Australasian Journal of Popular Culture - Volume 2, Issue 1, 2012

After the national election win of the Liberal National Coalition in March 1996, Australia experienced more than ten years of contentious public debate. Discussions about Australia's history and future raged with an intensity that both highlighted and problematized the very notion of national identity. During this period, the television commercials for tea brand Bushells paralleled changes in Australia's political culture. In various ways, events of epochal significance, both in Australia and abroad, surfaced in the brand's promotions. These campaigns not only showed the increasing difficulty of picturing Australianness; they also showed that, no matter how fragmented Australian culture became, there remained a lingering bias to certain images, ideals and values. As the Australian electorate became more insular, parochial and conservative, Bushells followed suit. This article considers how Bushells drew symbolic markers from popular culture – the worlds of celebrity, sport, cinema and so on – in a bid to remain relevant, endearing and likeable. It therefore shows that, for a commodity as basic as tea, much can be gleaned about the contemporary political mood through the vernacular rhetoric of television advertising.

When US coffee chain Starbucks announced it would close 61 of its 84 Australian stores, some Australian coffee drinkers were smug: Starbucks, it seemed, had failed to understand the Australian market. The President of Starbucks Asia Pacific John Culver admitted: 'I think what we've seen is that Australia has a very sophisticated coffee culture'. Australia does have a sophisticated coffee culture and the collective belief is that its origins are European. This article argues that Australia had a coffee culture of sorts prior to WWII but that it was American serviceman stationed in Australia, followed closely by the introduction of Nestlé instant coffee in 1948, that kick-started Australia's shift from tea to coffee drinking. It also argues that Australia's contemporary coffee market is very similar to America's, with recent trends in America's specialty coffee industry closely watched and followed by Australian 'third wave' coffee roasters and consumers.

This article discusses the history and evolution of the Dolly Varden cake. It traces the transformation of Dolly Varden from a Charles Dickens' character to the inspiration behind a range of popular culture tributes and dedications, and the iconic children's cake that she is associated with today. It also explores the changes in processes, ingredients and baking of the cake in Australia, and concludes with referencing a modern interpretation of the Dolly Varden image. Using the Dolly Varden cake, it draws other inferences about contemporary ideas of the feminine, as well as cake decorating as a new form of art through which cultural issues may be investigated.

There is no more basic commodity than food, but the expanding scholarly attention it has received also highlights its complexity. This article focuses on a food close to many people's hearts: the wedding cake. In particular, it discusses the style, form and consumption of royal wedding cakes to explore what this reveals about Australian identity. The cultural inscriptions and influences of royal wedding cakes reflect the intersection between food and national identity; however, this is a multifarious relationship between nation, race, gender, class and sexuality that is neither static nor certain. Despite changes in Australia's relationship with Britain after the Second World War, the monarchy remains a living and popular institution. The popular imagining of empire and royalty persists, as evidenced in the popularity of royal weddings and the influence of royal wedding cakes. This influence is not, however, one way: a distinctive new style of wedding cake developed in Australia has changed that of Britain. Deconstructing the wedding cake in this way provides scope for challenging the narratives of both the potency and decline of empire in terms of Australia.

Icing is not essential to the enjoyment of cakes, but it is part of the pleasure cakes offer and, especially when it comes to celebratory cakes, that pleasure can be more aesthetic than gustatory. The phrase 'the icing on the cake' refers to the finishing touch, the superfluous and even the frivolous: it connotes the ephemeral, the trivial and the feminine. In the case of the celebratory cake, however, it is all about the icing. The history of confectionery is mostly identified with the devaluation of sugar and its shift from the masculine/public sphere to the feminine/private sphere, but wedding cakes and children's birthday cakes descend from the elaborate sugar sculptures that were festive emblems of rank on the banquet tables of medieval courts. This article examines The Australian Women's Weekly (AWW) Children's Birthday Cake Book, which uses common confectionery as cake decoration. Sugar was once a magical substance in an ordinary world and, by endowing cakes with an appeal similar to that of toys, these AWW cakes excite visual pleasure and create childhood memories through artistry and spectacle. As confectionery historian Laura Mason explains, 'Sugar is fantasy land'.

This article considers the function of food and consumption in Katherine Mansfield's fiction. Using food as the ideal medium to dissect issues of gender, national identity and class, Mansfield unveils how eating functions as an agent of modernity. Against the backdrop of World War One – and the subsequent evolution into the 1920s – Mansfield reveals how history and popular culture merge in the idiom of food. Her fiction proves eating to be an activity of 'conflict', whether it be conceptually saturated with political militancy or marked by social divergence and disarming solitude. While Mansfield's New Zealand stories offer an optimistic perspective on gastronomy and life sanguinity, her European fiction offers a bleaker view of eating as an activity that emphasizes the pain of post-war separation, solitude and social neglect. By paying close attention to the gastro-political debates in the fiction, this analysis aims to show how food habits act as a crucial concept within Mansfield's negotiations of a particularly alienating moment in history.

