tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/australian-tv-138/articlesAustralian TV – The Conversation2024-03-14T01:05:51Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2251732024-03-14T01:05:51Z2024-03-14T01:05:51ZLarrimah-inspired series Population: 11 is a charming watch – if a tad heavy on the Aussie cliches<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581544/original/file-20240313-28-87bwma.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C21%2C4724%2C3118&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ben Feldman leads Stan Original’s new 12-episode series Population: 11 as Andy, a hapless American banker who travels to a tiny, outback town of 12 in search of his estranged father Hugo, played by Darren Gilshenan. </p>
<p>Inevitably, things do not go to plan. </p>
<p>Upon his arrival at Bidgeegud – a town of “Outback UFO” tours with “guaranteed sightings”, a zoo comprised of a single crocodile, and a pub where the priest holds confessional – Andy soon discovers Hugo has gone missing. His subsequent search for clues is helped by fellow outsider Cassie (Perry Mooney).</p>
<p>The pair progressively uncover the innumerable secrets of the town, one suspicious resident at a time.</p>
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<span class="caption">Perry Mooney plays the role of Cassie Crick, a fellow outsider at Bidgeegud.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stan</span></span>
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<h2>A fair go (at humour), mate</h2>
<p>Population: 11 is a comedic crime-thriller created by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0972716/?ref_=ttfc_fc_wr1">Phil Lloyd</a>, perhaps best known for his writing on 2014 miniseries The Moodys and 2016-17 series Here Come the Habibs! </p>
<p>It draws on the same heavy-handed comedy featured in Lloyd’s previous exploits. As an example, the Chinese restaurant in Bidgeegud sells “camel-toe pies”.</p>
<p>But most heavy-handed is the show’s revelling in Aussie stereotypes. Self-centred Andy is frustrated that “everything bites” after kicking a termite’s nest. He criticises the only person trying to help him in a mock Australian accent, and lashes out at the “dingo dollars or whatever you people call your money”. </p>
<p>Equally, the locals tell Andy “Americans always want something” and later on say “bloody yanks think you can buy everyone off”. </p>
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<h2>Australia through the eyes of international leads</h2>
<p>Australian-based streamer Stan <a href="https://www.reviews.org/au/entertainment/stan-review">is arguably best known</a> for its Australian content and local audience. </p>
<p>But Population: 11 appears to be part of an emerging trend of offering Australian content from an international lead’s perspective: think The Tourist (led by Jamie Dornan), Gold (led by Zac Efron) or Wolf Like Me (led by Josh Gad). </p>
<p>The push for international talent has long been an important strategy to draw wider audiences to local content, but it sits uncomfortably when this content is so heavily based – at least in places – on Australian stereotypes.</p>
<p>That said, after what is perhaps an inauspicious start, Population: 11’s finale offers a genuinely satisfying conclusion. It ties up a scatter-gun of loose ends, allows the charismatic Feldman to relax into a more fully realised version of Andy, and emphasises what wasn’t always obvious: this is a story about belonging. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581541/original/file-20240313-20-yxwftm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581541/original/file-20240313-20-yxwftm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581541/original/file-20240313-20-yxwftm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581541/original/file-20240313-20-yxwftm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581541/original/file-20240313-20-yxwftm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581541/original/file-20240313-20-yxwftm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581541/original/file-20240313-20-yxwftm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581541/original/file-20240313-20-yxwftm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Jimmy James (Tony Briggs) and Cedric Blumenthal (William Zappa) at the bar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stan</span></span>
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<p>Throughout its 12 half-hour episodes, one of the show’s strengths is its talented crew. Directors Helena Brooks and Trent O’Donnell work alongside a veteran supporting cast. </p>
<p>This cast includes the always-entertaining Katrina Milosevic as highly sexed local cop Geraldine, Stephen Curry as general store owner Noel, Tony Briggs as Jimmy the priest and Chai Hansen as station hand Gareth. </p>
<h2>Lost in … Larrimah?</h2>
<p>If the premise of Population: 11 sounds somewhat familiar, it’s because it was reportedly “<a href="https://thewest.com.au/entertainment/tv/kimberley-plays-host-to-population-11-a-stan-series-inspired-by-netflix-doco-last-stop-larrimah-c-13396341#">inspired</a>” by the 2017 disappearance of Patrick “Paddy” Moriarty and his dog Kellie from the remote, 11-person town of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrimah,_Northern_Territory">Larrimah</a> in the Northern Territory.</p>
<p>While neither Moriarty nor Kellie has been found, the coroner <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/07/paddy-moriarty-and-his-dog-allegedly-killed-amid-feud-with-neighbours-northern-territory-coroner-finds">concluded</a> “Paddy was killed in the context of and likely due to the ongoing feud he had with his nearest neighbours”.</p>
<p>Moriarty’s disappearance has been touted as Australia’s own “<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/last-stop-larrimah-netflix-tiger-king-b2438457.html">Tiger King</a>” tale, after being made the subject of Kylie Stevenson and Caroline Graham’s Walkey Award-winning podcast <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/lost-in-larrimah/podcast/e85a9697854598a9b0e75512911e9be7">Lost in Larrimah</a> (2018), a subsequent book titled <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Caroline-Graham-and-Kylie-Stevenson-Larrimah-9781760877835/">Larrimah</a> (2021) and HBO documentary <a href="https://www.netflix.com/au/title/81716863">Last Stop Larrimah</a> (2023). </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581529/original/file-20240313-16-7h0veb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581529/original/file-20240313-16-7h0veb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581529/original/file-20240313-16-7h0veb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581529/original/file-20240313-16-7h0veb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581529/original/file-20240313-16-7h0veb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581529/original/file-20240313-16-7h0veb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581529/original/file-20240313-16-7h0veb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581529/original/file-20240313-16-7h0veb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Larrimah (2021) tells the story of ‘an outback town, a missing man and 11 people who mostly hate each other’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Caroline-Graham-and-Kylie-Stevenson-Larrimah-9781760877835/">Allen and Unwin</a></span>
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<p>While there are clear links with Population: 11’s central mystery, quirky interpersonal drama and outback town of misfits, the show is otherwise only loosely related to the Larrimah mystery. Population: 11’s opening scene, for instance, shows Hugo seemingly being abducted by aliens. </p>
<h2>Screening the Kimberly</h2>
<p>Where Larrimah is more than 400 kilometres south-east of the Northern Territory capital Darwin, Population: 11 was filmed in Derby and the wider Kimberley region of Western Australia. Strikingly beautiful landscapes feature throughout the series.</p>
<p>Stan <a href="https://www.wa.gov.au/government/media-statements/Cook-Labor-Government/Western-Australian-outback-scene-for-new-comedic-crime-thriller-20240130">partnered with</a> Hollywood studio Lionsgate and Jungle Entertainment to film in the region, making it <a href="https://www.screenwest.com.au/news/latest-news/stan-original-comedic-crime-thriller-series-population-11-starring-ben-feldman-set-to-premiere-on-14-march">one of the first</a> Stan Original series to be filmed in the state. The other is the upcoming series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt29353885/">Invisible Boys</a>. </p>
<p>The combined effect of its cinematography, real-life inspiration and genuinely likeable cast make Population: 11 – even when it stumbles – an engaging view. I hope it encourages Stan to bring more work to the region, and to other Australian regions it has yet to visit. Because local content is always worth encouraging.</p>
<p><em>Population: 11 premieres on Stan on March 14.</em></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581543/original/file-20240313-28-y84qx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581543/original/file-20240313-28-y84qx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581543/original/file-20240313-28-y84qx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581543/original/file-20240313-28-y84qx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581543/original/file-20240313-28-y84qx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581543/original/file-20240313-28-y84qx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581543/original/file-20240313-28-y84qx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581543/original/file-20240313-28-y84qx1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Trevor Taylor (Steve Le Marquand), Maureen Taylor (Pippa Grandison), Valerie Hogarth (Genevieve Lemon) and Noel Pinkus (Stephen Curry) stand outside the bar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stan</span></span>
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</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225173/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly McWilliam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Stan’s new comedy-crime series is loosely inspired by the mysterious disappearance of Paddy Moriarty from the tiny town of Larrimah, Northern Territory.Kelly McWilliam, Associate Professor of Communication and Media, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2246452024-03-12T02:54:00Z2024-03-12T02:54:00ZWe studied two decades of queer representation on Australian TV, and found some interesting trends<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581139/original/file-20240312-18-9l4no.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=10%2C12%2C1353%2C754&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Television is experiencing a boom of queer representation, and Australian series are no exception. Our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X241236990">new study reveals</a> how trends in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and nonbinary (gender and sexually diverse) scripted stories have developed onscreen over the 2000s and 2010s.</p>
<p>In the 1970s and ‘80s, Australia was considered relatively radical in its representations of gender and sexually diverse people. We’re <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X19876330">credited with the first</a> positive portrayal of a gay man, Don Finlayson (Joe Hasham), in the soap opera Number 96 (1972–77). </p>
<p>We also portrayed the first lesbian kiss, between Vicki Stafford (Judy Nunn) and Felicity Baker (Helen Hemingway) in the pilot episode of The Box (1974–77), two weeks before the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jun/16/bbc-stream-1974-show-girl-alison-steadman-first-lesbian-kiss-uk-television-pride">UK’s first televised lesbian kiss</a>.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Australian TV drama The Box (1974) became the first in the world to show a lesbian kiss.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRcY9GV7MI0&rco=1&ab_channel=kurvapicsa">Youtube</a></span>
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<p>By the 1990s, queer character appearances shifted to predominantly once-off stories in medical and crime dramas. But things have changed substantially since then.</p>
<h2>Gay and bisexual men</h2>
<p>Between 2000 and 2019, Australian-scripted television represented gay men more regularly than bisexual men. Specifically, our research found 44 series featuring gay men and only three featuring bisexual men.</p>
<p>Similar to trends in US television <a href="http://applausebooks.com/books/9781557835574">throughout the 2000s</a>, many of these examples focused on characters “coming out” as gay – a popular storytelling device.</p>
<p>While bisexual coming-out narratives were rare, one notable exception was the character Sammy Lieberman (Thom Green) in Dance Academy (2010–13), who rejects labels others try to put on him.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581144/original/file-20240312-26-gtnqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581144/original/file-20240312-26-gtnqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581144/original/file-20240312-26-gtnqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581144/original/file-20240312-26-gtnqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581144/original/file-20240312-26-gtnqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581144/original/file-20240312-26-gtnqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581144/original/file-20240312-26-gtnqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581144/original/file-20240312-26-gtnqek.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sammy Lieberman in ABC’s Dance Academy came out as bisexual.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1551948/mediaindex?refine=nm2964015&ref_=tt_mv_close">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Although we found a prominence of coming-out narratives, we also saw an increase in already out characters. Previously, gay and bisexual men were commonly written <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1329878X19876330">into one-off storylines</a> in which coming out seemed like the only available narrative. Now they’re often shown with complex lives and other sources of drama.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Men-Caregiving-and-the-Media-The-Dad-Dilemma/Hunter-Riggs/p/book/9781032083759">avoidance of gay intimacy onscreen</a> remains prominent; we noted a tendency to use camera movements and cuts to avoid showing gay sex scenes. But some series are pushing these boundaries. For instance, season three of Please Like Me included a meaningful and critically acclaimed sex scene between Josh (Josh Thomas) and Arnold (Keegan Joyce).</p>
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Read more:
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<h2>Lesbian and bisexual women</h2>
<p>While there is a significant number of lesbian and bisexual women in Australian scripted television, they appear in fewer series overall compared with gay and bisexual men. Of a total 38 series, we found 32 with lesbians and 15 with bisexual women. Nine of the series included both.</p>
<p>Trends for lesbian and bisexual women often focus on characters who are assured of their sexuality, or who engage in temporary exploration as a “<a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-55598-4">passing phase</a>”. Coming-out narratives are rare for these women. </p>
<p>For example, Charlie Buckton (Esther Anderson) in Home and Away (1988–) temporarily explores attraction to out lesbian Joey Collins (Kate Bell). The relationship isn’t mentioned again after Joey is written out and Charlie returns to dating men.</p>
<p>Alongside this theme of temporary attraction is a troubling trend of unnamed bisexuality, wherein we identified bisexual women, but the bisexuality wasn’t clearly named. </p>
<p>That said, we do note instances where this is due to a resistance to labels. As Bridget (Libby Tanner) tells Bea (Danielle Cormack) in Wentworth (2013–21): “Fuck the labels.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581143/original/file-20240312-24-5zslsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581143/original/file-20240312-24-5zslsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/581143/original/file-20240312-24-5zslsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581143/original/file-20240312-24-5zslsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581143/original/file-20240312-24-5zslsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581143/original/file-20240312-24-5zslsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581143/original/file-20240312-24-5zslsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/581143/original/file-20240312-24-5zslsi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prison drama Wentworth had several lesbian and bisexual woman characters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>There are also several examples of lesbian and bisexual women raising families. In 2003, a two-part episode of Blue Heelers (1994–2006) focuses on a custody dispute between a lesbian couple and their sperm donor. These stories often incorporate themes of same-sex IVF and adoption, reflecting legal changes in Australia throughout the decades.</p>
<p>However, in All Saints (1998–2009), Charlotte Beaumont (Tammy Macintosh) – who is originally <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315876917-3/screening-dykes-oz-lesbian-representation-australian-television-rebecca-beirne">written as a lesbian and later rewritten as bisexual</a> – becomes pregnant after sleeping with a man.</p>
<h2>Transgender and non-binary people</h2>
<p>Until recently, and with rare exceptions, out gender-diverse characters have been largely invisible in Australian scripted television. </p>
<p>We found eight series with transgender women, three with transgender men, and one with a non-binary person. Within our study, only one of these characters appeared before 2010.</p>
<p>Most transgender storylines included some focus on self-identity, with the character either coming out or asserting their identity with others. Some stories also included romantic attraction, although almost all were in a heterosexual framing. One exception was Chris (Harvey Zielinski) in Starting From… Now (2014–16) – a trans man who is pansexual.</p>
<p>From 2018 onwards, all gender-diverse characters were portrayed by out actors who aligned with their identity. Before this, only Robyn Ross (Carlotta) in Number 96 and Chris in Starting From… Now were played by out transgender actors.</p>
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<h2>The emergence of queer story worlds</h2>
<p>Australian scripted television has moved away from representing solitary gay or lesbian figures, and towards more inclusive representations that portray queer characters belonging to a shared community. We found increasing instances of these characters appearing in regular, recurring and one-off stories in the same series. </p>
<p>We also found an increase in series that are set in queer story worlds. Outland (2012) was the first Australian series to feature an entirely gay and lesbian ensemble of characters. </p>
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<p>Similarly, Starting From… Now is a web series that follows a group of lesbian women living in Sydney’s Newtown. The final two seasons were picked up by SBS in 2016 and, along with Wentworth, contribute significantly to the number of lesbian and bisexual women appearing onscreen. </p>
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<p>The queer story world has been featuring even more from 2020 onward, in particular through digital-first and pilot initiatives for talent from underrepresented communities. These initiatives are giving more opportunities to queer creatives, resulting in series such as Iggy & Ace 5eva (2021) and All My Friends Are Racist (2021).</p>
<p>The appearances of gender and sexually diverse stories in Australian television continue to change. We hope our research can provide a starting point for further analysis of these decades and those to come.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/peppa-pig-has-introduced-a-pair-of-lesbian-polar-bears-but-aussie-kids-tv-has-been-leading-the-way-in-queer-representation-190648">Peppa Pig has introduced a pair of lesbian polar bears, but Aussie kids’ TV has been leading the way in queer representation</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224645/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From Dance Academy to Wentworth, Australian TV experienced a boom of queer representation over the 2000s and 2010s.Damien O'Meara, PhD Candidate, Media and Communications, Swinburne University of TechnologyWhitney Monaghan, Lecturer in Communications and Media Studies, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2229882024-02-22T19:20:05Z2024-02-22T19:20:05ZABC’s House of Gods: a bold and compelling exploration of contemporary life in an Australian imam’s family<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576400/original/file-20240219-16-42nfsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C9%2C2140%2C1486&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>House of Gods is a gripping new Australian TV drama. It reveals the inner workings of an imam’s family and community, and the corrupting effects of power, ambition and secrets on family and faith. </p>
<p>Set in Western Sydney, the saga commences on election day at The Messenger mosque. Sheikh Mohammad (Kamel El Basha) is a progressive, charismatic contender for the esteemed position of head cleric. But he is embroiled in controversy when a young woman unexpectedly plants a kiss on his cheek while posing with him for a selfie. </p>
<p>The seemingly harmless gesture swiftly snowballs into a scandal dividing the community and sparking a clash of ideologies within the mosque’s tight-knit community. </p>
<p>Although Sheikh Mohammad eventually emerges victorious over his conservative adversary Sheikh Shaaker (Simon Elrahi), the triumph is tainted by a startling revelation. Sheikh Mohammad’s adopted son, Isa (Osamah Sami, also co-creator and writer), has struck a clandestine deal with a corrupt official to secure his father’s win in exchange for hefty monthly payments.</p>
<p>The cleric’s efforts to bridge the gap between multiple generations and connect Islam with modern life in Australia is at the heart of the story. But unaware of his son’s dealings, an intricate web of lies, bribes and familial rivalry soon emerges, set against the backdrop of mosque politics. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/black-comedy-political-drama-and-a-documentary-about-a-cult-what-were-streaming-this-february-222146">Black comedy, political drama and a documentary about a cult: what we're streaming this February</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>The realism of lived experience</h2>
<p>Sami’s performance as Isa is spot-on, thanks to his firsthand understanding of growing up as the son of a progressive Shi'ite cleric. His personal background brings depth and authenticity to the character, making his portrayal truly compelling.</p>
<p>Fadia Abboud’s direction is enriched by her deep understanding of the Arabic community, lending genuine realism to every scene. Take, for instance, the conversation between Sheikh Mohammad and the local football coach, where the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-the-shia-sunni-divide-78216">historic tensions between Sunni and Shi’ite faiths</a> are delicately portrayed. Both characters navigate their differences with respect and caution, reflecting the nuanced dynamics within their community.</p>
<p>The inclusion of Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim actors adds an authentic touch to the drama. Their performances capture the cultural and social subtleties reminiscent of my own Arabic family and community. Through expressive body language, lively facial expressions, and intense physical affection, the actors animate the passionate social dynamics often characteristic of Middle-Eastern societies. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576401/original/file-20240219-28-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three Muslim men." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576401/original/file-20240219-28-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576401/original/file-20240219-28-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576401/original/file-20240219-28-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576401/original/file-20240219-28-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=419&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576401/original/file-20240219-28-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576401/original/file-20240219-28-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576401/original/file-20240219-28-andlwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The casting of Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim actors lends an air of genuineness to the drama.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sky Davies’ cinematography captures both private and public moments with striking compositional intention. The beautiful garden scenes where Sheikh Mohammad converses with his eldest daughter, Batul (Maia Abbas), under a luminescent grape vine, reference the central role dappled light plays in the intricate designs of mosques. </p>
<p>Integrity shines through the costume and set design and in the meticulous portrayal of Muslim dress and architecture. These elements reflect a profound understanding of how faith influences the transition between private and public life, adding credibility to the storytelling. </p>
<h2>Mighty heroines</h2>
<p>Sami was joined by co-creator and associate producer, Shahin Shafaei, along with Blake Ayshford and Sarah Bassiuoni. Shafaei and Bassiuoni come from Iranian and Egyptian families. Their collective experience provides valuable insights into the female experience, enriching the depiction of Muslim women beyond Western stereotypes of female oppression. </p>
<p>The struggles encountered by characters such as Batul, her younger sister Hind (Safia Arain), and her mysterious best friend Jamila (Priscilla Doueihy) echo real-life challenges. For instance, the scenes at the swimming pool vividly illustrate the women’s desires and rebellions, as well as their activism and resilience in advocating for women-only hours at the public pool.</p>
<p>Batul and Hind are mighty. Their rivalry hinges on their personal freedoms and to what extent they conform to community expectations. This ensures that they negotiate power and agency <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/23/as-muslim-women-we-dont-need-you-to-speak-for-us-and-we-dont-need-to-be-saved">within their own cultural context</a> – refreshingly removed from Western standards. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576404/original/file-20240219-30-aohrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Three hijabi women." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576404/original/file-20240219-30-aohrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576404/original/file-20240219-30-aohrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576404/original/file-20240219-30-aohrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576404/original/file-20240219-30-aohrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=330&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576404/original/file-20240219-30-aohrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576404/original/file-20240219-30-aohrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576404/original/file-20240219-30-aohrtk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The depiction of Muslim women moves beyond the Western stereotypes of female oppression.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sheikh Mohammad champions his daughters’ freedom, sparking discussions on gender equality and underscoring his progressive views on women’s roles in the Islamic community. A notable instance is when he appoints his daughter, Batul, as vice president of the mosque, defying traditional expectations and causing shock in the community.</p>
<h2>Written by Arabs, featuring Arabs</h2>
