http://hdl.handle.net/2123/7227 2013-06-18T05:00:55Z 2013-06-18T05:00:55Z Murphy, Caitlin http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8864 2013-01-11T17:52:31Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Snog, Marry or Avoid? Class, taste and the making of selfhood in makeover televison Authors: Murphy, Caitlin Abstract: ‘Snog, Marry or Avoid?: Class, taste and the labour of selfhood in makeover television’, is an exploration of the way social stratification is visited on individual and collective corporeality, externalised through the mechanics of taste and regulated within the makeover television genre. Research for this thesis has been primarily informed by the theory of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who, in the latter half of the twentieth century, aimed to expose the role of culture as implicated in the functioning of power within capitalist societies. Bourdieu’s work reminds us that social stratification is inevitably inscribed on corporeality, through the structure of habitus and its relation to capital. This thesis demonstrates how class often informs the subtext of makeover television – as middle-class tastes are held as the key to affecting legitimate selfhood – yet social difference is subsumed in the ideology of individualism. These concepts are developed with reference to Snog Marry Avoid? (2008--), a British ‘make-under’ series that subtly works to equate middle-class taste with a ‘natural’, desirable state of being. Through examination of this text, questions are raised about the arbitrariness of ‘good’ taste, the durability of habitus and how these constructs inhibit social mobility and interpersonal success. Ultimately, this thesis figures as an indictment of the way (classed) bodies are devalued by discourses of self-legitimation.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Bull-McMahon, Aimee http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8863 2013-01-11T17:52:30Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: “Say no to burqas”: geographies of nation and citizenship in Newtown Authors: Bull-McMahon, Aimee Abstract: This thesis is concerned with the ways in which instances of everyday racism reproduce geographies of national belonging and exclusion in the city, focusing specifically on an activist campaign in Newtown, Australia, which called on the community to ‘Say no to burqas’. The focal point of this one-man campaign was a large, street facing mural, depicting a veiled woman, crossed out inside a red circle. The mural attracted much community opposition, and was defaced over sixty-four times. This thesis deconstructs the ways in which the mural campaign inscribed a particular national imaginary onto Newtown, constituted through the exclusion of the Muslim other; attending to the roots of this imaginary in racialised and gendered regimes of citizenship which privilege white, liberal civility. It goes on to show how the mural both reproduced, and was implicated in, the classed geographies of Australian multiculturalism, which figure the inner city as diverse and cosmopolitan, in opposition to the suburban as a site of ethnic criminality and multicultural failure. Finally, this thesis looks to various instances of organised opposition to the mural as examples of insurgent citizenship, capable of reimagining the relationship between place, nation and political community, in response to the ethical, political and practical task of living together in the multicultural city.

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Ewan, Monique http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8686 2012-09-27T16:52:35Z 2012-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: 'What A Girl Wants, What A Girl Needs': Father-Daughter Intimacies in Theraputic Literature and Teen Film Authors: Ewan, Monique Abstract: This dissertation tracks the operations of broken family discourse through both therapeutic literature and popular teen film. It is interested in the way that young women and girls are implicated in supporting and maintaining the authority of fathers across separated families. The girl--‐power oriented films of the 1990s and 2000s are offered as a productive source for understanding the agency and complex subjectivity of girls who negotiate families marked by separation. In comparison to this girl--‐centric discourse, it is argued the therapeutic literature creates narrow and limited subject positions for girls as either innocent saviours or vulnerable victims of ‘broken’ families. In addition, it is argued that aspects of the therapeutic literature perpetuate established gender divisions and apportion blame to mothers for the breakdown of the traditional family unit. To explore these issues the first half of this dissertation surveys the therapeutic field on marriage and divorce, looking in particular at keywords in the Journal of Divorce and Remarriage and a recent review article published in this journal: Linda Nielsen’s ‘Divorced Fathers and Their Daughters: A Review of Research’ (2011). The second half of the dissertation explores the interaction between fantasy, fairy--‐tale and girl--‐power in teen films from 1995 to 2007, looking in particular at What A Girl Wants (2003) starring Amanda Bynes and Colin Firth. The discussion of these texts is framed within the field of girlhood studies, and draws on theories of ‘tween’ culture and feminist concerns about commercialisation and agency. Taking a discursive rather than aesthetic approach to the film text, I employ an interpretative strategy that takes seriously the desires and disavowals expressed in fictional narratives directed at teen or iv pre--‐teen audiences. As I hope to demonstrate, contemporary films targeted at girls have the capacity to narrativise these concerns in ways that shift the debate about divorced families away from a pathologising account of the damaged child. They direct us instead towards a more productive understanding of how changing family dynamics are actively negotiated by all parties—including those female minors otherwise understood to be outside of, and at risk from, the devolution and reformation of adult intimacies. Keywords: girlhood, gender, sexuality, fathers, daughters, teen film, family

