'The Popular Culture Association (PCA) has such a distinctive personality and devotion to long‐lasting friendships that its losses are keenly felt. Early members in the heady days of revolutionizing an entirely new field of study have been the memory of the organization, reminding us of our mission and purpose. It may be hard to imagine a time when the study of popular culture was relatively unknown and even despised, when faculty members could not get funding from their institutions to attend the annual PCA meeting, when the national press ridiculed the field for leading to classes on roller coasters, and when PCA members understood themselves as a Midwestern vanguard for the people’s culture, positioned outside what Ray Browne considered the east coast world of the elites. With a fifty‐year history, the PCA has now seen several generations of scholars in its conference halls, bringing new energy to the field while preserving the legacy from the days when color television was still rather new.' (Editorial introduction)
'Despite an often‐repeated cliché that gender and sexually diverse characters are relatively absent from film and television, Australian screen production has a very rich history of representing sexual and gender diversity: greater than nineteen wide‐release films since 1993, including internationally recognized films such as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), The Sum of Us (1994), Head On (1998), and The Monkey’s Mask (2000), portray gender and sexual diversity. Nine Australian films with LGBTQ, gender, and sexually diverse themes were released between 2013 and 2018, indicating an entrenchment of LGBTQ representation on Australian screens. Characters in major Australian television dramas and soap operas, such as Home and Away and Neighbours, have increased in regularity and complexity over the past two decades. Sexual stories, including narratives of minority sexual lives, have never, of course, been repressed or invisible, but according to Ken Plummer, they have long been central to contemporary Western culture (4). Stories representing gender and sexually diverse subjects depicting identity struggles and articulating minority health outcomes are a major and ongoing part of Australian creative production. What is significant in cultural analysis is not questions of visibility or invisibility but how the continuities and disruptions of depictions of gender and sexual minorities play a significant, pedagogical role in social participation, social harmony, acceptance, individual health and wellbeing, and community belonging (Cover, Queer Youth Suicide; Emergent Identities).' (Introduction)