<p>The lead performances are outstanding. El Basha is a Palestinian screen and stage actor, theatre director, playwright and producer. He gained critical acclaim in 2017 when he <a href="https://www.abouther.com/node/5191/entertainment/music-film-television/jserrors/aggregate?page=3">won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor</a> at the 74th Venice International Film Festival. In House of Gods, the actor again shows he is adept at capturing a proud and principled man who values his dignity and honour.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576403/original/file-20240219-30-54tww8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two men, one young and one old, talking." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576403/original/file-20240219-30-54tww8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576403/original/file-20240219-30-54tww8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576403/original/file-20240219-30-54tww8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576403/original/file-20240219-30-54tww8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576403/original/file-20240219-30-54tww8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576403/original/file-20240219-30-54tww8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576403/original/file-20240219-30-54tww8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Director Fadia Abboud infuses each scene with an intense realism.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span>
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<p>House of Gods is more than just an Australian television series. It’s a bold and unflinching exploration of contemporary life that is thought-provoking, authentic and complex. With its intricate plot twists and nuanced characters, it has the capacity to showcase the depth and diversity of Australian storytelling worldwide.</p>
<p>Abboud remarks that House of Gods:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>stood out as original and risky. Importantly, it wasn’t an ‘us’ and ‘them’ story. The dilemma didn’t come from our relationship to the West and racism. It was a powerful drama, with no big-name Anglo actor, which always seemed to be needed in shows with non-English speaking communities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For many in the Australian Arabic community, including Abboud, seeing a project created and written by Arabs featuring Arabs as lead characters is an exciting and welcome development.</p>
<p><em>House of Gods is on ABC and iView from February 25.</em> </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/shayda-this-unflinching-portrayal-of-domestic-violence-marks-a-profound-shift-in-australian-cinema-212535">Shayda: this unflinching portrayal of domestic violence marks a profound shift in Australian cinema</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222988/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cherine Fahd does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>House of Gods is a gripping new Australian TV drama, written by Arabs, featuring Arabs.Cherine Fahd, Associate Professor Visual Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2173642023-12-05T23:33:08Z2023-12-05T23:33:08ZAsher Keddie is outstanding in Strife – but the show gives us an uneven look at girlboss feminism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563226/original/file-20231204-17-78a47q.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=33%2C0%2C7385%2C4938&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kane Skennar/Binge</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The inner workings of magazines, television stations and newspapers have been rich fodder for film and television for decades.</p>
<p>From All the President’s Men (1976) to Frontline (1994–7), Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo (2011) and The Newsreader (2022–3), we remain fascinated by stories of how our media are made. These kinds of films and series immediately immerse viewers in a precise historical setting and allow commentary on it. This year’s series of The Newsreader reminded us of the divide in Australian culture over the bicentenary commemorations of 1988. </p>
<p>Set around 2012 (when Tinder was a “new app”), Strife is a fictionalised adaptation of Mia Freedman’s 2017 memoir, Work Strife Balance, which told the story of starting her hugely successful women’s website Mamamia in her lounge room in 2007. </p>
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<p>By 2014, the site was attracting 2 million to 4 million women <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/may/27/being-mia-freedman-this-idea-youre-doing-feminism-wrong-i-find-laughable">a month</a> and Freedman was famous. In the mid-2010s she was one of Australia’s most highly visible feminist faces, dropping soundbites on Sunrise and writing confessional essays about her life. </p>
<p>Freedman was relatable yet highly successful, a “busy mum” who was open about her shortcomings and the moments where the “wheels fall off”.</p>
<p>Strife’s Evelyn Johnson (Asher Keddie) is a spikier, colder figure than Freedman appears to be. She is running Eve, a new women’s website, but she’s two months behind on the rent. She has left her marriage and is living alone in a city apartment; she is co-parenting two teenage children with her estranged husband (Matt Day). </p>
<p>Evelyn is singularly focused on making her website work. She is tough on her writers, a bit forgetful about her children’s activities, and doesn’t really know how to cook. Here, the series treads a fine line between making Evelyn relatable and simply foolish: turning up to her daughter’s hockey game with the halftime oranges still in their string bag, or trying to make a last-minute family meal with a slow cooker. </p>
<h2>The art of the confessional</h2>
<p>As the series begins, Evelyn is struggling with writer’s block – not great timing for an editor running a site that is losing money. But by the end of the first episode, she writes a piece called “I ended my marriage over a flat white”. </p>
<p>It goes viral, and Eve has found its formula. </p>
<p>Evelyn tells one of her writers who is nervous about exposing her personal life for clicks “it can be empowering to share if you’re the one telling the story”. </p>
<p>Strife has an impeccable pedigree for a bingeable women’s drama: it was produced by Bruna Papandrea, whose credits include Big Little Lies, and it stars Asher Keddie, one of Australia’s most bankable television stars. Eve’s writers are a diverse bunch, oversharing and endlessly scrambling for story ideas. The series is set in the world of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, full of well-dressed women dropping their kids at private schools in 4WDs. </p>
<p>In other words, it is aspirational – and more than a little oblivious about the privileged world it depicts. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563227/original/file-20231204-30-eefl5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Asher Keddie in a brown suit." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563227/original/file-20231204-30-eefl5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563227/original/file-20231204-30-eefl5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563227/original/file-20231204-30-eefl5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563227/original/file-20231204-30-eefl5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563227/original/file-20231204-30-eefl5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563227/original/file-20231204-30-eefl5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563227/original/file-20231204-30-eefl5h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Evelyn is singularly focused on making her website work.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kane Skennar/Binge</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Despite claiming to be a “feminist publisher”, Evelyn shoots down most politically and socially aware story ideas because they won’t “get clicks”. The success of Eve is measured entirely in page views, clicks and advertising deals. Hiring young women to work as unpaid interns also seems at odds with Evelyn’s feminist credentials: indeed, one tells Evelyn she “can’t work for free”. </p>
<p>Evelyn’s relationships with her family and friends are the other main subject of the drama. A quick check of her browser history reveals her son is watching porn; she tries to broach the subject of buying a first bra with her daughter; a friend has put a profile of her husband on Tinder because she doesn’t want to have sex with him anymore. </p>
<p>While all of these topics would work for an Eve confessional essay, the series breezes over them far too quickly to capitalise on their dramatic potential.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-personal-is-now-commercial-popular-feminism-online-79930">Friday essay: The personal is now commercial – popular feminism online</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A uncertain tone</h2>
<p>Strife’s brand of feminism – where empowerment comes from telling personal stories online – is very much of the mid-2010s, when women’s online media were on the rise. </p>
<p>As gender studies academic <a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-personal-is-now-commercial-popular-feminism-online-79930">Kath Kenny points out</a>, confessional story-telling emerged at the same time media budgets were being cut: after all, confessions don’t require research or reporting. While this kind of writing can raise awareness of important issues, it’s not enough to solve them. “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/aug/21/girlboss-used-to-suggest-role-model-sexist-putdown">Girlboss feminism</a>” is still with us, unfortunately, but I think we know now that we won’t solve the gender pay gap or domestic violence with mere “empowerment”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563228/original/file-20231204-25-kpwdsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Keddie in a newsroom." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563228/original/file-20231204-25-kpwdsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563228/original/file-20231204-25-kpwdsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563228/original/file-20231204-25-kpwdsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563228/original/file-20231204-25-kpwdsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563228/original/file-20231204-25-kpwdsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563228/original/file-20231204-25-kpwdsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563228/original/file-20231204-25-kpwdsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Keddie’s performance is excellent – but the show is uneven.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kane Skennar/Binge</span></span>
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<p>Keddie’s brittle performance here recalls her outstanding work in Love My Way, where she wasn’t afraid to make her character unlikeable. Tina Bursill is cool as ever as Evelyn’s mother, and Maria Angelico is terrific as Eve’s editor. </p>
<p>But despite some wry jokes, the series’ tone is uncertain, and Evelyn’s confessions are largely of other people’s experiences. Perhaps if Evelyn was more willing to confront her own shortcomings we’d have the making of real drama. </p>
<p>Strife left me with the jittery feeling you get after spending too many hours in an office in front of a computer screen. Which, considering that’s probably how Eve’s writers feel, might be quite the achievement.</p>
<p><em>Strife is on Binge from today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/classic-aussie-cinema-and-new-twists-on-old-classics-our-picks-of-december-streaming-218707">Classic Aussie cinema and new twists on old classics: our picks of December streaming</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217364/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>The new Binge series Strife is a fictionalised adaptation of Mia Freedman’s 2017 memoir.Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2182422023-11-28T23:02:43Z2023-11-28T23:02:43ZSpectacle, speed and savagery: Disney’s The Artful Dodger comes down under for a pop period spin<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562036/original/file-20231128-21-1h74ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C0%2C6211%2C4156&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Disney</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27538007">a 1950 essay on Charles Dickens</a>, literary critic Dorothy Van Ghent suggested the author had an unusual way of writing about the human form. </p>
<p>She identified his “habit of seeing the parts of the body as separable and manipulable” in a descriptive technique of “surgical division”. </p>
<p>While these surgical divisions were often figurative, there were plenty of literal examples in Dickens as well. The most notable sees one of his characters <a href="https://omf.ucsc.edu/london-1865/victorian-city/wooden-legs.html">searching after his own amputated leg</a> in the seedy anatomical emporiums of London.</p>
<p>The new Australian series The Artful Dodger pursues this surgical fascination in a reworking of Oliver Twist. Its irreverent intentions are clearly marked by its substitution of the cheeky but lovable Dodger for the too-good Oliver, who’s summarily dismissed in the first episode as so much “wet lettuce”. </p>
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<h2>Casual brutality</h2>
<p>It is 15 years after the end of the novel and the Dodger – Jack Dawkins (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) – is in a fictional Australian town where he’s turned his pickpocket’s dexterity to the purpose of surgery.</p>
<p>Jack has fallen into an enormous gambling debt to a local crook (Tim Minchin), who is threatening to collect by taking off one of his precious hands. </p>
<p>At the same time, Jack’s old boss and bad father figure, Fagin (David Thewlis), arrives in town on a convict ship. Thrown into the mix in a meet-cute that takes place over a heinous compound fracture is the Lady Belle Fox (Maia Mitchell), who intends on becoming the colony’s first female surgeon. </p>
<p>In the vein of a show like <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/dickensian">Dickensian</a>, the series’ writers stitch together miscellaneous bits and pieces from the author’s canon. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562038/original/file-20231128-26-q1habl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A street scene." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562038/original/file-20231128-26-q1habl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562038/original/file-20231128-26-q1habl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562038/original/file-20231128-26-q1habl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562038/original/file-20231128-26-q1habl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562038/original/file-20231128-26-q1habl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562038/original/file-20231128-26-q1habl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562038/original/file-20231128-26-q1habl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Artful Dodger has found himself in a fictional Australian town.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Disney</span></span>
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<p>They borrow the Dodger’s naval surgeon training from Bleak House and its kindly love interest, Mr Woodcourt. Rather than hanging, Fagin meets the fate of the transported convict Magwitch of Great Expectations. And in one of the show’s more creative additions, the hospital’s artificial limb maker (Luke Carroll) evokes Dombey and Son’s charming duo Solomon Gills and Captain Cuttle. His complex mechanical arms and wooden legs recall both the scientific instruments manufactured by Gills and the prosthetic hook the captain uses in place of his hand.</p>
<p>Playing up the spectacle, speed and savagery of surgery before anaesthesia and antibiotics, the series presents its public operations as something between pantomime and blood sport. But despite all the viscera and violence, it refuses to double down on Dickensian misery, largely playing its most gruesome elements for laughs.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/great-expectations-by-charles-dickens-class-prejudices-the-convict-stain-and-a-corpse-bride-159816">Great Expectations by Charles Dickens: class prejudices, the convict stain and a corpse-bride</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Trading in bleakness</h2>
<p>Bleakness has long been the stock-in-trade of Dickens adaptations. But in the midst of all their Dickensian fog, many forget the fun of the author’s books. </p>
<p>This isn’t true of The Artful Dodger. Taking notes from the recent success of pop period dramas like <a href="https://theconversation.com/netflixs-bridgerton-a-romanticized-portrayal-of-britain-at-the-dawn-of-modernity-152946">Bridgerton</a>, the new adaptation is loud, energetic and refreshingly bright. It’s full of Australian sun and sound, each episode starting off with an Aussie rock track from the likes of Spiderbait and The Cruel Sea. </p>
<p>While these stylistic revisions reinvigorate, the show’s jokes and subplots are more hit and miss. Caricature has always been key to Dickens’s fiction, but the sheer silliness of Lady Belle’s unwanted suitor and her domesticated sister don’t serve the series well. Despite being a show that itself centres a minor figure, it fails to give some of its best side characters room to breathe. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562037/original/file-20231128-21-iq69an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Fagin in a church" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562037/original/file-20231128-21-iq69an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562037/original/file-20231128-21-iq69an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562037/original/file-20231128-21-iq69an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562037/original/file-20231128-21-iq69an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562037/original/file-20231128-21-iq69an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562037/original/file-20231128-21-iq69an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562037/original/file-20231128-21-iq69an.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The show is at its best when the Dodger and Fagin are keeping company.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Disney</span></span>
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<p>The most significant issue facing the series is its central romance. The key erotic scenes between the Dodger and Lady Belle just don’t crackle as intended. </p>
<p>There’s frankly much more on-screen chemistry between Brodie-Sangster and Thewlis, so the show is at its best when the Dodger and Fagin are keeping company. The pair skilfully tap into the troubling mix of affection and abuse in this relationship, with Fagin longing for a past that to Jack is the stuff of traumatic childhood memory. </p>
<h2>Welcome revisionism</h2>
<p>Given the enormous quantity of screen adaptations of Dickens, do we really need another reworking of the old Victorian? </p>
<p>In a recent essay, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/07/10/on-killing-charles-dickens">On Killing Charles Dickens</a>, Zadie Smith discusses her complicated feelings towards the author. With self-conscious hyperbole, Smith recounts how she went so far as to flee London to avoid writing her new historical novel and, in particular, to avoid everything Dickens. </p>
<p>Long story short: she couldn’t do it. </p>
<p>Returning home to work on <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fraud-by-zadie-smith-review-a-dazzling-depiction-of-victorian-colonial-england-212808">The Fraud</a>, she found him an irrepressible presence haunting both her city and her story. And so, she set about <a href="https://theconversation.com/slavery-illusion-and-dead-white-men-zadie-smiths-the-fraud-explodes-the-historical-novel-212863">killing off the famous author</a> by writing his death into the pages of her book. </p>
<p>As Smith aptly concludes, Dickens’ (sometimes irritating) ubiquity doesn’t mean he should be handed the last word. </p>
<p>If Smith’s strategy was to kill Dickens, we might say The Artful Dodger’s is to perform hacksaw surgery on him. The series slices and amputates and stitches back together with a welcome revisionism. </p>
<p>If the result is a little uneven, it works well enough. As Victorian surgeons knew, sometimes you have to be brutal to keep things alive.</p>
<p><em>The Artful Dodger is on Disney+ from today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fraud-by-zadie-smith-review-a-dazzling-depiction-of-victorian-colonial-england-212808">The Fraud by Zadie Smith review: a dazzling depiction of Victorian colonial England</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218242/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Megan Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The new Australian series The Artful Dodger is a surgical reworking of Oliver Twist, where the savagery is played for laughs.Megan Nash, Casual Academic, School of Art, Communication and English, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2120112023-08-30T20:35:28Z2023-08-30T20:35:28ZRomantic comedies, Japanese reality television and New Zealand true crime: the best of streaming this September<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/545456/original/file-20230830-20-oxidl6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3994%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> </figcaption></figure><p>We have never been more spoilt for choice when it comes to what we can watch on (streaming) television. But the downside of this gluttony of riches is the sheer overwhelm that can come from having to choose your next show. </p>
<p>Have you found yourself reaching to rewatch an old favourite, just to make the choice easier? Us too.</p>
<p>But fear not, The Conversation’s writers are on the case. In this new series, our experts will be bringing you the best new shows, films and seasons to watch every month. </p>
<p>From comedy to reality television to crime drama, we hope you’ll find your next favourite here.</p>
<h2>Glamorous</h2>
<p><em>Netflix</em></p>
<p>Kim Cattrall showed considerable savvy when, rather than rejoin the cast of Sex and the City, she opted to play Madolyn Addison, the dynamic head of beauty brand Glamorous. The series revolves around a young gender-fluid assistant, Marco Mejia (Miss Benny), who inspires the company to break boundaries while exploring his own uncertainties around sexuality and gender.</p>
<p>On the surface this is even frothier than Sex and the City, and some critics have panned it. Angie Han in the Hollywood Reporter (a publication not known for its commitment to high art) <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-reviews/glamorous-review-kim-cattrall-netflix-1235517921/">saw it as</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A workplace comedy that has no grasp of how work works, a rom-com that fails to generate a single convincing spark, a Gen-Z coming-of-age saga with the cultural references of a geriatric Millennial.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These objections are like complaints that Midsomer Murders gives an unrealistic depiction of police procedure. I know little about the cosmetics industry, but I suspect it is more accurately portrayed here than the cringing improbabilities of the British royal court in <a href="https://theconversation.com/royal-romances-have-always-been-fantasies-of-transformation-how-does-new-generation-teen-fiction-reflect-queer-and-diverse-desires-211196">Red, White and Royal Blue</a>.</p>
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<p>There is a taken-for-granted queerness of the program: here heterosexuals, led by Cattrall and her ever-faithful chauffeur, are in the minority. The series plays with stereotypes, from the A-list gay boys at Provincetown to the drag queens in Marco’s favourite club. And Han must have a heart of stone to have missed the ongoing heartbreak of Marco’s geeky workmate, Ben.</p>
<p>Glamorous is as camp as Barbie, but far cleverer and more subversive: without a spoiler, it’s worth comparing the way the two end.</p>
<p><em>– Dennis Altman</em></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gay-guys-can-do-missionary-how-red-white-and-royal-blue-brings-queer-intimacy-to-mainstream-audiences-211663">'Gay guys can do missionary?' - how Red, White & Royal Blue brings queer intimacy to mainstream audiences</a>
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<h2>Starstruck season three</h2>
<p><em>ABC iView (Australia) from September 6 and TVNZ+ (New Zealand) from September 2</em></p>
<p>The delightful romantic-comedy Starstruck follows the successes, failures and absurdities of an unexpected romance.</p>
<p>The two charismatic, neurotic non-white leads make this a far-from-standard rom-com: Nikesh Patel’s Tom Kapoor is a world-famous British movie star; Rose Matafeo’s Jessie is far more intense, obnoxious and funny than your average rom-com heroine. </p>
<p>Starstruck’s creator and star Matafeo has crafted a world that feels real with inside jokes that invite you in, an ironic sincerity that is sweet but not saccharine, and neurotic characters written with endearing specificity, warmth and humour. </p>
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<p>Last season ended with a moment that was equal parts romantic and absurd, as Jessie and Tom reconcile and make out in a pond. But the new season opens with a montage tracing the subsequent two years of moving in together and then drifting apart. </p>
<p>Starstruck understands what makes Jessie and Tom interesting to watch: not domestic bliss, but their awkward banter and difficulty overcoming their mismatched quirks, despite their obvious chemistry and attraction. For those who love a smart, sizzling rom-com in the tradition of Hepburn and Tracy this is a must-watch. </p>
<p>The new season continues the excellent form of the first two seasons, as Tom and Jessie attend a very awkward wedding and end up back in each other’s orbit.<br>
<em>– Jessica Ford</em></p>
<h2>Far North</h2>
<p><em>ThreeNow (New Zealand) and Paramount+ (Australia)</em> </p>
<p>The terrific new New Zealand dark comedy Far North dramatises a bizarre meth-smuggling case <a href="https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/113356686/ninety-mile-beach-meth-importing-trial-guilty-verdicts-for-both-accused">from 2016</a>, in which a ridiculously inept gang nearly got half a ton of methamphetamine to market, only to be rumbled by the locals. </p>
<p>Veteran actors Temuera Morrison and Robyn Malcolm are excellent as decent Ahipara couple Ed and Heather, who become embroiled in the bungled plot when local criminals try to get their Chinese bosses out to sea off Ninety Mile Beach to intercept a stranded drug shipment. </p>
<p>If things can go wrong, they do – and events swiftly turn into a cascading comedy of errors. </p>
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<p>Creator David White co-wrote <a href="https://aotearoabooks.co.nz/far-north/">a true crime book</a> on the subject, and you can see his eye for detail throughout. The whole thing is run through with a mordant, deadpan sensibility that will have you spitting out your tea with laughter even as you are wincing at some of the more horrific elements of the case. </p>
<p>Impeccably shot, and featuring a wonderfully motley assortment of low-rent crims, desperate drug runners, cartel mobsters and salt-of-the-earth locals, Far North is easily one of the best (and funniest) New Zealand shows in years.</p>
<p><em>–Erin Harrington</em></p>
<h2>Mother and Son</h2>
<p><em>ABC iView</em></p>
<p>Mother and Son has <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mother-and-son-reboot-has-fresh-things-to-say-about-adult-children-and-their-ageing-parents-211905">long been regarded</a> as one of Australia’s greatest sitcoms. </p>
<p>First airing in 1984, the tale of the ageing Maggie Beare and her hapless son, Arthur, was not only very funny, but revealed the pain, frustration and love that underpinned their relationship.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mother-and-son-reboot-has-fresh-things-to-say-about-adult-children-and-their-ageing-parents-211905">The Mother and Son reboot has fresh things to say about adult children and their ageing parents</a>
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<p>For anyone who has cared for an ageing parent – or faced the diminution of their autonomy as they have aged – Mother and Son still strikes a nerve.
