Australasian Journal of Popular Culture - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2019

Upon its 2014 release, Australian film The Babadook (Kent, 2014), gained critical acclaim worldwide. While the film gathered high praise, its domestic release was impeded by a lack of marketing support and ongoing debate about the quality of Australian horror films. By 2015, The Babadook was available to stream on Netflix in the United States, and one would imagine, to gradually fade from view. Yet a seemingly innocent categorization error on Netflix in 2016, which listed The Babadook as an LGBT interest film, resulted in a revival of the film’s popularity as a cult film and the emergence of the Babadook as ‘a frightening, fabulous new gay icon’. This article will trace the production history of The Babadook from its theatrical release through to its Netflix premiere and the evolution of the Babadook as a gay icon. Using Jenkins et al.’s work on spreadable media, the influence and spread of Internet content will be highlighted against the backdrop of contemporary political movements. In turn I will propose a number of categories essential to gay iconography, and explore how Internet cultures continually refine and expand these categories for widespread dissemination. The case study of the Babadook’s representation at American Pride Month in June 2017 will be used to illustrate the ability of Internet cultures to appropriate popular culture for political impact in marginalized communities.

The 2017 film Cargo (Howling and Ramke) impressed critics and audiences alike with its emotional and character driven approach to the zombie genre. Set against the Australian outback, the film draws on Australian Gothic cinema traditions that represents the landscape as a place of unease, isolation and socio-political anxieties. Marking a growing trend in international zombie films, Cargo explores postcolonial Australian anxieties and connects to similar preoccupations in early American zombie films. This article serves to unite these two areas of scholarship by drawing on establishing research of the history and analysis of the American zombie genre and the Australian Gothic traditions to explore the thematic and narrative implications of Cargo.

Television series, especially those in the supernatural or paranormal genres, regularly include long-lasting character arcs for characters other than the heroes – including those more villainous (see, for instance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer [1997–2003], Supernatural [2005–present] and The X-Files [1992–2002] among others). This article uses textual and character analysis to perform a close reading of Teen Wolf Season 6A (2017), in particular the characters Peter Hale and Theo Raeken. The analysis, grounded in theory regarding popular culture and villains, reveals that both characters are examples of a previously undefined villain, which we have termed the ‘post-villain’. Using examples from the text, five aspects of the post-villain are discussed with the suggestion for future research outside of Teen Wolf.

In just four seasons, Rachel Bloom and Aline Brosh McKenna’s musical dramedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–2019) has established itself as an important space for contemporary explorations of gender and genre on US television. In this article, we examine how the musical numbers operate as a feminist intervention into a postfeminist diegesis. The musical numbers in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend often parody different popular music genres by simultaneously drawing attention to and subverting their conventions. In doing so, the series critiques the gender norms of traditionally patriarchal and heteronormative Hollywood musicals and misogynistic music videos. The Hollywood film musical genre is typically framed by a tension between the narrative and the numbers. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend exploits this tension to offer a feminist critique of how patriarchal neo-liberal culture encourages women to invest in romantic love and postfeminist forms of appearance-based empowerment. This article argues that the musical numbers in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are a feminist space where the series critiques the postfeminist reality of its diegesis.

This article argues that, for Australian comedy series creators, the web platform has opened a new space in which the ‘rules’ of script development are being expanded, enhanced or otherwise refashioned through having direct connection with and input from their audience. With the audience’s potential as a ‘comedy gatekeeper’, the web series audience becomes integral to the ways in which these texts are developed, namely skipping the erstwhile second-guessing of demographic tastes by more traditional broadcast development executives and commissioners. Referring to a range of well-known Australian comedy web series, such as Bondi Hipsters (2011–2017) and The Katering Show (2015–17) – including what their creators, writers and audiences have said about them – we investigate the processes behind the success of these series to argue that a new form of script development has emerged: namely, that development is both facilitated and influenced by the direct line that exists between comedy creators and their viewers. Furthermore, we suggest that through such a collaborative and open-access process of script development, comedy writers and performers might also benefit from an expanded form of talent development.

Examining the global media controversy and debates surrounding the first season of the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why (2017–present), this article focuses on the Australian context and identifies key issues in these debates through a discussion of current media guidelines for responsible portrayals of mental illness and suicide. The article presents a survey of media and academic responses to 13 Reasons Why, including contributions from people with a lived experience of mental illness and suicide. It argues that the way forward for screen portrayals of mental illness and suicide is for screen producers to collaborate with mental health organizations in the development and exhibition of these stories.

Long of sociological interest, uniforms are a symbol of order, standardization, professionalism and trust. As cultural objects, they are studied from a range of perspectives to consider how organizational systems such as the military, schools, airlines and health services construct and reinforce identity and image. This article adopts a popular culture-focused approach to representations of the nursing uniform on screen in a range of films and television programmes and series. In doing so, it proposes that film representations promote an understanding of the nursing uniform in a number of ways. These include understanding the uniform as a marker of professional identity; signifier of stratification and power; signifier of gender and object of (sexual) desire; marker of professional incompetence; and fetish object. This analysis reveals how the representation of nurses and nursing on screen both intersects with the reality of nursing work and identity, and affects how nursing work and identity are understood. The argument engages with a range of relevant research, and adapts research from other disciplines, in the context of analysing popular cultural texts.

The Second, Mairi Cameron (2018), screenplay by Stephen Lance, Palace Cinemas, Brisbane, 5 July

Women of Ice and Fire: Gender, Game of Thrones and Multiple Media Engagements, Anne Gjelsvik and Rikke Schubart (eds) (2016) New York and London: Bloomsbury

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Netflix Canada (2018), Roberto Aguirre-Sacaso (Showrunner)

American Horror Story: Apocalypse, FX U.S. (2018), Ryan Murphy (Showrunner)

Wild Guitar, DENNIS RAY STECKLER (dir.) (1972), USA: Fairway Internati onal Pictures