characterisation) and is thereby sharper in its diagnosis of capitalism / neo-liberalism as the root cause of all the suffering and hardship it depicts. Also made me think of "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas".

(w/ Kim)

Angel Olsen - All Mirrors

Enormous, and at the same time delicate. All Mirrors is outstanding, probably her best yet, and both of the last two - My Woman (2016) and Burn Your Fire For No Witness (2014) - had been pretty great already. There's heavy orchestration on many of the songs, sparseness at other times. There are icy, churning moments which veer almost goth - the standout title track reminds me of Pornography - while elsewhere the mood traverses 'fraught Disney', contemporary torch, and all kinds of distinct singer-songwriter, with something both tender and fierce underneath every song. 

Shirin Neshat - Dreamers (NGV)

Three videos, each following a different woman through a series of encounters with aspects of the unconscious, black and white and around 15 minutes each.

"Illusions & Mirrors" (2013) is the most straightforward in its symbolism - a cyclical sequence in which Natalie Portman follows a figure along a beach into a house filled with troubling, blurry reflections of herself and others (including one moment which is something like a jump scare in what I took as a return of the repressed) and ends with a doubled gaze back out to the crashing waves. "Roja" and "Sarah" (both 2016) are equally striking in their imagery but more cryptic and I think deeper, operating with a less-determined (less linear), and so more apt, logic in accessing the unconscious, more glancing association than one to one representation.

Zombieland

I'm late to this one (I've seen bits on tv before); it's good. The writing takes it a fair way but the four main actors are crucial. Plus Bill Murray.

James Marten - The History of Childhood

From the Oxford Very Short Introduction series. Notes below are mostly direct quotations or close paraphrases.

Introduction

• 'Childhood is where you can catch a culture in high relief' - Joseph M Hawes
• Childhood is a social construction, shaped by local conditions, beliefs, and needs, as well as time.
• Young humans have always enjoyed a period of 'childhood', although the nature and length of that phase of life has varied widely. All societies rely on children to carry on their traditions and values. Children are intimately involved at virtually every stage of a society's economic, social and even political development.
• Another constant is that children play.

Traditions

• Christianity helped bring children to the centre of Western thought, including attitudes about family and children and creating moral lessons to be passed down.
• Early child welfare institutions and practices began to appear in England in the 14th and 15th century, through churches, central government, cities and private organisations.

Revolutions

• In the 15th and 16th century, the Renaissance changed the nature of schooling from simply re-creating cultures, preparing youth for work and training priests to encouraging more inquisitive, challenging and comparative points of view. Formal education expanded, literacy grew, and a new sense of the individual's place in society and possibilities of the future began to shape childhood.
• Children were a vital element of the Protestant Reformation (spreading from the 1520s). The family was the centre of the godly life for Protestants and Martin Luther called the school 'the daughter of the church' and advocated broad education.
• The Enlightenment further expanded the kind of knowledge deemed necessary for children to learn and encouraged the spread of education. Locke (late 17th century) thought children were blank slates and this notion of children's innocence was influential.
• The role of economics in children's lives also changed with the industrial revolution. Children had historically been regarded as crucial economic resources for their families and their labour was also crucial to industrialisation.

The rise of 'modern' childhoods

• Children and slavery
• Colonialism and imperialism
• Rousseau, building on Locke, associated children with nature and advocated education based on children's natural interests and curiosity
• By the late 19th century, governments were developing child welfare programs aimed at providing at least a semblance of a model of childhood.
• The rise of industry necessitated the creation of more centralised, modern states, many of which assumed responsibility for education.

Creating a worldview of childhood

• Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child (1924): 'The child must be given the means requisite for its normal development, both materially and spiritually.' This first clause reflected a shift from a defensive, primarily economic reaction to child dependence and poverty to a more proactive approach centred on education.
• Education expanded dramatically during the 20th century.
• Urbanisation and industrialisation reduced the economic value of children. Conceptions of children and childhood were also shifting. This caused societies to consider children's rights as a separate prerogative. The legal concept of 'the best interest of the child' gradually developed, meaning that courts would consider the emotional and economic wellbeing of the child rather than their economic value in deciding child custody cases.
• The international response to children affected by the world wars led to the rise of organisations that foreshadowed contemporary NGOs.

The century of the child and beyond

• War and conflict
• Advocating for children (Cf African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child stressing responsibility and Vietnamese National LAw for Children stressing respect, piety and love with family, community and friends)
• WHO estimates vast majority of people with health problems caused by climate change are under the age of five

Broadside

It was the chance to see Zadie Smith in conversation which got me in more than the prospect of an 'unabashedly feminist agenda', but the second of those was intriguing too so we went made a day of it. As things transpired, of course, Monday's Q&A and its aftermath contributed to the sense of 'event'-ness about it all, with several of the principals overlapping (Mona Eltahawy, Nayuka Gorrie, Fran Kelly, as well as one of the question-askers Nicole Lee).

Helen Garner and Sarah Krasnostein

I didn't get much out of this. I think it would've helped to have been a fan of Garner's, particularly given that its nominal subject - or at least jumping-off point - was the publication of her diaries. I liked the distinction between diary and memoir (with the latter, you have the opportunity to reflect back on your past behaviour and declaim that you'd never act that way now), the anecdote about the short story that someone else wrote about her (where she was offended not by her characterisation as having rudely dominated the conversation but by an apparently much more minor detail about what she was wearing), and her line about how if you don't know grammar then you don't have the tools to critique your own work.

Who Gave You Permission? Speaking Up and Speaking Out

Nayuka Gorrie was the MVP on this panel but I enjoyed all of them - Raquel Willis, Ariel Levy, Curtis Sittenfeld and facilitated by Michelle Law. Gorrie on writing's power to subvert, particularly in the hands of people who have been marginalised: writing finds its audience, whereas in a mainstream setting you need to contend with all the barriers that society throws in your way. Someone also pointed out that writing can be a tool in the hands of people who would otherwise struggle to speak in the face of power.

