Law Commons^™

Babashook: The Babadook, Gay Iconography And Internet Cultures, Renee Middlemost

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Upon its 2014 release, Australian film The Babadook (Kent, 2014), gained critical acclaim worldwide. While the film gathered high praise, its domestic release was impeded by a lack of marketing support and ongoing debate about the quality of Australian horror films. By 2015, The Babadook was available to stream on Netflix in the United States, and one would imagine, to gradually fade from view. Yet a seemingly innocent categorization error on Netflix in 2016, which listed The Babadook as an LGBT interest film, resulted in a revival of the film's popularity as a cult film and the emergence of the …

The Gay Novel And The Gay World, Guy R. Davidson

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

In a recent review essay, J. Daniel Elam charts the emergence of “gay world literary fiction,” a subgenre of the category “world literature,” which over the last twenty years or so has become both a marketing strategy for publishers and a “disciplinary rallying point of literary criticism and the academic humanities.”1 While Elam’s essay is implicitly underpinned by the usual disciplinary understanding of world literature (fiction from potentially anywhere in the globe, translated into English, and studied comparatively), its focus is narrowed to the “gay world” within the planetary world—a putatively homogenous, transnational gay subculture enabled by digital connectivity and …

Pinkwashing The Past: Gay Rights, Military History And The Sidelining Of Protest In Australia, Tanja Dreher

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper explores the implications of the militarisation of Australian history and the dilemmas of increasing public support for same-sex marriage in Australia at a time of renewed assaults on Indigenous rights, austerity measures and the silencing of dissent. The paper analyses the celebratory rhetoric which increasingly typifies both marriage equality campaigns and the commemoration of Australia's First World War or 'Anzac' history in popular media and public debate. Against the confluence between ongoing debates on same-sex marriage and the 'Anzac myth', I highlight four key challenges: the silencing of dissent; forgetting of the Frontier Wars; untold stories of civil …

Online And Onwards: It Gets Better For Gay And Lesbian Media, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Last week’s announcement that Australia’s oldest and most respected lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) weekly newspaper, Sydney Star Observer (SSO), will change to a monthly print format and a reinvigorated web presence does not come as a surprise given the global state of newspapers.

I edited SSO from 1999 to 2006 and, to me, the shift makes sense. What’s more, the publication’s move online says just as much about the evolution of the LGBTI community as it does about the changing fortunes of print media.

Gay and lesbian media have been one of the essential elements in the …

From Camp To Gay To Queer: David Mcdiarmid And Hiv/Aids Art, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

At the end of July, Melbourne hosted the 20th International AIDS Conference. A huge red AIDS 2014 sign perched on the Swanston Street Bridge between Flinders Street Station and the Melbourne Concert Hall.

The Global AIDS Village was in action at the other end of Southbank with a variety of displays from HIV/AIDS organisations from all over the world. One of the many associated events was the marvellous exhibition of gay artist David McDiarmid’s work, When This You See Remember Me. It is still on display at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).

For a brief moment the HIV/AIDS epidemic …

As A Gay Man, I Will Not Be Lectured On Discrimination By Julia Gillard, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Julia Gillard has had a rough few days. More accurately weeks, well, months. Let’s face it, years. And at the centre of so many of her travails has been debate about her gender. She’s been called a witch, deliberately barren, asked if her partner is gay and been the subject of a “joke” menu where a dish was described, with misogynistic cruelty, in terms of parts of her anatomy.

But for all Gillard’s outrage about the language and attitudes she faces, there’s a rather large elephant siting in her office in The Lodge which she seems to determined to ignore: …

Obama Inauguration Speech: A Historic Moment For Gay And Lesbian Equality, Marcus O'Donnell

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

Much has been made of the fact President Obama became the first president to mention the word gay in an inaugural address.

But the significance lies not in what he said but how he said it.

In declaring, “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law” Obama not only declared himself abstractly for “gay rights”, he placed these rights at the heart of the central ideals of the American story.

Obama’s whole speech sprung from his reiteration of the much sung hymn to equality from the Declaration of Independence …

"A Mirror For Men?" Idealised Depictions Of White Men And Gay Men In Japanese Women's Media, Mark Mclelland

Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts - Papers (Archive)

This paper argues that Japanese women's media which portray images of foreign (nearly always white) men and Japanese gay men as objects of desire and fascination for Japanese women function as rhetorical mirrors whose real intent is to reflect back the supposed deficiencies of 'traditional' Japanese men. The paper concludes that women's media are being used as a vehicle for anti-male rhetoric, a channel for an indirect discourse of complaint whose main purpose is to critique the perceived shortcomings of ordinary Japanese men.