'Colour must breed out in time': listening to whiteness in "Blue Hills"

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference proceeding contributionpeer-review

    Abstract

    In the mid-twentieth century radio played an important role in the construction of Australia’s ‘imagined community’. It transcended spatial boundaries and fostered the development of what Joy Damousi called a ‘listening self’, where listeners were forced—or freed—to imagine the pictures to accompany the sounds and words they heard ‘on the wireless’. So how did Australian audiences of the 1950s respond to author Gwen Meredith’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 ‘quarter caste Aboriginal’. However, the romance ended happily in marriage when an anthropologist from Sydney University informed Sally that ‘colour must work out in time ... a throwback is a biological impossibility’. 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 ‘listening’ to whiteness through audience responses to this serial.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationHistoricising whiteness
    Subtitle of host publicationtransnational perspectives on the construction of an identity
    EditorsLeigh Boucher, Jane Carey, Katherine Ellinghaus
    Place of PublicationMelbourne
    PublisherRMIT Publishing in association with the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne
    Pages244-252
    Number of pages9
    ISBN (Print)9781921166808
    Publication statusPublished - 2007
    EventHistoricising Whiteness Conference (2006) - Melbourne, Australia
    Duration: 22 Nov 200624 Nov 2006

    Publication series

    NameMelbourne University conference and seminar series
    PublisherRMIT Publishing in association with the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne
    Volume16
    ISSN (Print)1875-1920

    Conference

    ConferenceHistoricising Whiteness Conference (2006)
    Country/TerritoryAustralia
    CityMelbourne
    Period22/11/0624/11/06

    Keywords

    • radio
    • audiences
    • whiteness
    • assimilation
    • Blue Hills

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