Australian Masculinity Research Articles

Commercial gender: Fracturing masculinity in the case of OzRock

This paper examines the relation between culture and organizations in terms of the cultural meaning and contradiction that can be located in the ‘products’ of the entertainment industry. Specifically, we focus on the meaning of Australian masculinity as it is located in the cultural expression of commercial Australian rock, or OzRock as it is commonly referred to. We explore how the myth of Australian masculinity is fractured by complex and subtle gender relations that make its representation in one of its most successful business forms a failed project of the repression of the feminine. Despite its association with mateship, aggression, physicality, sexual prowess and social dominance, we highlight the instabilities inherent in Australian masculinity through a gendered reading of commercially produced and mass-consumed popular culture.

A Hard Culture? Religion and Politics in Turn‐of‐the‐Century Australian History

The idea that Australia developed a uniquely “hard” political culture after 1788 — a culture that prized the rational and made short shift of religion — has had plenty of currency over the years. This idea has been challenged in recent scholarship, along with the broader notion that Western society became secularised during the twentieth century. Set against the backdrop of a wider challenge to the “secularisation narrative”, this article explores the work of several historians dealing with the relationship between religion and Australian politics at the turn of the twentieth century. These historians, who include Al Gabay, Frank Bongiorno, Bruce Scates, and Judith Brett, are creating “softer” understandings of Australian political history. As a consequence, I suggest, their work has implications for the way we think about the relationship between the religious and secular Left, as well as for the way we think about Australian masculinities and culture more generally.

Circles in the surf: Australian masculinity, mortality and grief

This article examines the constructs of masculinity that are predominant in contemporary Australian society and their influence upon men's perception of their health and well-being. It questions the currency of ‘male stoicism’ at a time when changed perceptions of masculinity are emerging. In particular, it considers how these constructs are evidenced in men's embracing of human mortality and their public expressions of grief. The nature of men's health promotion is discussed and a platform for promoting healthy approaches to masculinity, mortality and grief is presented.

Dancing with the ordinary: Masculine celebrity performance on Australian TV

This article interrogates the mutual dynamics of grounding and floating evident in the mediated performance of Australian masculinity embodied by two male television personalities, Tom Williams and Jake Wall. I argue that both men's flirtation with feminizing spectacle – centred on acts of bodily, affective and media exposure – did not jeopardize but reinforced their association with heteronormative masculinity. The widespread popularity of both men's staged performances can be attributed in part to their ‘natural’ performance of self in which familiar and conventional narratives of nationality and class, gender and sexuality converged. While the construction of celebrity itself involves overlapping and mutually reinforcing performances of ordinary and extraordinary, the celebrity texts of Williams and Wall were built on a purposeful downplaying of the extraordinary and over-performance of a recuperative ordinariness: the panicked construction of a stable ground of masculinity as a point of origin and necessary return.

Not quite Mad Max: Brian Trenchard-Smith's Dead End Drive-In

This article suggests that Dead End Drive-In (1986), Brian Trenchard-Smith's little-known Ozploitation film, deserves reconsideration from Australasian film scholars because it offers a valuable contribution to discussions about Australian masculinity, car culture, phobic narratives and the White Australia Policy. It is argued that the drive-in as detention centre foreshadows later Australian anxieties about immigration and border protection. Clearly a ‘phobic narrative’ full of ‘white panic’ (Morris, 1989, 1998), it exhibits many of the anxieties about Australians and ‘auto-immobility’ that Catherine Simpson (2006) discusses, and fits neatly into Tranter's (2003) discussion of cars and governance and Bode's (2006a) arguments about whiteness and Australian masculinity in crisis.

Mollies Down Under: Cross-Dressing and Australian Masculinity in Peter Carey's <i>True History of the Kelly Gang</i>

It has become almost ubiquitous now to consider that nationalism is gendered and sexualized, especially in contexts where anticolonial nation building is so intimately tied to the legitimizing of newly independent nation-states. George L. Mosse pointed out in his 1985 work Nationalism and Sexuality 'the many interconnections between modern European nationalism and sexual respectability as well as the development of manliness as a constitutive component of the bourgeois morality that underpinned Western nationalisms.1 M. Jacqui Alexander confirms that an imperative of heterosexual masculinity also holds true for decolonizing nations to the extent that their norms have been shaped by European imperialism.2 Elleke Boehmer further argues that gender forms the formative dimension for the construction of nationhood.3 The links between nationalist and gendered discourses range from the role of women as both biological producers and symbolic icons of ethnic groupings and nations to the deep, horizontal comradeship or fraternity, even homosocial structure of male bonding, constitutive of national identity.4 It is within this critical context that celebrated expatriate Australian writer Peter Carey's novel True History of the Kelly Gang, published in 2000, marks an important challenge to the heteromasculinity of Australian settler nationalism through its disruption of the gendered symbolism of one