Where the original series featured a baby boomer looking after his mother, in the revival, it’s a millennial looking after his boomer mum – a story being played out in homes across the nation.</p>
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<p>In the 2023 Mother and Son, Maggie (Denise Scott) is a free-spirited eccentric who almost burned down the family home while cooking dinner for her grandchildren. Childless, unmarried Arthur (Matt Okine), meanwhile, is attempting to start a web business.</p>
<p>The new Mother and Son is likeable, gentle comedy. It has a diverse, multicultural cast and the writing is largely well-observed. Yet in remaking a much-loved classic comedy, the creators have set themselves an impossibly high bar: Scott and Okine, while charming, are no match for Ruth Cracknell and Garry McDonald.</p>
<p><em>– Michelle Arrow</em></p>
<h2>Ai no Sato (Love Village)</h2>
<p><em>Netflix</em></p>
<p>This year we have seen a new wave of interest in reality dating shows with older protagonists. In the US, Gerry Turner, aged 71, has <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/17/entertainment/the-golden-bachelor-gerry-turner-71-years-old-bachelor/index.html?utm_source=twCNN&utm_medium=social&utm_term=link&utm_content=2023-07-17T15%3A59%3A05">just been announced</a> as the first “Golden Bachelor”. In the UK, the upcoming show My Mum, Your Dad (<a href="https://9now.nine.com.au/my-mum-your-dad">an Australian version</a> aired in 2022) is <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-65857058">being billed as</a> “middle-aged Love Island”.</p>
<p>Perhaps the best example, though, comes from Japan. <em>Ai no Sato</em>, or Love Village, is a take on the stalwart Japanese reality dating format <em>Ainori</em> (Love Wagon). In <em>Ainori</em>, contestants travel the world in a minibus and fall in love along the way. In <em>Ai no Sato</em>, by contrast, contestants (all aged over 35) renovate a house in rural Japan together … and fall in love along the way.</p>
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<p>I love <em>Ainori</em>, but <em>Ai no Sato</em> takes things to a new level. Because its contestants are older, they have a deep well of life experience and relationship baggage, which makes for very compelling romance narratives – and, in particular, confessions of love that carry incredible emotional weight. </p>
<p>The vast majority of reality romance shows would treat a love triangle with a 60-year-old woman at its apex as jokey or gimmicky, but I defy anyone to watch this show and not be deeply hoping that Minane finds (in the show’s parlance) the last love of her life.</p>
<p>And if the romance aspect doesn’t interest you? There’s always the house renovation. This house is <em>gorgeous.</em></p>
<p><em>– Jodi McAlister</em></p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-guilty-pleasure-of-watching-trashy-tv-40214">The guilty pleasure of watching trashy TV</a>
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<h2>Unforgotten season five</h2>
<p><em>Binge (Australia) and TVNZ+</em></p>
<p>There are a lot of British crime dramas out there. You only need to look at the back catalogue of BritBox to see just how extensive it is. There are a lot of excellent series out there (Broadchurch, Happy Valley and Karen Pirie are all exceptional). There is also a lot of chaff, where the premise is more formulaic. This is perhaps why it took me so long to give Unforgotten a go. I was, however, quickly hooked and proceeded to binge the series very quickly.</p>
<p>Each season begins with the discovery of a murder that the historical crimes unit must solve, led by DCI Cassie Stuart (the wonderful Nicola Walker) and DI Sunil Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar). </p>
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<p>Initially, the subplots about miscellaneous suspects all seem unrelated and random. However, the investigation (very well plotted out) slowly pieces all these characters together. As the investigation develops, the suspects’ lives, and everyone close to them, are upended.</p>
<p>Season five sees the departure of Walker and new to the team is DCI Jessica James (Sinéad Keenan). The season’s central tension is around her gruffness and the resentment of her not being DCI Stuart, who everyone loved. DCI James must lead her team to investigate the human remains discovered up a chimney in a newly renovated London stately home, which leaves a diverse array of suspects somehow connected to the crime.</p>
<p>For those that love a gripping British crime drama, I highly recommend this series. </p>
<p><em>– Stuart Richards</em></p>
<h2>Beautiful Disaster</h2>
<p><em>Prime</em></p>
<p>If Beautiful Disaster, the new film from Cruel Intentions director Roger Kumble, had come out 20 years ago, no one would have paid it much attention. It’s an enjoyably formulaic girl-meets-boy rom-com, but it’s aesthetically drab, looking more like a telemovie (which it is) than a made-for-cinemas release. </p>
<p>However, streaming in 2023 – now the rom-com has <a href="https://junkee.com/where-did-all-the-rom-coms-go/332622">disappeared</a> as a mainstay of Hollywood cinema – there’s something refreshingly delightful about it. </p>
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<p>Abby (Virginia Gardner) leaves her father, a hopeless gambler in Las Vegas, to set out for college in Sacramento. On her first night at an underground mixed martial arts fight, she bumps into – literally – beefy brawler Travis (Dylan Sprouse, better known as the teen star of Disney’s The Suite Life of Zack & Cody). </p>
<p>At first he comes off as an arrogant jerk – not to mention Abby is sprayed with blood when he knocks out his opponent – but, as their relationship develops, his sensitivity becomes evident. </p>
<p>After many expected shenanigans, sexual and otherwise, and following run-ins with gangsters back in Vegas (to which Abby has to return to help Daddy out of a bind), the pair finish up happily ever after. </p>
<p>There is nothing unexpected here, but the charming qualities of the leads and the film’s general good humour carry it, along with cameos from TV stars who had their heyday in teen fare in the 90s and 2000s, including Brian Austin Green and Michael Cudlitz from Beverly Hills 90210, Autumn Reeser from The O.C. and Rob Estes from Melrose Place. </p>
<p>At the same time, only sometimes effectively, Beautiful Disaster thinks through questions around erotic power dynamics in a post-#MeToo era, comically centring on the kind of guilt Abby feels regarding her attraction to Travis. </p>
<p><em>– Ari Mattes</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212011/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ari Mattes, Dennis Altman, Erin Harrington, Jessica Ford, Jodi McAlister, and Stuart Richards do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Our experts bring you the best new shows, films and seasons. From comedy to reality television to crime drama, we hope you’ll find your new streaming favourite here.Dennis Altman, VC Fellow LaTrobe University, La Trobe UniversityAri Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame AustraliaErin Harrington, Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies, University of CanterburyJessica Ford, Lecturer in Media, University of AdelaideJodi McAlister, Senior Lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture, Deakin UniversityMichelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie UniversityStuart Richards, Lecturer in Screen Studies, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2119052023-08-28T20:03:59Z2023-08-28T20:03:59ZThe Mother and Son reboot has fresh things to say about adult children and their ageing parents<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/544932/original/file-20230828-27-cylx20.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=5%2C5%2C3988%2C1988&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mother and Son has long been regarded as one of Australia’s greatest sitcoms. First airing in 1984, the tale of the ageing Maggie Beare and her hapless son, Arthur, was not only very funny, but revealed the pain, frustration and love that underpinned their relationship. </p>
<p>For anyone who has cared for an ageing parent – or faced the diminution of their autonomy as they have aged – Mother and Son still strikes a nerve.</p>
<p>As Australia’s population ages, and more of us grapple with the challenges of caring for ageing relatives, it is unsurprising that Mother and Son has been revived by the ABC. As our media and entertainment industries churn out remakes, franchises and revivals, refashioning a beloved program like Mother and Son makes some sense: a large portion of the ABC’s <a href="https://tvtonight.com.au/2016/11/the-average-age-of-tv-viewers.html">ageing audience</a> will tune in, if only to complain that the remake can’t hold a candle to the original.</p>
<p>However, the revival has some fresh things to say about the fraught but loving bonds between adult children and their ageing parents in the 21st century.</p>
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<h2>The original Mother and Son</h2>
<p>Mother and Son premiered on the ABC in 1984 and ran for six seasons until 1994. Both critically acclaimed and widely loved by viewers, the series made Ruth Cracknell a beloved <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Living_Treasure_(Australia)">national treasure</a> and allowed Garry McDonald, who became famous as Norman Gunston in the 1970s, to show a different set of comic skills. </p>
<p>The show’s premise was simple: 35-year-old journalist Arthur moves in with his mum, Maggie, who is showing signs of cognitive decline – or is she? Maggie’s absent-mindedness frustrates Arthur and generates much of the comedy, but her ability to emotionally blackmail her son and get her own way balances the power in their dynamic. </p>
<p>At the time Mother and Son was first broadcast, Australian sitcoms were thin on the ground. Australian television had long succeeded in the realm of topical, satirical sketch comedy, from The Mavis Bramston Show to The Gillies Report and Fast Forward. Mother and Son represented a significant departure from the sketch comedies, soaps and serial dramas that featured on 1980s television. </p>
<p>In many ways it resembled the British sitcoms that were a staple part of the ABC’s viewing schedule, with live audiences, a single set and multiple cameras. </p>
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<h2>Ageing parents and adult children</h2>
<p>Re-watching Mother and Son, (currently <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/mother-and-son-1984">available on iView</a>), I was struck by how well it captures the complex emotions of both ageing parents and their adult children. </p>
<p>The series never shied away from Arthur’s guilt and frustration, or Maggie’s loneliness and feelings of loss. It is a resonant depiction of the often-messy emotions that come with being a carer, while not losing sight of the feelings of the person being cared for. </p>
<p>In spite of everything, Maggie and Arthur still love each other. In an early episode, after a fight, Maggie is caught shoplifting a bottle of oysters – one of Arthur’s favourite foods. She’s arrested and when Arthur arrives at the police station to take her home, he asks her why she stole the oysters. Maggie replies simply: “because I thought it would make you like me again”. </p>
<p>Cracknell’s subtle, dignified performance gave moments like these a genuine pathos. The series showcased both a complex portrayal of an older woman (a rare thing on television) and also a male carer. In a society where care of children and the elderly was (and still is) typically regarded as “women’s work”, this was significant. </p>
<h2>A new mother and son</h2>
<p>Where the original series featured a baby boomer looking after his mother, in the new series, it’s a millennial looking after his boomer mum – a story being played out in homes across the nation. </p>
<p>In the 2023 Mother and Son, Maggie (Denise Scott) is a free-spirited eccentric who almost burned down the family home while cooking dinner for her grandchildren. Childless, unmarried Arthur (Matt Okine), meanwhile, is attempting to start a web business. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/get-real-theres-more-to-ageing-than-what-you-see-on-tv-3751">Get real – there's more to ageing than what you see on TV </a>
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<p>In both series, Arthur’s return to the family home is seen as a product of his failure to establish his own family. In the revival, Arthur wants a wife and family but has neither, and spends much of his day playing computer games. This Arthur is caught in perpetual adolescence, unlike McDonald’s original character. His mercenary sister, Robbie (a gender flip from the original) wants to move their mother into aged care so they can sell her home: a very 2020s tale. </p>
<p>Scott’s Maggie has a more anarchic energy than Cracknell’s character. She is uninhibited (making her first appearance on the show naked) and rebellious: when Arthur takes her on a tour of an assisted living facility, a resident waves at her and she flips the bird in response. </p>
<p>Scott conveys the frustration experienced by older people who can no longer live independently – she is resentful about not seeing her grandchildren and angry about the ways her life is “shrinking”. Her spiky portrayal gives Maggie more agency and a likely point of connection with an older viewing audience. </p>
<p>The new Mother and Son is likeable, gentle comedy. It has a diverse, multicultural cast and the writing is largely well-observed. Yet in remaking a much-loved classic comedy, the creators have set themselves an impossibly high bar: Scott and Okine, while charming, are no match for Cracknell and McDonald. </p>
<p>While it can’t hope to match the brilliance of the original, this reimagined Mother and Son offers an sympathetic, honest portrayal of ageing parents and their harried adult children – something we don’t see enough of on our television screens.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211905/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Arrow receives funding from The Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>While it can’t hope to match the brilliance of the original, this reimagined Mother and Son offers a sympathetic, honest portrayal of ageing parents and their harried adult childrenMichelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2066682023-08-09T04:36:24Z2023-08-09T04:36:24ZThank God You’re Here is back. Its success proves Australian TV is the perfect home for improv comedy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541856/original/file-20230809-21-od1v06.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C4000%2C1994&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Improvised comedy TV show Thank God You’re Here returned last Wednesday after a 14 year hiatus, with its premiere drawing an impressive <a href="https://tvtonight.com.au/2023/08/wednesday-2-august-2023.html">684,000 viewers</a>. </p>
<p>Hosted by Celia Pacquola, the guest stars include first timers Urzila Carlson, Aaron Chen, Geraldine Hickey, Lloyd Langford, Luke McGregor and Aunty Donna’s Mark Bonanno, as well as returnees from the 2006-2009 run such as Fifi Box and Julia Zemiro. </p>
<p>The premise sees each celebrity guest costumed into a character – who is a complete surprise to them. They then enter through the infamous door into a scenario which they must play along with the core ensemble, who are also improvising but, unlike the guest, to a brief.</p>
<p>Thank God You’re Here, developed by Working Dog’s Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch, Michael Hirsh and Tom Gleisner is a “justification game” by theatre sports categorisation. It employs a similar hook to the theatre sports game <a href="http://improvencyclopedia.org/games/Actor%60s_Nightmare.html">Actor’s Nightmare</a>, where one player can only speak from the lines of a scripted play leaving everyone else in the scene, who are unaware of the text’s content, to “justify” their dialogue.</p>
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<p>Improv grew from a set of strategies for training actors to a performing art in its own right. </p>
<p>Australia’s place in the history of improvisation suggests our screens are uniquely placed for introducing wider audiences to a form that – if sometimes derided for its “cringe” or lack of diversity – promotes risk, spontaneity and genuine “liveness” at a level scripted theatre and comedy only aim to emulate.</p>
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<h2>Introduction to improv: from theatre to television</h2>
<p>The commercial success of improvised performance, peaking in the late 80s and 90s is often attributed to theatre sports. Theatre sports is credited as the brainchild of Keith Johnstone, whose 1979 book <a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Johnstone/dp/0878301178">Impro</a>, drawing on his experience as an educator and associate director at the Royal Court Theatre in London, is a mainstay of theatre studies reading lists. </p>
<p>Theatre sports is a comedy format where teams compete for points from a panel of three judges, using improv skills to create quick spontaneous scenes for the amusement of the audience. </p>
<p>Johnstone’s aim (based on his observations of pro-wrestling in Britain) was to have audiences as excited about theatre as they are about sport – for instance, booing a “block” (denying the reality set up by one’s scene partner) as enthusiastically as they would a sporting penalty.</p>
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<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2023/mar/30/keith-johnstone-obituary">Johnstone’s death</a> at age 90 in March this year was a loss to the improv world. Part of his legacy is the term “the Johnstone school”, the principles and techniques emerging from his Calgary company Loose Moose Theatre. </p>
<p>Rivalling the Johnstone school is the Chicago style, whose teachings are part of the origin story for US troupes Second City, Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade, all with their own <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2013/03/second-city-vs-groundlings-vs-ucb-where-do-the-most-snl-cast-members-come-from.html">famous alumni</a>. Chicago style can be traced to the enormous influence of American actor, educator and director <a href="https://www.violaspolin.org/">Viola Spolin</a>, who devised a series of techniques she called Theatre Games, which she wrote about in Improvisation for the Theatre (1963).</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/comedy-in-the-classroom-how-improv-can-promote-literacy-89900">Comedy in the classroom? How improv can promote literacy</a>
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<h2>Cringe and diversity</h2>
<p>Historically, the performing art of improvisation, especially improv comedy, has been dominated by white (cisgender, usually straight) men. This is well documented – <a href="https://www.theonion.com/everyone-in-improv-troupe-balding-1819573841">and parodied</a>.</p>
<p>Amy E. Seham, now a professor of theatre and dance, was a trailblazer in the critiques of improv’s homogeneity with her book <a href="https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/W/Whose-Improv-Is-It-Anyway#:%7E:text=Improv's%20influence%20is%20increasingly%20evident,mainstream%20approach%20to%20the%20genre.">Whose Improv is it Anyway?</a> (2001). </p>
<p>She interrogates “the gap between improv-comedy’s utopian philosophies and the highs and lows of [her] own experience” as a seasoned improviser navigating the sexist landscape. In the book she quotes then Australian Theatre Sports director <a href="https://www.actorscentreaustralia.com.au/staff/tutor/lyn-pierse-2/">Lyn Pierse</a>, whose female players were “railroaded by the men onstage”. </p>
<p>It’s not only sexism and misogyny that has plagued the improv scene, particularly in North America. </p>
<p>Since Seham’s book was published, former members of once lauded improv companies have spoken out about racist, sexist and ableist casting in <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-theatresports-1.5610964#:%7E:text=CBC%20News%20Loaded-,Former%20Vancouver%20TheatreSports%20performers%20call%20for%20leadership%20change%20amid%20allegations,its%20board%20members%20stepping%20down">Canada</a> and the <a href="https://lamag.com/comedy-2/la-improv-the-black-version">United States</a>.</p>
<p>As Second City and Saturday Night Live alumnus Tina Fey wrote in her memoir Bossypants, “only in comedy, by the way, does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity”. But the early announcement Pacquola would host inspired optimism for at least the gender skew of the series.</p>
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<h2>Improv down under</h2>
<p>In 2016, there was an attempted Australian version of hit US comedy show <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/nov/28/australian-whose-line-is-it-anyway-suffers-from-dated-jokes-and-too-much-ocker">Whose Line Is It Anyway?</a> – which didn’t fare as well as its UK and US counterparts. </p>
<p>According to this <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/nov/28/australian-whose-line-is-it-anyway-suffers-from-dated-jokes-and-too-much-ocker">review in the Guardian</a>, all’s fair since the US “viciously murdered” their own version of Thank God You’re Here – which was <a href="https://tvseriesfinale.com/tv-show/2007-cancelled-shows-several-nbc-cancellations/">cancelled</a> after only seven episodes.</p>
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<p>As improvisation researcher Braínne Edge wrote <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233686184_Comedy_improvisation_on_television_does_it_work">in 2014 article</a>, the US iteration suffered from “an awkward tension” between the core cast and the celebrities. </p>
<p>The lack of improv training of the celebrities saw them “effectively blocking and denying the action” – one of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmafmRIeet0">key transgressions of improv</a>.</p>
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<p>The success of the original Thank God You’re Here in Australia – and hopefully the new season too – may owe something to earlier improv training grounds in Australia. </p>
<p>In its heyday, theatre sports was embraced in both Australia and New Zealand, with high school training programs, regional and national tournaments, <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/pop-culture/26-02-2023/the-day-united-bank-gave-theatresports-a-million-dollars?fbclid=IwAR0IN-b4FTn6XomCgzDjxMutJGNtaVdlEFOj_9YHRg3zs9yA7QfQpA1BzD8">corporate sponsorship</a> and TV broadcasts. </p>
<p>The ABC aired the series <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPiZEgf4lfo">Theatre Sports</a> in 1987, and Television New Zealand broadcast each national Theatre Sports final in prime time from 1988 to 1991.</p>
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<p>According to Edge, the original Thank God You’re Here’s “key to success” is “that the Australians allow their scenes to be more fluid, less restrictive, more natural”. The premiere of the new series suggests this quality hasn’t changed. </p>
<p>When guest Aaron Chen uttered the famous line “thank god you’re here” upon entering his scene (instead of hearing it, as the premise demands), the cameras continued to roll. Later host Pacquola called back to his error, drawing comedy out of coaching him out of the habit ahead of his next entrance.</p>
<p>As Fey points out in Bossypants, “there are no mistakes, only opportunities”. For Australian comedy and the profile of improv, it might just be a case of thank god you’re back.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/206668/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stayci Taylor is affiliated with the Vancouver TheatreSports League as an alumnus, and as Artistic Director of Dunedin Improv Inc (1991) benefitted from the United Bank sponsorship of Theatre Sports in New Zealand. </span></em></p>Beloved improvised comedy TV show Thank God You’re Here is back after a 14 year hiatus, and its format still works.Stayci Taylor, Senior lecturer, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092252023-07-11T20:06:25Z2023-07-11T20:06:25ZWhat would history look like if women were the main characters? Gold Diggers gives us a very funny, refreshingly accurate answer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536723/original/file-20230711-15-hedyc9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=49%2C40%2C5402%2C3759&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the small Victorian goldfields township of Kingower in 1860, two women, <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/199601805">the “notorious” Hobart Town Annie and Tipperary Poll</a>, thrashed a man who had accused the pair of theft. </p>
<p>He was rescued by a crowd, at whom Annie and Poll began pitching bottles. </p>
<p>“Women are allowed an amount of latitude here,” concluded a contemporary newspaper report. </p>
<p>I was reminded of Hobart Town Annie and Tipperary Poll – keepers of a house “not of good repute” – when watching the new ABC series Gold Diggers. Not to sully the good names of Gold Diggers’ indomitable heroines, naturally.</p>
<p>As a screen representation of history, Gold Diggers is often refreshingly accurate.</p>
<p>Gold Diggers displays the demographically diverse population, layers of dirt and grime (women on the diggings wrote of daily struggles associated with <a href="https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/eqp282/cdi_proquest_journals_2479062710">dust and mud “up to the knees”</a>), the variety of dwellings from canvas tents and bark huts to mansions, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/mrs-morland-and-isabella-murrell-the-brutal-murder-of-a-domestic-angel-on-the-diggings-169839">potential for violence</a>, interracial relationships and the often easy vulgarity.</p>
<p>In the 19th century and into the 20th century, historians entrenched male-centred and mythologised Australian histories. But contemporary feminist historians have been challenging these notions.</p>
<p>Somewhat surprisingly, comedies like Gold Diggers may well help them with the task. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Sepia photograph: one man, a few huts." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536388/original/file-20230709-142947-x62shn.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=652&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cleared goldfields landscape of Maldon, where Gold Diggers was filmed at Porcupine Village. Thomas Hannay, High Street, Maldon, Tarrengower, 1861.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Golden girls</h2>
<p>Gold Diggers tells the story of Gert (Claire Lovering) and Marigold “Goldie” Brewer (Danielle Walker), arriving optimistic and intent on a good time to Dead Horse Gap on the diggings in 1853, apparently <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/01/magazine/on-language-on-the-lam-who-made-thee.html">on the lam</a>. This puts them among the many with <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/87983131">convict origins who flocked to the goldfields</a>, embracing the opportunity for riches and reinvention.</p>
<p>In Dead Horse Gap, Gert and Marigold think themselves the only single ladies expecting to claim a pair of well-heeled husbands (“newly minted dumb-dumbs”). </p>
<p>In reality, the sisters would have been among the boatloads of single women who travelled to the Victorian goldfields to secure a new husband and a new life.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LOXiMlEGLzw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Played as a farce (reminiscent of theatricals <a href="https://theconversation.com/emancipated-wenches-in-gaudy-jewellery-the-liberating-bling-of-the-goldfields-60449">common on the goldfields</a>) Gold Diggers is almost accidentally accurate in its extremes. </p>
<p>Gert and Goldie are seeking refinement but are helplessly attracted to the tawdry. This reflects historical depictions of women’s opposite roles on the goldfields, either <a href="https://theconversation.com/damned-whores-and-gods-police-is-still-relevant-to-australia-40-years-on-mores-the-pity-47753">helpmate or playmate</a>. In fact, most women were complicated, neither totally one of these tropes nor the other.</p>
<p>Even the seemingly absurd name of Dead Horse Gap is closely aligned with at least two 1850s goldfields, Dead Horse Flat (near Bendigo) and <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/66043295?">Dead Horse Gully</a> (near Ballarat). There is even a Dead Horse Gap, 500 km north-east of the goldfields, in Kosciuszko National Park.</p>
<p>While some historians persist in depicting the early Victorian goldfields as a predominantly masculine, transient and overtly-exuberant environment, the truth was more nuanced. </p>
<p>The goldfields attracted people of all classes, genders and nationalities. Single men, single women and newlyweds all made their way <a href="https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/eqp282/cdi_rmit_apaft_search_informit_org_doi_10_3316_informit_338797648824168">to the Victorian diggings</a>.</p>
<p>Unlike many other international rushes where men typically travelled alone from overseas, women and families were already in the colony. Established families, therefore, were able to travel on to the goldfields quickly and relatively easily.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration: women climbing onto a pier." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536386/original/file-20230709-90858-rqpqz1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Leech, Alarming Prospect. The Single Ladies Off to the Diggings, 1853.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/flashers-femmes-and-other-forgotten-figures-of-the-eureka-stockade-20939">Flashers, femmes and other forgotten figures of the Eureka Stockade</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Wife material is a heavy fabric’</h2>
<p>Gold Diggers presents an answer to a question I often return to: what would history look like if women were the main characters? </p>
<p>Much of history has been written on men, by men. <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-women-historians-smashed-the-glass-ceiling-66778">Feminist historians</a> of the goldfields are working to relocate women back into their own stories.</p>
<p>As the colonial newspaper reported of Hobart Town Annie and Tipperary Poll, women were often allowed an amount of latitude on the diggings. This formed part of its appeal for women, young and old.</p>
<p>My <a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-how-mother-of-8-mary-anne-allen-made-do-on-the-goldfields-amid-gunshots-rain-and-sly-grog-161354">own research</a> focuses on the goldfields as a domestic landscape, a place of women and home and family. In February 1852, for example, Englishwoman Mary Ann Allen travelled to the Forest Creek diggings with her husband and eight children. The youngest was aged only five. </p>
