@inproceedings{88d5eb61abe340489db0a1a93b271a2b,
title = "'Colour must breed out in time': listening to whiteness in {"}Blue Hills{"}",
abstract = "In the mid-twentieth century radio played an important role in the construction of Australia{\textquoteright}s {\textquoteleft}imagined community{\textquoteright}. It transcended spatial boundaries and fostered the development of what Joy Damousi called a {\textquoteleft}listening self{\textquoteright}, where listeners were forced—or freed—to imagine the pictures to accompany the sounds and words they heard {\textquoteleft}on the wireless{\textquoteright}. So how did Australian audiences of the 1950s respond to author Gwen Meredith{\textquoteright}s representation of Aboriginality and whiteness in her long-running ABC radio serial {"}Blue Hills{"}? In a controversial storyline, Meredith depicted a romance between Anderson Roberts and Sally Howard, a romance that was threatened when it was revealed, with great gravity, that Anderson could not marry Sally because he was a {\textquoteleft}quarter caste Aboriginal{\textquoteright}. However, the romance ended happily in marriage when an anthropologist from Sydney University informed Sally that {\textquoteleft}colour must work out in time ... a throwback is a biological impossibility{\textquoteright}. Through a detailed examination of this storyline, and the diverse reactions to it, this paper will reveal the ways that {"}Blue Hills{"} constructed a normative ideal of whiteness in 1950s Australia. It will also explore the possibilities of {\textquoteleft}listening{\textquoteright} to whiteness through audience responses to this serial.",
keywords = "radio, audiences, whiteness, assimilation, Blue Hills",
author = "Michelle Arrow",
year = "2007",
language = "English",
isbn = "9781921166808",
series = "Melbourne University conference and seminar series",
publisher = "RMIT Publishing in association with the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne",
pages = "244--252",
editor = "Leigh Boucher and Jane Carey and Katherine Ellinghaus",
booktitle = "Historicising whiteness",
note = "Historicising Whiteness Conference (2006) ; Conference date: 22-11-2006 Through 24-11-2006",
}