Congratulations to the 2022 Winners of the John Barrett Award

Abstract

Situating the white masculinist archetype of the ocker and women ’ s liberation within the same historical frame, Michelle Arrow o ff ers a compelling argument about the fi lmic ocker fi gure as a form of contestation against the Australian women ’ s liberation movement in the 1970s. The ocker fi gure is linked to other “ egalitarian ” Australian character types such as the larrikin and the bushman, which originated in the racialised crucible of white 19th-century labour. Yet while the ocker is understood as a manifestation of state-sanctioned 1970s “ new nationalism ” , Arrow moves beyond questions of national identity to make a signi fi cant contribution to ongoing debates about the history of Australian gender relations. More speci fi cally, she argues that new nationalist popular culture was a key site of gendered cultural contest during a time of radical feminist challenge to Australian cultural, social, and political norms. If the afterlife of the (toned-down) ocker suggests that “ ockerdom ” emerged victorious in the 1980s as a way of representing Australia to the world, Arrow convincingly recuperates the 1970s as a transformative decade of feminist challenge in Australia, noting the resurgence of touchstones of popular 1970s feminism today.