<p>Rather than stay behind with her young family in Melbourne, Mary Ann chose to be an equal participant in the adventure.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-how-mother-of-8-mary-anne-allen-made-do-on-the-goldfields-amid-gunshots-rain-and-sly-grog-161354">Hidden women of history: how mother of 8, Mary Anne Allen, made do on the goldfields amid gunshots, rain and sly grog</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Clare Wright’s powerful <a href="https://stella.org.au/prize/2014-prize/the-forgotten-rebels-of-eureka/">The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka</a> situates women as critical participants in the political, social and domestic landscape of the 1854 Eureka Stockade. In Wright’s portrayal, women are central to the action of Eureka, not helpless bystanders – much like the Brewer sisters’ determination to “rise up” to both the occasion and the situation.</p>
<p>In 1856, Englishwoman Fanny Finch, the subject of <a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-australias-first-known-female-voter-the-famous-mrs-fanny-finch-112962">Kacey Sinclair’s research</a>, was one of the first known women to vote in an Australian election. </p>
<p>Making the feat even more striking, Finch was of African heritage, a goldfields businesswoman and a single mother of four: a notable example of a diversity that is hard to trace in the archives. While much is known from the archives about the white and Chinese settlers on the goldfields, little is known about those of other backgrounds, other than the fact they were there.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-australias-first-known-female-voter-the-famous-mrs-fanny-finch-112962">Hidden women of history: Australia’s first known female voter, the famous Mrs Fanny Finch</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In Gold Diggers, Vic (Perry Mooney) and Molly (Kartanya Maynard) provide this often missing voice for women of colour on the diggings. Molly shines as the pithy activist and self-care advocate of Dead Horse Gap, admonishing the colonists to “do better”. It’s not all action, as Molly reminds Vic, “resting is resistance”.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration: men and tents in the foreground, houses in the background." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536387/original/file-20230709-17-gyrrwd.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">John Allan, Forest Creek, Mount Alexander, from Adelaide Hill, c1851.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of Victoria</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Girls like us</h2>
<p>The possibilities of reinvention and wealth attracted people from all over the globe. Subsequently, the goldfields became a microcosm of a diverse society. </p>
<p>All living cheek-by-jowl, all intent on leveraging an opportunity they may not be presented with again. All hoping – as with Gert and Goldie – they would claim a new future.</p>
<p>The Brewer sisters’ farcical, theatrical exaggerations show us enticing glimmers of an underrepresented reality.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209225/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dr Katrina Place Dernelley currently works for Heritage Victoria. Heritage Victoria was recently provided government funding to progress the World Heritage nomination for the Victorian Goldfields. The author is not associated with this project.</span></em></p>The history of the goldfields too often focuses on men – but, as new Aussie TV series Gold Diggers gets right, the settlements were filled with women.Katrina Place Dernelley, Historian and Heritage Consultant, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2084782023-06-29T20:01:47Z2023-06-29T20:01:47ZHow Deadloch flips the Nordic Noir crime genre on its arse and makes it funny<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534482/original/file-20230628-17-izgacn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C8%2C2986%2C1989&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prime Video</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>You know how it starts: a drone shot across an expanse of grey water under a leaden sky accompanied by eerie music and a sense of foreboding. Clearly someone is going to die, if they are not already dead, and a small community will be riven as its dark secrets are exposed to the pale light of a wintry Nordic day. </p>
<p>But we’re in Tasmania, and the dead body is not the violated, naked body of a young white girl, but a bloke whose tongue is missing, possibly eaten by the town’s resident seal, Kevin. </p>
<p>This is Deadloch, the fictional town that is the setting for a comedy crime drama that flips the Nordic Noir genre on its arse, so to speak.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dSUjgUjicME?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Funny Broadchurch</h2>
<p>The creators of this loving, yet savage, parody of Nordic Noir are Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney. In 2015, they launched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCGc8JKl5EvE8IjZ_qprNcQ">The Katering Show</a> on YouTube: a web series spoofing the homely genre of the cooking show that eventually found its way onto ABC iview. </p>
<p>They followed it with <a href="https://iview.abc.net.au/show/get-krack-n">Get Krack!n</a>, an attack on the genre of the cheerful but inane television breakfast show. It concluded with a <a href="https://youtu.be/B_SnLymcaZ8">memorable episode</a> in which, left in charge of the couch, Indigenous actor Miranda Tapsell berated the Australian public for their treatment of First Nations people. While it might not have been comedy, it was magnificent in its ferocity. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8UZJRR8OHhY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Deadloch (2023) continues the Kates’ take-no-prisoners assault on television’s favourite genres with a series they described as “funny Broadchurch” in their pitches to the powers that be. </p>
<p>Apparently, the <a href="https://concreteplayground.com/brisbane/arts-entertainment/the-kates-mclennan-mccartney-interview-deadloch">inspiration emerged</a> from the “explosion of Nordic Noir” they were watching while breastfeeding at in the early mornings of 2015.</p>
<p>As a warning: there’s so much “colourful vernacular” in this series that the creators had to write <a href="https://concreteplayground.com/brisbane/arts-entertainment/the-kates-mclennan-mccartney-interview-deadloch">an essay drawing on Shakespeare’s Bawdy</a> to defend their extensive use of the word “cunt” to the Amazon Prime executives. </p>
<p>Indeed, linguistically, the Kates do for “cunt” what director Martin Scorsese did for “fuck” when it comes to turning a profanity into a rhetorical gesture.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/534484/original/file-20230628-29-41qgsz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nina Oyama in Deadloch.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Prime Video</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What is Nordic Noir anyway?</h2>
<p>The impact of Nordic Noir on television production around the world has indeed been significant. British academics Richard McCulloch and William Proctor have described it as a “<a href="https://www.amazon.com.au/Scandinavian-Invasion-Nordic-Noir-Beyond/dp/1788740491">Scandinavian invasion</a>”. </p>
<p>While there are those who suggest Nordic Noir may have already passed its use by date, McCulloch and Proctor argue that the ripple effects are still being felt. Crime dramas everywhere continue to riff on the aesthetics and themes of the Scandinavian series that have captured the attention of a global niche audience. </p>
<p>Australia, it might be recalled, was one of the first countries to screen Danish crime shows including Rejeseholdet/Unit One (2000–04) and Ørnen/The Eagle (2004–06), even before Forbrydlesen/The Killing (2007-12) appeared on the SBS2 digital channel in 2010. </p>
<p>While the audiences for these shows may have been small, they included, as academics Pia Majbritt Jensen and Marion McCutcheon say in <a href="https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1535682/FULLTEXT01.pdf">their analysis</a> of the Australian audience for Nordic Noir, the “influential and trend-setting” creatives who would go on to produce new Australian crime dramas in which the traces of Nordic Noir are clearly visible. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HHRNtiKrC44?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Australian Noir</h2>
<p>Australian crime dramas with clear Nordic Noir influences have become common. This would include the political thriller Secret City based on a series of books by journalists Steve Lewis and Chris Uhlmann. </p>
<p>Produced by Matchbox pictures for Foxtel Showcase in 2016, Secret City re-imagined Canberra as the sexy setting for a Nordic Noir drama that owed as much to the Danish series Borgen as it did to The Bridge in terms of its aesthetics and style. The politics, however, were resolutely Australian, featuring Australia’s pig-in-the-middle predicament in the US-China power game. </p>
<p>And then there was The Kettering Incident, also produced for Foxtel Showcase by a Tasmanian-based team. While shades of David Lynch’s genre-bending Twin Peaks loomed, Kettering bore more than a passing resemblance to the Swedish eco-thriller Jordskott. </p>
<p>This show encompassed a blonde female protagonist returning home, the mystery of a missing girl, small town politics, environmentalism and supernatural happenings in a mystical forest – not to mention the spectacular drone shots of a misty and mountainous hinterland overlaid in blue and black tones. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2W61YtXVyDQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Flip the colour palette</h2>
<p>Not all story boards for Australian Noir are coloured Antarctic grey. The ABC Indigenous crime drama Mystery Road flipped the colour palette to orange and red in what Bunya Productions producer David Jowsey described as “tropical outback gothic noir”. </p>
<p>Mystery Road managed to retain the measured pace of Nordic Noir and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/sofia-helin-swaps-chilly-nordic-noir-for-outback-gothic-mystery-road-20200403-p54gu0.html">exquisite attention</a> to a monumental and threatened landscape, while focusing on Indigenous issues. </p>
<p>They even imported Sofia Helin, star of The Bridge, for series two as a Swedish archaeologist digging in the iron-red dirt of the Kimberley for Indigenous artefacts. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FVu6kVqj3BA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Potty-mouthed satire</h2>
<p>Which brings us back to Deadloch and the apotheosis of the Australian assimilation of Nordic Noir as a potty-mouthed satire that is also a feisty feminist take on the more usual gender politics of the crime drama. </p>
<p>Instead of a mismatched male and female cop from different cultural backgrounds, we have a couple of mismatched female detectives whose initially testy relationship gradually ameliorates as they join forces in the quest for the truth.</p>
<p>Rather than a married male detective having problems at home, we have a female detective whose lesbian wife needs constant affirmation. Replacing the sexually violated female victims naked on the autopsy table, we have dead men with missing tongues and a self-important fool of a male forensic examiner who misses all the important stuff. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/miss-fisher-and-her-fans-how-a-heroine-on-australias-small-screen-became-a-global-phenomenon-131673">Miss Fisher and her fans: how a heroine on Australia's small screen became a global phenomenon</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As in the best Nordic Noir, there appears to be a serial killer at work who is trying to send some kind of a message through the murders, but what is it? Is it personal or political – or both? </p>
<p>In the meantime, everyone in this female-centric community, from the mayorette to the members of the lesbian choir singing I Touch Myself at the Winter Feastival, is a suspect. It just couldn’t get any better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208478/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Turnbull has received funding from the Australian Research Council for two projects related to this article. LP 180100626 Valuing Web Series: Economic, Industrial, Cultural and Social Valuation, and DP 1600102510 Border Crossing: The Transnational Career of the TV Crime Drama.
</span></em></p>Deadloch is a potty-mouthed satire that is also a feisty feminist take on the more usual gender politics of the Nordic Noir crime drama.Sue Turnbull, Senior Professor of Communication and Media Studies, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047642023-05-11T23:45:12Z2023-05-11T23:45:12ZWhat BBC and Stan series Ten Pound Poms gets right – and wrong – about the British migrant experience in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525551/original/file-20230511-19-qhnxgf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=25%2C0%2C4252%2C2848&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first episode of Ten Pound Poms opens onto a bleak scene.</p>
<p>As snow falls against a grey sky in Manchester, Terry Roberts (Warren Brown) works to repair buildings damaged during the second world war. We can barely see him through the smog; the sound of hammering dominates the scene. As it gets louder, it triggers flashbacks to his time as a prisoner of war.</p>
<p>At home, his wife Annie (Faye Marsay) carefully scrapes used tea leaves into a jar, fed up with the sacrifices and depredations of post-war Britain.</p>
<p>That night, while tending to Terry – who has collapsed after another evening at the pub where he has spent their meagre income – Annie seizes on a newspaper advertisement offering her family the opportunity to “build a new life in sunny Australia” for only ten pounds.</p>
<p>Set in 1956, Ten Pound Poms, a co-production between the BBC and Stan, tells the story of British migrants as they struggle to build new lives in a distant and unknown land.</p>
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<h2>Australia’s post-war migration program</h2>
<p>Migration to Australia offers the Roberts family the promise of a fresh start, “a bright future” in a “modern” country with abundant fresh food, and a brand-new whitewashed house and family car.</p>
<p>The “Ten Pound Pom” scheme was launched in 1945 and continued into the early 1970s. It was just one of Australia’s assisted passage schemes of the post-war era. Most of the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1031461X.2018.1441608">1.5 million Britons</a> who came to Australia until 1981 were part of such a scheme. </p>
<p>Australia’s post-war migration program was driven by the imperative to “populate or perish”. The second world war had demonstrated Australia’s vulnerability to foreign invasion, and migrants were needed to fuel its burgeoning post-war industrial development and infrastructure projects.</p>
<p>But until the 1960s, the White Australia Policy was very much in place. Australia was still a British country and a proud member of the British Empire, with a preference <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us-subsite/files/immigration-history.pdf">for British migrants</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-changing-face-of-australian-immigration-14984">The changing face of Australian immigration</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>A new life?</h2>
<p>Australia offered the Roberts family an opportunity to “work hard, prosper” and own their own home. But once they arrive in Australia, their dream of a new life is dealt a blow.</p>
<p>As assisted migrants, they are sent straight to a migrant hostel camp, where they will live while earning enough to pay their own way. Their dream of “white washed houses and huge gardens” dissipates as they take their first look at the “squalor” of the Nissen huts, outdoor communal showers and drop toilets. </p>
<p>“They lied to us,” says Annie.</p>
<p>Most assisted migrants who arrived by ship ended up <a href="https://able.adelaide.edu.au/humanities/hostel-stories/publications#hostel-stories">in these camps</a>, where they could stay while they looked for work and resettled. But those who had trouble finding work stayed for many months, if not years. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525553/original/file-20230511-19-5gbe8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Shocked faces." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525553/original/file-20230511-19-5gbe8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525553/original/file-20230511-19-5gbe8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525553/original/file-20230511-19-5gbe8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525553/original/file-20230511-19-5gbe8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=395&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525553/original/file-20230511-19-5gbe8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525553/original/file-20230511-19-5gbe8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525553/original/file-20230511-19-5gbe8f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=497&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Instead of new houses and huge gardens, the migrants are sent to a hostel camp.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stan</span></span>
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<p>Terry, a qualified builder, must take any work he is offered as long as no Australians want it. His first job is digging ditches for a gas pipeline.</p>
<p>At work, he is subject to name-calling, ostracism and the threat of violence.</p>
<p>Under the scheme, migrants were obligated to stay and work in Australia for at least two years to repay their subsidised travel. After this, <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/informit.616634846242757">up to 25%</a> chose to return home.</p>
<p>The challenges faced by British migrants were shared by those from many other countries. These migrants were not only subject to the same <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/2867639">onerous visa conditions</a> and racist attitudes, but denied the privileges accorded the British: the right to vote, get an Australian passport, and receive social security benefits.</p>
<p>But in the series, these non-British migrants are used only as a backdrop. Their stories could have given us a much richer picture of hostel life. Instead they make only brief appearances, and even then, often as caricatures, such as the lazy and overly-emotional Italian, Maria (Sarah Furnari).</p>
<h2>An imperial past</h2>
<p>Ten Pound Poms is a pacy, character-driven story grounded in historical research. </p>
<p>The series is also very interested in examining the experiences of First Nations Peoples, which it does through war veteran Ron Mahoney (Rob Collins) and his community at an old mission station near the hostel.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525552/original/file-20230511-17-5ofdrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rob Collins" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525552/original/file-20230511-17-5ofdrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525552/original/file-20230511-17-5ofdrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525552/original/file-20230511-17-5ofdrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525552/original/file-20230511-17-5ofdrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=283&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525552/original/file-20230511-17-5ofdrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525552/original/file-20230511-17-5ofdrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/525552/original/file-20230511-17-5ofdrb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=355&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The series also looks at First Nations experiences.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stan</span></span>
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<p>But Ten Pound Poms gives us an idealised portrayal of the migrants’ relationship with Ron and the other Aboriginal characters. While the local Australian characters exemplify the racist attitudes of white Australia, the Roberts family’s many interactions with Aboriginal people are entirely friendly and enlightened.</p>
<p>“They’re just people,” Annie tells Terry’s racist co-worker. “They were here long before you were.”</p>
<p>The series largely skips over Britain’s role in the history of colonisation.</p>
<p>Series writer, English screenwriter and playwright Danny Brocklehurst, <a href="https://www.pressparty.com/pg/newsdesk/BBC1/view/327973/">rightly points out</a> these migrant stories are an important aspect of Australia’s past that have received little attention. But equally important is that this remembering takes account of both Britain and Australia’s imperial past.</p>
<p>Despite these flaws, Ten Pound Poms has a cast of characters you’ll want to follow to the end. It will especially appeal to the many British migrants – both “back home” and in Australia – who will see their own family histories reflected in these characters.</p>
<p><em>Ten Pound Poms is on Stan and the BBC from Sunday.</em></p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/at-times-devastating-always-powerful-new-sbs-drama-safe-home-looks-at-domestic-violence-with-nuance-integrity-and-care-204910">At times devastating, always powerful: new SBS drama Safe Home looks at domestic violence with nuance, integrity and care</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204764/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carmel Pascale does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This Australian/UK coproduction tells a story which has received too little attention – but it overlooks some of the more difficult parts of Australia’s migrant history.Carmel Pascale, Visiting Research Fellow, School of Humanities, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2051152023-05-09T04:12:29Z2023-05-09T04:12:29ZHow Alone Australia can help us understand and appreciate our place in nature<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/525007/original/file-20230509-258589-gz6i5l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1213%2C811&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alone Australia/SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>More than a million Australians have tuned in to <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/alone-australia">Alone Australia</a>, SBS’s <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/aboutus/alone-australia-cements-its-place-as-breakout-hit-new-tv-show-of-2023">highest-rating series</a> for 2023 to date. What is it about this program that’s got us so hooked? And what can it tell us about our own relationships with nature? </p>
<p>The series started with ten contestants dropped off in a remote area of lutruwita/Tasmania. The aim is to survive alone for as long as possible. Each contestant is relying on their ability to find food, create adequate shelter and contend with isolation from people. </p>
<p>Each contestant’s experiences have been shaped, in part, by their unique relationship with nature. We all value and experience nature in different ways. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/apr/19/alone-australia-brings-out-the-armchair-experts-i-should-know-im-on-it">armchair experts</a> watching from home, we may reflect on how we would act if we had to survive alone in a remote place. How might our own relationship with nature shape our actions? </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/alone-australia-contestants-are-grappling-with-isolation-and-setbacks-heres-what-makes-a-winner-204264">Alone Australia contestants are grappling with isolation and setbacks. Here's what makes a winner</a>
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<h2>Nature is everywhere</h2>
<p>Watching Alone Australia may generate the sense that nature, and nature experiences, happen “out there” away from urban places and other people. This narrative has been fuelled by media, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/our-planet-is-billed-as-an-attenborough-documentary-with-a-difference-but-it-shies-away-from-uncomfortable-truths-114889">David Attenborough’s awe-inspiring nature documentaries</a>, which paint nature and humans as separate. While this kind of media can inspire fascination with nature, it can be damaging if it perpetuates an idea that <a href="https://theconversation.com/humanity-and-nature-are-not-separate-we-must-see-them-as-one-to-fix-the-climate-crisis-122110">humans are separate from nature</a>. </p>
<p>Nature is all around us, including in our cities. Indeed, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/geb.12404">one-third</a> of Australia’s threatened species live in cities. </p>
<p>This means that what urban residents (that’s most of us) actually do is important for helping nature to survive and thrive. And there are many <a href="https://theconversation.com/nature-is-in-crisis-here-are-10-easy-ways-you-can-make-a-difference-202855">easy things we can do</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/nature-is-in-crisis-here-are-10-easy-ways-you-can-make-a-difference-202855">Nature is in crisis. Here are 10 easy ways you can make a difference</a>
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<h2>We shape nature, and nature shapes us</h2>
<p>Your relationship with nature is part of your identity. This relationship is shaped by values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. It’s personal and it’s cultural. </p>
<p>Alone Australia demonstrates how humans value nature in different ways. The show helps us widen our view of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-01980-7_2">valuing nature</a> from what it provides for us (instrumental/utilitarian values) to seeing beauty and worth in nature itself (intrinsic values). </p>
<p>Some contestants value nature from an even broader perspective (<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.11.003">relational values</a>) as they reveal their deep, caring, reciprocal and even spiritual relationship with the natural world. </p>
<p>Previous overseas seasons of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4803766/">Alone</a> have highlighted <a href="https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/pdf/S0169-5347(16)00050-1.pdf">utilitarian</a> nature relationships, with most contestants being white male survivalists. This season, the first in Australia, includes people from different cultures and genders, including First Nations peoples. This has highlighted different types of human-nature relationships, including spiritual and nature-as-kin relationships. </p>
<p>Experiences in nature early in life shape these relationships. In their “flashback” footage, several contestants express gratitude to their parents for early experiences of nature. </p>
<p>For those of us with children, this might inspire us to help shape our child’s “nature identity”. Meaningful <a href="https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pan3.10128">nature experiences</a> can include looking after nature (gardening, indoor plants), bushwalks, visiting botanical gardens, or getting up close and personal with wildlife at your local zoo. </p>
<h2>Nature as medicine</h2>
<p>Being in nature is good for us. It might seem like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/alone-australia-contestants-are-grappling-with-isolation-and-setbacks-heres-what-makes-a-winner-204264">moments of awe</a> and self-discovery in nature that we have seen Alone Australia contestants experience can only happen in these “out there” places. But these experiences can happen anywhere - if we seek them out. </p>
<p>This will be apparent to many of us who sought solace in nature <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ufug.2023.127895">during COVID lockdowns</a>. Connecting with nature, <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-for-wellbeing-science-tells-us-how-to-design-urban-spaces-that-heal-us-82437">including in urban places</a>, can help people <a href="https://theconversation.com/1-in-4-australians-is-lonely-quality-green-spaces-in-our-cities-offer-a-solution-188007">feel less lonely</a> and support their wellbeing in many ways. </p>
<p>For two Alone Australia contestants, in particular, their experiences of post-traumatic stress disorder (Chris) and the loss of a child (Gina) have been harrowing. Both describe how nature provides them with solace and healing. </p>
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<p>For several contestants, craving connection with people was the reason to head home. Others seek <a href="https://theconversation.com/empathy-in-conservation-is-hotly-debated-still-the-world-needs-more-stories-like-my-octopus-teacher-149975">kinship with nature</a>. For example, ecologist Kate befriends her local possum family and Gina delights in regular visits by a platypus. </p>
<p>For First Nations man Duane, the experience strengthened his connection to Country, but experiencing that connection with family was critical:</p>
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<p>It’s about oneness with nature, but sharing it collectively – kindness, actions towards others, not being alone out there. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-alone-australia-tells-us-about-fear-and-why-we-need-it-203399">What Alone Australia tells us about fear, and why we need it</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Learning about nature</h2>
<p>TV nature content like Alone Australia is educational. As the remaining contestants find food and other resources, we learn about plant and animal species and their use by the palawa people, the Traditional Custodians of the land. </p>
<p>This might prompt viewers to find out more about the plants and animals in their own local environments. Indeed, recent renewed interest in urban foraging has been <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-foraging-and-gathering-are-food-for-the-soul-109044">touted as cementing our connections to place</a> and sense of belonging. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/CrsCGhytzRC","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>We need nature, and nature needs us</h2>
<p>Alone Australia highlights our complete interdependence with nature. Ultimately, everything we need for survival, including clean water, shelter and food, is derived from nature, even when we live in a city. The “successes” of the contestants are determined by their ability to understand their relationship to the land and how to meet their basic survival needs. </p>
<p>If we broaden our view of nature and see ourselves as interwoven in nature’s rich tapestry, as many of the contestants do, we can gain more than basic survival. We can improve our wellbeing while feeling kinship with the more-than-human, and a sense of responsibility to care for it. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/nature-is-in-crisis-here-are-10-easy-ways-you-can-make-a-difference-202855">Nature is in crisis</a>, and that matters for all of us. </p>