Zadie Smith and Jia Tolentino

A crackling conversation, with a great dynamic between the two, one American and the other English, while both also other, with a sense that, in their different registers - Tolentino fast-talking and zig-zagging through her sentences and Smith sonorously reflective and with an air of unspooling - both were thinking out loud, individually and together. I have to admit that, just 24 hours later, I struggle to remember many of the specifics - although freedom was a theme to which they returned more than once - but the impact was marvellous.

Things My Mother Never Told Me

A revue (or possible gala) style event, with a bakers dozen of performers addressing the theme. This might have been my favourite session, helped no doubt by the evening slot and the rapid turnover format. The three who I found least engaging were the three middle-to-older aged white Australian women (Fran Kelly, Patricia Cornelius, Clare Wright) but I think that was mostly that they weren't speaking to me (as filtered through attendant personal biases born of experience, background etc), and even then they brought diversity[*] had some interesting things to say - both Kelly and Cornelius elaborated variations on the theme of their mothers, from a previous generation of course, having told them very little.

The others I all actively enjoyed, though 'entertained' wasn't always the word given the mix of lighter and more serious (and in some cases very moving) approaches - Gorrie (again), Raquel Willis (finding unexpected parallels between her mother and herself), Maria Tumarkin (delivered as spoken word and made me think I actually should read Axiomatic), Ariel Levy (on money) and Aretha Brown especially. Others: Bhenji Ra, Courtney Barnett ("Nameless, Faceless" of course), Curtis Sittenfeld, Mehreen Faruqi, Nicole Lee.

(w/ R, also Hayley, and many others around)

[*] Diversity was - as you would hope - a feature across the program, with better-than-token representation of at least First Nations, LGBTI (including trans women) and women of colour.

Miranda Lambert - Wildcard

I guess there's a type of Miranda Lambert song that I particularly like - namely the contemporary, glossy country-Americana vein she mined to such good effect on the really excellent The Weight of These Wings, some of which shows up on Wildcard in what are, indeed, my favourites on this new album of hers, which includes "How Dare You Love", "Fire Escape", "Track Record" and probably "Dark Bars" (though that last one, the closer, leans more truly country).

The other I especially like is "Holy Water", which is a bit gospel and a bit blues. The ones that go harder at pop or rock (generally one or the other) are mostly less successful; Kacey Musgraves kind of stitched that one up already, although the most Musgraves-esque song here, "Settling Down", is actually quite good.

The good ones are very good, the others are ok, also it's taught me the phrase 'all hat, no cattle', so chalk that up as a win.

Bill Callahan - Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest

Haven't got much into this apart from a few songs. Too murmury for me.

Black is the New White (MTC)

Unquestionably both entertaining and on-point in its staging of urgent questions about race, class and gender in contemporary Australia, operating in an oscillating middle ground between realism and farce (but deliberately much smoother-edged than playwright Nakkiah Lui's excellent Blackie Blackie Brown, which was actually written after Black is the New White).

I enjoyed it but wasn't swept away, which I think was because I went in expecting it to function primarily as political text, whereas the better frame might have been one of social comedy in which case it hits its marks more directly. Some of the stagecraft wasn't what it could have been; the narrator in particular was an inelegant device, though not distractingly so for the most part. But I did think it was very good - lively, sharp-witted, direct and with plenty of subtleties. (My favourite jokes: the revelation about Sonny's family background and the final line about the characters' 'happily ever after', which brings into crystal clear focus one of the most important things that the play is 'about'.)

(w/ Erandathie and Cass)

The Dead Don't Die

Has some - many - of the charms one would expect of a Jim Jarmusch zombie movie but really this was just a bit too much of a goof to amount to much.

(w/ Kim)

"Olympia: Photographs by Polixeni Papapetrou" & "Petrina Hicks: Bleached Gothic" (NGV Australia)

These photos by Polixeni Papapetrou of her daughter, from very young to early adulthood, are wonderful. The 'Alice' (and other Lewis Carroll) ones I like, unsurprisingly, including the trompe l'oeil painted backdrops, so too the 'Haunted Country' and 'Games of Consequence' ones, both interestingly shadowy but not overly heavy or dark. And the 'Eden' series, revelling in colour, proved a treat near the end.

"Olympia as Lewis Carroll's Alice dreaming by the riverbank" (2003) - I wondered whether the figures in the background are intended to appear Aboriginal Australian, in a series of painted backdrops otherwise heavily shaped by Tenniel's illustrations 

 "The Wimmera 1864 #1" (2006) - unavoidably recalling Picnic at Hanging Rock though without any overt sinister elements

"Dreams are like water" (2008) 

"Heart" (2016)

The Petrina Hicks pieces were intriguing - at first blush coolly holding their mysteries both on the surface and at one remove, and on closer inspection showing themselves to be warmly humanistic.

"Shenae and Jade" (2005) on the large dividing wall; I was also drawn to "The beauty of history" (2010) in the background, green drapes around white statue

The two close-up videos were compelling and somehow not abject or at least not scanning that way to me - this one was "Gloss" (2011) (the other was the butterfly on the open mouth)

(w/ Jade)

Jessica Jones season 1

Probably both Krysten Ritter and the positive reviews were necessary but not sufficient, but together they finally got me watching now that netflix has come into my life. And it's good stuff - a bit darker than I expected, and more lavish with the body count, and really steers into the central metaphor of male control and abuse. Economical in its use of characters almost to a fault - the fault being when it seems the pieces fit together too well - and the 'abilities' (ie super-powers) aspect functions well, although the coincidence of so many 'gifted' people stumbling across each other as required by the plot sometimes strains credulity. The plot is twisty and there's just the right amount of it, the characters are engaging and undergoing both revelation and development as the series progresses, there are a few unnerving and even properly uncanny moments, and as mentioned just before, the themes are strong and well handled.

