Australian TV & Gay & Lesbian Issues
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This paper is an examination of Australian television and the way it both deals with and ignores gay and lesbian lives and issues. The history of television in Australia has always been one of attempting to follow the patterns set primarily in the United States and the United Kingdom, but without the urgency that has driven the development of the mass media in those two nations. Television history in Australia trails behind that of most other developed nations, and this is reflected in the way that queer issues are a part of their broadcasting texture. While gays and lesbians do appear on the screen, they are still seen as a separate minority whose interests and concerns remain outside the mainstream and are, therefore, marginalized by most programming. This is partly a result of geography and partly one of culture. Australian television is a direct reflection of Australian society as a whole. Elizabeth Jacka and Lesley Johnson (1995) observe: One way of understanding Australian television history is as a continuing tension between centralizing and regionalizing pressures, a struggle between large commercial television proprietors who wish to extend their reach over the entire nation (and increasingly beyond) and those interests that seek to preserve the local and regional character of television, a struggle which has always been biased towards the former (p. 331). Larger, more national issues have always tended to overbalance more individualized and local interest
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ncluded a gay character, a lawyer named Don Finlayson, played by Joe Hasham. Graham Willett (2000) writes, "Don's real impact came from the fact that the writers steered clear of the 'screaming queen' stereotype, presenting him as 'a nice guy, an ordinary bloke' who just happened to be homosexual" (p. 55). The series was one of the most-watched programs in Australian television history, but it did not start a significant trend.
Howes (1998, February) notes, "Number 96 begat The Box, even sexier and set in a television station," with characters that included a bisexual woman and a very effeminate man, who was also presented as a competent professional (p. 40). Yet few other gay and lesbian characters made their way onto the TV screen during this time.
The establishment in 1980 of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS-TV), a network specifically conceived as an "ethnic television service," was a long time in coming. Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser had promised such a network during the Federal election campaign of 1977. Yet defining what that network was about became an ongoing point of contention, as various interest groups argued over the meaning of multicultural broadcasting. Some groups viewed the networks attempts
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1696
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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