<p>People who feel connected to nature are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.101323">more likely to protect it</a>. If TV nature content such as Alone Australia encourages us to reflect on our relationship with nature and seek meaningful moments with nature and nature knowledge, then perhaps it might lead us to strengthen our environmental identities and act as nature stewards. And that’s a great outcome for people and the planet.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205115/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lily van Eeden receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action. She is affiliated with Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash University), and ICON Science (RMIT University). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christina Renowden receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action. She is affiliated with Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research and BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash University). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fern Hames receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA). She is affiliated with the Arthur Rylah Institute for Enviromental Research in DEECA, and Monash University. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Lee receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment, and Climate Action. She is affiliated with Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research and the University of Melbourne.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melissa Hatty receives funding from the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) and the NSW Office of Energy and Climate Change through her affiliation with BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash University). She has previously received funding from DEECA, the Biodiversity Council, Melbourne Water, and WWF Australia.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Bekessy receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Ian Potter Foundation and the European Commission. Research cited in this article was undertaken by the Threatened Species Recovery Hub with funding from the Australian Government's National Environmental Science Program (Phase 1) and the Victorian Department of Land, Water, Environment and Planning. She is a Lead Councillor of the Biodiversity Council, a Board Member of Bush Heritage Australia, a member of WWF's Eminent Scientists Group and a member of the Advisory Group for Wood for Good.</span></em></p>The contestants’ relationships with nature clearly shape their actions. As armchair experts, each of us may reflect on our own relationship with nature and how we would act in the same situation.Lily van Eeden, Research fellow, Monash UniversityChristina Renowden, PhD candidate, Monash UniversityFern Hames, Director, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental ResearchKate Lee, Program Coordinator, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental ResearchMelissa Hatty, Research Fellow, BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash UniversitySarah Bekessy, Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning, Leader, Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group (ICON Science), RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2033992023-04-25T20:01:08Z2023-04-25T20:01:08ZWhat Alone Australia tells us about fear, and why we need it<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27371519/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_4_nm_1_q_Alone%2520Austr">Alone Australia</a> follows individuals having an extreme adventure in wild Tasmania. From one perspective this seems like a foolish thing to do – participants must be crazy or fearless. Why else would anyone choose to be uncomfortable, alone and without a supermarket for weeks? </p>
<p>Based on the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4803766/">US reality TV show</a> of the same name, participants are dropped off in remote Tasmania where they need to survive alone. The contestants film themselves throughout the ordeal with the person who remains the longest in the wilderness winning A$250,000.</p>
<p>The contestants have to overcome many obstacles: basic survival, isolation and loneliness and extreme fear. The <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/extreme-athletes-risk-taking">traditional notion</a> is that people who look for extreme opportunities in nature either feel “no fear” or have an inappropriate relationship to it. Participants doing <a href="http://theconversation.com/finke-film-review-riders-daring-to-fly-in-a-crazy-desert-race-126597">similar extreme activities</a> in nature have been most commonly explored from a negative perspective – for example, focusing on the “need to take unnecessary risks”, or the desire to prove themselves by battling against nature. </p>
<p>While participants in Alone Australia do have a “get out” plan, it is very easy for a serious accident to happen and for participants to be gripped by the fear of that likelihood. For example, contestants in the show voiced concerns about embedding an axe in a limb or being trapped by a large falling branch or being stuck in a deep muddy bog. </p>
<p>Supposedly, adventurers are driven by a <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Phenomenology-and-the-Extreme-Sport-Experience/Brymer-Schweitzer/p/book/9780367374501">pathological relationship with fear</a> resulting from a personality disorder, yet these conjectures have never been scientifically substantiated. </p>
<p>Fear is seen as something that should be avoided, yet should this be so? Perhaps as the late president Roosevelt noted – paraphrasing the French philosopher Montaigne – we “have nothing to fear but fear itself”. </p>
<p><a href="https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-2018/january-2018/adventure-important-part-being-human">Research</a> with people who actively search out extreme activities suggests other motives. Alone Australia shows us fear is more nuanced, and positive than assumed. </p>
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<h2>Fear as a messenger and guide</h2>
<p>Like other emotions, fear tends to ebb and flow. Rather than remaining at the same level of intensity at all times, it depends on both internal and external factors and relates to fluctuating levels of danger.</p>
<p>Essentially, knowing when a venture would be too dangerous to attempt or continue, requires deep self knowledge about one’s strengths and limitations as well as extensive experiential knowledge of the environment. This does not come from a mindset whereby one is in competition with nature, but from being attuned to nature. </p>
<p>An important function of intuition is to <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Adventure-Psychology-Going-Knowingly-into-the-Unknown/Reid-Brymer/p/book/9781032003047">detect danger</a>. This can be felt through the body, where a response and systematic preparation for action originate before the intellect has a chance to ascertain the source of the danger and its various attributes such as immediacy, degree or complexity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522489/original/file-20230424-16-q0jxhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522489/original/file-20230424-16-q0jxhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/522489/original/file-20230424-16-q0jxhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522489/original/file-20230424-16-q0jxhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522489/original/file-20230424-16-q0jxhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522489/original/file-20230424-16-q0jxhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522489/original/file-20230424-16-q0jxhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/522489/original/file-20230424-16-q0jxhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gina, an Alone Australia contestant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Intuition, like any other sense, triggers bodily responses to fear before clear factual data is brought into cognitive awareness. The intuitive bodily movements that occur in response to danger are partly what affords an extraordinarily rapid response when there is perhaps only a fraction of a second available to mitigate or avoid catastrophic danger. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/adrenaline-zen-what-normal-people-can-learn-from-extreme-sports-72944">Adrenaline zen: what 'normal people' can learn from extreme sports</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Fear is pragmatic</h2>
<p>Aside from being a source of rapid information relay, fear has the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3595162/">pragmatic function</a> of integrating senses, thoughts and actions, so that dangers can be addressed immediately.</p>
<p>Fear is a force which demands a sharpened focus of attention toward the source of danger in preparation for action, such as escaping.</p>
<p>Fear is a reliable messenger between the senses and the cognitive faculties. The realisation of danger, such as tree branches falling on an Alone Australia contestant’s head, hypothermia, the need for food and effective shelter, or even the onset of severe illness, require a rapid shift in focus toward the danger, with all other concerns immediately falling by the wayside.</p>
<p>If the environmental information contained in fear were forced to “queue up and wait its turn”, before it could finally arrive into cognitive awareness, the window of opportunity in which the danger could have otherwise been effectively evaluated and addressed could have already passed. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iLvE5QmDNd8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Fear as a guide</h2>
<p>Fear is a benevolent force or guide which is often felt in the context of <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/extreme-athletes-risk-taking">high adventure</a>. </p>
<p>The information contained in fear is information used to make wise decisions under extremely dangerous and uncertain conditions. An intimate and harmonious relationship with fear brings vital information relating to danger into conscious awareness more quickly than any other means. The nature of fear is to instantly ignite the power of the body and the mind simultaneously, so that there is no delay in executing responses to danger. </p>
<p>In adventurism, fear is a friend, an essential companion, not something to fear. In Alone Australia, accepting fear as something useful and necessary is essential for survival.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203399/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eric Brymer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In Alone Australia accepting fear as something useful and necessary is essential for survival.Eric Brymer, Chartered Psychologist, Southern Cross UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2022352023-03-28T19:21:28Z2023-03-28T19:21:28ZGreen juice, microdosing, cupping and … cocaine? Netflix’s Wellmania takes a humorous dive into the heady world of wellness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517352/original/file-20230324-18-yvhf0j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C0%2C5475%2C3087&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Wellmania, Netflix.</em></p>
<p>What does it mean to be well? Wellmania, inspired by Brigid Delaney’s <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/34451942">book of the same name</a>, attempts to answer this question. </p>
<p>Liv (Celeste Barber) is stranded in Australia after losing her green card, desperate to return to her job in the United States. After failing the necessary medical exam to apply for a new card, Liv embarks on a journey to “get well”. </p>
<p>And she’s going to do it in four weeks.</p>
<p>The show dives into the world of overconsumption of all kinds: food, drugs, sex and, eventually, wellness. Wellmania is a show where a glass of orange juice can’t be presented without a comment about the vitamin C content. </p>
<p>Liv’s health (or apparent lack thereof) is never presented in terms of her weight; instead, her “have it all” lifestyle is constantly critiqued by her friends and family. </p>
<p>You cannot, it turns out, have it all – if the all is a functioning career, family life, and copious amounts of cocaine and alcohol. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/69ZfDTpeBTA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the eight episodes of this mini-series, Liv encounters all manner of wellness tropes, from green juices to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2018/09/05/gwyneth-paltrows-goop-touted-benefits-putting-jade-egg-your-vagina-now-it-must-pay/">vaginal crystal eggs</a>. We are taken on a journey with her to cupping massages, watching intensely attractive people glistening on exercise bikes, to a nude session with a sex therapist. </p>
<p>Her journey is never presented as the clean, soft and beautiful acts of wellness we see on our Instagram feeds. Instead, it is hilarious, sweaty, vomit-covered, and has fallen so far off the wagon we are left wondering if she ever actually got on. </p>
<p>In the words of Liv: “Fuck diet, fuck exercise. All I need to do is starve myself and have my colon rinsed out.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517533/original/file-20230327-28-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a gym, upside down in a harness." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517533/original/file-20230327-28-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517533/original/file-20230327-28-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517533/original/file-20230327-28-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517533/original/file-20230327-28-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517533/original/file-20230327-28-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517533/original/file-20230327-28-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517533/original/file-20230327-28-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Quick fixes for our health don’t exist.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wellmania shows us in no uncertain terms that while many of us crave quick fixes for our health, no such thing exists. It is quickly apparent Liv’s wellness extends beyond what she puts in her body (or up her nose). We see a complex relationship between friends, family and coming home. </p>
<p>This is, of course, coupled with all the humour of returning home and turning into an adolescent version of yourself when you are around your adult sibling. There is nothing quite like being 39 and flipping off your younger brother behind your mum’s back.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/marketing-not-medicine-gwyneth-paltrows-the-goop-lab-whitewashes-traditional-health-therapies-for-profit-130287">Marketing, not medicine: Gwyneth Paltrow’s The Goop Lab whitewashes traditional health therapies for profit</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What we mean when we talk about wellness</h2>
<p>Wellness is a part of our everyday vernacular. We see it on our Instagram feeds, in news headlines and in a recent <a href="https://webpublisherpro.com/is-health-and-wellness-content-the-next-big-trend-in-publishing/">trend in publishing</a>. </p>
<p>Self-help books, <a href="https://theconversation.com/keto-diet-a-dietitian-on-what-you-need-to-know-99867">keto diets</a>, green juices and ways to “get well” are promoted everywhere. </p>
<p>Wellness meant something distinctly different when the word first became commonplace. The history of the word wellness dates back to 1961, with medical doctor Halbert Dunn’s book <a href="http://www.connectedandthriving.org/documents/DunnHLW.pdf">High Level Wellness</a>. </p>
<p>Dunn’s definition of wellness relies on an individual’s ability to function to their maximum potential physically, mentally and emotionally. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517535/original/file-20230327-14-npvplr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in a robe at a spa." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517535/original/file-20230327-14-npvplr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517535/original/file-20230327-14-npvplr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517535/original/file-20230327-14-npvplr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517535/original/file-20230327-14-npvplr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517535/original/file-20230327-14-npvplr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517535/original/file-20230327-14-npvplr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517535/original/file-20230327-14-npvplr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Today, ‘wellness’ is a multi-billion dollar industry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Dunn’s work inspired physician John W. Travis to create the world’s first wellness centre. Travis believed health is not the absence of disease, but an “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAorj2U7PR4">ongoing dynamic state of growth</a>”.</p>
<p>His centre did not claim to treat or diagnose patients, but to help them understand <em>why</em> they are sick.</p>
<p>Since then, wellness has transformed from an ideology of self-examination used to describe relaxation, meditation and managed nutrition, to its current medicalisation alleged to treat health issues. Today, wellness is an unregulated word. With the popularisation of social media platforms and the commodification of bodies and health, wellness can be bought and sold online.</p>
<p>In Wellmania, we see Liv enter multiple wellness spaces. </p>
<p>Some of these spaces endeavour to help Liv understand her mind and body, like her very concerned and unbelievably patient GP. Others indirectly assist Liv to explore her past and relationship with her body: she hitchhikes to Canberra with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/death-doulas-can-fill-care-gaps-at-the-end-of-life-105743">death doula</a>; she sees a tarot card reader while <a href="https://theconversation.com/could-microdosing-be-as-good-as-yoga-for-your-mood-its-not-that-big-a-stretch-157891">microdosing on LSD</a>.</p>
<p>It’s not all health and wellness. The show includes a significant amount of drug use and shows the dangers and dark side of the wellness industry, and of Liv. Liv’s self-destructive behaviour is mixed in a dangerous cocktail with fasting, <a href="https://theconversation.com/cupping-at-the-olympics-what-is-it-and-why-do-athletes-use-it-63729">bloodletting cupping</a> and an inability to confront the past.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/could-microdosing-be-as-good-as-yoga-for-your-mood-its-not-that-big-a-stretch-157891">Could microdosing be as good as yoga for your mood? It's not that big a stretch</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A holistic journey</h2>
<p>Health is not linear. A consistent theme running through wellness discourse for the past 60 years is that to be completely well requires a holistic approach – not holistic as in the bastardisation of the word by the <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/consumer-packaged-goods/our-insights/still-feeling-good-the-us-wellness-market-continues-to-boom">multibillion-dollar industry</a> of juice cleanses and essential oils, but holistic as in the sense of the whole body. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517538/original/file-20230327-14-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Two women running near a beach." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517538/original/file-20230327-14-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517538/original/file-20230327-14-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517538/original/file-20230327-14-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517538/original/file-20230327-14-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517538/original/file-20230327-14-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517538/original/file-20230327-14-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517538/original/file-20230327-14-90i7il.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Wellness is about the whole body – not just your physical self.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Netflix</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Wellness is the physical body, yes, but also emotional, mental, sexual and spiritual health. Each episode of Wellmania shows us this, woven throughout a story of family, home, flourishing careers and the downfalls of them all. </p>
<p>Alongside its wonderful, crude humour (necessary in a show featuring colonics), Wellmania unexpectedly tells the story of grief and how uniquely it penetrates and devastates our bodies. </p>
<p>This series shows us one woman’s world of wellness. But, more than that, it reminds us how closely wellness is tied to our lives, bodies and loved ones, and the consequences of being unwell. </p>
<p><em>Wellmania is on Netflix from today.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edith Jennifer Hill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Wellmania, staring Celeste Barber and inspired by Brigid Delaney’s book, asks: what does it mean to be well?Edith Jennifer Hill, Associate lecturer, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2023542023-03-28T00:31:23Z2023-03-28T00:31:23ZThe ABC’s In Our Blood shines a light on lesbian activism during the AIDS crisis – but there’s more to their story<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517581/original/file-20230327-14-y6a0wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C5%2C3982%2C2652&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent ABC mini-series, In Our Blood, offers a fictionalised account of Australia’s response to AIDS, focusing on the development of a <a href="https://unsw.press/books/learning-to-trust/">partnership</a> between impacted communities, health professionals and government. </p>
<p>Lesbians are placed at the centre of this narrative, but more needs to be done to ensure these representations capture the complex histories of AIDS <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/information-activism">information activism</a> in Australia.</p>
<p>The series features two lesbian characters: activist Deb (Jada Alberts) and high-school teacher Mish (Anna McGahan). Deb and Mish are shown attending activist rallies, speaking up in meetings with government representatives, transforming their home into an office for AIDS activists, and caring for people living with HIV.</p>
<p>Their inclusion serves to historicise lesbians’ immense contribution to Australian AIDS activist movements – but it perpetuates a well-established trope of the “altruistic” <a href="https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/the-fabric-of-resistance-care-domestic-objects-and-hiv-self-narra">lesbian carer and advocate</a>. </p>
<p>In this re-telling, we risk forgetting that lesbians also protested their own exclusion from epidemiological, medical and public health information about AIDS.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6F70kankd6Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Are lesbians at risk of HIV?</h2>
<p>The answer is complicated. </p>
<p>While sex between cisgender women is thought to be low risk, several studies suggest that <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(87)93071-6/fulltext">transmission is possible</a>. </p>
<p>It is, however, important to understand how HIV risk transmission hierarchies can render lesbian and queer women invisible in our surveillance data. </p>
<p>When a person is diagnosed with HIV, risk transmission hierarchies are used to record their most probable source of exposure to the virus. <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14680777.2020.1837907">In Australia</a>, these risk hierarchies have never recognised female-to-female sex as a potential route for HIV transmission.</p>
<p>This means, for example, that if a woman reports having sex with both men and women, her exposure to the virus is recorded as “heterosexual contact”. If she has never had sex with a man but uses injecting drugs, her exposure is recorded as “injecting drug use”. And if she has never had sex with a man or used injecting drugs, her exposure is recorded as “undetermined”.</p>
<p>Yet, even if we understand sex between cisgender women as low risk, lesbians are not a homogenous group. Some lesbians use injecting drugs, have sex with men or could become infected with HIV through another source of transmission. </p>
<p>But for these lesbians to be included in HIV surveillance data, their sexual identities <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13691058.2012.738430">must be obscured</a>.</p>
<p>Because of this, we have no way of knowing how many lesbian and queer women are living with HIV or have died from AIDS-related illness in Australia. Although, anecdotally, we do know that <a href="https://www.positivelife.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/plnsw-talkabout-46.pdf">four of the first seven</a> women diagnosed with HIV were lesbians.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517814/original/file-20230327-26-7xlsk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517814/original/file-20230327-26-7xlsk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517814/original/file-20230327-26-7xlsk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517814/original/file-20230327-26-7xlsk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517814/original/file-20230327-26-7xlsk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=837&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517814/original/file-20230327-26-7xlsk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517814/original/file-20230327-26-7xlsk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517814/original/file-20230327-26-7xlsk0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1052&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Part of the safe-sex campaign during the 1980s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Act Up Melbourne</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Untold histories of lesbian AIDS activism</h2>
<p>Since the 1980s, when In Our Blood takes place, lesbians have advocated for their inclusion in Australia’s public health, medical and epidemiological response to AIDS. </p>
<p>Much lesbian AIDS activism occurred from within Australian AIDS organisations, such as the AIDS Council of New South Wales (now known as ACON). In 1988, ACON’s Women and AIDS Working Group produced the organisation’s first lesbian information pack, entitled <a href="https://www.positivelife.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/plnsw-talkabout-46.pdf">Sapph Sex</a> – its title a pun on safe and sapphic sex.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517813/original/file-20230327-28-e21gsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517813/original/file-20230327-28-e21gsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517813/original/file-20230327-28-e21gsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517813/original/file-20230327-28-e21gsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517813/original/file-20230327-28-e21gsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517813/original/file-20230327-28-e21gsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517813/original/file-20230327-28-e21gsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517813/original/file-20230327-28-e21gsy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=734&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">ACON’s Women and AIDS Working Group produced the organisation’s first lesbian information pack.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ACON</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Outside the context of Australian AIDS organisations, activists used lesbian magazines to produce, debate and circulate lesbian-specific information about HIV. Lesbian magazines published articles <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-881421990/view?partId=nla.obj-881436490#page/n5/mode/1up">contesting the dominant assumption</a> that lesbians were “immune” to HIV, and provided a platform for HIV-positive lesbians to write on their experiences. </p>
<p>Readers of Australia’s largest lesbian magazine, Lesbians on the Loose, were also encouraged to write in to the magazine’s resident doctor, Doctor on the Loose, to request guidance on a range of health-related concerns.</p>
<p>During the height of the epidemic, Doctor on the Loose provided readers with advice on the risks associated with specific practices: sex, injecting drug use, sperm donation, and blood sharing rituals. In their responses, Doctor on the Loose worked to dispel <a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-884067310/view?partId=nla.obj-884070012">common misunderstandings</a> about HIV transmission:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>you can’t catch it from toilet seats, sharing food, sharing joints, shaking hands or kissing (there is no evidence that tongue kissing passes on HIV).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>HIV-positive lesbians were, of course, at the forefront of these activist endeavours. One such lesbian was Jennifer Websdale. As one of the first seven women diagnosed with HIV in Australia, she was committed to ensuring lesbians were visible as a distinct population in the global AIDS epidemic. </p>
<p>In 1991, Websdale received funding to attend the Ninth National AIDS/HIV Forum in New Orleans. When she returned to Australia, she coined the term “<a href="https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-888349986/view?partId=nla.obj-888383459#page/n11/mode/1up">cuntaphobia</a>” to describe the complex intersections of sexism and homophobia that work to silence HIV-positive lesbians in wider conversations about HIV.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517819/original/file-20230327-26-7u5zkr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517819/original/file-20230327-26-7u5zkr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/517819/original/file-20230327-26-7u5zkr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517819/original/file-20230327-26-7u5zkr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517819/original/file-20230327-26-7u5zkr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=717&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517819/original/file-20230327-26-7u5zkr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517819/original/file-20230327-26-7u5zkr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/517819/original/file-20230327-26-7u5zkr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=901&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">AIDs campaigning in Australia 1985.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ACON</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Websdale died from AIDS-related illness in 1994 at the age of 33. Three decades on, her activism retains an enduring relevance. </p>
