Cirrus@Austlit

'Fifty years ago this week, the first blockbuster of the Australian new wave hit Australian cinemas. Directed by Tim Burstall and starring Graeme Blundell, Alvin Purple was a bawdy sex comedy about an unprepossessing young man who was irresistible to women.' (Introduction)          

'Historians have long understood ocker cinema in terms of a more distinct and assertive national identity in Whitlam’s 1970s, yet only recently have begun to consider the context of the women’s liberation movement unfolding at the time. Adding to this emerging body of scholarship, this article reads the rise of ocker cinema both in the context of, and as a response to, second-wave feminism. Turning to the films Stork (1971), The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (1972) and Alvin Purple (1973), this article argues that the cinematic articulation of the ocker in the 1970s not only asserted a masculinist national identity, but also positioned this national masculinity as the victim of (and in danger from) threatening feminist challenges.' (Publication abstract)

'High school education underwent a radical change in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s, commensurate with the major changes experienced within other institutions and social environments. This article is an exploration of Australian television’s use of the schoolroom within drama during the 1970s, with a focus on three productions: 290 half-hour episodes of Class of ’74/’75, 39 hour-long instalments of Glenview High and a pilot for Jackson High, a one-hour show that was not developed but which proved to be a forerunner for Glenview High. The article demonstrates that such shows provide insight into attitudes to both schooling and to teenage life in Australia in the 1970s, as well as being in themselves important and engaging examples of early Australian television drama.' (Publication abstract)

'The 1970s is often characterised as the decade of Australia’s “new nationalism”, expressed most potently in a wave of cultural activity nurtured by government funding. The figure of the ocker was central to this new nationalism, particularly in film. The ocker, a contemporary masculine archetype devoted to beer, sex and swearing, was a star of Australian films such as The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Alvin Purple, Petersen and Don’s Party. Yet few scholars have considered the ocker in a gendered context, remarkable when we consider that while the ocker films were being produced, the women’s liberation movement was mounting a radical challenge to Australian cultural, social and political norms. What new understandings of 1970s society and culture might result if we read the new nationalist ocker and women’s liberation in the same frame? This article examines the relationship between ocker culture and women’s liberation in the 1970s. It argues that we can read new nationalist popular culture as a site of gendered cultural contest, with a particular focus on feminist responses to ocker culture, including Alvin Purple, and a reading of the film Petersen.' (Publication abstract)