Since 2016, Western Australian-based company BS Productions have presented a series of adaptations and appropriations of the Shakespearean canon, titled Bogan Shakespeare Presents. This article explores how Bogan Shakespeare’s productions appeal to double-access audiences, examining how they facilitate engagement by inclusive and diverse audiences. In order to evaluate the Bogan Shakespeare productions, this article draws on theories of double-access audiences, adaptation and appropriation. With unique insights into Bogan Shakespeare’s workshopping processes, this article considers how each Shakespearean text has been adapted with two audiences in mind, Shakespearean enthusiasts and Australian ‘bogans’. It will outline the Bogan Shakespeare team’s creative process as it evolves from a base script, which is then workshopped and adapted during each performance in response to the audience. Ultimately, this article will explore the strategies, challenges and opportunities afforded by BS Productions while crafting performances aimed at double-access audiences.

The detective or private investigator of gothic crime is a complex figure with his origins in nineteenth-century literature. Either bumbling and naïve, or uncannily insightful, these usually single men relentlessly pursue a mystery event or encounter until the crime is solved and narrative resolution is achieved. In doing so, the stolid pursuit of the independent sleuth, who is typically a socially isolated observer, reveals the gothic’s twofold response to the law as both a set of rules to be enforced in the pursuit of justice and as a system to be criticized or mocked. This article explores the representation of the gothic detective in contemporary Australian film, television and true crime, and examines four archetypes of the detective as they appear in contemporary Australian media: the lone detective, the larrikin detective, the apathetic detective and the armchair detective.

This article probes a previously under-examined facet of the past of Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, to demonstrate the rich intersections of popular culture and historical inquiry. This investigation probes how people have engaged with aviation-related activities at Bondi Beach. It views these engagements from the viewpoint of participation in popular culture, while using representations of these engagements in popular culture as historical source materials. Taking the broadest view of aviation ranging from balloons and kites to aeroplanes, helicopters and wind-driven sports vehicles, the article offers an addition to existing historical narrative about Bondi Beach. It also begins to probe the points of connection between the disciplines of popular culture and history.

Review of: Folk Horror: New Global Pathways, Dawn Keetley and Ruth Heholt (eds) (2023) Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 280 pp., ISBN 978-1-78683-979-4, p/bk, $114

This article expands the literary genre of autofiction to include the televisual medium and argues that the autofictional is employed as a narrative mode in select queer television series, namely Josh Thomas’s Please Like Me (2013–16) and Ryan O’Connell’s Special (2019–21). Autofiction’s deliberate distortion of autobiographical truth by intermingling it with fictional elements becomes a method for individuals from underrepresented communities, like the queer community and people with disabilities, to write themselves and their narratives into televisual culture. This article conducts a textual analysis of the two TV series to highlight the blurring of distinctions between the creators and their characters, supplemented by an analysis of paratextual resources (creator interviews, show titles and end credits) to locate the creators’ strategic inscriptions of their works’ autofictionality.

Reiew of: Rearranged: An Opera Singer’s Facial Cancer and Life Transposed, Kathleen Watt (2023) New York: Heliotrope Books, 384 pp., ISBN 978-1-95647-434-3, p/bk, $38

This article explores the potential of melodramatic toyetic (merchandise-driven) television for the development of empathy in young audiences, using the 2020–21 programme Kamen Rider Saber (hereafter Saber) as an example text. Filmed and aired during the coronavirus pandemic, Saber offers a poignant case study for the potentially positive role that toyetic television and its tie-in merchandise might play in the full sensory exploration of empathy and emotional connection in a situation in which real-life interactions and sensations were severely limited. Saber is a superhero melodrama fairy tale pastiche. Fairy tales and melodrama alike have been identified as useful for the socio-emotional development of children because they lend themselves to the generalization of emotions and situations that allows these to be applied to the child’s own life, while toys can also stand in for social actors like friends. Toy sales are a key aspect of toyetic television. Yet, we assert that there is undertheorized potential in the combination of drama, music and toy design and the affordances this combination creates for audiences to practise empathy.

Review of: Nosferatu, Robert Eggers (dir.) (2024), USA: Universal Pictures

This article examines how Māori director Taika Waititi rejects the ‘adult’ across his cinematic body of work, offering instead a vision of the world through the eyes of children, privileging whimsical and nonsensical humour to challenge conventional definitions of maturity and development. With reference to several theoretical conversations on the child’s perspective in film and a non-linear coming of age, this article addresses already established writings on Waititi’s films as sites of subversion; the rejections of the ‘adult’ are the key to developing these arguments. First, he rejects the ‘adult’ perspective, using a childlike, fantastical cinematic viewpoint to confront and eschew the social norms that pressure the child protagonists into replicating socially accepted ways of becoming and being ‘mature’. Second, Waititi offers alternative, non-linear paths of development that reject the generalization of the adult, siding instead with outsider characters that are shown to have ‘failed’ in the eyes of the society. Finally, an analysis of Indigenous development narratives, their influence on how the definition of ‘maturity’ is challenged and how this intersects with Waititi’s whimsical, childlike humour reveals a nuanced rejection of the ‘western’ adult inherent in traditional coming-of-age narratives.

Popular culture studies provide a unique perspective on the intricate intersections of sociopolitical, economic, and artistic contexts that shape our identities and experiences, as reflected in the media and cultural landscape. The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture Studies (AJPC) aims to understand the diverse forms and narratives of popular culture that influence our identities over time. This issue features six articles that offer a scholarly examination of contemporary popular culture studies, with topics including the cultural history of aviation at Australia’s most famous beach, theatrical reimaginings of Shakespeare via Western Australia’s ‘Bogan’ culture, and critical analyses of character and genre in television, film and true crime. The issue concludes with two book reviews of recent scholarly monographs and one film review of the recently released remake of Nosferatu (2024). Collectively, this issue underscores the importance of context in popular culture studies, with contributions spanning across the globe, highlighting the field’s broad scope and interdisciplinary nature.