Australian Popular Culture

Australia's leisure culture is legendary, and as millions of British viewers of Neighbours, fans of Yothu Yindi or drinkers of Castlemaine XXXX would attest, Australian popular culture is popular outside of Australia. Australian Popular Culture is an exciting collection of essays bringing together new perspectives on the nature and meaning of a nation's changing life. The collection also explores the idea of popular culture at large. Leading authors represent a range of approaches, backgrounds and fields to explore subjects of wide interest within the categories of 'the everyday', 'the mass media' and 'critical theory'. Chapters are devoted to the Aussie Back Yard; Vegemite; postage stamps; Australian Rules football; the introduction of television; Crocodile Dundee; The Lindy Chamberlain Affair; Spycatcher; Domesticity, leisure and love and Postmodernism and Australian Culture.

This book, first published in 1987, sets out to examine and extend our understanding of Australian popular culture, and to counter the long-established, traditional criticism bewailing its lack. The authors argue that the 'knocker's' view started from an elitist viewpoint, yearning for Australia to aspire to a European culture in art, music, literature and other traditional cultural fields. They argue however that there are other definitions of culture that are more populist, more comprehensive, and which represent a vitality and dynamism which is a true reflection of the lives and aspirations of Australians. Myths of Oz offers no comprehensive definition of Australian culture, but rather a way of interpreting its various aspects. The barbeque or the pub, an expedition to the shops or a day at the beach, the home, the workplace or the job queue; all these intrinsic parts of Australian life are examined and conclusions drawn as to how they shape or are shaped by what we call popular culture. The authors look too at monuments and symbols, from Ayers Rock to the Sydney Opera House, which both shape and reflect Australian culture, while a chapter on the Australian accent shows how language and terminology play a powerful role in establishing cultural standpoints. A particular strength of this book is that while delivering a provocative and stimulating series of viewpoints on popular culture, it also makes use of current academic tools and methodology to ensure that we gain new insights into the meanings and pleasures we derive from our everyday experiences.

From jitterbugging and Big Brother to the introduction of television and the rise of file-sharing, this study explores the ways in which popular culture has developed and changed in Australia from the end of World War II to today. In order to understand the massive social and cultural changes that have taken place Down Under, popular culture is examined through three main lenses: consumerism and the development of a mass consumer society, the impact of technological change, and the ways in which popular culture contributes to and articulates individual and collective identities. Providing the first integrated account of Australian post-war culture, this reference analyzes film, television, sports, music, and leisure in relation to each other rather than as stand-alone cultural forms.

Australia holds a unique place in the global scheme of fandom. Much of the media consumed by Australian audiences originates from either the United States or the United Kingdom, yet several Australian productions have also attracted international fans in their own right. This first-ever academic study of Australian fandom explores the national popular culture scene through themes of localization and globalization. The essays within reveal how Australian audiences often seek authentic imports and eagerly embrace different cultures, examining both Hollywood’s influence on Australian fandom and Australian fan reactions to non-Western content. By shining a spotlight on Australian fandom, this book not only provides an important case study for fan studies scholars, it also helps add nuance to a field whose current literature is predominantly U.S. and U.K. focused. Contributors: Kate Ames, Ahmet Atay, Jessica Carniel, Toija Cinque, Ian Dixon, Leigh Edmonds, Sharon Elkind, Jacqui Ewart, Lincoln Geraghty, Sarah Keith, Emerald L. King, Renee Middlemost

Making it National argues that we need to rethink the way national identity is constructed in Australia today. Graeme Turner takes a series of recent instances - the mythologising of Bond and the larrikin entrepreneurs, the Spycatcher trials, Maralinga and the Bicentenary - showing how popular images of national identity are used to serve specific rather than national interests. 'Graeme Turner's writing has a remarkable power to engage its readers with all the immediacy, vividness and drama of our very best journalism, while putting cultural theory to work in new and creative ways.' - Meaghan Morris 'Making it National could be to the 1990s what Richard White's Inventing Australia was to the 1980s.' - Tony Bennett, Institute for Cultural Policy Studies, Griffith University

Postfeminism in Context studies the representation of women in Australian popular culture over the past three decades to locate postfeminism in a specific time and place. Margaret Henderson and Anthea Taylor argue that ‘postfeminism’, as a critical term, has been too often deployed in ways that fail to account for historical and cultural specificity. This book analyses Australian popular culture – chick lit novels; ‘dramedy’ television shows; women’s magazines; YouTube beauty vlogs; self-help manuals; and newspapers – to reveal the tensions, contradictions and ambiguities that have always been constitutive of postfeminism, including in Australia. Examining how these popular forms intervene in dominant conversations about contemporary Australian femininities, Postfeminism in Context maps the ways in which various aspects of Australia’s history and national identity have shaped its postfeminism. While Henderson and Taylor identify some of the limited postfeminist tropes and patterns of representation evident in comparable locales, they also find that Australian popular culture has responded to feminism in a much more hopeful way. Adding some much-needed cultural specificity to the ongoing debate around this loaded term, Postfeminism in Context is essential reading for those interested in Australian popular culture, feminism, and the gendered politics of representation.

The Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies is a timely volume that provides an overview of this interdisciplinary field that emerged in the 1990s in the context of deindustrialization, the rise of the service economy, and economic and cultural globalization. The Handbook brings together scholars, teachers, activists, and organizers from across three continents to focus on the study of working-class peoples, cultures, and politics in all their complexity and diversity. The Handbook maps the current state of the field and presents a visionary agenda for future research by mingling the voices and perspectives of founding and emerging scholars. In addition to a framing Introduction and Conclusion written by the co-editors, the volume is divided into six sections: Methods and principles of research in working-class studies; Class and education; Work and community; Working-class cultures; Representations; and Activism and collective action. Each of the six sections opens with an overview that synthesizes research in the area and briefly summarizes each of the chapters in the section. Throughout the volume, contributors from various disciplines explore the ways in which experiences and understandings of class have shifted rapidly as a result of economic and cultural globalization, social and political changes, and global financial crises of the past two decades. Written in a clear and accessible style, the Handbook is a comprehensive interdisciplinary anthology for this young but maturing field, foregrounding transnational and intersectional perspectives on working-class people and issues and focusing on teaching and activism in addition to scholarly research. It is a valuable resource for activists, as well as working-class studies researchers and teachers across the social sciences, arts, and humanities, and it can also be used as a textbook for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses.

Cultural studies has emerged as a major force in the analysis of cultural systems and their relation to social power. "Rather than being interested in television or architecture or pinball machines themselves - as industrial or aesthetic structures - cultural studies tends to be interested in the way such apparatuses work as points of concentration of social meaning, as 'media' (literally)", according to John Frow and Meaghan Morris. Here, two of Australia's leading cultural critics bring together work that represents a distinctive national tradition, moving between high theory and detailed readings of localized cultural practices. Ethnographic audience research, cultural policy studies, popular consumption, "bad" aboriginal art, landscape in feature films, style, form and history in TV miniseries, and the intersections of tourism with history and memory - these are among the topics addressed in a landmark volume that cuts across myriad traditional disciplines.