<p>As we move toward <a href="https://www.afao.org.au/our-work/agenda-2025/">ending HIV</a> in Australia, it is imperative for us to interrogate how our ingrained re-tellings of the Australian AIDS epidemic foreground some histories, and marginalise others. </p>
<p>After all, the project of ending HIV will require us to ensure that HIV prevention, testing and treatment information and services are available to all Australians – including lesbian and queer women.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/202354/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Manlik received funding from a Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship while undertaking this research.</span></em></p>The ABC mini-series, In Our Blood, offers a fictionalised account of Australia’s response to AIDS – but more can be done to remember lesbians’ immense contribution to AIDS activist movements.Kate Manlik, Casual Academic and PhD Candidate, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1987572023-01-30T05:11:08Z2023-01-30T05:11:08ZStreaming platforms will soon be required to invest more in Australian TV and films, which could be good news for our screen sector<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506960/original/file-20230130-20-7k736.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=653%2C40%2C6056%2C3772&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Unsplash</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+ will soon face <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-01-29/streaming-giants-to-be-required-to-make-australian-films-and-tv-/101904938__;!!NVzLfOphnbDXSw!F2MahbT73qHA-8aM7lbbOK1ek-WfrKbvD_oZ4_2t0v7yyELgtqsRrDkjyAEZzsRBpm456UdnhrXEWtTrGhz-uKzcVHogylHToQgIIkOr$">regulations</a> to invest in Australian content, as Australian regulations catch up to other world players. </p>
<p>Nearly eight years since the launch of Netflix in Australia in 2015, redressing the “regulatory gap” between unregulated streaming platforms and regulated traditional television is front-of-mind for Arts Minister Tony Burke. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1619480812617109504"}"></div></p>
<h2>Streaming regulations in Australia</h2>
<p>Announced as part of the Labor Party’s new <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/national-cultural-policy">National Cultural Policy</a>, a 6-month consultation period will commence looking at the shape and intensity of new streaming regulations. The implementation deadline for the new streaming regulations will be no later than 1 July, 2024.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1619862385434435584"}"></div></p>
<p>The regulation is shaping up as a revenue levy, where a percentage of a streaming platform’s Australian-derived revenues will be required to be spent on local television and films. Existing television regulations in Australia include the transmission quota of 55% local content on commercial free-to-air television, and the 10% expenditure requirement on pay-TV drama content. A revenue levy would be a new policy mechanism in Australia’s television regulation arsenal. </p>
<p>There is a particular urgency to regulating local content on streaming platforms for the government – in 2020-21, Australians for the first time were <a href="https://mozo.com.au/broadband/articles/streaming-services-overtake-free-to-air-tv-for-first-time-in-australia">more likely to watch online video than traditional television</a>. Major American streaming platforms now dominate the viewing landscape, with Netflix a mass service in Australia <a href="https://academic.oup.com/joc/article/72/4/511/6605780?searchresult=1">reaching over 50% of television households</a>. </p>
<p>The government is concerned with the growth of online video that lacks cultural regulation, and fears this, combined with the prominence of American platforms, could contribute to a <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/file/14954/download?token=cdYDZfD-">“drowning out” of Australian voices and stories</a>. Regulating local content on streaming platforms is a way to underpin Australian cultural identity, to ensure Australians will continue to see themselves reflected onscreen, and to support the screen sector with jobs and investment.</p>
<p>Some industry stakeholders like Screen Producers Australia are on record arguing strongly for a <a href="https://assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/89c218af-4a5a-00a2-9d83-3913048b3bc7/644b0e79-24c9-421b-9e07-296c51f0e4b9/20220422%20-%20SPA%20submission%20Services%20Investment%20Scheme.pdf">high revenue levy</a> of 20%. There are estimates a levy of 20% would result in around <a href="https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/streamers-forced-to-inject-500m-into-aussie-tv-and-film-industry/news-story/f3964e5adf8ed1d2bebaf59ce02848a8?amp&nk=de7057d8033e38b9f4e578175f046b97-1674947283">$500 million a year alongside 10,000 jobs</a> in the screen sector. </p>
<p>However, some experts have warned such a high levy on local and global platforms could <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-local-content-rules-on-streamers-could-seriously-backfire-157233">backfire</a> and reduce the competitive edge domestic service Stan might have with Australian content. If every service is required to invest in Australian content, there is less to distinguish Stan’s place in the sector. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-local-content-rules-on-streamers-could-seriously-backfire-157233">How local content rules on streamers could seriously backfire</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Opposition to the new regulation</h2>
<p>Unsurprisingly, the major streaming platforms have previously expressed their opposition to new regulation, believing their current levels of investment in Australia are sufficient. The Australian Communications and Media Authority <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/spending-subscription-video-demand-providers-2021-22-financial-year">reported</a> Australian content expenditure from five major platforms at $335.1 million in the 2021-22 financial year. </p>
<p>While lobbying against new regulations, the streaming platforms have also been planning ahead for potential obligations. <a href="https://theconversation.com/amazons-resuscitation-of-neighbours-can-aussie-tv-become-good-friends-with-streaming-195101">Amazon’s revival of Neighbours</a> for instance would be a big help towards meeting future Australian content obligations. </p>
<p>The government has not been drawn on what percentage a revenue levy would be set at – that’s what the consultation period is for, they say. Nonetheless, no figure has been ruled out either.</p>
<h2>Streaming regulations around the world</h2>
<p>Some countries around the world have much more advanced regulatory frameworks than Australia for regulating streaming platforms. There are important lessons to impart from these countries, both in terms of seeing what sort of regulation is possible, but also understanding the pitfalls of potential regulation.</p>
<p>The European Union is widely considered the global leader in the regulation of digital platforms. The EU legislated a 30% catalogue quota for European works on streaming platforms in 2018 under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, which was intended to come into force in 2021. However, several EU member states were slow in <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-95220-4_10">implementing</a> this. </p>
<p>The catalogue quota considers the overall size of a streaming library and requires that 30% of these titles are European. For example, the <a href="https://academic.oup.com/joc/article/72/4/511/6605780?searchresult=1">average Netflix library</a> in major markets was around 5,300 movies and TV shows in 2021, which would result in approximately 1,590 European titles. The catalogue quota uses a broad definition of “European” works which includes a <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/190342/faq-television-on-demand-services-after-brexit.pdf">range of countries</a> across Europe beyond the EU itself, such as Turkey and ironically the United Kingdom.</p>
<p>Australia’s focus on a revenue levy on streaming platforms looks more like some of the additional regulations from EU member states legislated under the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. France, which has a history of strong cultural policy and “cultural exception”, has been aggressive in legislating a high revenue levy. The French levy of 20-25% is at the higher end in Europe and is also a country that Screen Producers Australia explicitly referenced when arguing for a 20% levy in Australia.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/amazons-resuscitation-of-neighbours-can-aussie-tv-become-good-friends-with-streaming-195101">Amazon's resuscitation of Neighbours: can Aussie TV become good friends with streaming?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The French levy is not without quirks nor criticisms, and was even <a href="https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2021/04/15/european-commission-takes-issue-with-planned-french-svod-rules/">considered too high</a> by the European Commission. Part of the 20-25% revenue requirement can be satisfied with spending money on generally European content (which again could include UK content), as well as investing in things like restoring archival footage, and subbing and dubbing of content. </p>
<p>The variety of expenditure options are worth keeping in mind when attempting to compare potential regulation in Australia to the French setting. There are a range of other percentages that have been implemented across EU member states – <a href="https://www.screendaily.com/news/netflix-reaches-landmark-rights-agreement-with-create-denmark-exclusive/5176920.article">after extensive negotiations in Denmark</a>, the level reached was 6%. The process in Denmark demonstrated some of the challenges that can come during negotiation of new regulation – during a difficult period, <a href="https://deadline.com/2022/09/netflix-viaplay-disney-denmark-commissioning-decimation-1235125461/">Netflix and other services stopped ordering Danish productions entirely</a> in light of what the services saw as over-burdensome proposals.</p>
<p>As well as the importance of debating the intricacies of policy mechanisms for regulating streaming platforms in Australia, the forthcoming consultation period is a vital opportunity to reflect on the cultural dividend Australian content can pay, as well as how much of the raised money should go to drama, children’s, or independent production. So far, Labor has <a href="https://www.arts.gov.au/what-we-do/national-cultural-policy">prioritised First Nations stories</a> and perspectives as the first pillar of the National Cultural Policy, which is a worthy goal to consider for streaming and local content regulation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198757/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Oliver Eklund owns shares in Apple, Disney, and Netflix.</span></em></p>New streaming regulations have been announced as part of the Labor Party’s new National Cultural Policy.Oliver Eklund, PhD Candidate in Media and Communication, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1870902023-01-01T19:39:41Z2023-01-01T19:39:41ZMy favourite fictional character: Seven Little Australians’ wild heroine, Judy, was equipped to conquer the world – but not to survive it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498861/original/file-20221205-26-xd1my0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=23%2C0%2C7916%2C5297&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Annie Spratt/Unsplash</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I can’t remember if I first met Judy Woolcot on the TV screen or in print: the two versions have cohered into a single entity. The television series of Ethel Turner’s <a href="https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/seven-little-australians/">Seven Little Australians</a> first aired in 1973, so if I met her on-screen, it must’ve been via re-runs. </p>
<p>I know my mother’s paperback copy of the novel featured a still from the series on its cover: a family portrait — Meg, Bunty, Baby, Nell, Pip; the General in a nightshirt, clinging to his young mother. The ultra-Victorian Captain Woolcot, played by Leonard Teale, his chin jutting out so precipitously that it threatens to pierce through the picture. And Judy, with bundles of shoulder-length hair, perched on a sofa arm, seeming somehow too big, too angular for the frame. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/498613/original/file-20221202-18-f8tswy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Abebooks</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Seven Little Australians was published in 1893 and tells the story of the Woolcot family: seven children, running semi-wild in the rural outskirts of Sydney, overseen by their generous young stepmother, Esther, and military-man father, Captain Woolcot. Judy, the second oldest, aged 13, is a focal point of the tribe of children.</p>
<p>What is it about Judy that makes her my favourite character? By the time I read Seven Little Australians, I had already met <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8127.Anne_of_Green_Gables">Anne of Green Gables</a> and the stable of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1934.Little_Women">Little Women</a> sisters. I had probably just opened the chocolate sampler box that was the Bennet girls. So why not Anne Shirley? Why not Jo March? Why not Elizabeth Bennet?</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/IJz1AASVY10?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The 1973 television series, Seven Little Australians, dramatises Ethel Turner’s 1893 story of the rambunctious Woolcot family.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/little-women-at-150-and-the-patriarch-who-shaped-the-books-tone-102565">Little Women at 150 and the patriarch who shaped the book's tone</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘Bone-true’ authenticity of self</h2>
<p>For one thing, Judy was solid. You could trust her with an axe, a rope, a river. She was not, like Anne Shirley, a red-headed scrap of a thing, for whom accidents were always just waiting. She was not, like Jo March, inhabiting a secret, interior writer’s life. She was not, like Elizabeth Bennet, riveted to the question of appropriate marriages. </p>
<p>You could rely on Judy, in her boots, stomping across a paddock, cutting through the vanities and inanities of 19th-century life. She was fearlessly outwards-facing, and deeply honest: a “wild, unquiet subject” with a “strongly expressed scorn for equivocation”. Her honesty was the noble type of honesty that came, not from assiduous avoidance of lies, but from a bone-true authenticity of self. </p>
<p>She was also Australian. She spoke in an Australian accent (in the series and in my head). Her trees were my trees: gum trees. Although Seven Little Australians is set in Sydney in the late 1800s, the sky that sheltered her was the sky that sheltered me; the hot, scruffy dust was the hot, scruffy dust of my childhood. The bird calls were from bell birds and whip birds, way up high in impossibly tall trees with names like ironbark: trees that were very hard to cut down and fatal when they fell.</p>
<p>Anne could get knocked off her perch with a mere shake of a tree branch (or of her orange braids); Jo and Elizabeth could fall in love at any moment and waft away from their own centres. But not Judy. Judy was unassailably in and of herself. And only Judy could do that gravest of things: only Judy could die.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/31aZ8pOMhlc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Anne Shirley was beaten as a contender for favourite fictional character by ‘unassailably in and of herself’ Judy Woolcot.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anne-of-green-gables-goes-to-war-94157">Anne of Green Gables goes to war</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Robustly competent, yet vulnerable</h2>
<p>Re-reading Seven Little Australians, I discovered that the image I have of Judy’s physical sturdiness is not borne out by the text. Turner tells us “she was very thin, as people generally are who have quicksilver instead of blood in their veins”. Her thinness, I realise now, is code for her fragility, which runs like a weave through the novel. </p>
<p>When she runs away from boarding school, walking 70 miles and sleeping rough, she suffers for her adventurousness; she is found in the stable loft, coughing blood into a handkerchief — a signal moment of terror in any 19th-century narrative. </p>
<p>When the children conspire to earn their father’s favour, Judy doesn’t wait on him or sew for him like her sisters: she mows the lawn, <em>with a scythe</em>. It is this hardiness of hers, her ability to wield a scythe, that explains the robust competence that is my image of her. Yet it also reveals her precariousness: she sweeps the “abnormally large scythe” back and forth in long, dangerous arcs, “decapitating a whole army of yellow-helmeted dandelions” while her father watches on in terror.</p>
<p>I’m struck, as an adult, by Captain Woolcot’s recognition of his daughter’s vulnerability. “Be careful of Judy,” her mother had said on her deathbed, and thinking about Judy’s future gave her father “an aggrieved kind of feeling”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>That restless fire of hers that shone out of her dancing eyes, and glowed scarlet on her cheeks in excitement, and lent amazing energy and activity to her young, lithe body, would make a noble, daring, brilliant woman of her, or else she would be shipwrecked on rocks the others would never come to, and it would flame up higher and higher and consume her […] Judy was stumbling right amongst them now, and her father could not “be careful” of her because he absolutely did not know how.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is a terrible modern tragedy in this: the father’s sensitive awareness of his daughter and complete incapacity to nurture and protect her. Judy is both equipped to conquer the world and ill-equipped to survive it.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-with-men-i-feel-like-a-very-sharp-glittering-blade-when-5-liberated-women-spoke-the-truth-191496">Friday essay: 'with men I feel like a very sharp, glittering blade' – when 5 liberated women spoke the truth</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>‘The first time I wept reading a book’</h2>
<p>Judy’s death was the first time I wept reading a book. I knew her death was coming: I had watched it on TV. Watched her dash to save her baby brother, watched the enormous tree branch creak and fall, trapping her body beneath it. Still, I wept. I kept hoping the book would somehow reverse the tragedy of the television version: rewrite it, reanimate Judy. But no, Judy dies – as obstinately and heroically as she lived. </p>
<p>And in her death, how honest and modern she remains; wholly absent of any stoic, religion-inflected martyrdom you might expect of the period. She’s a frightened child, in a hut, feeling the light fall away. “Oh Meg, I want to be alive!” she says frantically. “How’d you like to die, Meg, when you’re only thirteen!” This stricken cry cut through my childhood.</p>
<p>I didn’t cry this time, but I did feel sobered and still and, at least for a few moments after finishing, <em>very</em> still. I was right to remember Judy. Judy was a reminder of how to live, how to be in the world, which is “always in a perfect fever of living”. </p>
<p>By virtue of her death, Judy has a gravitas that none of her fictional contenders possess. Her mortality is the very point of her being, the point of her character. </p>
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<p>“Judy!” Pip said, in a voice of beseeching agony. But the only answer was the wind at the tree-tops and the frightened breathing of the others.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/187090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Edwina Preston has received funding for her own creative work from Australia Council for the Arts and Creative Victoria. She is the recipient of a Research Training Scholarship and Dean's Excellence in Research Scholarship at the University of Melbourne. She was the recipient of the 2020 Felix Meyer Creative Writing Scholarship and the Helen Macpherson Smith Scholarship for female researchers.</span></em></p>Edwina Preston tells why her favourite literary heroine is Seven Little Australians’ Judy Woolcot and her ‘bone-true authenticity of self’ – beating fellow tomboys Jo March and Anne Shirley.Edwina Preston, PhD Candidate, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1959312022-12-12T19:02:52Z2022-12-12T19:02:52ZSex, comedy and vulnerability: Latecomers on SBS is an important shift in disability representation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500211/original/file-20221211-90998-uu5no9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C11%2C3994%2C2982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The SBS drama Latecomers is an insightful, witty and superbly produced exploration of the fragility of human life and the fear of rejection that accompanies the human need for intimacy. </p>
<p>Starring <a href="https://www.westernadvocate.com.au/story/2896591/angus-living-life-to-the-full/">Angus Thompson</a> (as Frank) and <a href="https://hannahdiviney.com/">Hannah Diviney</a> (as Sarah), actors with cerebral palsy, the show’s most distinctive appeal is how it explores the fear of rejection which accompanies all attempts at intimacy: successful or otherwise. </p>
<p>Globally, the screen industry has struggled to employ actors with a disability. Films such as Breathe (2017), Me Before You (2016), Margarita with a Straw (2014), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) and many others all employ actors without a disability in disabled roles.</p>
<p>Latecomers, however, stars actors with a disability playing characters with a disability. It is a joy to see. </p>
<p>Actors with a disability need to be included in screen media more often. Latecomers is particularly important because of the way it considers sex, pleasure and disability.</p>
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<h2>Disability, sexuality and sex in Australian cinema</h2>
<p>Perhaps the one of the most significant early Australian films about living with a disability is <a href="https://shop.nfsa.gov.au/annies-coming-out">Annie’s Coming Out</a> (1984), an adaption of a book written by Rosemary Crossley and Anne McDonald based on a true story exploring the life of children with a disability who are institutionalised by their parents. </p>
<p>Annie’s Coming Out was significant because of the performance given by Tina Arhondis, an actor with cerebral palsy who was cast to play the role of Annie. </p>
<p>The film follows Annie’s institutionalisation and misdiagnosis as intellectually and physically disabled, before the realisation she has no intellectual disability. </p>
<p>Her physical therapist fights to have her released and succeeds. </p>
<p>The history of institutionalising people with a disability in Australia begins with colonisation. European settlers brought their asylums with them. Intellectually disabled people together with physically disabled people were also included in these group homes. By 1841, one eighth of the population in South Australia <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2021-11/Research%20Report%20-%20Disability%20in%20Australia%20-%20Shadows%2C%20struggles%20and%20successes.pdf">relied on public relief</a>. The Adelaide Destitute Asylum was full beyond capacity.</p>
<p>Similar reliance on asylums characterised life for people with any kind of disability in Perth (Freemantle Asylum), Melbourne (the Ballarat Asylum and later the Kew Idiot’s Ward), Sydney (Parramatta, Callan Park, Gladesville Asylums). Intellectual disability was slowly extracted from psychiatric illness in the late 19th century. </p>
<p>by the year 1887 an estimated 7,722 Australians were <a href="http://chartsbin.com/view/eoo">registered</a> as “insane”“, but institutions still housed people with "incurable” disabilities and women who had post natal depression. For example, in 1898 children with intellectual disability began being moved out of the <a href="https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/sa/biogs/SE01279b.htm">Adelaide lunatic asylum</a>. </p>
<p>It was not until the 1970s that institutional living began to be critiqued. De-institutionalisation took place unevenly over the 1980s and 1990s. In 1981, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/255716547_De-institutionalisation_The_move_to_community_based_care">195,243 people</a> lived in health and welfare institutions in Australia. By 1991, this number had dropped to 168,940 and it continued to fall. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/by-naming-pennhurst-stranger-things-uses-disability-trauma-for-entertainment-dark-tourism-and-asylum-tours-do-too-185581">By naming 'Pennhurst', Stranger Things uses disability trauma for entertainment. Dark tourism and asylum tours do too</a>
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<p>The film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0154378/">Dance Me to My Song</a> (1998) also looked at women with disabilities in institutional living facilities. Written by the late Heather Rose, an actor and screen writer with cerebral palsy, the film explores Julia’s sexuality and her complicated relationship with her abusive carer. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.wdv.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Royal-Commission-into-Violence-Abuse-Neglect-and-Exploitation-of-People-with-Disability-Group-Homes-Submission-Word-Version-1.docx">rates of sexual abuse</a> of women with disabilities in institutional living facilities in Australia were alarming. Primarily instigated by male carers working in institutions, <a href="https://disability.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2021-10/EXP.0066.0002.0035.pdf">the forced sterilisation</a> of women with disabilities in institutions became a way of “managing” – hiding – this abuse. </p>
<p>If women could not become pregnant there was no material evidence the abuse was taking place. Women were not only stripped of the right to choose to have sex, they have their reproductive rights taken away in an effort to cover up systemic sexual abuse. </p>
<p>Even today, <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309728772_Disability_and_child_sexual_abuse_in_institutional_contexts_Royal_Commission_into_Institutional_Responses_to_Child_Sexual_Abuse">one in four</a> Australian women with a disability have experienced sexual violence after the age of 15, compared with 15% without disability.</p>
<p>This is the context in which Latecomers’ presents its exploration of disability and sexuality. </p>
<p>Just as Dance Me to My Song spoke to themes of power, sex and sexual control, Latecomers looks at the role of sex and sexuality in the lives of disabled people. But here, we get to join in with friendships, humour, the fear of rejection and the excitement of sex. We also get to laugh at the failure of sex at times. </p>
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<span class="caption">Hannah Diviney and Angus Thompson in Latecomers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Renata Dominik/ SBS</span></span>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-matters-is-hope-freedom-and-saying-who-you-are-what-lgbtq-people-with-intellectual-disabilities-want-everyone-to-know-184555">'What matters is hope, freedom and saying who you are.' What LGBTQ+ people with intellectual disabilities want everyone to know</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Witty approaches to disability and sex</h2>
<p>Latecomers begins with a date. Angus Thompson’s Frank doesn’t care about a nice meal, or interesting conversation, Frank just wants to get drunk and get laid. </p>
<p>In trying to achieve these goals, Frank is keen to pursue the strategy made popular by generations of Australian men – tell Hannah Diviney’s Sarah she is “unfuckable”.</p>
<p>This statement has a complexity specific to Sarah and Frank’s disabilities that makes it more powerful than it might otherwise be. However, women who are both disabled and not disabled will relate.</p>
<p>These relationships are complicated by power relationships surrounding disability and these tensions play out as the show continues. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/500219/original/file-20221211-90998-hv1x1s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Renata Dominik/ SBS</span></span>
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<p>Sarah ditches Frank for a nice guy, (Patrick Jhanur) who likes her for her wit and intelligence and who doesn’t want to tell his mates all about sex. In a media landscape characterised by sexual fantasies, I am personally relieved to see a sex scene that is not played out between two able-bodied white people.</p>
<p>It is a welcome change to see disabled people enjoying sex on screen. May we see much more of it. </p>
<p>Latecomers is a tonic for the pain and loneliness that is part of all our embodied lives – and an important step forward in how the stories of people with a disability are told on screen. Released in the same year that neurodivergent actor Chloé Hayden from Heartbreak High won the AACTA best actress audience choice awards, Latecomers signals a shift in consumer taste.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195931/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Hickey-Moody receives funding from funding from the Australian Research Council. She grew up in Australia with a father who was severely disabled and has been researching questions of disability, gender and representation since her late teens.</span></em></p>Latecomers looks at the role of sex and sexuality in the lives of disabled people.Anna Hickey-Moody, Professor of Media and Communication, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1906482022-09-21T20:01:18Z2022-09-21T20:01:18ZPeppa Pig has introduced a pair of lesbian polar bears, but Aussie kids’ TV has been leading the way in queer representation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485228/original/file-20220919-62030-igrjib.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C973%2C546&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Channel 5</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Peppa Pig’s first same-sex couple, a pair of lesbian polar bears, were recently introduced after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/08/peppa-pig-introduces-its-first-same-sex-couple">a petition to include a same-sex family</a> received nearly 24,000 signatures. </p>
<p>Children’s television has often been a place to push the boundaries of diverse representations onscreen. In particular, Australian children’s TV has been a global leader in screen diversity, including gender and queer representation. </p>
<p>Emmy-winning Australian series <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10614090/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_6">First Day</a> (2020-22) tells the story of a transgender girl starting high school. </p>
