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Jon Stratton Jon Stratton i(A34204 works by)
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 y separately published work icon Cultural Studies Jon Stratton (editor), Rachel Fensham (editor), Allen and Unwin (publisher), Crows Nest : Allen and Unwin , Z1622782 series - publisher criticism
1 Whatever Happened to Multiculturalism? Here Come the Habibs!, Race, Identity and Representation Jon Stratton , 2017 single work criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 31 no. 2 2017; (p. 242-256)
'In February 2016 Channel Nine broadcast six episodes of Here Come the Habibs!. The show was a comedy about a Lebanese-Australian family who win 22 million dollars in the lottery and move from working-class Lakemba to upper-class Vaucluse where they buy a house next to the very white O’Neills. The show invokes key tropes of official multiculturalism most importantly race and identity. At the same time, official multiculturalism has been in decline in Australia since the advent of John Howard’s conservative prime ministership in 1996. Official multiculturalism focused on ethnic groups and their cultures. It has been supplanted by the ideas of neoliberalism which is concerned above all with individuals and the market. In this article I argue that Here Come the Habibs! is, in the end, nostalgic for a multiculturalism which is no longer privileged in Australia. The dynamics of the tension between the Habibs and O’Neills has been displaced, as is signalled in the final episode of the show, by the entry into Australia of a mobile, cosmopolitan elite whose worth is measured not in their culture but in what they can economically contribute to the country.'
1 The Sapphires Were Not the Australian Supremes : Neoliberalism, History and Pleasure in The Sapphires Jon Stratton , 2015 single work criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 29 no. 1 2015; (p. 17-31)
'The Sapphires was the most popular Australian film of 2012. Loosely based on history, the film tells the story of four Indigenous young women, three of whom move in 1968 from a country reserve to Melbourne, who are transformed from singing hymns and country and western to becoming a soul group in the mould of the Supremes and who then tour Vietnam during the war entertaining the American troops. This article analyses the reasons for the popularity of the film. I argue that beyond the feelgood drama, including a romantic comedy subplot, the film minimizes the mistreatment of Indigenous Australians during the 1950s and 1960s, elides the 20 years era of self-determination and suggests a positive continuity between the period of assimilation and paternalism and the John Howard Liberal-dominated government's neoliberal ideology of personal responsibility. To this end, the film also plays down the racism of the assimilationist period and, through the character of Kay, implies that the policy of taking children away from their families (the Stolen Generations) had positive results. The film denies the young women's agency by introducing the character of the Irish Dave Lovelace as the creator and manager of the Sapphires.' (Publication abstract)
1 'Welcome to Paradise' : Asylum Seekers, Neoliberalism, Nostalgia and Lucky Miles Jon Stratton , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 23 no. 5 2009; (p. 629-645)
'This article considers the Australian film Lucky Miles (2007) in the context of the developing emphasis in Australia through the 1990s and 2000s on neoliberal policies. This emphasis started with the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating and was qualitatively reinforced by the conservative coalition government of John Howard. Lucky Miles is a film which narratives the experience of asylum seekers arriving on the Australian mainland. My focus is particularly on the impact of neoliberalism on the role of the border and on the popular attitude towards asylum seekers. To help develop this argument I also consider the film Children of Men (2006), which is set in Britain in a dystopian future. I analyse Lucky Miles to understand how it replicates anxieties about asylum seekers and the porosity of the border that are, at bottom, a consequence of changing attitudes bred by neoliberal policies.' (Author's abstract p. 629)
1 The Murderous State : The Naturalisation of Violence and Exclusion in The Films of Neoliberal Australia Jon Stratton , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Cultural Studies Review , vol. 15 no. 1 2009; (p. 11-32)
1 Suburban Stories: Dave McComb and the Perth Experience Jon Stratton , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Vagabond Holes : David McComb and the Triffids 2009; (p. 35-43)
The author argues that Perth, Western Australia's, loss of innocence, especially after the murders in the 1960s by Eric Cooke and those in the 1980s by Catherine and David Birnie, is reflected in McComb's lyrics which 'can be read as a metaphor for the experience of a lost utopia that continues to haunt the cultural life of Perth.' The criticism includes brief references to the work of Veronica Brady, Peter Cowan, Philip Masel and Dorothy Hewett.
1 Dying to Come to Australia : Asylum Seekers, Tourists and Death Jon Stratton , 2007 single work criticism
— Appears in: Our Patch : Enacting Australian Sovereignty Post-2001 2007; (p. 167-196) Imagined Australia : Reflections around the Reciprocal Construction of Identity between Australia and Europe 2009; (p. 57-87)
1 Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Difference and National Identity in the USA and Australia Ien Ang , Jon Stratton , 1998 single work criticism
— Appears in: Multicultural States: Rethinking Difference and Identity 1998; (p. 135-162)
1 Pressing Matters: Truth, Morality and the Media Jon Stratton , 1989 single work review
— Appears in: Northern Perspective , Dry Season vol. 12 no. 1 1989; (p. 76-79)

— Review of Portrait of an Optimist Donald Horne , 1988 single work autobiography
1 Watching the Detectives : Television Melodrama and Its Genres Jon Stratton , 1987 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 10 (p. 49-66)
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