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Abstract
In 2011, something surprising happened in terms of Australian feminist cultural memory: a celebratory feminism arrived in the shape of the hugely popular ABC television mini-series, Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo. Eschewing dour social realism for a stylish and ludic narrative, Paper Giants uses the story of the women's magazine Cleo to tell the story of Australian women's liberation. This essay analyses the components of the mini-series' celebratory feminist aesthetics, examining the ways in which it mobilises feminist tropes to speak an intelligible feminist language in postfeminist times. Further, I detail how women's liberation becomes central to the national historical narrative underpinning the programme.
Notes
1. Jan Assmann defines cultural memory as ‘that body of reusable texts, images, and rituals specific to each society in each epoch, whose “cultivation” serves to stabilize and convey that society's self-image’ (Citation1995, 132). Expanding upon Assman's definition, feminist cultural memory is, therefore, the body of texts and images that stabilise the image of feminism for society and for feminists.
2. Hereafter, referred to as Paper Giants. All dialogue quoted is from this production.
3. The original promotional video for potential advertisers states that Cleo's target audience is 17–40-year-old women.
4. In the proto-second-wave feminist text The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan accuses 1950s women's magazines of spreading the feminine mystique (Citation1984, 43–44). About two decades later, Marjorie Ferguson argues that ‘a cult of femininity … is promulgated by women's magazines’ (Citation1983, 5).
5. This promotional video was made by the publisher and was aimed at potential advertisers, explaining the magazine's demographic and purpose. It was included in the DVD edition of Paper Giants.
6. Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) was to produce an Australian version of the Hearst publication, Cosmopolitan, however, the deal failed and instead Fairfax gained publication rights to the title. Cleo, therefore, came into being to compete against Cosmopolitan.
7. This shift is prophesised by Paper Giants in the scene where the newsroom is emptied of staff after Frank Packer sells his newspapers to Murdoch, only to be filled with the staff of Cleo.
8. Among her many public achievements, including the already mentioned Australian of the Year, Ita edited the Australian Women’ Weekly and is the eponymous subject of the Cold Chisel hit single, ‘Ita’.
9. Note, however, the controversy surrounding the portrayal of Ita's former husband in the series. Alasdair Macdonald sued the ABC for defamation for portraying him in such an unflattering light, with the matter being settled out of court (Hall Citation2012, 3). Perhaps his representation played out the second-wave feminist cliché of the callous husband.
10. See, for instance, Clarke (Citation1992), Peel and Twomey (Citation2011) and Griffiths (Citation1977). Studies of contemporary Australian politics are similarly hesitant to include the Australian women's movement as a valid or significant political force.
11. Paper Giants was the ABC's most popular drama programme in years and a ratings success, with ‘an average of 1.34 million viewers, a 24.5 per cent share, across the five capital cities on Monday’ (Brook and Meade Citation2011, 3). Its success led to a bidding war for its sequel, Howzat, with Channel Nine outbidding the ABC (Meade Citation2011, 3).