Critic Te Ārohi turns 100 this year – and we need your help to celebrate.
Over summer, Iris (Features Editor) got cracking on research for the centenary book we’ve proposed. The idea is that she would take a year off her studies to work full-time on digging through the archives of Critic to put together a “best of Critic” anthology book. She’s only just dipped into it and yet made some incredible discoveries already, such as the 1964 Beatles interview (yes, the actual Beatles).
The historic milestones and cultural waves of the past century are, for the most part, captured in some way in the pages of Critic – whether through a political cartoon caricature of George Bush, a 1940s letter to the editor complaining about women wearing pants on campus when the men had left to fight in World War Two, or the sheer volume of low-rise jeans and wildly offensive jokes in the early 2000s.
The Hocken Library is putting on a month-long exhibition, which hammered home the prestige of the whole thing. I couldn’t suppress a giggle at the idea of the 3D-printed Clocktower bong (‘Clong’), custom-made in 2020, being displayed in a glass case. It can be hard to fathom the prestige of standing on the shoulders of a hundred years of student history whilst sitting among the crap piled up in the office, which the Hocken staff charitably dubbed “detritus”. Step into the office, and it’s a snapshot of the generations of journalists who have taken their first steps here – something I can too easily take for granted being here every day.
Sitting at my desk, to my right is a pinboard that we used as a muse for the flavour of the proposal: a leftover ODT Watch clipping that says “Easing into the year with some pleasing chardonnays”, a beerpong handbook, a Stoppers condom (a relic from the old Starters Bar merch), a Fish and Chip review picture signed by Chris ‘Chippy’ Hipkins, and an embroidered ‘This is the Fucking News’ banner (made entirely of the word “fuck” repeated to form the iconic Paddy Gower phrase).
Behind me is a wall plastered with old centrefolds – the now-iconic Ōtepoti Dunedin map, last year’s Maharajas potluck-turned-last-supper scene, a ‘Radio One Gives Good Aural’ 40th birthday tribute – and a shelf packed with more fragments of history than your flat’s attic. There are boxes of issues stretching back to 1999, a Vogue book of diets and exercise (probably the origin story for that time Critic tried one) and photographs from thirty-year-old campus protests.
This barely scratches the surface of the history of Critic Te Ārohi. We’re engulfed in it in the office, and bar the physical copies of past issues, bound copies of some from the ‘60s and ‘80s, and the couch that Grant Robertson said he used to hang out on when he was OUSA President in 1993 (the one we painted with the logo and cart all over town), that’s all just from the most recent chapter. When Critic was founded, they wouldn’t have even heard of condoms, let alone have them pinned to a board for a Sex Issue photoshoot.
We’re launching the From the Archives column in this issue. It will highlight the best of our treasure trove of finds. As 1981 Editor Chris Trotter reflects in this week’s column, Critic has always belonged to the students of the University of Otago. The column, and the book by extension, will have stories that almost anyone who’s passed through this campus will connect to – lecturers, lawyers, Radio Hauraki hosts, doctors, supermodels, your dad’s mate who brings up the “good old days” of his student band, and politicians who’d rather keep certain skeletons in the closet (read: Critic archives).
Our official birthday is April 2nd (notably not April Fools) which will come with all the appropriate bells and whistles for this geriatric mag. But first, we need all the help we can get to make the centenary book happen. Safe to say a hundred years of Critic is a mammoth effort to dig through. It’ll be a full-time job for Iris, but only if we can raise the funds to employ her. We have until March 16th to raise $70k for a book that generations of Otago alumni would treasure – and that’s just the starting sum before Iris has to commit to her Law Honours (save her).
Critic’s been said to have a “cult following”. I’m tapping into that now. Spread the word. Make a fuss. Bother your great uncle with deep pockets. Let’s make this happen.