"KAWS: Companionship in the Age of Loneliness" (NGV International)

"Gone" (2019)

"Born to Bend" (2013)

"Man's Best Friend" (2014)

"What Girls Are Made Of" (Spiegeltent)

The true story of early 90s indie band Darlingheart's not-quite-rise to fame as told and sung by then-17 year old now 40-something frontwoman Cora Bissett. Good-natured, energetically performed (including by the three other musician / channelers of many other characters) with enjoyable 90s colour and music, and the impressions of Radiohead and Blur - both of whom they supported back in the day - were fun. Not substantial at all though, the aspects to do with her parents and daughter notwithstanding, albeit with an extra layer thanks to its being all true.

(w/ R and Lisa)

Felice Brothers @ Corner Hotel, Friday 11 October

Very good show, many songs with a family resemblance to the only Felice Brothers song I really know, "Forever Green", and enjoyably more rock-y live and also garnished and sometimes led with plenty of piano accordion.

(w/ Julian)

"Civilization" (NGV Australia)

"Many civilisations populate the earth today and many have in the past, but it is clear that a single, planetary civilisation is slowly evolving."

Olivier Christinat - "Figurations II" (2016) (it's people coming down on an elevator)

'Civilization' is a broad theme for an exhibition, and maybe especially one of contemporary photography, but this show was convincing, helped by the thematic organisation which struck the balance between being meaningfully specific and sufficiently rich in association: 'flow', 'hive', 'rupture' etc. The pieces leaned towards the evidently composed, and many used repetition as part of their effect. These two, Candida Hofer's "Augustiner Chorherrenstift Sankt Florian III 2014" (2014) and Ahmad Zamroni's "Muslims pray at a mosque during the Friday noon prayer in Jakarta" (2007), struck me as a matched pair:

Others:

Thomas Struth - "Pergamon Museum 1, Berlin 2001" (2001)

Graham Miller - "Alice" (2005)

Taloi Havini and Stuart Miller - "Sami and the Panguna mine" (2009) - PNG conflict and copper mining

Michael Wolf - "Tokyo Compression #80" (2010)

Irene Kung - "Torre Velasca" (2010), though I liked her "IAC Gehry NY" from the same The Invisible City series even more

Also Richard Misrach's "Untitled (November 9, 2013, 9:49am)"  (2013) from his On the Beach series.

Sally Rugg - How Powerful We Are

I already suspected Sally Rugg was a pretty great human being and reading How Powerful We Are, her account of the campaign for same sex marriage, has reinforced that plenty. It's hugely clear, readable and interesting, with just the right balance between campaign, social movement and personal, political and social/human context. 

Particularly interesting for me were the sections about the Yes campaign's strategy and its consequences - the decision that the goal was maximising the total proportion of yes votes (rather than, for example, aiming for every electorate to return a vote greater than 50% or progressing a positive narrative around LGBTIQ rights) and therefore on getting out the vote and mobilising '1s' and '2s' rather than seeking to win the votes, or change the minds, of '3s' let alone '4s'. Admirably, Rugg is very clear on the costs of this decision and the harm caused - to causes and to people - in pursuing that objective in such a focused way.

I also liked the bits on the more tactical dimensions of activism and advocacy - the importance of a clear theory of change, the competing frames used by the two opposing campaigns (children vs modern families) and the importance and difficulty of avoiding fighting the issue on your opponent's terms (however tempting to rebut misinformation, such as about Safe Schools, rates of abuse/harm to children of queer parents, transgender identity and sexuality and so much more - "facts bounce off frames"), the relentless positivity and non-threatening messaging and delivery through predominantly white, middle to upper class and heterosexual or passing speakers (another choice whose consequences in terms of exclusion of intersectional and even more marginalised experiences she is explicit about), her description of the spectrum of collaboration with the media,[*] a two by two with level of central control on one axis and level of disruptiveness on the other, the creation of a 'hero's journey' narrative in which the hero is members of the social movement being generated and not the campaigners who are mobilising and coordinating.

It's also important and compelling - though not always easy reading - in how it highlights the harm caused by the whole national 'discussion' about the worth and belonging of LGBTIQ people, including in youth and adult suicide and self-harm, as well as the internal conflict, bullying and exclusion that is surely endemic to every set of progressive movements but especially acute when the stakes were as high and public as they were over the period that Rugg's book covers.

Anyway all in all a really terrific book for a whole range of reasons. Intensely practical as well as principled, not to mention passionate and quite inspiring.

[*] Breaking the law / whistleblowing, exclusives, strong media releases, deliberately disrupting the media in a way they'll like, Streisand effect, media hoaxes, fake news.

Buddy & Julie Miller - Breakdown on 20th Ave South

Predictably good but low-key. The melody of "Everything is Your Fault" reminds me of Pollyanna's "Brittle Then Broken".

"Killing the Planet is Against My Religion - Tejopala Rawls" (Federation Wharf)

Climate activism, Buddhism, etc. Comedy, part of Fringe.

(w/ R, Angela + her mum)

Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising

Titanic Rising is enormous. Maybe it's apt, given the title and also the music itself, that the album's immensity took a while to impress itself on me - it took quite a few listens for me to get it, despite expecting to like it after 2017's Front Row Seat to Earth. The lushness was a barrier, but in the way of these things, once the flip had occurred, it became part of the attraction.

The first four songs - "A Lot's Gonna Change", "Andromeda", "Everyday" and "Something to Believe" - are all relatively conventional pop songs, at least by Mering's woodsy standards, but after the mid-album instrumental title track, the tenor shifts subtly deeper, with "Movies", "Mirror Forever" and "Wild Time" all seeming somehow more waterily below-the-surface than the opening run; then there's the gentle "Picture Me Better" and another instrumental, "Nearer to Thee", to end.