<p>Another Emmy-winner, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8747140/">Hardball</a> (2019-21) includes gay dads for one of the lead characters. </p>
<p>Even recent updates to The Wiggles’ line-up has placed a greater emphasis on gender diversity, including <a href="https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/music/the-wiggles-announces-four-new-band-members-with-focus-on-diversity-gender-equality/news-story/dbc914965a83332c857e7665b3639ba0">adding a non-binary unicorn</a>.</p>
<h2>Diverse representation</h2>
<p>Children’s TV is often less risk averse than programming aimed at adults. </p>
<p>The ABC is <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1329878X16687400">empowered</a> to take risks with representations of gender and sexuality in children’s programming because of its publicly funded role.</p>
<p>But such progressive portrayals can sometimes chafe with outdated expectations of children’s television. In 2004, Play School <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07380560802314128">faced controversy</a> for showing lesbian mothers.</p>
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<p>As social acceptance has progressed, Australian children’s TV has been able to achieve more queer representations.</p>
<p>Talking to the Queering Australian Screens <a href="https://djomeara.com/phd-research/">research project</a>, television professionals often praised the genre for its openness to new ideas, representations and bringing in new talent.</p>
<p>Tony Ayres, Creator of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nowhere_Boys">Nowhere Boys</a> (2013-18), observed those who commission children’s TV are “generally very open to diverse representation”.</p>
<p>This representation happens behind the scenes, too, with Ayres describing how these shows often give new talent their first credit.</p>
<p>David Hannam, who has written for several kids’ TV shows including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_Academy">Dance Academy</a> (2010-13), said children’s television “has led the way”.</p>
<p>Speaking of his time at the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, Hannam noted the foundation had an “almost charter responsibility” to show diversity on screen, “with great caution and responsibility”.</p>
<p>Julie Kalceff created First Day, which starred a young trans actor, Evie McDonald, as a trans girl starting high school.</p>
<p>When she was developing the show, Kalceff shared that she was initially concerned about what would be allowed on children’s TV:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>There were no trans people on television. There were no TV shows with trans actors in the lead role. I thought there’s no way the ABC is going to do this. And there’s no way they’re going to do it with kids’ TV. But to their credit, the ABC was so supportive, and was so behind the project from the beginning.</p>
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<h2>What audiences want</h2>
<p>It is not only TV producers who are eager to widen representation in children’s television. Audiences are also seeking out more inclusive content. </p>
<p>Just like Peppa Pig in the UK, there have been calls in Australia for more diversity in animated hit Bluey, with the show adding its <a href="https://10play.com.au/theproject/articles/bluey-introduces-first-auslan-signing-character-in-a-new-special-episode/tpa220616bswgm">first Auslan signing character</a> in June.</p>
<p>One of our research projects, Australian Children’s Television Cultures’ <a href="https://www.swinburne.edu.au/news/2022/05/new-research-shows-the-way-families-watch-TV-is-changing/">2021 survey</a> found 90% of Australian parents believe diverse representation is an important element of children’s TV.</p>
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<p>As one father explained:</p>
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<p>Diversity on screen helps children learn about people with different upbringings from their own, expanding their empathy for and curiosity about other people.</p>
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<p>In contrast to the controversy Play School received nearly 20 years ago for its inclusion of same-sex parents, a mother praised the show for “doing a fantastic job” of depicting diversity in relationships.</p>
<p>Not everyone believes Australian television is doing enough. One survey respondent praised the way shows like Bluey reflect Australian culture, but said he would “love to see more LGBT representation […] It would be nice as a kid to know you’re valid.”</p>
<h2>Uncertain futures</h2>
<p>The streaming era has changed how families and children watch TV. This raises concerns about the future of Australian children’s content. </p>
<p>The recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/cheese-n-crackers-concerns-deepen-for-the-future-of-australian-childrens-television-147183">removal of quotas</a> for Australian networks to air a minimum number of hours of children’s television, alongside the absence of quotas on streaming services, has led to <a href="https://tvtonight.com.au/2022/09/producers-slam-hypocritical-networks-as-australian-childrens-tv-plummets.html">a reduction</a> in the production of local kids’ TV. </p>
<p>From Play School to Bluey, children’s TV has reflected the richness of Australian cultural life. There is a risk that if Australian child audiences need to rely on international content, future generations will not see themselves on screen. </p>
<p>With the loss of local voices, Australian kids’ TV may also lose its ability to push boundaries of diversity and inclusion.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cheese-n-crackers-concerns-deepen-for-the-future-of-australian-childrens-television-147183">Cheese 'n' crackers! Concerns deepen for the future of Australian children's television</a>
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<p><em>We are conducting a survey of parents and guardians with children aged up to 14 about how families watch kids’ TV in the streaming era. You can participate <a href="https://swinuw.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1YXJ1rpH2KSxNZk">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190648/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Damien O'Meara is a Research Assistant for the Australian Children's Television Cultures research project at Swinburne University of Technology.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam Burke receives funding from the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF).</span></em></p>Australian children’s television is a leader in onscreen queer representations, due in part to its primarily cultural role.Damien O'Meara, PhD Candidate, Media and Communications, Swinburne University of TechnologyLiam Burke, Associate Professor and Cinema and Screen Studies Discipline Leader, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1909672022-09-21T00:57:49Z2022-09-21T00:57:49ZIn The Australian Wars, Rachel Perkins dispenses with the myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/485440/original/file-20220919-14345-deaukn.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5472%2C3637&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dylan River/SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>First Nations people please be advised this article mentions colonial violence towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.</em></p>
<p>The Australian Wars is a new three-part TV series directed and produced by Arrernte and Kalkadoon nations filmmaker Rachel Perkins.</p>
<p>Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years, from the landing of the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1920s.</p>
<p>The series traces some of the key phases, sites and underlying features of frontier wars here on home soil. </p>
<p>It sets out to understand why the war was never declared, why the British didn’t follow their own laws, and the tactics and strategies Aboriginal people deployed defending their land and survival. </p>
<p>Perkins asks us to consider this difficult history, why there are only a handful of monuments to this warfare, and how it should be memorialised.</p>
<p>To ask these questions, Perkins deploys stunningly shot re-enactments, archives, artefacts, biography, expert evidence and uses place to great effect. </p>
<p>The series treats the viewer with the ability to critically reflect and ask why we still struggle to come to terms with this history.</p>
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<h2>The frontier wars</h2>
<p>The “<a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/what-are-the-frontier-wars/6ym0q6ic9">frontier wars</a>” were the conflicts between Europeans and Aboriginal people over access to land the British sought to occupy exclusively without any agreement, treaty or settlement. This series emphasises Aboriginal people resisted these wars in multiple ways, including warfare. Aboriginal people are still <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-13/gomeroi-fight-santos-narrabri-gas-project-climate-change/101428862">resisting these wars today</a>, in the courts. </p>
<p>The Australian Wars is an important contribution to truth-telling. Perkins provides a public reckoning with the means by which the British Empire – followed by independent democratic Australian governments – managed to grab the entirety of the land assets of the continent. </p>
<p>The dominant narrative of Australian settler colonialism was once sunny tales of possession, sustained by hard toil. Aboriginal acts of resistance, refusal and warfare were somehow miraculously omitted. </p>
<p>Only in recent decades has a more truthful account of the past emerged. New conversations and responsibility are slowly navigating the realities of the frontier, the shared history of “both sides” and how the past can be remembered. </p>
<p>Reconciliation Australia’s “Reconciliation Barometer” survey identified <a href="https://www.reconciliation.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Australian_Reconciliation_Barometer_2020_-Full-Report_web.pdf">only 64%</a> of non-Indigenous Australians believed the frontier wars occurred. Some 30% of respondents were unsure and 6% rejected the factual accuracy of significant aspects of Australia’s colonial history. </p>
<p>The Australian War Memorial, once tasked with considering how to reflect frontier wars in Australia’s story, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/12/australian-war-memorial-ignores-frontier-war">rejected</a> any inclusion of the frontier wars in its exhibitions.</p>
<p>The documentary returns to the theme of rejecting this part of Australia’s history and asks: how can the frontier wars be remembered and memorialised? </p>
<p>Perkins reminds us that as many people – both black and white – died in the frontier wars as did in overseas conflicts featured at the Australian War Memorial. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-death-on-the-darling-colonialisms-final-encounter-with-the-barkandji-114275">Friday essay: death on the Darling, colonialism’s final encounter with the Barkandji</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The moving frontier</h2>
<p>The Australian Wars draws together experts of Australian history, detailed studies of the expansive colonial records, the oral testimony of survivors’ descendants and new archaeological research. </p>
<p>With this trove of references, Perkins reveals the extent and breadth of violence, the global networks of military men and the strategies they honed on the frontier, and the technology that came to enable this. </p>
<p>Ultimately, we learn unfettered access to the land resource was the driving factor. The rule of law, claims of humanitarianism and Christianity were readily dispensed with in pursuit of land.</p>
<p>Perkins begins this story in the nation’s capital at the War Memorial. She then follows the moving frontier from the Sydney settlement to Tasmania and crossing Bass Strait. The story then moves with rapid pace from south to north and across the top end to the Kimberley, as settlers expanded across landscapes in always violent encounters. </p>
<p>She dispenses with the abiding myth Aboriginal people didn’t fight back.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/csNH4y-UQO0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>In each location Perkins focuses on, we see different strategies deployed, tactical advantage held at times by Aboriginal people, the fear and terror struck in the settlers, and the military actors and strategy that underpinned the colonial settlements. </p>
<p>By the third episode, as the frontier heads north, settlers take lessons from Sydney, Tasmania and the New South Wales grasslands country. Moving with much greater speed aided now by horses, the settlers recruited skilled Native Mounted Police, used repeating rifles and developed systems and infrastructure to confine Aboriginal people to prisons. </p>
<p>But the Aboriginal peoples whose lands were being invaded were fast developing new tactics.</p>
<p>In Queensland alone it is estimated 72,000 Aboriginal men, women and children were killed.</p>
<h2>How do we remember?</h2>
<p>The series prompts us to ask: if not war, then what do we call the process by which the land, once all carefully delineated and peopled, is occupied by settlers? </p>
<p>How do we remember this and memorialise those who died? </p>
<p>Perkins tells us this violence was often very well documented. This violence was acted against people whose eyes you could see. Yet from Lake George, just outside the nation’s capital, to the Sydney wars and massacres, Tasmania, Queensland and to the Kimberley, sites of violence are overwhelmingly unmarked, unobserved, save for colonial names: “Blackfellows Bones”, “Victory Hill”. </p>
<p>The silence continues.</p>
<p>Leading Australian historian Henry Reynolds says the frontier wars are our most important war because of where they were fought and what they were about: the outcome determined the ownership and sovereign control of a whole continent. </p>
<p>As he comments in the series “what can be more important than that to us?”</p>
<p><em>The Australian Wars is on SBS and SBS on Demand from today.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-its-time-for-a-new-museum-dedicated-to-the-fighters-of-the-frontier-wars-155299">Friday essay: it's time for a new museum dedicated to the fighters of the frontier wars</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/190967/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In her new SBS documentary, Rachel Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years.Heidi Norman, Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology SydneyAnne Maree Payne, Lecturer, Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1768042022-03-07T03:02:42Z2022-03-07T03:02:42ZFrom the ABC and the National Gallery of Australia, The Exhibitionists explores the unsung talent of Australian art<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447435/original/file-20220221-22-1jdw71c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C3%2C2150%2C1477&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC TV</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: The Exhibitionists, ABC TV</em></p>
<p>What do you picture in your mind when you imagine an artist? </p>
<p>Is it a man in a beret? Do you think Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Van Gogh? Odds are it is unlikely to be a woman. Yet there are many famous and highly regarded women artists: Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cindy Sherman.</p>
<p>It is even less likely for the word “artist” to trigger the image of an Australian woman. There are however many of importance to Australia’s cultural life: Emily Kame Kngwarreye, Tracey Moffatt, Patricia Piccinini and Margaret Preston among them.</p>
<p>Female artists are nowhere near as well known as their male counterparts. </p>
<p>A new docu-comedy, The Exhibitionists, explains why this dominant image of an artist is man, and describes many fascinating stories of the noteworthy place of women across the history of Australian art. </p>
<p>After a few too many drinks at an exhibition opening, four friends dare each other to get locked into the National Gallery of Australia (NGA). </p>
<p>Having a bit of a lark, they notice there aren’t many female artists on show, and set about rectifying that. This narrative is used as a framing device for fascinating profiles of Australian women artists and interviews with experts. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NPIhyHuNvUI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Shaping art practice: the female gaze</h2>
<p>The Exhibitionists defines the male gaze as </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the idea that everything we look at is created for a default viewer who is male. It is men’s ideas, men’s needs, that dominate the creation of art and visual media. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>In contrast, this docu-comedy gives an insight into “the female gaze”, which <a href="http://femalegaze.com.au/reviews-2/">I describe as</a> “the individual way anyone who identifies as female inflects her own female experience or subjectivity” onto her artwork. </p>
<p>The female artists included in the program played a role in elevating female iconography and women’s culture. Through their work, they introduced crafts such as embroidery into the halls of fine art, and avoided exploitative representations of the female body. </p>
<p>Arguably, it was these things that led to their work being disregarded by gatekeepers and critics.</p>
<p>The Exhibitionists chronicles decades of misogynist critics whose point of view arguably worked to hold women out, an issue across most artforms. </p>
<p>In 1933, critic James Stuart MacDonald bemoaned the “tremendous intrusion of women painters since the war”. </p>
<p>As recently as 2008, Brian Sewell wrote in London’s Evening Standard that “only men are capable of aesthetic greatness”. He noted women are prevalent in art schools but tend to fade away – a fact that indicates systemic issues for female artists rather than a lack of talent. </p>
<p>Women artists are subjected to the same discrimination evident in many other fields, including a gender pay gap, under-representation in galleries, and unconscious bias — particularly by gatekeepers. For example, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/opinion/we-need-more-critics-of-color.html">critics are still often</a> white, heterosexual men over 40 with track records of lacking regard for women’s art. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-league-of-men-why-are-there-so-few-female-film-critics-47470">The league of men: why are there so few female film critics?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>#KnowMyName</h2>
<p>The NGA, which assisted financing The Exhibitionists, has recognised that only 25% of works in its Australian art collection are by women. This situation is <a href="https://nmwa.org/support/advocacy/get-facts/">mirrored</a> in galleries nationally and internationally. </p>
<p>To redress this, the NGA launched an initiative called “<a href="https://knowmyname.nga.gov.au/about/">Know My Name</a>” in 2019, aiming to increase representation in the collection while celebrating and recognising Australian female artists.</p>
<p>The initiative has been a call to action and also made visible the work of women across diverse creative practices, highlighting the systemic issues that have been barriers to their participation. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beauty-and-audacity-know-my-name-presents-a-new-female-story-of-australian-art-150139">Beauty and audacity: Know My Name presents a new, female story of Australian art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>This example of leadership by a cultural institution comes on the back of a long history of women’s activism to attain recognition. </p>
<p>Often this has been achieved through humour, as it does in The Exhibitionists. </p>
<p>Guerrilla Girls, an anonymous activist group, fight sexism and racism with humour. In 1989 they <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/guerrilla-girls-do-women-have-to-be-naked-to-get-into-the-met-museum-p78793">printed posters</a> asking “do women have to be naked to get into the Met museum?”, noting only 5% of the modern art collection was from female artists, but 85% of the nudes were of women.</p>
<p>Referring to that phenomena as “the male graze”, the Guerrilla Girls challenged people to count the nudes in other galleries and report back. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=236&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447726/original/file-20220222-22-mqtl3c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=296&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Guerrilla Girls’ famous poster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/slu-art-gallery/19123342045/">St. Lawrence University Art Gallery/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Brilliant artists</h2>
<p>There are some shocking statistics in The Exhibitionists about how women have been held out of art world circuits, but of most interest are the stellar female artists across eras and styles.</p>
<p>The program creates a potted female-centred history of Australian art. Included is landscape painter Jane Sutherland (1853-1928), the first professional Australian female artist. She was a member of Heidelberg School and one of a small number of women who accompanied Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts on painting trips. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447719/original/file-20220222-47521-1nuchrq.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jane Sutherland’s A cabbage garden, 1896.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Emily Kame Kngwarreye (1910-1996) was one of Australia’s finest abstract expressionists, achieving the highest price for a painting by an Australian woman artist (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/nov/17/emily-kame-kngwarreye-painting-sells-for-21m-in-sydney">A$2.1 million in 2017</a>). She did this in sourcing her work from her clan country Alhalkere, and not from western art. </p>
<p>Dorrit Black (1891-1951) was the first Australian woman to run an art gallery and the first Australian cubist landscape painter. </p>
<p>It does appear that in order to make this contribution, many of these artists did not have families and devoted themselves to their art. This life choice led to them being regarded as unfeminine or unwomanly. However, along the way they made a substantive contribution to Australian art. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447730/original/file-20220222-47535-uakh61.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Dorrit Black’s The monastery church from 1936.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Gallery of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Exhibitionists tells us women’s stories matter, and they attract audiences. </p>
<p>Art is for everyone, and it should mirror society.</p>
<p><em>The Exhibitionists screens on ABC TV on March 8.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176804/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa French does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new docu-comedy, The Exhibitionists asks why the dominant image of an artist is a man – and places women back in the frame.Lisa French, Professor & Dean, School of Media and Communication, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1765982022-02-08T12:06:32Z2022-02-08T12:06:32ZThe politics of Neighbours: what the Australian soap can teach us about post-Thatcher Britain<p>Channel 5’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-6027793">decision to axe</a> Australian soap opera Neighbours has led to widespread dismay among British people in their thirties and upwards. After 36 years on British screens, the network said it will instead invest more in “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/feb/06/curtains-for-ramsay-street-as-channel-5-no-longer-needs-good-neighbours">original UK drama</a>”.</p>
<p>Although its 1990 heyday of 20 million viewers on BBC One are long behind it, the show still does comparatively good numbers. Its <a href="https://www.thinkbox.tv/research/barb-data/top-programmes-report/?tag=Channel5">20% market share</a>
makes it the most successful show on Channel 5. Presumably, the soap must be too expensive. But given it has relied on a very visible <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/soaps/neighbours/toadie-and-dee-reunited-6-crazy-must-see-moments-as-neighbours-plot-explodes/">mannequin in a wig</a> to function as a body double during a car crash, where any big budgets are going is difficult to ascertain.</p>
<p>Business case apart, a lot of the anguish is due to the loss of a communal experience. In the 1990s, Neighbours was a perennial part of young people’s lives, no doubt a product of its repetitive, five-day-a-week transmission. With 83% of 12-15-year-olds claiming to watch the show at <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2021.2019583">its height</a>, there is a generation of British people for whom the surname Kennedy will conjure up Karl and Susan before it does John F. or Bobby.</p>
<p>That said, despite its uncontroversial, amiable vision of the world, the show was not unrelated to the rough and tumble of party politics. Neighbours was at the peak of its popularity as the UK was beginning to transition away from Margaret Thatcher’s long tenure in Downing Street towards the New Labour period after 1997.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2021.2019583">I’ve argued</a>, the politics of Erinsborough is small “c” conservative and certainly capitalist. But, unlike Thatcher, Neighbours demonstrated there was <a href="https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106689">such a thing as society</a>. All told, it was (and to some degree still is) very Blairite. </p>
<p>Indeed, the type of people who were so drawn to Neighbours – women and those who lived in suburbs – were precisely the type of voters who would go on to fervently back Tony Blair in 1997. The reasons people tuned in to Erinsborough in the late 1980s and early 1990s were largely similar to those they gave for backing New Labour: they wanted an escape from the realities of Thatcher’s Britain. They initially sought it on screen in the form of Australian sunshine and then, when Labour found a charismatic, moderate leader, at the ballot box. Some of Neighbours’ appeal was largely imagined – Australian cul-de-sac living can’t always be so pleasant – but it was certainly enduring. </p>
<p>Like opposition era Blair, the show was (and is) safe, reassuring television. This undramatic tendency would destroy its fortunes in the thrill-seeking US market, but its reliable niceness was a significant draw for the British public. Indeed, while the socially conservative activist Mary Whitehouse took issue with Eastenders’ “violence”, “bad language” and “demoralising situations”, viewers have consistently <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2021.2019583">told</a> audience researchers that they trust Neighbours with their children’s unsupervised attention. </p>
<p>For its star <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/looking-back-at-80s-neighbours-scripts-how-much-has-really-changed-20200228-p545d6.html">Geoff Paine</a> (now back in the show as Dr Clive Gibbons), “the test was could adults and kids watch the show without either getting embarrassed, or the kids asking ‘what does that mean’”? Nearly all of the time, it passed this test. Viewers praised the soap’s lack of “extreme” content, and would make similar comments about New Labour.</p>
<h2>Neighbours’ opposition</h2>
<p>The interesting thing was that politicians didn’t get this at the time. Few watched the show (a product, perhaps, of its daytime transmission), but they would have been well advised to do so to get a more rounded understanding of its appeal.</p>
<p>In May 1991, schools minister Michael Fallon called for Neighbours to be removed from British screens altogether. For Fallon, it was harmful to Britain’s young and served to “dull their senses, making teachers’ jobs even harder”. Labour’s Jack Straw mostly agreed, calling Neighbours “a pretty trashy programme”. Some of this was proto-culture wars nonsense. At the time, only 7% of Neighbours’ viewers <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2021.2019583">found it</a> “unsuitable for children”. How could they? Dr Clive Gibbons wasn’t even allowed to say the word “pregnant” lest it raise any awkward discussions.</p>
<p>Equally, the fact that Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue were glamorous heartthrobs no doubt helped its ratings, but many Erinsborough watchers were more likely to cite its “harmless, sexless stories about everyday people” than anything raunchy. Indeed, in so far as remarks were made, Minogue’s role as a car mechanic was seen as groundbreaking – and the female mechanic has formed something of a trope in later years. Neighbours told a narrative that was often empowering, did not appear tokenistic, and certainly proved popular among women. In 1990, almost two-thirds of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13619462.2021.2019583">female viewers</a> saw it as a programme “for people like me”. </p>
<p>Altogether, the show was and is well written. Although occasional comparisons at its height with Shakespeare were a bit much, it does comedy and tragedy very well. As anyone watching the 2019 death of Toadie’s wife Sonya will attest to, it delivers occasionally deeply poignant stuff. And so, while it may be curtains on Channel 5, there should still be a place for it on British television. If nothing else, because flight attendant-turned-Trumpian-business mogul Paul Robinson has gotten out of <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/archive/au/entry/neighbours-storylines-crazy-most-memorable_au_5e7302e2c5b6f5b7c53e23c0">worse scrapes</a> than this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Carr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The types of people who gathered daily to watch Neighbours are the same who backed Tony Blair in 1997.Richard Carr, Lecturer in History and Politics, Anglia Ruskin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1695272021-10-11T19:11:38Z2021-10-11T19:11:38ZNew Gold Mountain review: a compelling murder mystery shines light on early Australian multiculturalism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425614/original/file-20211010-13-1j7hsxb.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C6%2C2048%2C1345&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: New Gold Mountain, directed by Corrie Chen.</em></p>
<p>The beautifully shot and evenly paced New Gold Mountain, the new series from SBS, is an 1850s-era murder mystery set in the Ballarat goldfields during the gold rush heyday. </p>