“Save Us from the Womanly Man”

Over a very short period, between approximately 1905 and 1908, surf bathing on the ocean beaches of Sydney, Australia, was reinvented as a national pastime. The primary focus of this reinvention was the exposed male body, which emerged as a visual symbol of a racially hygienic and pure, virile, militarized, and natural Australian masculinity. The author argues that, far from constituting a natural space, the idealized male body needs to be understood as occupying an impossible space, essentially trapped between an emphasis on the exposed body as a spectacle of masculine virility and the need to repress any pleasure, desire, or eroticism associated with this subject position as the object of the admiring gaze. The surf bather, that is, was emasculated by the need to deny the very existence of the source of his masculinity, the specular idealization of his body.

‘So slide over here’: the aesthetics of masculinity in late twentieth-century Australian pop music

For Australian men, the very act of appearing on stage has for much of the twentieth century aroused suspicion about their gender status and their sexuality. To aspire to the stage often implied homosexuality culturally in Australia. This has been evident in the evolving aesthetic of white Australian masculinity in pop music from the 1970s onwards. For most of that period, Anglo-Australian males who presented themselves in a rigid, almost asexual way dominated the aesthetic. The reality of urban Australia was ignored in their images, which were essentially confined to outback or coastal Australian settings. This paper examines that development as part of a continuum of twentieth century Australian male music performance that has variously been informed by the bush legend; a mythologised late nineteenth-century Australian masculine image, popularised in The Bulletin under the editorship of Archibald, that saw the urban as the feminine and the rural as the masculine. The paper considers how the combination of sexual anxiety surrounding male gender identity in Australian performance, and this rigid bush aesthetic, have encouraged the development of unstable male gender representations in Australian music that for the most part have come across as either caricatured male, sexless or anti-pop. The exception is the late Michael Hutchence whose performances were a clear departure from this in that on stage and in music videos he conveyed a star persona that was sexually charged and often ambiguous about its sexuality. It is for that reason alone that Michael Hutchence has been referred to as Australia's only international rock star (Carney 1997).

'Johnnie comes marching … where?' Australian gay men, masculinity, HIV/AIDS and sex

Outsiders often see Australia as a place that has achieved a remarkable degree of tolerance for social and cultural difference. It has a reputation for a successful and enlightened national HIV/AIDS strategy and as an important gay tourist spot, particularly during Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. Legalized sex between men in all jurisdictions has been achieved, most of it during the era of the HIV epidemic. Reforms in anti-discrimination law and the recognition of gay and lesbian relationships are further examples of significant social change concerning sexuality. These achievements suggest that real gains have been made by gay and lesbian political activism and have been used to indicate that there is a new, more open space for Australian gay people to live their lives, accepted as citizens and treated equally. This is true to some extent, but an analysis of a recent, popular 'reality' television programme, Big Brother , reveals a different picture and suggests that the acceptance of gay men in Australia comes at a price. The HIV epidemic has made its own contribution to these social changes, but this too is a mixed blessing for gay men in particular. Just how far Australia has come on this road to social reform concerning sexual equality is assessed. Les étrangers voient souvent l'Australie comme un pays qui a atteint un degré remarquable de tolérance vis à vis des différences sociales et culturelles. Elle a la bonne réputation d'avoir mis en place une stratégie nationale éclairée et efficace contre le VIH/sida et d'être une importante destination touristique gay, en particulier lors du Mardi-Gras gay et lesbien de Sydney. La légalisation des rapports sexuels entre hommes a été obtenue dans toutes les juridictions, en grande partie pendant l'épidémie de sida. Les réformes des lois discriminatoires et la reconnaissance des relations entre gays et entre lesbiennes sont d'autres exemples de l'évolution significative de la société quant à la sexualité. Ces réussites suggèrent que de vrais progrès ont été obtenus grâce à l'activisme politique gay et lesbien, et sont utilisés pour montrer l'existence d'un espace nouveau, plus ouvert, permettant aux gays australiens de vivre comme ils l'entendent, en étant acceptés et traités comme des citoyens à part entière. Cela est vrai dans une certaine mesure. Mais l'analyse de Big Brother , un reality-show récent et populaire, révèle une image différente et suggère que l'acceptation des hommes gay en Australie a un certain prix. L'épidémie de sida a sa part de contribution dans cette évolution sociale, mais représente elle aussi une bénédiction mitigée, en particulier pour les hommes gay. Cette étude analyse jusqu'où l'Australie est allée sur la voie des réformes des inégalités relevant de la sexualité. Los extranjeros suelen ver a Australia como un lugar que ha alcanzado un admirable grado de tolerancia en cuanto a sus diferencias sociales y culturales. Es conocido por su brillante y adelantado programa nacional contra VIH/sida y como lugar turístico para homosexuales, especialmente la fiesta Mardi Gras de Gays y Lesbianas en Sydney. Se ha conseguido legalizar el sexo entre hombres en todas las jurisdicciones, sobre todo durante la época de la epidemia del virus del sida. Otros ejemplos del importante cambio social en la sexualidad han sido las reformas en las leyes antidiscriminatorias y el reconocimiento de las relaciones de gays y lesbianas. Estos logros se han conseguido gracias al activismo político de homosexuales y lesbianas y han servido para indicar que existe un espacio nuevo y más abierto para que los homosexuales australianos puedan vivir sus propias vidas como ciudadanos aceptados que reciben el mismo trato que los demás. Esto es verdad hasta cierto punto. Un reciente análisis del popular programa de televisión Gran Hermano muestra una imagen diferente y sugiere que el aceptar a los homosexuales australianos tiene un precio. La epidemia del sida ha contribuido a estos cambios sociales, pero también esto tiene sus pros y sus contras, sobre todo para los gays. Se está valorando cuánto camino ha recorrido Australia en sus reformas sociales con la relación a la igualdad sexual.