2012-01-01T00:00:00Z Mitchell, Emma http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8038 2012-01-13T18:06:18Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Seeing blue: negotiating the politics of Avatar media activism Authors: Mitchell, Emma Abstract: This thesis examines how the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar (2009) has been taken-up in media activism directed towards Indigenous struggles against imperialism. It assumes the importance of locating this phenomenon within the discursive and material regimes that mediate, enable, and constrain it. I therefore offer a contextualised analysis of the film and media relating to its appropriation, which focuses on the representational practices and structural mechanisms that inform the production, circulation, and reception of the texts. This approach emphasises the tensions and contradictions that underpin activists’ relationship to the media they mobilise. Such contradictions are particularly apparent in relation to the politics of race that shape Avatar, the Indigenous activism that references it, and the media regimes that make this possible. The very forces that marginalise Indigenous voices empower auteur James Cameron to speak on their behalf and to be heard. Activists must also negotiate the tension between co-opting media spectacle and being commercialised as spectacle. However, refusing a simple critique of the representations activists deploy as media spectacles, I argue for a model that foregrounds the alliances that they seek to engender. Drawing on the work of feminist scholars Oliver (2001) and Deslandes (2010), I signal a theoretical approach that focuses on how the mediated spectator relates to such representations and insists on the spectator’s responsibility to respond. Acknowledging that the tensions that animate Avatar media activism can be both constrictive and creative, this project seeks a model that maximises the potential for the latter. It thus resists the paralysis of activism that can come with critiquing how we fight for the world we imagine.

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z Howse, Eloise http://hdl.handle.net/2123/8037 2012-05-01T17:08:19Z 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z

Title: Menstruating the Past, Consuming the Future: Analysing Sanitary Hygiene Products through the work of Walter Benjamin Authors: Howse, Eloise Abstract: This thesis explores how the menstruating subject is articulated in contemporary consumer culture and through practices of consumption. This results in an alternate reading of the menstruating subject that brings together broader questions related to modernity and history. Consumption in modernity occupies a troubled place for feminist theorists and activists; considering consumption requires the rejection of assumptions about the consumer as a blank slate on which advertisers and marketers write their products. The assumed passivity of the young female consumer is also readily questioned, particularly in relation to sanitary hygiene products. Using the work of Walter Benjamin, particularly his ideas of „now-time‟, the dialectical image and technological reproducibility, allows for a different type of analysis of the menstruating subject in modernity. Understanding how the past, present and future are constructed in current sanitary hygiene product advertising and branding leads to new ways of accessing the everyday for young women in contemporary Australia. Benjamin‟s literary trope of the fragment is also discussed and used in conjunction with the cultural artefacts of everyday objects and commodities. Looking at the visual and digital media of two brands of sanitary hygiene products Moxie and U by Kotex, framed by an autoethnographic approach, I offer a way of considering menstruation and consumption together whilst also suggesting new possibilities for how we frame the everyday for young women in modernity.

2011-01-01T00:00:00Z