Australasian Journal of Popular Culture - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2019

On 15 March 2019, a white supremacist gunman shot dead 50 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, Aotearoa, New Zealand. His actions changed forever the safe haven known as ‘God’s Own’. New Zealanders were shocked that such an event had happened here. Many Kiwis believed the nation to be safe, given its geographic isolation from the terrorist targets of Europe and the United States of America. However, the atrocity has exposed an unhealthy underbelly that has long permeated New Zealand’s socio-culture. Racism and discrimination have forefronted ensuing conversations. This article explores the nation’s history of discrimination preceding the terrorist attack. In doing so, we expose something subtly denied: that New Zealand is not the egalitarian land of milk and honey that many Kiwis believed it to be. We suggest that the terrorist attack not only highlighted the nation’s discrimination but also provided its liminal moment. Part of that liminality was Cat/Yusuf Steven’s performance, in Christchurch, of ‘Peace Train’. We compound our exploration of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history of discrimination by asking how the lyrics of ‘Peace Train’ provide a way to view our past and provide an opportunity to perceive a way forward for the nation, given the tragedy of terrorism. We suggest that ‘Peace Train’ is a metaphorical illumination of the nation’s liminality, and that it provided a road map of unity that helped to guide many Kiwis in understanding and coming to terms with not only what had happened but also a future view of how Kiwis might see themselves.

Television programmes continue to impart ‘narratives, consumer choice’ and ‘moral predispositions’, although there is conjecture among scholars over the influence of television on the formation of a moral viewpoint in audiences. These components allow consumers to evaluate the content of television shows in the light of their own cultural understandings of morality and then either accept or reject them. This article uses thematic analysis to reveal patterns in the representations of moral ambiguity in the first season of the television show The Resident (2018–present), a contemporary US-based television series that is broadcast to global audiences in a number of international territories. The series explores the intricacies of hospital management, patient care and medical ethics particularly in light of increasing commercial pressures within a US context. Our analysis shows that the series grapples with four main themes: do no harm, experts and egos, money muddies morality and good versus evil, and in doing so, interrogates the basis of implicit knowledge about right, wrong and individual responsibility in western culture.

This article examines Peter Ackroyd’s popular Gothic novel The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein (2008), which is a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s famous Gothic novel Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus ([1818] 2003). The basic premise of Ackroyd’s narrative seemingly resembles Shelley’s own, as Victor Frankenstein woefully reflects on the events that have brought about his mysterious downfall, and like the original text the voice of the Monster interrupts his creator to recount passages from his own afterlife. However, Ackroyd’s adaption is instead set within the historical context of the original story’s creation in the early nineteenth century. Ackroyd’s Frankenstein studies at Oxford, befriends radical Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, moves to London to conduct his reanimation experiments and even accompanies the Shelleys, Byron and Polidori on that fateful holiday when the original novel was conceived. This article explores how Ackroyd’s novel, as a form of the contemporary ‘popular’ Gothic, functions as an uncanny doppelgänger of Shelley’s Frankenstein. By blurring the boundaries between history and fiction, the original text and the context of its creation haunt Ackroyd’s adaptation in uncannily doubled and self-reflexive ways that speak to Frankenstein’s legacy for the Gothic in popular culture. The dénouement of Ackroyd’s narrative reveals that the Monster is Frankenstein’s psychological doppelgänger, a projection of insanity, and thus Frankenstein himself is the Monster. This article proposes that this final twist is an uncanny reflection of the narrative’s own ‘Frankenstein-ian’ monstrous metafictional construction, for it argues that Ackroyd’s story is a ‘strange case(book)’ haunted by the ghosts of its Gothic literary predecessors.