These songs sound like soundtracks to a movie; listening to them reminds me why that's a quality I've so often sought in music.

N K Jemisin - The Obelisk Gate

Deeper and wider, and similarly good. (The Fifth Season)

NGV Australia

Jenny Watson - "The Inner Stable" (1986), its dreaminess and emotional content much clearer when actually in its presence

Callum Morton - "Gas and Fuel" (2002), complete with repeated calls of "help me, please"

Peter Purves Smith - "The Pond" (1940), the surrealism subtle but effective

(w/ R & L)

Downton Abbey

Never watched the tv series, found myself watching the movie. Provokingly gentle, and I found the sheer privilege, conservatism, deference to authority and low stakes hard to ignore.

(w/ Erandathie)

Rachel Cusk - Kudos

These novels of Cusk's are so mysterious and bewitching in their effect that I have little idea whether my more muted response to Kudos - the last in the trilogy following Outline and Transit - is due to the properties of the book itself or where I've been at while reading it.

The similarities to its predecessors are far more pronounced than any differences, and in Kudos too there are repetitions, some - like dogs and musical instruments - carrying over from Transit, and others - like precocious children and people distressed by and sensitive to lies - new as far as I can tell. Also new is the spectre of Brexit, and a greater explicitness in the prominence of story and metaphor, the female experience (although, flipping back through Outline to verify that impression, nearly the first page I opened to had someone recounting a dream where she and her friends all began menstruating profusely at the opera to the horror and disgust of the passing men ...), and the disappointments of marriage and the disappointments between parents and children.

I've read some reviews arguing that Faye is more visible - more tangible - in Kudos than in the two earlier books, but I didn't particularly find that. For me, Transit was the peak of this puzzling and quite great sequence; Kudos is the first to feel a tiny bit over-determined in its language, imagery and faint through-lines. Still, for large sections I was enthralled, and all in all found plenty to grapple with - at times in that way of grappling with the text's own elusiveness, and in other places directly with the ideas that it poses in overt terms.

Derry Girls seasons 1 and 2

Very charming and full of heart, also very funny and very 90s in its soundtrack.

The Australian Dream

Its story and message are compelling - focused on Adam Goodes and concertina-ing out to contextualise his story and experience in Australia's historical and present day racism. The presentation was less so (not bad, but not as compelling) - the weaving through of the talking heads was generally effective, especially because many of them were not just after the fact commentators but actors in their own right (eg Michael O'Loughlin, Eddie McGuire, Andrew Bolt), but the reenactments sapped some of the interest for me and the overall narrative didn't quite punch through. Still it was worth watching.

(w/ R)

"Fall of the Prince: Louise Milligan" (MWF)

Louise Milligan in conversation with Martin McKenzie-Murray about her investigation of George Pell and book about same. She was very impressive and the session worthwhile.

(w/ R)

Golden Shield (Anchuli Felicia King, MTC)

Engaging, interesting and multi-faceted. For me, the strongest element was the play's treatment of its theme of translation - staged through the figure of the narrator-translator himself (a constant observer and interpolater, making literal the idea that translation is a character in its own right), the acts of translation (interpreting) involved between Chinese and American actors and institutions, the multi-vocal and multi-perspectival presentation of many of the scenes, and the links made between intercultural and interpersonal translation, communication, and speech.

Also interesting but less satisfyingly developed, including in their interconnections, were the personal stories (both those of the central sisters Julie and Eva, and the dissident and his wife, were more sketched than fully fleshed out and a bit told rather than showed) and the social and political implications of China's state surveillance system as played out through the 'great firewall of China' and the Communist Party's centralised/decentralised apparatus to monitor and crack down on dissenting voices, and as writ large theatrically via the large screen projections of the action on stage.

Some aspects of the writing weren't as tight as they could have been - the little sister's 'breakthrough' that sets up the case seemed elementary, the erroneous implication that a 400% increase in speed is the same as being four times faster, the leading questions during examination in chief (the last being most forgivable). But overall Golden Shield was very good - high quality and intriguingly layered, and making good use of the theatrical form alongside its prestige-televisual elements.

(w R)

Two Brunswick galleries

"Morganna Magee: Teenage Wildlife" (Counihan Gallery)

Documentary-style photos of three teenage girls - all related to each other - who have become teen mothers in country Australia (Victoria I think). Good, and made better by the accompanying text contextualising them.

"Daisy and her mother" (2016)

"Cinta Vidal: Urban" and "Chris Leib: Primate Directive" (Beinart Gallery)

I liked the city ones with their sidelong perspectives, especially the Asian ones (eg Hong Kong), maybe because they tended to be a bit busier. The primate ones weren't my style - too garishly pop/kitsch.

(w/ R)

Deborah Levy - Swimming Home

Swimming Home reminded me of both The White Hotel and The Magus, though it's much leaner than either; what it has in common with them is how much it seems to be about what's below the surface, driven by the unconscious. From its opening scene - which turns out later to be pivotal (as one might expect - but not in the way one might assume) as well as slipperily elided - it feels unstable, troubling, on the verge of sinister, in the way that desires and drives in the psychoanalytic sense can be when glimpsed. Hot Milk is the more sophisticated and deeper book, but this one (from 2011) has its way too. Kitty Finch, Joe Jacobs, his daughter Nina et al.

N K Jemisin - The Fifth Season

Excellent. An interesting and well-realised world whose underlying elements are similar enough to ours that its metaphors and literalised themes - especially relating to structural oppression, power and responsibility, social change, and humanity's relationship to the natural environment - punch hard. The three female protagonists whose stories weave through before gradually and satisfyingly linking - 'Essun' (or 'you'), Damaya and Syenite - all have enough depth to convince and their stories are each equally compelling, while each contributing to layering and unfurling the Stillness's culture, history and geology (a future-world version of ours?). I liked the casual social progressiveness of parts of its society too - one character is incidentally transgender, and polyamory features without being remarkable, not to mention its general pleasing non-whiteness.

