Internal Code: 2AEBE
TASK
How does representing the body become a feminist issue? Explain, with reference to a key cultural theorist (such as John Berger, bell hooks or Laura Mulvey).
Choose a contemporary subculture from the media as a case study. Carefully identify the style and practices of the subculture. With reference to subcultural theory (especially Dick Hebdige’s work), do you think that thissubculture subverts the status quo?
‘Lifestyle’ is a term which is used to refer to the newconsumer sensibility …. Characteristic of modernconsumption; through lifestyle, consumers are seen tobring a more stylized awareness or sensitivity to the processes of consumption. As a mode of consumption, or attitude to consuming, it refers to the ways in which people seek to display their individuality and their sense of style through the choice of a particular range of
goods and their subsequent customizing or personalizing of these goods” (Celia Lury, Consumer Culture, 1996, p.80). Choose a contemporary local
lifestyle that you see appearing in Australian culture and analyse how it links to consumer culture and becomes a commodity.
Analyse how inequality is represented in one Australian television text (such as the Struggle Street TV series on SBS, but your choice could be a more traditional television news story). Do you think that highlighting poverty on Australian television is helpful or not?
What is the connection between Australian television and national “imagined communities”? If you like, your response can include an analysis of an Australian television episode of your choice.
Within current debates about race and difference, mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgement and enjoyment of racial difference. The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (bell hooks 21). Explain this statement in more detail, with reference to a pop cultural text of your choice (TV show, film, music album, etc.).