Australasian Journal of Popular Culture - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2014

The Internet has changed the relationship of Australians to information. As history rises in popularity as a genre for leisurely entertainment, the way people interact with Australian history online is also changing. Digital history is democratized; it has never been easier for both scholars and the general public to obtain historical content, or to develop and share historical works. Yet these developments in presenting, creating and storing historical data online are not without their complications. The proliferation of online histories has engendered a digital space where it is sometimes hard to distinguish credible material. Moreover, issues of subscription and accessibility complicate individual abilities to consume particular histories. This article examines the notion of history as commodity by examining Australian histories online, such as genealogy archives and databases. Key points of discussion are the complexities and dynamic developments in digital history as a popular genre, as well as the extent to which digital Australian histories are informative representations of the past.

Eleven Pro-Am curators of Australian television history were interviewed about their practice. The data helps us to understand the relationship between professional and Pro-Am approaches to Australian television history. There is no simple binary – the lines are blurred – but there are some differences. Pro-Am curators of Australian television history are not paid for their work and present other motivations for practice – particularly being that ‘weird child’ who was obsessed with gathering information and objects related to television. They have freedom to curate only programmes and genres that interest them, and they tend to collect merchandise as much as programme texts themselves. And they have less interest in formally cataloguing their material than do professional curators of Australian television history.

Conspiracy theories surrounding the death of celebrities have become an integral facet of the millennial western culturescape, particularly in relation to iconic celebrity figures such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Princess Diana Spencer. This article delineates these ‘celebrity death conspiracies’ as distinct forms of conspiracy theory that function to assert and develop processes of spectacle and attention integral to the concept of celebrity and the operations of celebrity culture. Such conspiracy theories also serve as a means for publicizing normally marginalized conspiracist world-views within the contexts of popular culture. The article concludes by discussing two contemporary trends associated with celebrity death conspiracies: the deliberate elaboration of such theories by celebrities for publicity purposes, and the rise of ‘New Age Illuminism’ as a conspiracist world-view in which celebrity plays a major role, as illustrated by the celebrity death conspiracies that have developed around the late singer Michael Jackson.

Photo caption competitions have existed for about 100 years and are well embedded in popular culture. Adopting a very fine grained examination, this article looks at a new caption competition running in a very popular New Zealand magazine. An overall description of the first twenty episodes is provided, discussion then focuses on a key feature of the photos that form the first part of the competition. They feature very visible hand gestures and embodied expressions, which seem to appeal to the competition’s organizers because they provide a readily understandable and economic platform for directing competitors in their caption-construction. By close attention to several examples, the discussion shows how indeed these hand gestures and embodied expressions are an excellent resource for the typical use of incongruity in accomplishing humour.

From its radio debut in 1933 through to the 2013 film, The Lone Ranger (TLR) franchise has continued to grow, expanding from these beginnings into television, novel, comic books and, as noted, film. With the expansion of TLR still a continuing, albeit occasionally dormant, process, the franchise itself possesses a broad history filled not only with additions but also absences. This article is concerned with one absence in particular with: re-authoring. Other media franchises featuring popular Superheroes typically delved, with varying degrees of frequency, into re-authored variants of their canonical narrative – producing distinct images and varied ideas surrounding their characters. Yet, TLR has remained squarely within a pseudo-historical nineteenth-century-western United States and concerning an ambushed Texas Ranger who becomes a masked vigilante-Superhero – and it is this absence that marks TLR as distinct compared with other long-running media franchise texts. Through history along with media and genre theory, this article explores the history and character of TLR retrospectively, focusing on the absence of setting and genre variation in contrast to the use and theme of the Frontier throughout the franchise. Within this exploration we position the figure of the masked man as Superhero surrounded by the history of the American West, attributing the absence of re-authoring to this arrangement, seeing the notion of the masked man entrenched rigidly into ideas surrounding the nineteenth century westward expansion of the United States.

Aca–fandom, as popularized by Jenkins, forefronts reciprocity and dialogue between researcher and subject and has become the method of choice for many fan studies scholars. This article critiques the centrality of canon in the aca–fan tradition, using Derrida’s work on the parergon. I raise various issues for consideration, such as aca–fandom’s emphasis on identity, and the potential implications of a researcher presuming commonalities with fan communities. These issues are discussed with regard to my own practice-led research approach. I examine the aca–fan position in relation to ‘reflexive’ and ‘native anthropology’, the latter of which highlights advocacy dimensions of the position. I also make a case for the importance of managing responsibilities to academy and community (public or fannish) and distinctions between autonomous and public or political intellectualism. My discussion of the various implications of the aca–fan position leads to my central argument, which is that the aca–fan researcher in the textual tradition would do well to avoid the temptation to fixate on canon at the expense of the fan works themselves.

Punk: Chaos to Couture, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 9 May–14 August 2013

A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk, Valerie Steele (ed.) (2013) New Haven, London/New York: Yale University Press/Fashion Institute of Technology, 248 pp., ISBN: 9780300196702, h/bk, AU $54.99

Buffalo Bill in Bologna: The Americanization of the World, 1869-1922, Robert W. Rydell and Rob Kroes (2013) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 209 pp., ISBN: 9780226007120, p/bk, AU$14.40

Loving Faster than Light: Romance Readers in Einstein’s Universe, Katy Price (2012) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 261 pp., ISBN: 9780226680736, h/bk, AU$45

Apollo in George Street. The Life of David McKee Wright, Michael Sharkey (2012) Sydney: Puncher & Wattmann ISBN: 9781921450341, 437 pp., p/bk, AU$34.95.

The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain, 1710-1795, Kate Fullager (2012) Berkeley and London: University of California Press, xv + 252 pp., ISBN: 9781938169038, p/bk, AU$ 49.95

The Vogue Factor, Kirstie Clements (2013) Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 234 pp., ISBN: 9780522862430, p/bk, AU$29.95.