QAG / GOMA

From visits on consecutive days.

QAG

William Delafield Cook's "A Haystack" (1982), its near-photo realism combining with the unusually close perspective to defamiliarise the subject. In another layer, it turns out the artist has also been inspired by encounters with ancient Greek temples.

Billy Benn Perrurle - "Artyetyerre - Harts Range" (2008).

GOMA

I liked the Ben Quilty exhibition. There's a gestural forcefulness even to his earlier paintings which deepens into something really interesting over time, through the Afghanistan war, the 'last supper' ones, and examinations of the violence and ghosts of Australia's settler history. By the end I was sold on the multi-panel Rorschach paintings too, with the technique adding more than just interest and an element of the spectacular to generate some real resonance.

"Rorschach after von Guerard" (2008)

"Farewell virginity" (2015) and "Joe Burger" (2006)

I wasn't in the mood for crowds so only had a quick look through the Margaret Olley exhibition, but saw enough to get a feel for why she's so popular - very appealing.

Sometimes art has something that enables it to transcend elements that ought to consign it to banality. An example: Anne Wallace's "Passing the River at Woogaroo Reach" (2015).

Daniel Crooks' "Phantom Ride" (2015). I've liked Crooks' spliced videos each time I've encountered them. This one has two channels, one facing forwards and the other backwards, as you ride along a succession of tram and train tracks through metro and regional Australia.

"White Night Reimagined"

Consolidated this year across Carlton Gardens, Treasury Gardens and Birrarung Marr (we visited the latter two). Not any real sense of discovery, let alone danger, but perfectly pleasant.

(w/ Hayley)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

In the end I thought this was really very good. Nowadays a new Tarantino film is cause for mixed expectations but actually Once Upon a Time in Hollywood strikes me as being somewhere near the upper echelon of his films.[*]

The dynamic between DiCaprio's fading Western movie actor Rick Dalton and Pitt's stuntman/offsider Cliff Booth is charming and their perambulations through 1969 Los Angeles are drawn with a texture and warmth that goes beyond mere pastiche; it's a movie version of LA for sure, just as are the threads following Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate and her social circle, but that's all actually of a piece with the film's interest in old school notions of heroes and villains, and cinema's role in creating and sustaining those notions, as well as with how we now look back on and interpret the 1960s and especially the late period when the Manson family and murders came to signify a darkness which was then said to have always been there.

However much he intended this - and I'm inclined to give him credit for self-awareness about it, if not necessarily for any particular clarity in political or social critique - he depicts a Man (that would be Cliff Booth) who lives by an old-fashioned code of honour and could be, depending on how you look at it, a heroic figure by the end. I think there are enough clues in the film to point to this being a critical perspective, or at least not an uncritically approving perspective, and in this respect the director's signature over the top violence comes to be not gratuitous after all, if its purpose is to punctuate the deep flaws within that hero (or anti-hero) figure ... the Western genre itself having played no small part in creating it. I don't think the nasty way in which the hippie antagonists of that lifestyle are depicted takes away from the rottenness of that 'hero' archetype and the beliefs that sustain it - which in turn raises interesting questions about the film's implied perspective on the Hollywood elite who move through its action and ultimately emerge unscathed and even better off than when they started, with Dalton's symbolic invitation into the new Hollywood represented by the house next door occupied by Tate and previously Polanski.

Also, it being Tarantino - it's impossible to escape his directorial presence - there are plenty of baubles and delights along the way: the dry humour, the precocious eight year old method actor, various 'blink and you'd miss it' cameos, the sure hand with keeping things interesting even when not much is happening.

So, sure, probably genuinely 'problematic' in any number of ways - I haven't dug much into the commentary but I'm not totally convinced that it fails Tate or should be criticised for its treatment of women by not giving her a voice (I think in this case it's artistically defensible) - but all round pretty impressive.

***

[*] Given we're talking about Tarantino, it would almost seem remiss to not attempt a listing:

1. Kill Bill vol 1
2. Pulp Fiction
3. Inglourious Basterds (which has improved in my mind over time because of the forcefulness of its central meta-cinematic metaphor, the having of which it has in common with OUATIH as well as its historical-revisionistic plotting and possible justification for its gruesome violence, but might drop down a bit if I rewatched it)
4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (?)
5. Jackie Brown
6. Reservoir Dogs
7. Kill Bill vol 2
8. Django Unchained
9. The Hateful Eight (bottom by a long way)

And having made that list, it's apparent how actually consistently high quality his films have been, with every single one of them except The Hateful Eight and maybe Django Unchained (the most recent two before OUATIH) being at least very good.

Thom Yorke - Anima

A swirling, often tender effort from the person who's possibly more thoroughly colonised my musical brain than any other. Highlights are "Twist", "Dawn Chorus" (like "Treefingers" but with words and an epic build) and the lingering, burnt-out soul of "Axe".

Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschappeler - The Decision Book: Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking

Not that good. A bunch I already knew, and nearly all of the others struck me as either unconvincing or of limited value - many of them more ideas or very loose frameworks than genuine 'models for strategic thinking'.

My Dearworthy Darling (Malthouse)

Written by Alison Croggon who is obviously an outstanding theatre critic (with The Rabble), but my expectations weren't too high given the huge difference between criticism and creation. It didn't quite land for me, whether due to my own lack of knowledge of the subject-matters, themes, and possibly theatrical sources she was tapping or otherwise, though it did convince in its rendition of the subjective immensity of its central character's experience and the political-feminist argument of the text, while blunt, didn't feel over-determined; the religious-mystical elements were the bits I struggled with.

(w/ Hayley and Cass)

Children of the Sea

There's definitely something about anime - I'm always very conscious of the form when I watch it, and I seem disproportionately likely to have some kind of strong associations running through my mind (at the time or after) when I do.

