Suchergebnisse

This article focuses on two aspects of popular culture. Principally, the article presents a history of a popular sculpture erected at Australia's Bondi Beach in 1960. The narrative follows the genesis of the work, its removal, and subsequent attempts to restore the sculpture at different locations on Bondi Beach and in the adjacent Bondi Park. Based on archival research and material from the popular press, the article offers the first thorough account of the sculpture, highlighting debates around its form, its popularity with local residents, the often-overlooked significance of the work as a tourist attraction, and decades-long efforts to restore the work. Secondly, the article identifies the sculpture's creator, Lyall Randolph, as an artist who enjoyed popular appeal in Australia at this time, despite never reaching the status of an 'elite' artist. Investigating the place of a popular artwork in the cultural and social history of Australia's most iconic beach, the article contributes to both Bondi and Sydney's eastern suburbs' local history and knowledge about popular Australian artists.

Review of: Australian Radio Listeners and Television Viewers: Historical Perspectives, Bridget Griffen-Foley (2020)
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 167 pp.,
ISBN 978-3-03054-636-6, h/bk, AUD 79
ISBN 978-3-03054-639-7, p/bk, AUD 79
ISBN 978-3-03054-637-3, e-book, AUD 66

This article surveys book-length writing for a general readership about one of Australia's most well-known and popular beaches, Sydney's Bondi Beach. Having located narratives about Bondi Beach in a range of popular fiction and non-fiction writing, this investigation uses thematic analysis to examine these publications. Ten themes were identified in this analysis, revealing not only the wide range of topics related to Bondi Beach that are of interest to writers but also a series of tensions across these representations, as well as what is missing across these volumes.

Abstract

Abstract
Despite the challenges and difficulties involved in crafting a viable living as a professional creative writer, a number of Australian women sustained careers as popular writers in the twentieth century. Some of these worked across multiple genres, media and professional descriptors, maintaining what can be described as portfolio careers. This case study recognizes that the task of writing the lives of such popular writers is important because, in addition to restoring women to the historical record, such narratives make an important contribution towards understanding the production and consumption of popular writing. Margaret Dunn (1919–2011) worked for 70 years as a popular journalist, radio dramatist, cookbook writer and historian in Adelaide, Sydney, New York, New Delhi and Geneva. In addition to outlining the trajectory of her life, this study provides the first profile of her career as a popular writer and of the narratives that she constructed and published for both Australian and international audiences. This will include discussion of the 'golden age' of radio and the roles that women played in the production of this media, her bestselling cookbook Mother's Best Recipes (1974) and how she wrote engaging institutional and family histories that reached mainstream audiences.

Abstract
This article explores how chef and author Heston Blumenthal has drawn on Gothic and other popular literature to inspire his multimedia output, with a focus on the 'Gothic Horror Feast' episode of the second series of his popular television series, Heston's Feasts (2010). In this episode, Blumenthal himself uses Gothic literature as he draws on some of his supposed favourite Gothic tales to inspire an edible feast, in which, he states, he wants to recreate what is for him the pleasure of Gothic literature – 'that spine chilling thrill of being terrified but wanting to come back for more'. The guests at his feast are filmed as they foray into this unknown territory, experiencing a range of responses to the Gothic-inspired food – including fear, horror and disgust – and finding words to articulate these responses. Finally, viewers of the television series watch and experience this brief but surprisingly intense trip into the Gothic at a safe remove. Drawing on both Contemporary Gothic and food studies scholarship, this article will use this detailed example to investigate this specialist form of culinary television.

Since the 1970s, feminist scholars have undertaken important critical work on Australian women's writing of earlier eras, profiling and promoting their fiction. Less attention has been afforded to the popular non-fiction produced by Australian women writers and, in particular, to that produced before the Second World War. Yet this writing is important for several reasons. First, the non-fiction writing of Australian women was voluminous and popular with readers. Second, this popular work critically engaged with a tumultuous political, social and moral landscape in which, as women's rights were increasingly realized through legislation, the subjectivity of women themselves was fluid and contested. Third, as many of these women were also, or principally, fiction writers, their non-fiction can be shown to have informed and influenced many of their fictional interests, themes and characters. Lastly, and critically, popular non-fiction publication helped to financially sustain many of these writers. In proposing a conceptual framework informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu to analyse examples of this body of work, this article not only suggests that important connections exist between popular and mainstream non-fiction works – newspaper and magazine articles, essays, pamphlets and speeches – and the fictional publications of Australian women writers of the early twentieth century but also suggests that these connections may represent an Australian literary habitus where writing across genre, form and audience was a professional approach that built and sustained literary careers.

Abstract
This article examines the notions of the romantic dinner in post-war Australia, using material culture in the form of Australian food writing and advertisements in cookbooks and popular magazines from the post-war period (in this case, 1945–68). It investigates three closely related aspects of the 'romantic' dinner for two: the similarities and contrasts between the courtship restaurant 'date' and a specially prepared dinner at home; the way in which gendered roles are performed, confirmed and contested in these events; and the influence of American advertising, and its promotion of American cuisine and lifestyle, on the way the domestic meal was conceptualized and presented to housewives at this time. Bearing in mind that the social importance of food is reinforced because its preparation occurs on a daily basis and that the informative power of food and the material culture around food production is as yet only partially tapped, this analysis attempts to answer the question: was the romantic dinner for two an opportunity for romance, or was it a creation that reinforced post-war gender roles in Australia?

This article indicates the wide range of material that can be useful to those taking a popular culture approach to food studies, as well as the types and variety of major and notable Australian institutions that can be relatively easily accessed in order to undertake this research.
This is achieved through the provision of an overview of the holdings of a wide variety of Australian institutions that relate to the study of food and beverages, including their production, preparation and consumption. This article acknowledges the range of traditional materials that have,
for many years, supported scholarly research in the field of food studies such as cookery books and historical materials. In addition, this article outlines some of the more unusual items that are both relevant and important to researchers including film and photographic materials, manuscripts,
ephemera and everyday objects.

Abstract