While Katy Perry is a pop-superstar, known for her sexually explicit lyrics and catchy dance-pop songs, the release of her fourth studio album, Witness (2017), saw the singer attempt to distance herself from her ‘Katy Perry’ persona. According to Baudrillard, people feel so lost in an artificial world of simulacra that people cling nostalgically to reality, truth, and reason. Baudrillard’s claim that people cling to notions of reality and authenticity can be seen with Perry, who used Witness as a storytelling vehicle to ‘introduce’ the ‘real’ person behind the celebrity persona, Katheryn Hudson. By constructing the tale that Hudson is the singer’s true self, the perceived liberation of Perry from the shackles of her celebrity persona frames Witness as an era distinct from previous albums. This article will critically examine the construction of this story throughout the Witness era, discussing how the singer’s desire to be witnessed ultimately reiterates Meyers’ claim that celebrities can never be known. Although Perry attempts to reveal her authentic identity to fans by manufacturing a clear division between her celebrity persona, and the person behind the persona, this narrative raises issues around authenticity and reality, as the singer has arguably become lost in the hyperreal.

This paper draws on letters published weekly in ‘Uncle Sam’s Corner’, in Rockhampton’s Morning Bulletin and Central Queensland Herald between 1915 and 1918 to explore the role of journalists in disseminating popular narratives during the First World War. Through the children’s own words their understanding of unfolding events is exposed as is the role of journalist ‘Uncle Sam’ in shaping children’s wartime responses. Using his adjoining children’s corner and the responses given to the children’s letters, Uncle Sam inculcates the values of duty, service and sacrifice; the qualities demanded of the Empire’s civilians in wartime to aid military success. An examination of a specific children’s column reveals how media can overtly manipulate public perceptions to shape dominant societal narratives and highlights how children unwittingly participate in wartime propaganda.

Many sweet foods featured in contemporary Australian cookbooks are indelibly connected to culinary tradition and use nostalgia to encourage a sense of collective identity and experience. Anzac Biscuits exemplify this through ubiquity and familiarity, and the annual baking ritual becomes a collective commemoration that shapes ideologies of identity and myth, which are somewhat central to understanding the Australian experience. Yet the mythology around the biscuits is flawed. The recipe recognizable today as Anzac Biscuits can be traced from the 1920s onwards in Australian cookbooks, which calls into question the veracity of the well-told story of women on the home front baking and sending the biscuits to the Anzac trenches during the First World War. This article will examine the parallels between Australian traditions of baking culture and the functional value of the Anzac myth, and the way both seem to reaffirm cultural standards, and attempt to secure gender ideals by presenting unattainable fantasies. While the Australian interpretation of the Anzac myth reinforces a certain unattainable ideal of heroic masculinity – with courage, determination and sacrifice for nation – contemporary cookbooks reflect a romanticized domestic fantasy that centres on family and feminine practice, both heavily reliant on proscriptive heterosexuality and heteronormativity, enhanced and polished via a nostalgia-tinged lens.

The humid, sub-tropical city of Brisbane is Australia’s third-largest and one often regarded as culturally inferior to its southern counterparts Sydney and Melbourne. However, the city has supported a small but active independent fashion scene, and this article examines three of these businesses, exploring how they positioned themselves in relation to the global fashion industry. It contributes to literature on local fashion industries in New Zealand, Scandinavia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Challenges and opportunities presented to local fashion businesses are considered, and ways in which these have changed over time is also discussed. Case studies are drawn from a period between 1950 and 2018 and were purposively chosen so that contemporary case studies could be contextualized with historical examples. Research was conducted through archival research at the Queensland Museum, semi-structured interviews with participants and on-site observations. Findings confirm those of existing studies in the field that suggest local fashion businesses outside of large cities and dominant fashion centres may struggle to remain relevant in a fast-paced global industry, but have an opportunity to develop and foster close bonds to local cultural scenes and to contribute to place-making in the cities in which they are located.

The Routledge Companion to Literature and Food, Lorna Piatti-Farnell and Donna Lee Brien (eds) (2018), 516 pp. ISBN: 9781138048430, New York: Routledge, h/bk, $389 AUD

The Case of Katherine Mansfield, Louise Keenan (DIR.) (2019) written by Cathy Downes, Cheeky Pukeko Productions, The Mansfield Garden, Hamilton Gardens Festival of the Arts, Hamilton, 23–24 February