This one was fairly lovely, the relatively detailed and naturalistic drawing of the urban scenes throwing the fluidity and sense of wonder of the aquatic and oceanic ones into sharper relief - although the animation wasn't quite up to the task of some of the galactic stuff near the end (some of which reminded me of Hilma af Klint, which is admittedly something). I liked the sense of mystery, the uncertainty about what was really happening, and the way it combined the personal and intimate with the ultimately cosmic.

(w/ trang - and looking to be my solitary MIFF visit this year)

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - And Now For The Whatchamacallit

Pretty fun. Modern psychedelic pop-rock harking back to the genre's heyday in some ways. (A gift from Rob.)

Scarlett Thomas - Dragon's Green

Happened across this in the library - my old literary crush Scarlett Thomas has written a young adult fantasy novel. It's quite fun and has a bit of fizz, but is less good than I expected it would be given Thomas's thoughtfulness about story and how good she is in other genres.

"Turning Points: Contemporary Photography from China" (NGV International)

The most striking feature of this small-medium size exhibition is how many of the photos are directly engaged with the relationship between past and present, whether by comparison to ancient culture or in highlighting changes over a single lifetime or generation - with that also being the most prominent means of political commentary.

Wang Qingsong - "Preincarnation" (2002)

Yang Yongliang - "Eclipse" (2008) - the 'mountains' are digital collages of modern Shanghai city buildings and construction sites

Wang Fen - "On the wall: Guangzhou (4)" (2002) - not as direct as the others I was thinking of, but working with similar dynamics in relation to change and 'progress', and as it happens my favourite, not least because to me it seems to take the form of a question.

"Shea Kirk: Vantages" + other pieces, Centre for Contemporary Photography

Shea Kirk's portraits were strong, black and white and many of the subjects photographed in a way suggestive of queerness and/or gender fluidity/non-binarism.

"Dale Robertson (left and right view)" (2019)

Of the others, Michelle Tran's photos were my favourite, especially this one:

"Madison and Shauna" (2019)

(w/ R + L & Carmel)

Lauren Groff - Florida

Florida has hung alluringly before me since it came out last year, the combination of "Ghosts and Empties" (the lead story in this collection) and Fates and Furies making me pretty sure I'd like it - and I do.

For a collection of 11 stories originally published over several years, there are some striking recurrences - storms, snakes, and the state of Florida itself, that last emerging as state of mind and state of being almost as synecdoche for the wider world, not to mention recurrences of situations, the most notable being flawed women who have chosen to isolate themselves in settings which prove inhospitable and depictions of what arises from the discomfort they then face. This obsessiveness is a strength, not a limitation - it adds to the sense that all of the stories are being told through the lens of a distinct vision, coupled with the general atmosphere of teeming, barely contained threat coexisting with the everyday difficulties experienced by her protagonists.

You can't read Lauren Groff without noticing the language, especially at a sentence level. At times it slips into being too ornate; that seems to have been the major obstacle to at least a couple of people I know's enjoyment of Fates and Furies (although, in that novel, it becomes apparent by the end that the overt 'literariness' of the register in which it's written is part of the point). But Florida shows how controlled she is as a writer, the stories mostly moving forward in clean, punchy sentences and paragraphs, and while she's unafraid to try out new formulations, which sometimes leads to a brief false note, the flourishes are more frequently present illuminating new ways of seeing the things she's writing about.

I also like how much of a sense of story there is to most of the pieces, with some stretching across an entire lifetime, either proportionately in time or with one or two large leaps - there's a confidence to the way Groff both immerses us in her characters' minds and pulls us forward through large pieces of plot, often littered with seemingly incidental events and observations that add a lot to the whole. I'm not sure I have favourites; in some ways they all run together a bit. But all told, Florida is quite something.

Gangs of New York

Rewatch. (last time)

Solaris (Malthouse)

There's a lot to like about this adaptation - I'm not sure whether it's been framed as an adaptation of the original novel, Tarkovsky's 1972 film version or the 2002 Soderbergh take through which I first came to Solaris - including its convincingness in immersing the audience in its space station setting via set, sound (often bouncing from all around), stage lighting and projection and the way it escalates the emotional stakes as it goes. It doesn't completely hit its emotional marks, nor does it achieve the immensity and sublimity of last year's Melancholia staging, but nonetheless, very good.

(w/ Hayley, Cass and Kim)

Rocketman

I figured that if nothing else, at least the music would be good. Rocketman makes an effort to bring some colour and zing to its telling, and does a reasonable job at giving a sense of the person who became the outsized star, but ultimately the story - musical prodigy who was always a bit different hits it big and runs into trouble with drugs and predatory music industry people and finally makes peace with who he is - just isn't especially compelling.

(w/ Erandathie)

Bruce Springsteen - Western Stars

The man's nearly 70, so if anyone deserves to record a mellow modern country album, call it 'Western Stars', load it up with songs with names like "The Wayfarer" and "Chasin' Wild Horses" (both good songs btw), and put a whole lot of strings on it, it's him. Even better, it's good - high points coming deep into its gradual burn at tracks 10 and 11, "Stones" (the "those are only the lies you told me" song) and "There Goes My Miracle", which is maybe actually too simple, but such an earworm of an anthem that it doesn't matter. At times his vocals remind me of Eddie Vedder, at others Nick Cave, but also, he sounds the way you'd expect Bruce Springsteen to sound at 70 (69 actually).

Wake in Fright (Malthouse)

Adapted (and directed) by Declan Greene into a one-woman - the woman is Zahra Newman - show that starts with the uncanny spectacle of a bear (suit) adorned in 'Lead Council of NSW' hat and t-shirt stumbling unhealthily across stage, transitions into Newman directly addressing the audience and telling a story about encountering racism while talking about the lead poisoning of children in Broken Hill, and then slips into the suffocating story of Wake in Fright itself, deliberately anachronistically rendered with its 60s setting preserved (as evident in the references to pounds and shillings) but the music, projections and some of the acting choices - eg Newman's use of Usain Bolt's thunderbolt gesture - calling attention to the play's contemporary staging, as well as aspects of the direction which highlight black-coded imagery, adding another layer to the critique of toxic white Australian masculine culture. It's quite a tour de force.

