ISSN: 1329-878X

Satire, Censorship, Sex No 92 August 1999 Order form Abstracts

Contents

Abstracts

SATIRE, CENSORSHIP, SEX

Telling the truth, laughing - Justice Tony Fitzgerald
This paper centres on three themes: the lack of a constitutional bill of rights in Australia, especially a right to freedom of speech; the suitability of the judiciary to arbitrate social values; and the importance of public humour, and its relations to Australian defamation law. These themes are illustrated by a discussion of the Queensland Court of Appeal's recent finding that Ms Pauline Hanson was defamed on the ABC by Ms Pauline Pantsdown.

Sex, satire and middle-class morality: Reflections on some recent defamation cases - Julie Eisenberg
This article examines recent defamation cases, especially the Hanson and Abbott and Costello cases, as studies of how courts distil meanings from publications and judicial perceptions about how ordinary readers interpret publications. It explores the difficulty in defining the line between publications that are tasteless, tacky or hurtful and those that are defamatory, particularly those which deal at the fringes of sexual morality or subversive humour. Finally, it addresses the question of whether defamation law creates a parallel system of censorship.

Taking the piss: From Serrano to surfwear - Morgan Richards
In a factional and pluralistic society, art that works in opposition to political correctness is increasingly prone to public controversy and intolerance. This paper examines Andres Serrano's notorious Piss Christ and Mambo's provocative clothing range, Spiritual Adventurewear, as a means of considering the relation between discourses on satire and value and the politics of offence and transgression.

The 'Digital/Life' moral panic - Christina Spurgeon
This paper attempts to make sense of recent debates concerning broadcast media self-regulation of sex and nudity. It focuses on a period in mid-1998 when Sex/Life disappeared from Australian TV screens. Specifically, it tracks a 'moral panic' in progress at the time the Ten Network announced its decision to cancel this program. It describes and summarises findings of a quantitative analysis of the editorial content of 17 Australian newspapers monitored in 1998 for references to media portrayal of sex and nudity. The particular role of The Australian in this panic is considered. Its quest for a popular national readership is highlighted and the question of media influence is raised. This report also contrasts the political responses to Sex/Life with more recent responses to Bay Watch and concludes with some speculative remarks about the economic impact of censorship and program classification regimes.

Instant sexpert: Academic experts and media experience - Kath Albury
This paper investigates the notion of academic expertise in relation to medico/sexual matters within the context of an anecdotal account of the author's transformation from scholarly academic researcher to satirist and media 'sexpert'. In examining these different modes of knowing about sex and sexuality, the paper raises questions about their relative value, and explores the nature of both academic and media expectations of experts. What, the paper asks, is the relationship between expertise and experience within the domain of the 'sexpert'?

The role of the state in the regulation of television broadcasting in South Korea - Ki-Sung Kwak
Television broadcasting in South Korea is experiencing a major change in its regulatory structure under the new government led by Kim Dae-Jung, who won the 1997 election as an opposition candidate for the first time in Korean history. Based on the review of the regulatory history of television broadcasting and its recent development in South Korea, this paper provides an overall background which explains the way in which the state has shaped and developed the regulatory structure of television broadcasting in Korea. It argues that the policies set in law and regulatory practice exercised by the state bureaucracy have not always been consistent or completely compatible. It concludes that this has been mainly because the government has been the sole player in establishing, framing and devising television broadcasting regulations.

The 'new' men's magazines and the performance of masculinity - Tony Schirato and Susan Yell
In Australia in the 1990s, following on from the phenomenon of the 'new woman's magazine', a new market in lifestyle magazines for men has emerged, distinct from magazines such as Penthouse, Playboy and Picture. This paper examines the phenomenon of the 'new' men's magazines, and argues that these magazines are a site in which contemporary performances of masculinities can be analysed, just as feminist and other analyses have examined and critiqued the production of feminine subjectivities through women's magazines. We introduce the market positioning and profile of these magazines, then analyse shifts in the available discourses for constructing masculine subjectivities as they are exemplified in one of the most successful of these magazines, Ralph. Making use of Judith Butler's concept of performance and her critique of Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the habitus, we analyse a story in Ralph, concluding that Ralph's performances of 'stereotypical' masculinity are self-conscious 'over-performances' of a set of discourses and subjectivities which it recognises are already in a sense obsolete.

Pay TV in Australia and the concentration of media ownership - Mike Minehan
This article examines the history of Australis Media from its acquisition of the Pay TV B licence on 18 November 1993 to its financial collapse on 5 May 1998. The article analyses the reasons for the collapse of Australis Media and examines the way in which Pay TV was penetrated by the media interests of Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer.

Ad wars: Adversarial advertising by interest groups in a New Zealand general election - Shirley Leitch and Juliet Roper
During New Zealand's 1996 general election, neo-liberal employment law became the subject of two opposing advertising campaigns. Although the campaigns confined themselves to a single piece of legislation, the Employment Contracts Act, they reflected a deep division within New Zealand society. This article examines the two campaigns which were run by the Engineers' Union and the Employers' Federation. At its core, the Engineers' campaign was a defence of collectivism both in terms of the values underlying trade unionism and, more broadly, of Keynesian social democracy, whereas the Employers' Federation campaign championed the ethic of individualism within a free-market economy. Such a clear ideological positioning was absent from the campaigns of the major political parties who fought for the middle ground during New Zealand's first proportional representation election. This article, then, examines how interest groups used network television to confront voters with a stark choice between an unasked-for neo-liberal present and an apparently discredited Keynesian past.

Farming on air: New Zealand farmers and rural radio programming - Susan Fountaine
In the light of funding cuts for New Zealand and Australian public service broadcasters, this article examines the impact of Radio New Zealand's restructuring on one key audience group: farmers. The results of a mail survey of the agricultural community indicate that the recent changes have had a negative effect on the specialist rural programs. Supporting the notion that the specialist news media are an important component in the information-sharing process, agricultural publications were judged the most important source of news overall, and Radio New Zealand's rural programming the most important broadcast source.