As a sober Australian man, I’ve battled the bottle and I’ve battled the boys. As Ted Kotcheff’s 1971 film knows, there’s no victory in eitherGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailWake in Fright, the 1971 film-cum-anthropological study by Ted Kotcheff understands Australian men, it understands Australia’s drinking culture, and it understands the way those two things intersect – which is to say it understands games.Dick-measuring contests, arm-wrestling bouts, two-up, binge-drinking: Australian masculinity is a series of ongoing games with the promise that if you complete all of these contests you will be the winner – the mannest man. Of course, it’s an illusion: Australian men never really escape the playground rules of the handball court, which turn a swathe of casual interactions into high-stakes opportunities to prove ourselves. Continue reading...