Intellect is excited to announce that the Australasian Journal of
Popular Culture 7.2 is now available! For the full article list, click
here >> https://bit.ly/2NaIbQt

Content

The Cardrona Hotel: Creating a New Zealand heritage icon

Authors: Lloyd William Carpenter
Page Start: 209

On the road between the famed tourist hubs of Wanaka and Arrowtown on
New Zealand’s South Island lies the former 1860s gold-rush-era town of
Cardrona. There, beside an immaculately kept heritage precinct of
nineteenth-century wooden buildings, tourists pause at the Cardrona
Hotel, an architectural relic of the rush for gold in Central Otago.
This hotel has emerged in guidebooks and local histories, and on
social media sites and ratings guides, as a tourism and craft beer
‘must-do’ and, according to Heritage New Zealand, has become New
Zealand’s most photographed hotel. Its popularity defies belief and
even logic, and yet each new visitor to the region appears determined
to leave with at least one photograph of its distinctive facade in
their portfolio. The story behind the survival of the heritage-listed
structure and its elevation to the heights of popular and tourist
culture ‘icon’ status stems from a combination of its remote location,
the enduring romanticization of the gold rush, a succession of
eccentric owners, the mythopoeia of a popular book from the 1950s and
its inclusion in a brewer’s marketing campaign. Each has scaffolded
the Cardrona Hotel to become iconic to the gold-rush era, heritage
tourism and New Zealand’s popular culture and identity.

Kabell Mockbell and his coffee empire

Authors: Alison Vincent
Page Start: 225

The story of Kabell Mockbell and the coffee empire that he built
demonstrates how the biographies of individuals, and even the limited
amount of knowledge gained from secondary sources, can expand an
appreciation of the past and challenge popular preconceptions.
Mockbell was a self-described ‘Egyptian Turk, of Arab parentage’
living in Sydney throughout the First World War, negotiating the
challenges of allegiance to his ancestry and to his new home. He was
part of a cosmopolitan community long before post-Second World War
migration brought large numbers of Europeans to Australia and
government policies encouraged multiculturalism. Despite the popular
belief that today’s coffee culture owes its origins to the espresso
bars of the 1950s, Mockbell should be acknowledged as a much earlier
personage to bring the coffee shop to Sydney.

Margaret Dunn: A life and career biographical study

Authors: Donna Lee Brien
Page Start: 239

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.

Conflating class, culture and ethnicity: Casual and culinary forms of
racism in Alice Pung’s Laurinda

Authors: Astrid Schwegler-Castañer
Page Start: 255

Literature can function as a lens through which social values are
mediated. This characteristic acquires particular relevance in the
case of children’s and young adult literatures as the world-view of
the young readership is especially susceptible to the ideologies
articulated in literary works. This article investigates the critical
depiction of Australian multicultural society in Alice Pung’s novel
Laurinda (2014). By analysing the role of food in both the novel’s
plot and its figurative language, the article explores the novel’s
illustration of the alienation of Asian minorities that is triggered
by instances of overt and casual racism. The tangibility of foodways
enables the illustration of how a lack of interaction between distinct
social classes and ethnic groups is conducive to an absence of
cross-group understanding that contributes towards the conflation of
class, cultural and racial differences and prevents the achievement of
the multicultural dream.

‘Dressing up’ two democratic First Ladies: Fashion as political
performance in America

Authors: Denise N. Rall And Jo Coghlan And Lisa J. Hackett And Annita Boyd
Page Start: 273

An American First Lady, argues Karin Vasby Anderson, ‘influences
conceptions of American womanhood’ and by ‘virtue of their husband’s
elections[,] First Ladies become sites for the symbolic negotiation of
female identity’. The process of negotiation in female identity
appears in various forms after women assume political power, for
example: Golda Meir in Israel, Margaret Thatcher in the United
Kingdom, Indira Gandhi in India and most recently, Australia’s first
female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard (2010–13). While the position of
First Lady is unique to American politics, the ways in which Hillary
Clinton and Michelle Obama each rejected a ‘suitably feminine’ image
provides an important lesson for all women in power. Therefore, we
argue here that this analysis of two Democratic American First Ladies
and their employment or disregard of fashion informs the gender-based
and race-based issues affecting women in political leadership through
their choices in dress. When ‘dressing up’ both Hillary Clinton and
Michelle Obama struggled with issues of individual identity,
subjectivity and power, and negotiated their First Lady roles in their
fashion.

