The 'aussie battler' and the hegemony of centralising working-class masculinity in Australia: gender, class, mainstreaming and the axis of visibility in Kenny

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dc.contributor.authorWhitman, K.
dc.date.issued2013
dc.description.abstractThis paper explores the ways in which the ‘Aussie battler’ identity of the character Kenny Smyth in the film Kenny (2006) is both visible through its hegemonic status and cultural ubiquity, and invisible as the marker of normative Australian identity. This paper examines the ‘mainstream’ and ‘battler’ identities and the discourse that surrounds them, in particular looking at working-class masculinity which are argued to be both hegemonic and centralising. The paper explores how identities such as these, which exist at the axis of invisibility/visibility, can access narratives of entitlement and marginalisation. As a partially gendered and fully classed construct, the ‘battler’ identity operates within mainstream and mainstreaming culture in often exclusionary ways, denying any real challenge to classed and gendered inequality while using classed narratives to make a claim for more cultural, social and economic space.
dc.description.statementofresponsibilityKirsty Whitman
dc.identifier.citationAustralian Feminist Studies, 2013; 28(75):50-64
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/08164649.2012.758026
dc.identifier.issn0816-4649
dc.identifier.issn1465-3303
dc.identifier.orcidWhitman, K. [0000-0002-8407-2460]
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2440/79374
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherRoutledge
dc.rights© 2013 Taylor & Francis
dc.source.urihttps://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2012.758026
dc.titleThe 'aussie battler' and the hegemony of centralising working-class masculinity in Australia: gender, class, mainstreaming and the axis of visibility in Kenny
dc.typeJournal article
pubs.publication-statusPublished

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