This article delivers preliminary findings from a series of interviews with Australian migrant producers, directors and writers. With the increasing calls for diversity in the media generally, and on ...television screens specifically from a wide range of stakeholders (institutions like Screen Australia, advocacy groups and high-profile media personnel of colour), there is ample empirical evidence that our public and commercial broadcasters have a long way to go in terms of 'reflecting' contemporary Australia. There is also more emphasis on institutionalised strategies, and looking towards overseas models to make this happen. Using the discourses of official and everyday multiculturalism, this article unpacks what it means to 'reflect reality', versus the meaning of various kinds of aspirational content, especially in drama and comedy. Such an analysis is crucial to understand the value of diversity beyond the simplistic rationale of 'reflection', and particularly in a changing mediascape.
This special issue of Media International Australia responds to an increasingly visible trend in the performing arts and screen industry in Australia that has identified diversity as a valuable ...cultural phenomenon and urges greater representation and access to work in the media for Australians of diverse backgrounds. Studies undertaken by Screen Australia (2016), the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (2016), and Diversity Arts Australia (2019) have emphsised that barriers to inclusion have resulted in a sector that has skewed what it represents of Australian society on screen.
This article addresses cosmopolitan cinema through the figure of a former refugee in an Australian-made documentary, Constance on the Edge (Belinda Mason, 2016). Beginning with an overview of ...cosmopolitanism as a project and a political ideal, as well as its relevance now, I then trace its manifestation in the discourses of refugee advocacy that have been evident in Australia over the last couple of decades. This helps set the stage for a close reading of the film, in which a Sudanese asylum seeker who has been resettled in a regional town with her family is struggling to find a sense of belonging in her new home. I argue that such an instance of cosmopolitan cinema facilitates the audience’s capacity to see both similarities and differences in the refugee other, thereby enabling a politics of solidarity that is simultaneously in dialogue with global and national discourses.
This international collection discusses how the individualised, reflexive, late modern era has changed the way we experience and act on our emotions. Divided into four sections that include studies ...ranging across multiple continents and centuries, Emotions in Late Modernity does the following: Demonstrates an increased awareness and experience of emotional complexity in late modernity by challenging the legal emotional/rational divide; positive/negative concepts of emotional valence; sociological/ philosophical/psychological divisions around emotion, morality and gender; and traditional understandings of love and loneliness. Reveals tension between collectivised and individualised-privatised emotions in investigating ‘emotional sharing’ and individualised responsibility for anger crimes in courtrooms; and the generation of emotional energy and achievement emotions in classrooms. Debates the increasing mediation of emotions by contrasting their historical mediation (through texts and bodies) with contemporary digital mediation of emotions in classroom teaching, collective mobilisations (e.g. riots) and film and documentary representations. Demonstrates reflexive micro and macro management of emotions, with examinations of the ‘politics of fear’ around asylum seeking and religious subjects, and collective commitment to climate change mitigation. The first collection to investigate the changing nature of emotional experience in contemporary times, Emotions in Late Modernity will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as sociology of emotions, cultural studies, political science and psychology.
In this paper, I examine the “Home Cooking” episode of Netflix series Ugly Delicious, and the “Toronto Truths with Foodies of Colour” episode of award‐winning Racist Sandwich podcast to uncover their ...mediation of a foodie and cosmopolitan person of color identity. By paying close attention to biographical details and the foregrounding of certain aspects of foodie and racialized identities, this paper addresses the question of performativity when it comes to food adventuring by using the mediated lens of the two chosen food shows. Are the hosts (and the semiotics of the programs) potentially challenging the archetype of the adventurous meat‐eating white male, or reinforcing the same by letting certain people into the fold? This analysis is necessary to understand if producers and consumers of color who are vested in exploring different food cultures through their practices do this any differently from dominant cultures.
Emerging literature on the rapid rise of 24-hour commercial news television in India in the last decade, as well as popular and editorial commentary on the above phenomenon, suggests that these ...channels are playing the role of mediators for the middle classes. While the news content is widely believed to be sensationalised for the sake of attaining higher ratings in an overcrowded and competitive market, political talk shows have turned into the analytical and narrative extension of news segments. By including the ordinary - mostly through its mediation by middle-class experts and journalists - these talk shows have turned into the popular culture equivalent of a public sphere for middle-class discussions of pertinent political issues. This article traces the genealogy of a long-standing political talk show on one of India's longest-running commercial networks, NDTV 24x7's We the People, to demonstrate its attempts to mirror an inclusive Indian public sphere. Further, in light of the recent middle class-led anti-corruption movement in India, and subsequent conclusions about the weakening of the state, an episode of the talk show titled 'Anna and the Great Indian Middle Class' is subject to a detailed textual analysis. The purpose of this analysis is to demonstrate the show's construction of: (a) corruption as a pan-Indian, and not just a middle-class, issue; (b) the middle class itself as a homogeneous group; and (c) the televisual public sphere (and not a community consultation involving representatives of the state) as a place for establishing populist consensus. Literature on new political television and theories of the public sphere are used as theoretical springboards throughout the article.
This article uses the narrative case study approach to document the shifts in research and teaching in the contemporary Australian higher education environment. The release of the Federal ...Government's 'Australia in the Asian Century' White Paper in 2012 is considered here as the formal starting point for a shift towards a more transnational paradigm in terms of research content and approaches, as well as course curricula. However, both appear to continue to be marked by ethnocentrism and instrumentalism in the mainstream. Some strides are being made towards amplifying previously marginalised voices and enhancing cross national and intercultural links at home and abroad by associations such as the Asian Australian Studies Research Network. Institution based projects such as the 'Transnational Teaching Teams' project at the University of Wollongong documented here are attempting to bridge the gap in terms of creating an internationalised curriculum and linking the same to student progression and learning outcomes. Author abstract, ed
There is now a well-established tradition of using participatory research methods, of which arts-based interventions constitute an important kind, for working with young people from disadvantaged ...backgrounds. At the same time, literature on decolonisation, and how decolonial research frameworks can be applied to specific research contexts (such as migration and refuge in varied settings) is still emerging. Therefore, this article discusses the methods employed, and feedback obtained in a 2018-2019 project in south west Sydney involving university students partnering with young ex refugees to produce short films on belonging. While the methods themselves are not novel, they were carefully chosen to help facilitate cultural safety, agency of participants, and move towards a decolonial research paradigm. The feedback from collaborating organisations and participants is also unpacked to arrive at the criteria which could be applied to similar projects interested in a decolonising agenda. Ultimately, I argue that this is not an end in itself, but helps build local capacity for change and momentum for decision-making organisations to also institute more consultative practices.
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