Alfred Dampier as Performer of Late Colonial Australian Masculinities

Performers tend to imprint a strongly responsive and sympathetic outline upon the culture of their age. Through their distinctive resources of body. voice, gesture, personality, sex appeal, and manipulation of social personae they both mobilise and embody those identities, desires, and values held by their contemporaries. Spectral traces of their once vibrant and distinctive individual presence are detectable in newspaper accounts of live performances and discernible across a repertoire of varied roles. This actorly presence, while situational and diffused, may be articulated as a fairly constant gestaltconstellation of preferred attributes, vocal and physical presence, affects, and pleasures that are produced in dialogue with the values, emotions, and complex identifications of popular audiences. These affects and meanings will be explored

Alfred Dampier as Performer of Late Colonial Australian Masculinities

Alfred Dampier as Performer of Late Colonial Australian Masculinities

Australian Masculinity on the Road

In an Australia where the old images of masculinity are no longer serviceable, the road provides an ideal site for films wishing to explore ways of being a man at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, True Love and Chaos, Doing Time for Patsy Cline and Kiss or Kill critique or destabilise traditional models of masculinity, and use the road as a space where masculinity is free to change. However, as Pamela Robertson (1997: 271) has pointed out, the road movie is ‘a genre obsessed with home’. The closure of all four films involves establishing a new form of home, and in doing so demonstrates how difficult it is to reintegrate credibly the changes experienced on the road into a domestic unit that is fulfilling for all its members.

Commanding men: Masculinities and the convict system

(1998). Commanding men: Masculinities and the convict system. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Australian masculinities, pp. 17-34.

Percy Grainger and manliness

(1998). Percy Grainger and manliness. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Australian masculinities, pp. 106-115.

The Australian legend: Writing Australian masculinity/writing ‘Australian’ masculine

(1998). The Australian legend: Writing Australian masculinity/writing ‘Australian’ masculine. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Australian masculinities, pp. 68-77.

‘So tough'? Masculinity and rock'n'roll culture in post‐war Australia

(1998). ‘So tough'? Masculinity and rock'n'roll culture in post‐war Australia. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Australian masculinities, pp. 125-137.

Lovable larrikins and awful ockers

(1998). Lovable larrikins and awful ockers. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Australian masculinities, pp. 78-85.

Fantasy worlds: The depiction of women and the mating game in men's magazines in the 1950s

(1998). Fantasy worlds: The depiction of women and the mating game in men's magazines in the 1950s. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Australian masculinities, pp. 116-124.

Dragging it out: Tales of masculinity in Australian cinema, from Crocodile Dundee to Priscilla, queen of the desert 1

(1998). Dragging it out: Tales of masculinity in Australian cinema, from Crocodile Dundee to Priscilla, queen of the desert. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Australian masculinities, pp. 138-146.

Changing masculinities: Disruption and anxiety in contemporary Australian writing

(1998). Changing masculinities: Disruption and anxiety in contemporary Australian writing. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Australian masculinities, pp. 169-179.