The warrior woman in Harlequin’s Bombshell Athena Force series
- Authors: Chivers, Marian , Speed, Lesley , Tasker, Meg
- Date: 2014
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Australasian Journal of Popular Culture Vol. 3, no. 3 (2014), p. 335-349
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- Description: The theme of the warrior woman – the woman prepared to fight – appears in popular romance and in multiple time settings. This article will explore the way in which Silhouette Bombshell’s Athena Force series presents a series of romance heroines who are professional, trained warrior women. Rather than presenting these characters as a radical alternative to the more ‘traditional’ romance heroine, it will be shown that they attempt to accommodate a range of ideas about gender; they extend rather than reverse conventional ideas about femininity. There are, however, significant implications for the conventional romance plot as gender roles are unsettled and reconfigured. How are relationships between male and female warriors in the novels characterized, and how does this distinguish them from other contemporary romance fiction? Warrior women in fiction may be seen to subvert gender characteristics traditionally linked to biological traits and the conventional binary opposition between male and female gender roles. By stepping outside the accepted behaviour of females, the warrior woman makes us question those norms we may take for granted and provides another intriguing sub-genre for romance fiction.
Strike me lucky : Social difference and consumer culture in Roy Rene’s only film
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Screening the Past Vol. 26, no. (2009), p.
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- Description: Strike Me Lucky (Australia 1934) presents an imaginative view of Australian society and consumer culture in the 1930s. The only film starring vaudeville star Roy Rene, it has been largely dismissed because of its poor box office performance and perceived artistic failure. Yet Strike Me Lucky is significant for centring on a prominent Jewish Australian comedian and for being an early screen example of Australian ethnic humour. The film’s diverse view of Australian society undermines perceptions of the 1930s as culturally homogeneous and Anglocentric. Its depiction of a modern consumer culture reflects upon Australia’s relationship to Hollywood and modern capitalism.
- Description: 2003008037
Out of the frying pan : From casual teaching to temp work
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Gypsy Scholars, Migrant Teachers and the Global Academic Proletariat Chapter 13 p. 127-148
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- Description: B1
- Description: 2003005819
Win and lose : Subculture and social difference in 'Dogs in Space'
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2009
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine Vol. 162, no. (2009), p. 160-165
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- Description: Lesley Speed takes a closer look at a cult classic's snapshot of Melbourne post-punk subculture.
- Description: 2003007958
Life as a pizza : The comic traditions of wogsploitation films
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2005
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine Vol. 146/147, no. (2005), p. 136-144
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- Description: At the box office and in television ratings, Australian comedy reached a high point with this film and the television series Pizza, which spawned the film Fat Pizza (Paul Fenech, 2003). These 'wogsploitation' films were created by Australians of non-English speaking backgrounds and eschew the sensitive and dramatic portrayals of ethnic minorities seen in earlier films. While The Wog Boy and Fat Pizza have been accused of a return to outdated ethnic stereotypes, these films differ from previous comic depictions of Australian ethnic minorities. Far from being positioned as victims, the protagonists of these films simultaneously assert their ethnic identities and reconfigure the Australian stereotype of the 'ocker'.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001257
When the sun sets over suburbia : Class and subculture in Bruce Beresford's Puberty Blues
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies Vol. 20, no. 3 (2006), p. 407-420
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- Description: Bruce Beresford’s film Puberty Blues (1981) focuses on Australian surf culture of the 1970s and the Sydney beach-side suburb of Cronulla Beach, presenting the Cronulla surf subculture as a prism through which Australian society is viewed. The film, which centres on the quest of the characters of Debbie and Sue to join the elite Greenhills surfing gang, signifies a turning point in Australian screen depictions of class, prefiguring an increased emphasis on the middle class and deviating from a traditional equation of class with the working class. The film’s bleak and satirical portrayal of the Australian middle class also reveals dimensions of suburban Australia that are usually absent from local films and television series. Based on Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey’s 1979 novel of the same name, the film draws on a cultural tradition that associates surfing with freedom from social constraints. Yet the film depicts the protagonists’ idealization of surfers as being undermined when drugs intrude upon their world. The flight from middle-class suburban existence also suggests that the comforts of suburbia are deceptive. This article’s analysis of class and subculture in Puberty Blues aims to draw greater attention to Australian film depictions of subculture and middle-class life, for despite the large body of work around subcultures and although the majority of Australian films made in the last 25 years centre on the middle class, these aspects of Australian cinema have generally received little analysis from film and cultural studies scholars.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001872
You and me against the world : Revisiting puberty blues
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2004
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine Vol. 140, no. (2004), p.