Life’s no beach: (Un)popular reality television of the Australian beach

Authors: Elizabeth Ellison
Page Start: 289

Australian national identity has a long history of being intrinsically
tied with landscape, and this is captured in representations of
Australia in popular culture. Predominantly, representations of
Australia have heavily featured the rural Outback, with television
remakes of classic films recently released, such as Wake in Fright
(2017) and Picnic at Hanging Rock (2018) suggesting there is still
interest in this idea of an alien and terrifying Outback environment.
And yet, most Australians live in coastal regions, many of which form
the edge of urban hubs. The Australian beach plays an important role
in establishing national identity in part because of its role as a
gateway between the natural and the urban. Morris called the
Australian beach ‘ordinary’, while Fiske et al. instead include the
beach as one of the ‘myths of Oz’. The beach, therefore, inhabits a
complex position in Australian imagination as both an ordinary part of
Australian lives as well as a mythically beautiful locale for many
Australians and tourists alike. Reality television has become an
increasingly popular contemporary mode of storytelling and, despite
its global dominance, the genre’s tendency to localize content can
therefore reveal elements of Australian cultural identity. However,
reality television programmes specifically set on the Australian beach
have had varying levels of success, ranging from the strikingly
popular Bondi Rescue (2006–present) and Bondi Vet (2009–present) to
the almost immediately cancelled The Shire (2012) and Being Lara
Bingle (2012). This article examines how these texts represent the
complexities of the Australian beach through an analysis of
representations of the ordinary, the mythic and the body.

Internet rumours with Chinese characteristics

Authors: Kay Hearn
Page Start: 303

Internet rumours are a global popular culture phenomenon. For
instance, the claims that Barack Obama was not born in America
persisted throughout his presidency. Despite the technological means
used to control the Internet and the legislation against the spread of
rumours there are many false stories on the Internet in China and
removing them is a full-time task. Although the quote, ‘When you open
the window, some flies may come in’ 打开窗户，苍蝇可能会飞进 (Deng Xiaoping on the
Open Door Policy), refers to the opening up of China in 1978, it is
still relevant as a response to the consequences of the Internet and
the way it is managed. This article investigates the discourses
surrounding the regulations about the spreading of rumours and argues
that the regulations are used to maintain control over the narrative
of events so as to preserve and reaffirm the government’s legitimacy
to rule. The legislation is used as a justification to censor
information that the government deems sensitive and this has been used
as a reason to imprison activists and to shape popular culture. The
regulations are also used to prevent widespread public panic or
unrest, as was the case in 2011, when there was panic buying of salt
thought to give protection from nuclear fallout that was rumoured to
be heading to China from Fukushima. The application of the law can at
times be arbitrary and planted rumours are used during factional
fighting that is played out in the media and online. Xi Jinping has
also used the tightening of rumour regulations as a part of factional
fighting and in his consolidation of power. The following case studies
act as empirical data to further illustrate the ways in which rumour
and the legislative attempts to control it are used to shape Chinese
cyberspace and online popular culture.

Game of Thrones and the hidden apocalypse

Authors: Sarah Baker And Amanda Rutherford
Page Start: 315

HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011–present) is based on George R. R. Martin’s
A Song of Ice and Fire (1996–ongoing) book series. This Gothic fantasy
world, which is based in a medieval-like period, where a struggle for
the iron throne of Westeros is marked by a kingdom-wide civil war that
encompasses wave after wave of massacres, betrayals and clandestine
affairs, has become a popular culture phenomenon. The presence of
‘priests’ and ‘priestesses’ through the storyline provide religious
undertones with the predatory, hive-minded zombie White Walkers being
the key threat to the kingdom from the frozen north. Apocalyptic
scenarios in popular culture have often been secularized, however,
Martin explores the mysteries of what it is to be human and the
fragility of existence by using religion as a central plot element,
which this article will explore. Buried truths come to the fore in the
ultimate battle of the living against the dead, and the trajectory of
the narrative highlights the plot’s impending apocalyptic event,
bringing otherwise enemies together. The article explores the
connections made between the characters to that of biblical texts from
the Book of Revelation in the Bible, and the prophesized destruction
of the earth.

Musical Review

Authors: Tess Van Hemert
Page Start: 327

Priscilla Queen of the Desert: The Musical, Simon Phillips (2018)

Television Review

Authors: Nino Miletovic
Page Start: 331

Safe Harbour, SBS Australia (2018)

Event Report
Authors: Lyn Barnes And Richard Pamatatau
Page Start: 335

Tales of the (Un)Popular: Intersections of Narrative, History, and
Popular Culture, Popular Culture Research Centre, Auckland University
of Technology, New Zealand, 1 February 2018

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