<p>In 1851, gold was discovered in Ballarat – a little known pastoral outpost of the British empire. News of the strike quickly spread and the town rapidly developed. Initially, the first arrivals came from other parts of Victoria. Others followed from other Australian colonies. Soon after, international arrivals came from all regions of the globe and in 1852 many arrived from Southern China in search of gold.</p>
<p>New Gold Mountain focuses on this Chinese-Australian goldfields experience, primarily from the point of view of Leung Wei Shing (Yoson An), the brooding headman of the Chinese miners and his relationships with his younger, errant brother Leung Wei Sun (Sam Wang) and his loyal assistant Gok (Chris Masters Mah). </p>
<figure>
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<p>The narrative is widened to include Belle Roberts (Alyssa Sutherland), the English widow turned newspaper proprietor; Hattie (Leonie Whyman), the resilient Indigenous woman trying to get by; and Patrick Thomas (Christopher James Baker), the troubled Irish miner whose wife’s disappearance drives the plot. </p>
<p>In their own ways, each character is caught between different cultures, friendships and allegiances in the rapidly forming goldfields frontier society on the far side of the world.</p>
<h2>A Chinese Australian tale</h2>
<p>Chinese migration patterns to Australia were largely based on regional associations, particularly in the localities of Toi Shan, Sze Yup and Sam Yup in Guangdong, Southern China. These regional associations and “brotherhoods”, as they are referred to in the series, were labour recruiting mechanisms similar to the one Wei Shing runs at this Chinese camp.</p>
<p>Here, Cheung Lei (Mabel Li) brings into play the connections, allegiances and complexities between Chinese gold seekers in the Australian colonies and their backers in China. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425586/original/file-20211010-25-7hpfvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a white woman and an Asian man talk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425586/original/file-20211010-25-7hpfvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425586/original/file-20211010-25-7hpfvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425586/original/file-20211010-25-7hpfvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425586/original/file-20211010-25-7hpfvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425586/original/file-20211010-25-7hpfvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425586/original/file-20211010-25-7hpfvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425586/original/file-20211010-25-7hpfvp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New Gold Mountain shows the complexity of relationships on the gold fields.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On one hand, relations between key characters and groups (primarily between the Chinese and Europeans) are typified by racism and hostility. But there is also cooperation, as Wei Shing and Belle unite to solve the murder. Sometimes there is brutal friendship, as when Wei Shing and the Chinese protector, Standish (Dan Spielman), finally establish exactly where they stand with each other. </p>
<p>Director Corrie Chen and creator Peter Cox pull no punches while maintaining a compelling murder mystery and this lively ensemble offers a nuanced reading of the Australian goldfields experience, telling a mature and ambiguous account of the frontier. </p>
<p>The other stars of the series are the distinctive former mining landscapes and Sovereign Hill providing the visual backdrops for the 1850s goldfields society. You can imagine how startled recent arrivals from the bustling South China trading ports of Guangzhou, Hong Kong and Macau must have been on disembarkation. The flora and fauna – literally everything – was so different to home.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425633/original/file-20211011-23-vtq501.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A Chinese man stands amid red lanterns" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425633/original/file-20211011-23-vtq501.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425633/original/file-20211011-23-vtq501.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425633/original/file-20211011-23-vtq501.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425633/original/file-20211011-23-vtq501.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425633/original/file-20211011-23-vtq501.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425633/original/file-20211011-23-vtq501.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425633/original/file-20211011-23-vtq501.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The hot and dusty goldfields were very different from the Chinese ports – but cultural traditions lived on.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Chen explores this shock in a moment of brief magical realism with Wei Shing’s encounters with a kangaroo. It seems the bush sees all. The Chinese miners and their Indigenous and European counterparts were all coming to terms with a landscape broken by mining and colonised by a disparate society coming to terms with its own experiences and opportunities. New Gold Mountain evocatively captures this moment. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-the-story-of-fook-shing-colonial-victorias-chinese-detective-94017">Friday essay: the story of Fook Shing, colonial Victoria's Chinese detective</a>
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</p>
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<h2>The gold rush on screen</h2>
<p>Australian goldfields life has been shown on television before, notably <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071046/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_7">Rush</a>, the Victorian gold rush era drama from the 1970s.</p>
<p>But the obvious cultural point of reference is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0348914/">Deadwood</a> (2004-06), David Milch’s multi-layered historical narrative based on the 1850s gold-rush town in the Black Hills Indian Cession, a region that subsequently became South Dakota.</p>
<p>Much of Deadwood centres on the business dealings between the Chinese headman, Mr Wu, and the corrupt saloon owner and town powerbroker, Al Swearengen. The inherent racism of frontier life is apparent, as is the mutual respect the two men have for each other as they seek to benefit from nefarious business dealings. </p>
<p>Similar complex, intertwined plots of shifting alliances and a mutual desire to win money run through New Gold Mountain. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425627/original/file-20211011-21-1dkjedm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a Chinese man looks for gold in his hands." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425627/original/file-20211011-21-1dkjedm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/425627/original/file-20211011-21-1dkjedm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425627/original/file-20211011-21-1dkjedm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425627/original/file-20211011-21-1dkjedm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425627/original/file-20211011-21-1dkjedm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425627/original/file-20211011-21-1dkjedm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/425627/original/file-20211011-21-1dkjedm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Like Deadwood, New Gold Mountain explores shifting alliances in the search for gold.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SBS</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On closer viewing, the series also shares a watermark with the New Zealand made <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195822/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Illustrious Energy</a> (1988), directed by Leon Narbey, which also explored the goldfields experience from a Chinese perspective. Other Australian colonial stories have been told in John Hillcoat’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0421238/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">The Proposition</a> (2005) and Jennifer Kent’s recent <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4068576">The Nightingale</a> (2018).</p>
<p>Yoson An’s smouldering portrayal of Wei Shing resembles Jay Swan’s character in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7298596/">Mystery Road</a> (2018–). Both are extremely resourceful, conflicted and move between different worlds while confronting the ghosts of their own respective pasts in remote Australia. </p>
<h2>Historical voices together</h2>
<p>New Gold Mountain emphasises the little told history of the Chinese on the diggings. The paradoxical nature of the colonial gold seeking era is best understood when all the historical voices are heard together. If one story dominates, much of the historical themes which help to explain Australian society in the present day are missed.</p>
<p>The show also reminds us of the complex enduring relationship between China and Australia, which has often been driven by the mining industry. </p>
<p>But, ultimately, it’s a cracking murder mystery that reminds viewers the first Australian multicultural moment happened in the mid-19th century – not the 20th.</p>
<p><em>New Gold Mountain premieres on SBS Wednesday 13 October.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-lurid-orange-sauces-to-refined-regional-flavours-how-politics-helped-shape-chinese-food-in-australia-150283">From lurid orange sauces to refined, regional flavours: how politics helped shape Chinese food in Australia</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169527/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keir Reeves does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>SBS’s new four part murder mystery examines Chinese experience on the Australian goldfields during the 1850s.Keir Reeves, Professor of History & Director Future Regions Research Centre, Federation University AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1677022021-09-17T00:43:12Z2021-09-17T00:43:12ZBack to the Rafters review: series reboot is full of heart and reflects changing times<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420955/original/file-20210914-16-1oji2ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C0%2C6000%2C3979&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brook Rushton/Amazon Prime</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Soap operas have been around since television was invented. Often involving outlandish plots, exaggerated storylines and hyperbolic characters and dialogue, they labour each moment on screen for ultimate dramatic effect. The women are transcendingly good looking and the men impossibly buff.</p>
<p>Packed to the Rafters — which aired for 122 episodes on Seven from 2008 to 2013 and was broadcast in over 20 countries — always managed to transcend the soap genre, presenting the daily struggles of everyday people without melodrama or histrionics. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fewer-episodes-more-foreign-owners-the-incredible-shrinking-of-australian-tv-drama-166274">Fewer episodes, more foreign owners: the incredible shrinking of Australian TV drama</a>
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<p>Following the trials and tribulations of the Rafter family, they confronted issues from the usual (births, deaths and marriages) to the extreme (arrests, vasectomies and even a kidney donation to an HIV-positive grandmother).</p>
<p>Throughout, the drama was understated and subtle. The show handled these crises sensitively, exploring them thoroughly. They were not glossed over or rushed. It didn’t try for the shock factor. Nor were there easy answers to anything, with problems resolved quickly. Some issues were not resolved at all, just like in real life.</p>
<p>Now, after eight years, they are … Back to the Rafters, re-imagined for Amazon Prime.</p>
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<h2>Getting off the road</h2>
<p>At the end of the final season, Dave (Erik Thomson) and Julie (Rebecca Gibney) with their four-year-old daughter Ruby had left Sydney and their extended family to do what many Australians do in later life: travel the byways and highways in a campervan.</p>
<p>At the beginning of the new series, the recent past is recapped before setting up the new premise. After being on the road for six years, the van they are travelling in breaks down outside the small fictional town of Buradeena, and Dave, Julie and now 10-year-old Ruby (Willow Speers) decide to plant roots in this picturesque rural village.</p>
<p>Across six episodes, the drama in the new series revolves around contemporary issues: country versus city life; Ruby’s concern for climate change; homelessness as a result of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-lessons-to-be-drawn-from-the-cracks-that-appeared-in-sydneys-opal-tower-but-they-extend-beyond-building-certification-109428">defective apartment building</a>; dealing with sick parents in aged care; the infertility Ben and his new wife face.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421731/original/file-20210917-15-cm0h5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421731/original/file-20210917-15-cm0h5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/421731/original/file-20210917-15-cm0h5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421731/original/file-20210917-15-cm0h5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421731/original/file-20210917-15-cm0h5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421731/original/file-20210917-15-cm0h5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421731/original/file-20210917-15-cm0h5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/421731/original/file-20210917-15-cm0h5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Back to the Rafters looks at a generation looking after their children and their parents.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Brook Rushton/Amazon Prime</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>But the internal conflict is the more relevant overarching arc of the series. Julie wants to move back to Sydney so she can better provide care for both her father and her children; Dave is resolute in his desire to stay in Buradeena. </p>
<p>They are torn between duty, responsibility, love and dedication to their family — but even moreso to each other. </p>
<h2>A drama about us</h2>
<p>As Seinfeld is oft-quoted as a comedy about nothing, Rafters has always been a drama about the ordinary. Ordinary people facing ordinary issues many of the viewers have faced in their own lives. But ordinary doesn’t mean mediocre. Far from it. Ordinary means the characters and drama feels drawn from real life. </p>
<p>I always found Packed to the Rafters to be honest and authentic. It was relatable because the issues, actions and dialogue of the characters were grounded in realism.</p>
<p>Most television shows cater to a specific audience niche: crime dramas for adults, teen dramas for younger people. Horror shows like The Walking Dead or comedies like Ted Lasso are even more niche. Reality television shows like The Block and The Voice rate well because they cater to a wide demographic. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The family at dinner." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420954/original/file-20210914-13-bwaqwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5889%2C3932&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420954/original/file-20210914-13-bwaqwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420954/original/file-20210914-13-bwaqwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420954/original/file-20210914-13-bwaqwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420954/original/file-20210914-13-bwaqwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420954/original/file-20210914-13-bwaqwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/420954/original/file-20210914-13-bwaqwy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Back to the Rafters, like its predecessor, explores ordinary Australian life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon Prime</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Rafters is like the reality TV of drama. Its multi-generational approach means it caters to all ages. While it aired on Seven, it was one of the only dramas on Australian television a whole family — from grandparents to children — could sit down to watch together, finding it reflected real family life back at them.</p>
<p>Back to the Rafters avoids most of the trappings of what I have previously dubbed “<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-seachange-is-a-sad-case-of-zombie-tv-when-your-favourite-programs-come-back-from-the-dead-123162">Zombie TV</a>” – those shows that come back from the dead and act as if nothing has changed. </p>
<p>The writers of Back to the Rafters have not tried to emulate the familiar concerns of the past. Instead they created issues relevant to 2021, with all the current complications attached.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-new-seachange-is-a-sad-case-of-zombie-tv-when-your-favourite-programs-come-back-from-the-dead-123162">The new Seachange is a sad case of Zombie TV: when your favourite programs come back from the dead</a>
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<p>At the heart of Rafters has always been one thing: family. The conflict and care between generations as they go through different stages of their lives. Dave and Julie, like many middle-aged couples, are caught in the middle. Pulled between needing to help ageing parents and the desire to still help children and grandchildren. </p>
<p>And this is the key to Rafters continued success. It takes the ordinary in our lives and makes it just a little bit more extraordinary on the screen. It’s a great joy to go Back to the Rafters again, after all these years.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Back to the Rafters is streaming on Amazon Prime from today.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daryl Sparkes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Packed to the Rafters was an authentic TV show about an ordinary family. The new reboot has family at its centre while touching on issues such as climate change and homelessness.Daryl Sparkes, Senior Lecturer (Media Studies and Production), University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1471832020-10-01T06:00:59Z2020-10-01T06:00:59ZCheese ‘n’ crackers! Concerns deepen for the future of Australian children’s television<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360977/original/file-20201001-16-156xx7n.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C3%2C2521%2C1429&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">ABC/Screen Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Today ABC, BBC Studios and Screen Australia <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/sa/media-centre/news/2020/10-01-bluey-returns-for-season-3?utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=2020-10-01-bluey-returns-for-season-3">announced</a> series three of the award-winning animation series Bluey will commence production in Brisbane later this year. </p>
<p>But despite Bluey’s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/bluey-cartoon-australia-ludo-studio-2020-6">global success</a>, policy changes announced yesterday mean that we may see fewer Australian-made children’s shows on broadcast TV in the future.</p>
<p>The federal government has <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/government-scraps-childrens-content-quotas-in-revamp-of-commercial-tv-regulations-644659">scrapped quotas</a> for minimum hours of local children’s content for commercial television networks. Foxtel’s obligation to Australian content has also been halved.</p>
<p>These changes represent a rapid unravelling of regulatory infrastructure established in the 1970s — and refined over decades — to support production and broadcast of quality Australian children’s content. </p>
<p>Responding to the policy changes, Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF) CEO Jenny Buckland explained: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The argument about children’s content quotas has been going ever since they were introduced nearly 40 years ago. The broadcasters never wanted to do it and they didn’t treat the shows well.</p>
</blockquote>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/save-our-screens-3-things-government-must-do-now-to-keep-australian-content-alive-132758">Save our screens: 3 things government must do now to keep Australian content alive</a>
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<h2>Changes to TV content regulation</h2>
<p>Under the existing system, commercial networks must abide by <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/fact-finders/television/industry-trends/content-regulation">strict requirements</a> to broadcast a certain amount of children’s content each year: 130 hours for pre-school children, and 260 hours for children under 14, including at least 25 hours of new drama. </p>
<p>From 2021, commercial networks will have no such obligation. </p>
<p>Children’s content quotas were suspended in April 2020, a decision Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts Paul Fletcher <a href="https://tvtonight.com.au/2020/04/local-quotas-suspended-spectrum-fees-waived-in-media-rescue.html">said</a> was in response to COVID-19. </p>
<p>Now a decision initially described as “an emergency red tape reduction measure” has been enshrined into policy.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360980/original/file-20201001-24-12x9397.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Boy with mouth stuck together and girl laughing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360980/original/file-20201001-24-12x9397.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/360980/original/file-20201001-24-12x9397.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360980/original/file-20201001-24-12x9397.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360980/original/file-20201001-24-12x9397.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360980/original/file-20201001-24-12x9397.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360980/original/file-20201001-24-12x9397.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/360980/original/file-20201001-24-12x9397.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Locally made kids’ shows like Round the Twist remain popular, 30-odd years since their first airing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BM2QwYjJlZDAtZjk2MC00ZTU5LWIyMTgtY2Q4YTNjOTMwYjNiXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNTQ0Mzk3MDg@._V1_.jpg">IMDB</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-tv-support-package-leaves-screen-writers-and-directors-even-less-certain-than-before-136545">Coronavirus TV 'support' package leaves screen writers and directors even less certain than before</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Strength in numbers</h2>
<p>The government’s decision to remove children’s quotas responds to intense lobbying from commercial networks. In February 2020, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/seven-halts-children-s-production-in-australian-content-quota-protest-20200225-p5445r.html">Seven declared it planned to halt the production of Australian children’s content</a>, a decision that would likely have resulted in a breach of children’s content quotas in 2021 if the current system was sustained. Seven’s Chief Executive explained he wanted the government to take “immediate action” to remove the quotas. </p>
<p>In 2017, the chief executives of Seven, Nine and Ten advocated together at a parliamentary inquiry <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/australian-commercial-television-networks-want-to-scrap-childrens-content-quota-20170720-gxfdsg.html">for the removal of children’s content quotas</a>.</p>
<p>They argued <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/australian-commercial-television-networks-want-to-scrap-childrens-content-quota-20170720-gxfdsg.html">children weren’t watching</a> their children’s programming. Indeed, many children’s programs on <a href="https://www.freetv.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Free-TV-Submission-to-Australian-Content-Options-Paper-6-July-2020.pdf">commercial networks don’t rate well.</a> This may relate to the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/academic-anna-potter-warns-australian-childrens-television-drama-under-threat-from-a-tsunami-of-animation-shows-20150325-1m752v.html">cheaply produced, culturally non-specific animated programs</a> made to meet the quotas. </p>
<p>ACTF CEO Jenny Buckland notes that <a href="https://blog-actf.com.au/when-broadcasters-cut-costs-on-local-tv-content-its-the-children-who-pay/">over the past decade</a>, commercial broadcasters have halved their spending on children’s drama. International co-productions also count towards the quotas, resulting in a surfeit of “co-produced animated series based on international concepts”. </p>
<p>The networks also argue the rising popularity of streaming services <a href="https://www.communications.gov.au/sites/default/files/submissions/freetv-australia-childrens-content.pdf?acsf_files_redirect">has made the quota system outdated</a>. Indeed, an increasing number of Australian children are turning to streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube, however the Australian Communication and Media Authority’s research has found that children still watch broadcast TV programs <a href="https://www.acma.gov.au/publications/2017-08/report/kids-tv-viewing-and-multi-screen-behaviour">made specifically for them</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/tv-has-changed-so-must-the-way-we-support-local-content-139674">TV has changed, so must the way we support local content</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Where the ABC fits in</h2>
<p>Bluey is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-01/bluey-abc-kids-show-wins-international-emmys-childrens-award/12111308">the most popular show</a> in the history of the ABC’s streaming app ABC iView, demonstrating there is demand for quality local children’s content.</p>
<p>But rather than seeing this as an endorsement, commercial broadcasters claim the popularity of children’s content on the ABC <a href="https://www.communications.gov.au/sites/default/files/submissions/freetv-australia-childrens-content.pdf?acsf_files_redirect">diminishes the need</a> for quotas. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1311483473929162753"}"></div></p>
<p>However, public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, are not obligated to produce or broadcast a certain amount of local children’s content (rather than quotas, they have internal targets underpinned by their charters). This means the ABC can <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-slow-death-of-australian-childrens-tv-drama-75394">pull funding from the children’s television budget as it sees fit</a>. Local content targets on children’s channel <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/abcme/">ABC ME</a> were <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-dramas-what-budget-cuts-signal-for-homegrown-childrens-shows-on-abc3-50004">reduced to 25% (from 50%) in 2015</a>. </p>
<p>Budget restrictions make the ABC’s track record of quality local children’s content difficult to sustain. <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Communications/AustralianfilmandTV/Report">Government analysis</a> in 2017 raised concerns that the ABC may have “reduced its commitment to producing children’s content”.</p>
<p>Despite the ABC’s role in broadcasting quality Australian content, and <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1329878X20948272">even directly helping with remote education during the pandemic</a>, the government has pressed pause on the indexation of ABC funding until July 2022. This means by end of the financial year (2020–21), the ABC’s operational funding base will have <a href="https://www.artshub.com.au/news-article/features/public-policy/vyshnavee-wijekumar/the-real-cost-of-defunding-the-abc-260708">reduced by 10%</a> since 2013.</p>
<p>Children’s content was a key target of a recent round of redundancies at the ABC. June saw <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-and-radio/abc-me-presenters-mourn-sad-cuts-20200627-p556ti.html#comments.">the closure</a> of Melbourne children’s division ME TV and the cancellation of kids’ show <a href="https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/the-screen-guide/t/definitely-not-news-2020/38889/">Definitely Not News</a>. The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance <a href="https://mumbrella.com.au/government-scraps-childrens-content-quotas-in-revamp-of-commercial-tv-regulations-644659">warns</a> changes to production quotas could “mean the demise of children’s content on commercial TV, leaving a cash-strapped ABC to pick up the slack”. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bgzQ9DE9zOM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Definitely Not News was cancelled in June.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Defending local children’s TV</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.communications.gov.au/what-we-do/television/modernising-australian-screen-content-settings/qa#:%7E:text=The%20Government%20is%20providing%20funding,%2D22%20and%202022%2D23.&text=This%20funding%20makes%20it%20more,and%20values%20on%20alternative%20platforms.">government has announced</a> a welcome A$20 million in funding for the ACTF for children’s content, supplemented by $30 million in funding for Screen Australia.</p>
<p>Jenny Buckland notes, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>we’ll be working very hard with producers to try and open those commissioning doors to new content, and tracking what happens to production over the 2-year period.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Perhaps this funding will stave off the end of local children’s content for now. Though the policy and budgetary ecosystem that supports a robust domestic children’s content sector is in flux, Buckland is still hopeful: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>… there needs to be Australian children’s content on all the places that children go to watch content — that includes having well-resourced public broadcasters with a major commitment to kids, as well as content on commercial video-on-demand platforms and other destinations. We were hoping there would be Australian content expenditure requirements on these platforms, and the door might still be open for that.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147183/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The pandemic pause on local children’s television content has become policy. Now what for kids’ TV?Jessica Balanzategui, Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies, Swinburne University of TechnologyJoanna McIntyre, Lecturer in Media Studies, Swinburne University of TechnologyLiam Burke, Associate Professor and Cinema and Screen Studies Discipline Leader, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.