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- Description: Depicting thirteen-year-old girls having sex, consuming alcohol, smoking marijuana and defying adult authorities, Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey’s 1979 novel Puberty Blues caused a scandal upon its original publication.
The comedian comedies : George Wallace's 1930s comedies, Australian cinema and Hollywood
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine Vol. , no. 158 (2008), p. 76-82
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- Description: The article analyzes five significant films from Australian director George Wallace's comedic personalities. These films were considered more than simply entertaining as these films reveal much about the Australian film industry in the 1930s, including to its relationship to Hollywood's output and the representation of national identity.
No matter how far you run; Looking for Alibrandi and coming of age in Italo-Australian Cinema and girlhood
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2006
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Screening the Past Vol. 19, no. (2006), p. 1-15
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- Description: Looking for Alibrandi (Australia, 2000) is significant not only because it is the financially most successful Australian teen film and winner of five AFI awards. This film has also played an important role in increasing the cinematic profile of Italo-Australians. It has attracted audiences that exceed the hitherto limited markets for most Italo-Australians films and expanded the source novel's predominantly teenage readership. Looking for Alibrandi can be linked to Italo-Australian cinema's shift away from social realism and towards market-driven entertainment. The film presents a utopian and revisionist view of Australian society, challenging monolithic characterisations of Australian society in terms of a patriarchal, Anglo-Celtic, middle-class mainstream. The dissolution of this monolithic mythology is implicit in Josie Alibrandi's dawning recognition that Australian society involves complex intersections of class, generation, gender, ethnicity and locality. The film thus alludes to a coming of age that is both social and subjective, encompassing the increased cinematic profile of Italo-Australians in general and Italo-Australian femininity in particular. Josie's social and subjective coming-of-age culminates in the question of reconciliation with Anglo-Australian masculinity.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003001874
The possibilities of roads not taken - Intellect and utopia in the films of Richard Linklater
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2007
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Journal of Popular Film and Television Vol. 35, no. 3 (Fall 2007), p. 98-106
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- Description: This article examines the relationship between the films of Richard Linklater and Hollywood. These films expand Hollywood's capacity for producing mentally stimulating alternatives to formulaic entertainment. Linklater's independent and studio films reflect the changed relationship between these spheres, while pursuing a utopian quest for alternatives to purely physical consumer gratification.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003005783
A handshake and a smile: video-making, young people and mental health
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2010
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Screen Education Vol. 2010, no. 59 (2010), p. 52-57
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- Description: As digital technologies have enabled wider access to means of media production, community uses of digital media have proliferated. This article examines a recent community program that taught basic ideo-making skills to rural young people with mental illness. It aimed to assist the social integration of young people with mental illness and foster self-expression through video-making.
Loose cannons : White masculinity and the vulgar teen comedy film
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2010
- Type: Journal article
- Relation: The Journal of Popular Culture Vol. 43, no. 4 (2010), p. 820-841
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- Description: Although infamous for its focus on adolescent sexual strivings, the vulgar teen comedy film has been the subject of little sustained analysis. Yet there are numerous reasons to examine more closely this teen subgenre, of which the most prominent examples are Porky's and American Pie. The vulgar teen films of the early 1980s and late 1990s exemplify contemporary Hollywood production strategies and reflect changes in youth's social and economic status. In particular, the pivotal early 1980s cycle reflects a crisis in young, middle-class men's presumed right to behave hedonistically on other people's territory. Such films as Porky's, Losin It and Spring Break revolve around characters whose belief in their hedonistic freedom is oblivious to the social implications of their actions. A waning male, middle-class privilege is evident in the failure of the male sexual quest in Porky's and prefigures the subsequent suburbanization of teenage sexuality in American Pie. Vulgar teen comedy films thus reflect the changing social status of male youth.
