Retrovisioning chicko roles: Puberty Blues as postfeminist television adaptation and the feminization of the 1970s

Abstract

A recurrent theme in the studies of postfeminist adaptations of popular second wave feminist texts is the diminution at best, or gutting, at worst, of feminist politics in the contemporary remakes. This essay explores whether a similar process occurs in the 2012–2013 television adaptation of the Australian proto-feminist classic, Puberty Blues or whether a more productive relationship between feminism and postfeminism can occur. The television adaptation of Puberty Blues is an ideal text with which to examine Australian postfeminist adaptation, given that its source text is one of the earliest examples of Australian popular feminism, and a rare example of a text associated with Australian second wave feminism being remade. In contrast to many postfeminist adaptations in which feminism is contained, I demonstrate that Puberty Blues expands its popular feminist gaze from surf culture to Australian culture more broadly. Its careful retrovisioning – in both senses of looking back and using retro style – of the Australian 1970s feminizes a crucial era of the nation, and hence criticises a number of semi-dormant Australian cultural mythologies. As a result, it offers a fictional history lesson on the necessity of the Australian women’s movement. And it thus, disturbs postfeminist times with its comforting assumption that women’s inequality has been (smoothly) resolved and women are therefore fully integrated into the nation.