I am writing a course for first term culture studies using a wiki. Wikies are a great tool for arranging a course, headings give way to sub-headings and so on. It is very easy to code and is very flexible. The wiki platform I am using (ProjectForum) even looks good. The above video I uploaded to Google this afternoon (it is open source) to use in the course. It is an episode from The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) written by the now quite famous Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage) who plays the psychiatrist in the scene. When I arrived in England in 1997 I actually had people call me 'Blue' (I don't have red hair so they had not idea what they were talking about), and ask me if I wanted to 'crack a tube with them'. I remember hearing about Barry McKenzie from my father, and it seems it was an important step in the cultural independence of Australia away from Britain, but it was a bit before my time..I found it irritating that some poms thought Australia was still all 'chunder' and 'sheilas'....I was into The Birthday Party and and Michael Dransfield poetry. Another video I cam across today was this masterpiece from Barry Humphries looking back at the Whitlam government in Australia. I thought to use it in the course material but I don't think anyone who did not grow up in Australia would understand it as it is very funny...if you know the topic:
The beginning of Barry Humphries' Flashbacks episode 3 - The 70s, in which Barry, Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson discuss the impact of Gough Whitlam. This series aired on Australian television in 1999 and is now available on DVD.
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