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Robert Phiddian

Articles by Robert

Do we really have to hitch the arts to a metric?

At the tail end of this year’s Adelaide Festival, Fringe and other Mad March cultural events, spare a thought for the miracle of numbers and the banality of metrics.

Permission to laugh? Humour without risk of danger and offence would be an emaciated thing

In our pursuit of a world that is safely and entirely OK, must humour be cleansed of its original sin of cultural appropriation and insensitivity? It depends whether we are ‘laughing up’ or ‘laughing down’.

Peter Nicholson, The Australian, 9 March 1996.

Political cartooning – is this the end of an era?

One of the great satirical achievements of the mass media era, the editorial cartoon, is losing its centrality in the digital age. Yet the ‘visual terrorism’ of cartoons can cut through the verbiage of political commentary.

Why scorecards in arts and culture do more harm than good

Modern society has become addicted to ratings and league tables. But a new scorecard, which aims to give ‘good art’ a numerical ranking, is utterly wrong-headed.

Farewell John Clarke: in an absurd world, we have never needed you more

In our more than usually absurd world, we have never needed satirist and social commentator John Clarke more.