Mel Campbell

Melissa "Mel" Campbell (born August, 1977, Melbourne, Australia) is an Australian journalist, blogger and cultural critic. She is a co-founder of Is Not Magazine and currently runs the online pop-culture magazine The Enthusiast.

Academia

Campbell studied creative advertising at RMIT University, then pursued a Master of Arts degree by research at the University of Melbourne. Her research concerned the Australian cultural figure of the bogan, which she argued does not refer to a social class, a subculture or an aesthetic, but rather is a consensually imagined figure that arises in Australian media and public debate when Australian national identity is perceived as fragmentary or under threat. As part of her research, Campbell has written and spoken on the Jaidyn Leskie murder case,[1] Ned Kelly[2] and the phenomenon of "cashed-up bogans".[3]

Campbell's other academic interests include fashion and popular music. Her paper about the non-verbal vocalisations of Michael Jackson[4] won the International Association for the Study of Popular Music's Postgraduate Prize in 2003.[5]

In 2009 Campbell tutored in online journalism at Monash University.

Journalism

Campbell is a freelance journalist who writes about popular culture, advertising and branding, media (particularly online media trends) and everyday life. Publications to which she contributes include The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Crikey[6] and New Matilda.[7]

Between 2006 and 2007 Campbell was pop culture editor at Australian alternative women's magazine YEN.

From 2007-8 Campbell was deputy editor at Triple J's monthly music magazine, jmag. She continues to write and review for the magazine on a freelance basis.

Campbell is currently the film editor at ThreeThousand, an online subcultural guide to Melbourne, as well as its sister sites around Australia: TwoThousand, FourThousand, FiveThousand and SixThousand.

Creative projects

With Stuart Geddes, Natasha Ludowyk, Penny Modra and Jeremy Wortsman, Campbell co-founded Is Not Magazine in 2005. An independently published, bimonthly magazine in the form of a 1.5m x 2m bill poster, Is Not ran for eleven issues (and several special issues) before the five co-founders declared it officially defunct in August 2008.

"We wanted to make a community around this magazine and reinvigorate public space," Campbell told The Age in 2005. "It changes the way you approach reading, because there's no logical place for you to start. We love the way that it's physical. You look up, you bend down, we've got spaces … where you can make contributions of your own."[8]

In 2008 Campbell formed the creative partnership Infinite Ape Media with fellow journalists Andrew Tijs and Daniel Zugna. Their first publication is an online magazine of culture and the popular arts called The Enthusiast. Launched in January 2009, The Enthusiast publishes news, features, opinion and review.

Blogging

Campbell began her personal blog, A Wild Young Under-Whimsy, in March 2004. She also maintains a fashion blog called Footpath Zeitgeist, where she posts research for and discussion about her published work on fashion.

Campbell has contributed to Crikey's politics blog, The Stump,[9] and is also a contributing editor at feminist blog The Dawn Chorus.[10]

The Incredible Melk

For the 2004 Melbourne Fringe Festival, Campbell created the satirical character The Incredible Melk, a human resources consultant-turned-hip-hop MC. Her comedy cabaret show The Incredible Melk's Booty Pageant was commended in that year's Fringe Awards, and she performed a revised version at the 2005 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Reviewer Helen Razer described the show as "a confusing delight", writing: "Performer Mel Campbell has constructed a complex man-eater at ease with language and pop culture."[11]

References

  1. ↑ Archived 2 May 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ "The order of Australia". theage.com.au. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
  3. ↑ "Perhaps there's a little bogan in everyone - Opinion". smh.com.au. 2006-06-08. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
  4. ↑ "Informit - Context: Journal of Music Research - Saying the Unsayable: The Non-verbal Vocalisations of Michael Jackson (Humanities & Social Sciences Collection)". Search.informit.com.au. 2013-10-19. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
  5. ↑ "International Association for the Study of Popular Music – Australia / New Zealand". iaspm.org.au. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
  6. ↑ "Mel Campbell". Crikey. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
  7. ↑ Archived 14 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine.
  8. ↑ "Coming to a wall near you - Arts - Entertainment". theage.com.au. 2005-05-20. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
  9. ↑ "Mel Campbell | The Stump". Blogs.crikey.com.au. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
  10. ↑ "The Chorus « The Dawn Chorus". Thedawnchorus.wordpress.com. 2008-08-07. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
  11. ↑ "The Incredible Melk - Reviews". www.theage.com.au. 2005-04-14. Retrieved 2013-10-31.
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