(w/ R and Cass)

Zadie Smith - Feel Free

Sometimes it feels like I'm always reading Zadie Smith (like - incompletely - here, here and here).

More than any other writer, I think of her as having been a companion throughout my reading life from the time when I could (generously) be called an adult, dating back to White Teeth's publication in 2000, and while her novels have never been right at the top of the heap of my favourites (although NW has become better and better in my memory of it), I find her varied short non-fiction hugely nourishing for my spirit.

Feel Free collects pieces originally published from 2010 to 2017, possibly including a few which appear for the first time in it, and so is a sequel of sorts to Changing My Mind. I'd read and enjoyed at least a couple of these before, including her riffs on Joni Mitchell, Anomalisa (*) and dance lessons for writers; and I'm skimmed or skipped a few, where their subjects didn't quickly draw me in (but I expect that I'll return to them over time).

Throughout there are so many delights - insights articulately carefully and aptly, often in a way that's marvellously illuminating. The ones that made the strongest impression on me:

• "Generation Why?" - on Facebook, The Social Network, identity, and the way software reduces humans and 'locks us in'
• "Killing Orson Welles at Midnight" - on Christian Marclay's "The Clock" and, inevitably, fiction, cinema and time
• "Getting In and Out" - on Get Out, blackness, being biracial, engaging with the question of artists depicting suffering that is not theirs, and what she calls '[t]he real fantasy ... that we can get out of each other's way, mark a clean cut between black and white, a final cathartic separation between us and them'.
• "The Bathroom" - about family. 'It's only years later, in that retrospective swirl, that you work out who was hurt, in what way, and how badly.'
• "Man Versus Corpse" - art, reality, nature, perspective, death
• "Love in the Gardens" - a particularly charming account of two times and places in Rome whose real heart is Smith's relationship with her deceased father

In general, I liked the pieces she's written taking pop culture works that I'm familiar with as a jumping-off point, and those mining questions about the nature of being human and alive today, and am less drawn to the ones that are more explicitly engaged with contemporary politics and the state of society (where she is maybe a bit less original in her thinking).

Rhiannon Giddens with Francesco Turrisi - There Is No Other

Interesting, wide-ranging and well-crafted, like everything Giddens does. This one hasn't really grabbed me as a whole, though the closing "He Will See You Through" is stunning.

Joan Baez - Baez Sings Dylan

It's striking how sweetly melodic these are - recorded in the 60s, so from the earlier part of Dylan's career. As much country as folk.

John Wick & John Wick: Chapter 2

These have made a surprisingly large and positive impression on the cultural landscape - enough to overcome my usual boredom about movies which are 99% about action and cause me to watch them. And they are good! Keanu is convincing, so are the many other enjoyable actors who bob up (I especially like John Leguizamo), and the action scenes are basically non-stop but in a way where most of the non-direct action bits involve build-up and also flesh out the sense of an intriguing larger world within which this is all taking place (unlike say The Raid, another often held up as an exemplar of its type).

"Indies & Idols" (Australian Chamber Orchestra, Hamer Hall)

An enjoyable program mixing pieces by three Polish modernist composers - Witold Lutoslawski, "Overture for Strings" (1947), Krzysztof Penderecki, a short piece in Baroque style (1964) and "String Quartet No 1" (1960) and Karol Szymanowski, "String Quarter No 2" (1927) - with compositions by three contemporary composers in Bryce Dessner ("Reponse Lutoslawski"), Sufjan Stevens ("Suite from Run Rabbit Run", by way of arrangement by Michael Atkinson) and Jonny Greenwood ("Suite from There Will Be Blood" - the only ones I'd heard before). My favourites were Dessner's and the sprightly Sufjan translations, but all were - in some ways surprisingly - enjoyable.

(w/ Hayley)

Storm Boy (MTC)

Nice set (including the projections), I liked the puppets (penguins, snake, pelicans), and the performances were fine. But the play itself is gentle to a fault - very ho-hum.

(w/ Erandathie and trang)

Fleabag seasons 1 & 2

Tremendously appealing and emotionally pungent, and darker and deeper than I'd expected. Season 2 in particular is a marvel; the moment when the priest notices her asides to 'us' is electric, and the way the show develops the significance of those performatively conspiratorial comments to camera over the rest of the season, including in illustrating her development across the two seasons, is remarkably clever and at times uncanny. The stakes feel high, and real, especially in their flirtation. There are laughs too, and by the end mercy for all its main characters as well. I had a lot of feelings while watching Fleabag, and admired it very much it.

Assorted thoughts:

• Straight after seeing it, I expected my defining image of her character - and her monstrousness - to be the scene where she gigglingly sneaks up with a knife on her drip of a boyfriend in the shower. That by the end it's been replaced by not one but several others is a testament to the show's depth and its layering of her character and our understanding of it.
• So many of the people in her life are just terrible. Olivia Colman as her mother-in-law to be is particularly something.
• Her relationship with her sister Claire is right up there with the very best bits of the show.

Meg Wolitzer - The Female Persuasion

One of those well put together novels that feels just a bit too well put together. It starts off as a campus coming of age story (making me think of The Idiot) before sharpening, not too many pages in, into being also about feminism at the levels of the personal and the political - and, as the novel's cast and plot expand, its transmission across generations and the attendant conflicts - and eventually kaleidoscoping further outwards to encompass sections told from the perspective of not just Greer but also her high school boyfriend Cory, her best friend Zee, the second wave feminist icon she encounters Faith Frank, and the venture capitalist Emmett Shrader to whom Faith is connected.