This article presents the pie cart as a life marker within three celebrity narratives. While Americanized fast food chains currently dominate the Australasian take-away market, pie carts (and especially those operating in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s) provide an entrance into the collective memory, evoking a nostalgia redolent of Bruce Mason's Golden Weather (1962), a time past that, in retrospect, seemed simpler and less complex than contemporary life. The narratives of Ray Columbus, Georgina Beyer and Johnny Cooper are important because, and as Graeme Turner suggests, celebrities mediate the momentary and the permanent by constructing communities of thought from which others find reassurance and identity. Like pie carts themselves, our celebrity narratives offer a performative recapitulation of 1950s, 1960s and 1970s experience by engaging the symbolic realms of nostalgia and memory.

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.

THE ARISTOLOGIST: AN ANTIPODEAN JOURNAL OF FOOD HISTORY, DUNCAN GALLETLY (ED.) (2011) Wellington, NZ: Kowhiti House, 160 pp., ISBN: 9780473202187, p/bk, NZ$40.00

LOCALE: THE AUSTRALASIAN-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF REGIONAL FOOD STUDIES, SUSIE KHAMIS (ED.) (2011) Regional Food Research Network Australasia, Southern Cross University, Lismore, pp. 157, ISSN: 2200-5005, online, free-access, http://www.localejournal.org

VORACIOUS: THE BEST NEW AUSTRALIAN FOOD WRITING, PAUL MCNALLY (ED.) (2011) Prahran, Vic: Hardie Grant Books, 191 pp., ISBN: 9781742701202, p/bk, AUS$29.95

NEW ZEALAND FOODWRITING: BOOKS AND THEIR WRITERS

JANE HUNTER: GROWING A LEGACY, TESSA ANDE RSON (2008) Auckland, NZ: Harper Collins, 320 pp., ISBN 9781869506483, h/bk, NZ$40.00

NEW ZEALAND FOOD AND COOKERY, DAVID BURTON (2009) Auckland: David Bateman, 320 pp., ISBN 9781869537289, h/bk, NZ$60.00

THE PAVLOVA STORY: A SLICE OF NEW ZEALAND'S CULINARY HISTORY, HELEN LEACH (2008) Dunedin: Otago University Press, 192 pp., ISBN 9781877372575, p/bk, NZ$40.00

FROM KAI TO KIWI KITCHEN: NEW ZEALAND CULINARY TRADITION AND COOKBOOK S, HELEN LEACH (ED.) (2010) Dunedin: Otago University Press, 219 pp., ISBN 9781877372759, p/bk, NZ$45.00

THE TWELVE CAKE OF CHRISTMAS: AN EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY WITH RECIPES, HELEN LEACH, MARY BROWNE AND RAELENE INGLIS (2011) Dunedin: Otago University Press, 192 pp., ISBN 9781877578199, h/bk, NZ$40.00

GREEN URBAN LIVING: SIMPLE STEPS TO GROWING FOOD, KEEPING CHICKENS, WORM FARMING, BEEKEEPING AND MUCH MORE IN NEW ZEALAND, JANET LUKE (2011) Auckland: New Holland, 176 pp., ISBN 9781869663223, p/bk, NZ$45.00

MASTERING THE ART OF SELF-SUFFICIENCY IN NEW ZEALAND, CAROLANN MURRAY (2010) Auckland: New Holland, 224 pp., ISBN 9781869662912, p/bk, NZ$39.00

A HOME COMPANION: MY YEAR OF LIVING LIKE MY GRANDMOTHER, WENDYL NISSEN (2010) Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin, 302 pp., ISBN 9781877505058, p/bk, NZ$26.99

Dining Out: A History of the Restaurant in New Zealand, Perrin Rowland (2010) Auckland: Auckland University Press, 280 pp., ISBN 9781869404642, h/bk, NZ$59.99

CHANCERS AND VISIONARIES: A HISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND WINE, KEITH STEWART (2010) Auckland: Godwit/Random House New Zealand, 447 pp., ISBN 9781869620709, p/bk, NZ$49.99

KIWI KITCHEN WITH RICHARD TILL (TVNZ/GOOGLEBOX PRODUCTIONS LTD), RICHARD TILL (2008) Auckland: Renaissance Publishing, 144 pp., ISBN 9780958263566, p/bk, NZ$34.99

EVERY TEA TOWEL TELLS A STORY: RICHARD TILL'S SPECIAL COLLECTION, RICHARD TILL (2010) Auckland: Renaissance Publishing, 112 pp., ISBN 9780986452109, p/bk, NZ$24.99

FIRST CATCH YOUR WEKA: A STORY OF NEW ZEALAND COOKING, DAVID VEART (2008) Rpt. 2009, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 330 pp., ISBN 97818699404109, p/bk, NZ$49.99

INSIDE STORIES: A HISTORY OF THE NEW ZEALAND HOUSEWIFE 1890–1975, FRANCES WALSH (2011) Auckland: Godwit, Random House, 320 pp., ISBN 9781869621650, p/bk, NZ$49.99

FOOD AND CULTURE IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN FICTION, LORNA PIATTI-FARNELL (2011) New York: Routledge, 191 pp., ISBN: 9780415884228, h/bk, AUS$80.00, ISBN: 9780203805077, E-book