Jess Hill - "Losing It: Can We Stop Violence against Women and Children?" (Quarterly Essay 97)

Thoughts while reading this:

• Hill is strong on not focusing only on 'gendered drivers' (in the language of the National Plan) vs other more proximate factors like the impact of child maltreatment and trauma, mental health disorders, alcohol and gambling, and upfront about the historical context behind the hard-won focus on primary prevention and a feminist perspective. At times it feels like it's getting a bit close to a straw person but her argument is that the balance is wrong - and, implicitly, that it has suited governments to maintain this since it was put in place in the first overdue wave of reform from 2008 onwards.
• A lot on child and adolescent sexual violence and abuse - within intimate partner relationships, directed towards siblings and caregivers, and in other contexts. Evidenced by ACMS and otherwise.
• Rates of domestic, family and sexual violence not falling. Hill questions the dominant view that this is being driven by increased reporting. Another question that comes up: could this be driven by the social and technological trends that she points out elsewhere (alienation of boys, access to harmful material online, manosphere), ie a current going against whatever positive effect primary prevention and early intervention efforts are having?

See What You Made Me Do remains one of the most stunning non-fiction books I've ever read. And for all the contention around the bomb that Hill threw last year with her public criticisms of Australia's approach on primary prevention it's hard to see her as anything other than an enormous force for good on this topic.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

I liked the more off-the-wall visuals, the little horror elements, and Benedict Cumberbatch but as a movie this is a bit of a mess, and noticeably not at all stand-alone from the 'MCU'.

Esther Rose - Want

Want is a sweetheart of an album, carrying a good part of the charm that made How Many Times in particular such a winner (especially on early highlight "Had To" with its tuneful verse/chorus, surprising bridge and rapidly climbing guitar solo) and adding rockier, noisier elements that produce some of its best moments in songs like "Ketamine", "Rescue You", "New Bad" and "The Clown". There's something endearingly slightly unpolished about the whole affair - it feels easy to imagine these as a set of songs written by someone you might know ... which is in the record's favour, not to its detriment.

Andor seasons 1 & 2 / Rogue One

Andor lived up to the reviews - staying focused the whole way through on the perils and costs of resistance in the face of tyranny, spies and soldiers, with a grittiness and grasp of the dramatic that make the action-y sequences to which it periodically builds up almost a surprise and the more exciting for it, without becoming the point. 

Star Wars has never been personally important to me, but I only needed the general cultural awareness of it that we all have to fill in the blanks with Andor. And, of course, I've seen Rogue One before; on this rewatch, post-series, it naturally gains resonance from knowing Cassian's back story and indeed the whole back story of the rebellion leading up to the movie's events, but also suffers by comparison to the longer-form story-telling that's retrospectively proceeded the events that it depicts itself (Jyn's rise to heroism feels abrupt when compared to the Cassian's tortuous road).