THE ‘AUSSIE BATTLER’ AND THE HEGEMONY OF CENTRALISING WORKING-CLASS MASCULINITY IN AUSTRALIA

Abstract

Abstract This paper explores the ways in which the ‘Aussie battler’ identity of the character Kenny Smyth in the film Kenny (2006) is both visible through its hegemonic status and cultural ubiquity, and invisible as the marker of normative Australian identity. This paper examines the ‘mainstream’ and ‘battler’ identities and the discourse that surrounds them, in particular looking at working-class masculinity which are argued to be both hegemonic and centralising. The paper explores how identities such as these, which exist at the axis of invisibility/visibility, can access narratives of entitlement and marginalisation. As a partially gendered and fully classed construct, the ‘battler’ identity operates within mainstream and mainstreaming culture in often exclusionary ways, denying any real challenge to classed and gendered inequality while using classed narratives to make a claim for more cultural, social and economic space.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author would like to thank the editors of this special edition of Australian Feminist Studies for all their help and valuable contributions to this paper.

Notes

1. This arguing for both victim status and visibility (Lewis and Simpson 2010) has been most recently seen in the second series of the SBS series Go Back to Where You Came From (2012), when Australian musician and politician Angry Anderson claimed that ‘Australia and Australians come first. People like me feel like we don't matter anymore’.

2. The Castle is a 1997 Australian comedy film, also filmed in a ‘mockumentary’ style. It follows the story of protagonist Dale Kerrigan and his working-class family as they fight to keep their home (located near and airport in the Australian city of Melbourne) from being acquired by the Government and the airport in order to build a new runway. With their assorted neighbours they take the case to retain their ‘castle’ to the Australian High Court, and, despite the array of power aligned against them, they are able to keep their home. It is an interesting contrast to Kenny. While both films have ‘Aussie Battler’ protagonists and are comedies filmed in a mockumentary style, The Castle has an overarching narrative of the importance of family, collective action, fighting against more powerful institution and disrupting the status quo, whereas in Kenny the status quo is never challenged, the ‘Battler’ is individualised and conflict is not resolved.