Through it all, it remains interesting - persuasive in its depictions of characters and situations (and arcs), and dovetailed in a way that doesn't feel too neat although it veers very close. Yet it never felt in any way surprising, either at the level of story (I guessed the plot-turning death early; all the main characters ended up somewhere more or less linearly predictable given where they started) or how it worked up its themes (although I did like the way it tied Greer's coming into her own self and voice with her betrayal of Zee, and the way it patterned a couple of at least arguably more noble - or differently so - paths in Zee's and Cory's as part of Greer's own progression). 

Sharon Van Etten @ Hamer Hall, Arts Centre, Tuesday 11 June

Very nice show, built mostly around Remind Me Tomorrow, opening with "Jupiter 4" (exceedingly gothy including in the red and white lighting and smoke and pulsatingly exciting, the band having aptly walked on stage to another reference point in Portishead), then going straight into the clatter of "Comeback Kid" and then the stomp of "No One's Easy To Love".

All the Remind Me Tomorrow songs punched through, with the most new light for me shed on "Memorial Day", which I hadn't realised before is another on the goth/dream-pop spectrum (though more in the 'early Cocteau Twins' vein), and she dug way back for a handful of older songs - I would've enjoyed more, but time is fleeting - including "Serpents" from Tramp and a charmingly laid back "One Day" from all the way back to Epic.

Support act: BATTS - great voice, so-so songs, sweet cover of Gillian Welch's "Everything Is Free".

(w/ R)

Tess Lea - Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts

A timely read, and frequently enjoyable and illuminating, though I found myself skimming after a while - an anthropologist's perspective on the policy-makers, program managers and public health practitioners involved in the NT's Indigenous health system, the human and social dimensions of the systems of the state, the 'magical' quality of the policy process (in the sense of the qualities attributed to various rituals and artefacts of the process - workshops, inductions, strategic policy statements, etc), and its self-perpetuating nature in its framing of problems and interventions at the interface with Aboriginal communities, experiences and health outcomes. 

Art Gallery of Ballarat

Some highlights and notables across various exhibitions and the permanent collection:

Nana Ohnesorge's series "No Picnic at Ngannelong", commenting on the absence of Aboriginal people from Peter Weir's Picnic at Hanging Rock, set on a site of deep traditional significance.

As part of "Becoming Modern: Australian women artists 1920-1950": a pencil self-portrait by Thea Proctor (undated), curiously striking; a Margaret Preston "Jug of Flowers" (1929); Marjorie Woolcock's "All set to go" (circa 1950).

Naomi Hobson's "Wild Lagoon" (2019), inspired by the Cape York landscape of the artist's family and culture, combining motifs referring to Indigenous art with elements more reminiscent of western abstraction.

Claudia Moodoonuthi's "My Vegemite Family" 1 and 2 (2018), not to mention her redesign of the Vegemite label.

Marlene Gilson's "Black Swamp - Lake Wendouree" (2018) - a Ballarat setting. I've been seeing her work everywhere lately; here's an article contextualising.

Two Eugene von Guerard landscapes; I've encountered him in the NGV, and elsewhere I think, and despite what superficially appears to be quite generic subjects, they tend to draw the eye. It might be partly the brightness and detail, and maybe some unusual composition (e.g. unusual use or disregard of the rule of thirds).

It reflects well on the gallery how much of the work being displayed was created by Indigenous artists by the way.

(w/ R)

Game of Thrones season 8

[spoilers]

At last it's over, although 'at last' may not be the right phrase given how rapidly - relative to what come before it - the last two seasons often seemed to chew through their plots.

Having spent so much time watching this show, not to mention consuming often quite detailed online commentary about it, it's hard to distil my feelings about this last season and its ending, but basically it was satisfying enough for me. I liked that the defeat of the Night King wasn't the climax, that nor was an 'all the good guys team up and beat Cersei' scenario, and that Jon Snow didn't end up the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms (or even King in the North), and I also liked where most of the characters' arcs ended up. Dany's is obviously the most difficult, and I can see how it would have been a fine balance over several seasons to lay some groundwork for where she ends up without it seemingly overly foreshadowed as an inevitability, but I don't think there was enough spadework done there and particularly given the extra degree of difficulty involved in portraying a '(strong) woman descends into madness' arc; for me the way that turn is depicted is the weakest part of this last season and how the show ends.

All up I do think Game of Thrones has been pretty great basically all the way through, even if some of the story-telling and characterisation has been rickety as it's attempted to bring things towards its close. One of the best and most notorious things about it has been the way it's subverted various types of expectation, and with the benefit of seeing how it's now played out as a whole, I don't think it's fair to criticise the show for not having held more left turns or - in particular - killing off more of its main (and, especially, sympathetic) characters through its mid to late section until right near the end. Much of its 'subversiveness' has always been in relation to familiar notions of good triumphing over evil by virtue of nobility, and associated fantasy and general story-telling archetypes, while highlighting the role that power, manipulation/scheming, pragmatism and a willingness to act immorally, and chance and circumstance all play in people's lives and ultimate fates - and I don't think the ending is especially inconsistent with those structuring themes that have tun through the show ... I don't think the show's relatively amoral worldview requires it to give its sympathetic characters unhappy endings.

Two good articles criticising the way it ends: on its shift from sociological to psychological storytelling, and on the type of experience - including of terror and horror - that the show provided in its earlier seasons.

The other thing for me is that I'm not that demanding a viewer when it comes to extended epic-type storytelling. I'm willing to overlook plenty of flaws for something that looks and feels great, and at the episode and technical level, season 8 did all the way through, just like the show as a whole, with many (many) characters, scenes and plot through-lines to linger.

Previously: seasons 1 (and again), 2, 3, 4 and 5, then 1-6, 6 again, then 7 (and maybe 7 again but unrecorded?).