Gangland: Cultural elites and the new generationalism

by Mark Davis (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $12.00

  Panics over the culture wars, political correctness and victim feminism, rap music, ecstasy and body piercings. our cultural landscape is currently peppered by examples of a desperately backward-looking stasis and a fearful hanging-on. In Gangland Mark Davis analyses the near monopoly of baby boomer ideals and assumptions among Australia's cultural elites. Who are these people? What do they do? How is their influence affecting public forums and the media? Where does that leave the young people of today? In an age of classic hits radio and television programs resurrected from the sixties, and in the wake of scandal-bearing Vogel winners and DIY feminists, Davis' irreverent prose cuts across the moral panics and anxieties that characterise Australian culture to detect a deep-seated fear of change - a fear that is often expressed as hostility towards youth. Gangland lays bare the discrepancies between reality and the images peddled by some of Australia's most popular thinkers, questioning the ideas that have characterised Australia in the nineties. The outcome is an iconoclastic take on the ideas and philosophies of Australia's cultural ruling class. <