The Murderous State: The Naturalisation of Violence and Exclusion in the Films of Neoliberal Australia

In common with many other Western countries, neoliberalism has become the dominant political philosophy in Australia since the 1980s. With the election of the John Howard-led Coalition in 1996 this impact has been reinforced. This article explores the neoliberal values appearing in Australian cultural productions through a number of popular Australian films from 2005 and 2006: The Proposition, Kenny, Jindabyne and Suburban Mayhem. The article discusses the nature of the proposition in The Proposition, the serial killers in Wolf Creek and Jindabyne, who remain at large, and the murder in Suburban Mayhem for which the wrong person is convicted and the real perpetrators are able to enjoy the fruits of their crime

The Beastie Boys: Jews in whiteface

The Beastie Boys are usually described as the white hip hop group who helped break rap to a broad-based white audience. Rarely is it acknowledged that the Beasties all came from Jewish backgrounds. This article examines the implications of the Beastie Boys’ Jewishness. The Beasties can be placed in a long history of Jewish entertainers reworking black music for white American audiences. By the 1980s, Jews in the United States had been assimilated into whiteness, yet it is clear that the memory of discrimination lived on. The members of the Beasties played with whiteness – performed in whiteface – while being very aware of their own Jewishness and the implications of this. With the advice and mentoring of African American Russell Simmons and the Jewish Rick Rubin, the group gained respect in the black community as legitimate rappers and then set out to perform as uncivil rock performers for white audiences. This article argues that the Beasties’ Jewishness was central to their success as the group that brought rap to a mainstream white American audience

Not Just Another Multicultural Story: The English, From 'Fitting In' to Self-Ethnicisation

It would be usual, these days, to argue that the experience of British migrants in Australia is the norm against which the reception of non-British migrants has always been articulated. I will argue that the understanding of how British migrants were expected to experience Australia, and were, and are, experienced by Australians has been ideologically driven, at first, by a need to see the Australian society, and the culture that evolved, as a version of British society and culture and, later, during the era of official multiculturalism, by the desire to assert this culture as the naturalised, core culture of Australia. John Docker writes that the emphasis on Anglo-conformity, which laid the basis for the present-day core culture, became pervasive in the period between the two world wars. Since this period also, and corresponding to the emphasis on Anglo-conformity, there has developed an assumption that migrants from the United Kingdom and Ireland, and, indeed, all English-speaking migrants, would simply 'fit in' to Australian society. By 'fitting in' I do not mean that they would assimilate, assimilation in its classical definition entails the expectation that the person's behaviour and ideas would change to be more congruent with those of the host country. Rather, I mean that there was the assumption, no matter how obviously it was contradicted by actual experiences, that English-speaking migrants would simply merge with the general population. I will argue that such an assumption has continued during the era of official multiculturalism

Two rescues, one History: everyday racism in Australia

On the same day, at different ends of Australia, two extraordinary rescues of men from extreme hardship took place. The two miners, both white and of Anglo-Celtic origin, were feted, appeared on television chat shows and became celebrities so sought after that they had to employ an agent. The three Torres Strait Islanders, members of a grouping identified as 'indigenous' in the Australian social order, who had survived 22 days at sea in an open dinghy, were, to all intents and purposes, ignored by the mainstream Australian media. They would appear to have simply gone back to their families and got on with their lives. This article tracks the discursive histories in which each event was embedded to examine how this distinction could happen and how it could be so naturalised that hardly anybody commented on the disparity of treatment. It is this taken-for-granted disparity that I am describing here as everyday racism

'Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da' Paul McCartney, Diaspora and the Politics of Identity

'Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da' is commonly considered to be one of the Beatles more trite songs. A slice of happy-go-lucky pop-ska, it was recorded in June 1968 during the sessions for the eponymously titled double album, usually known as the White Album, released in November of that same year. The lyrics describe the lives of Desmond and Molly, focusing on their marriage and their happy-ever-after existence. The song is a romance. However, the chorus of 'Ob la di ob la da life goes on' suggests the very mundanity of their life. It is theirs alone, but what makes it special, their love, could be anybody's. 'Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da' was, as all the Beatles knew, the most commercial track on the album but, as Ian MacDonald writes in Revolution in the Head, his track by track account of the Beatles' recordings: 'Fed up with it, the others vetoed it as a single and Marmalade cashed in, taking it to No 1' (2008, p.295). As we shall see, it was not as simple as this. While Marmalade's version was, indeed, the most successful, the Bedrocks, a group from Leeds composed of Caribbean migrants, climbed as high as number 20 in the UK singles chart with a reading of the song that was simultaneously rockier and more Jamaican. That same year Joyce Bond, who divided her time between Jamaica and London, recorded a version that had a more pronounced ska rhythm and the following year the Heptones, one of the most significant Jamaican rock-steady groups, released their version