Australian Popular Culture

An exciting collection of essays bringing together new perspectives on the nature and meaning of a nation's changing life.

Ian Craven (Edited by)

9780521466677, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 29 April 1994

236 pages
22.7 x 14.9 x 1.4 cm, 0.302 kg

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.

Introduction
Part I. Popular Culture as the Everyday: 1. A brief cultural history of vegemite Robert White
2. The Australian back yard George Seddon
3. Stamp duty Xavier Pons
4. Australian football as secular religion Stephen Alomes
Part II. Popular Culture and the 'Mass' Media: 5. Controlling the technology of popular culture and the introduction of television to Australia James Walter
6. 'Crocodile Dundee': the revival of American virtue Ruth Brown
7. The Boys from the Bush: television coproduction in the 1990s Ian Craven
8. Patterns of control in Australian crime fiction Stephen Knight
9. National fictions and the 'Spycatcher' trial Kevin Foster
10. Naturalising 'horror stories': Australian crime news as popular culture Christine Higgins
Part III. Popular Culture and Critical Theory: 11. How to be a singer though married: domesticity, leisure and modern love Kay Ferres
12. The Wild Colonial Boy rides again and again: an Australian legend abroad Grahame Seal
13. Shaping the Plain Australian: Social analysis in the 1940s and 1950s Nicholas Brown
14. 'On the Beach': Apocalyptic hedonism and the origins of postmodernism Andrew Milner.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM], Biography: historical, political & military [BGH]