Australian comedy films of the 1930s : Modernity, the urban and the international
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: The Moving Image
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- Description: Comedy has been a perpetual part of Australian film, in which humour reflects Australia's adaptation in times of crisis, social change and technological advances. This was never more so than in the 1930s, when Australia produced more comedy feature films than in any other decade before 1970. These films of the 1930s embraced the new technology of sound, made local vaudeville performers into movie stars, offered escape from the Depression and revealed a diverse and international Australia. In these films, Australia moved further from Empire and the bush, forged the Digger legend, responded to cultural diversity and viewed itself as a modern, urban nation. Influenced by Hollywood, Australian comedies of the 1930s adapted international styles to local points of view. Based on research at the National Film and Sound Archive, Lesley Speed's book provides new insight into Australian comedy films of the 1930s and the extraordinary period of social change in which they were produced.
Comedy
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2011
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Directory of World Cinema Australia & New Zealand p. 158-169
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Clueless : American Youth in the 1990s
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: Cinema and Youth Cultures series
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- Description: Clueless: American Youth in the 1990s is a timely contribution to the increasingly prominent academic field of youth film studies. The book draws on the social context to the film's release, a range of film industry perspectives including marketing, audience reception and franchising, as well as postmodern theory and feminist film theory to assert the cultural and historical significance of Amy Heckerling's film and reaffirm its reputation as one of the defining teen films of the 1990s. Lesley Speed examines how the film channels aspects of Anita Loos' 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, the 1960s television series Gidget and Jane Austen's Emma, to present a heightened, optimistic view of contemporary American teenage life. Although seemingly apolitical, Speed makes the case for Clueless as a feminist exploration of relationships between gender, comedy and consumer culture, centring on a contemporary version of the 'dumb blonde' type. The film is also proved to embrace diversity in its depiction of African American characters and contributing to an increase in gay teenagers on screen. Lesley Speed concludes her analysis by tracking the rise of the Clueless franchise and cult following. Both helped to cement the film in popular consciousness, inviting fans to inhabit its fantasy world through spinoff narratives on television and in print, public viewing rituals, revivalism and vintage fashion. © 2018 Lesley Speed. All rights reserved.
The virtual city in 'The doctor Blake mysteries'
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2016
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Metro Vol. 187, no. (2016), p. 50-56
- Full Text: false
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- Description: Ballarat provides the stage upon which the ABC's riveting period crime drama 'The doctor Blake mysteries' unfolds. As such, writes lesley speed, the city - whose size is between that of a metropolitan centre and a rural town - exemplifies the regional gothic as well as the interaction between real and imagined places.
'In the best film star tradition’: Claire Adams and Mooramong
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Screening the past Vol. , no. (2015), p.
- Full Text: false
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- Description: When the Hollywood silent movie actress Claire Adams married Australian grazier Donald “Scobie” Mackinnon in 1937, the Australian press embraced the event as a glamorous love story.
Prurient exuberance : Early Australian sex hygiene films and the origins of ozploitation
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2017
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Screening the Past Vol. , no. 42 (2017), p. 1-11
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- Description: Australian exploitation films that were made since the 1960s have received considerable attention in Mark Hartley’s 2008 documentary, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! However, Hartley’s film and much of the subsequent interest in Ozploitation overlooks the fact that exploitation films existed in Australia since at least the 1910s. In its most basic definition, an exploitation film centres on a topic that is forbidden, such as sex or vice, while purporting to educate the public about it. This article examines the significance of two early Australian sex hygiene films, Remorse, a Story of the Red Plague (John E. Mathews, 1917) [1] and Should a Doctor Tell? (P. J. Ramster, 1923). Although these films do not survive, the information available about them reveals affinities with contemporaneous American and British exploitation films. They also form a precedent for the role of exploitation in the revival of the Australian film industry in the early 1970s. Purporting to explore the issue of sexually-transmitted disease while appealing to audience prurience, early sex hygiene films courted controversy in a manner that prefigures The Naked Bunyip: A Survey of Sex in Australia (John B. Murray, 1970), a significant early film in the revival and one of a cycle of local sexploitation films. Early Australian sex hygiene films expand understanding of Ozploitation by providing a glimpse of the diversity of early Australian film-making and forming a precedent for the role of exploitation in the development of Australian film.
Comedian comedy
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book chapter
- Relation: Directory of World Cinema: Australia & New Zealand p. 79-81
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In the best film star tradition : Claire Adams and Mooramong
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Screening the Past Vol. , no. (2015), p.
- Full Text: false
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