1. “‘Lifestyle’ is a term which is used to refer to the new consumer sensibility …. Characteristic of modern consumption; through lifestyle, consumers are seen to bring a more stylized awareness or sensitivity to the processes of consumption. As a mode of consumption, or attitude to consuming, it refers to the ways in which people seek to display their individuality and their sense of style through the choice of a particular range of goods and their subsequent customizing or personalizing of these goods” (Celia Lury, Consumer Culture, 1996, p.80). Choose a contemporary local lifestyle that you see appearing in Australian culture and analyse how it links to consumer culture and becomes a commodity.
2. How does representing the body become a feminist issue? Explain, with reference to a key cultural theorist (such as John Berger, bell hooks or Laura Mulvey).
3. Choose a contemporary subculture from the media as a case study. Carefully identify the style and practices of the subculture. With reference to subcultural theory (especially Dick Hebdige’s work), do you think that this subculture subverts the status quo?
4. Analyse how inequality is represented in one Australian television text (such as the Struggle Street TV series on SBS, but your choice could be a more traditional television news story). Do you think that highlighting poverty on Australian television is helpful or not?
5. What is the connection between Australian television and national “imagined communities”? If you like, your response can include an analysis of an Australian television episode of your choice.
6. “Within current debates about race and difference, mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgement and enjoyment of racial difference. The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling. Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (bell hooks 21). Explain this statement in more detail, with reference to a pop cultural text of your choice (TV show, film, music album, etc.).
7. Explain why the mass media is crucial for constructions of Australian identity and national sporting culture(s).
8. Select a case study of a diasporic group who finds common identity via a media form (such as a television programme, radio show, cinema, etc.). How is this cultural identity sustained? You may also wish to think about the theory of “imagined communities” in your response.
9. Using your semiotic textual analysis skills (and looking at both the words and images), examine the representation of “Australianness” that appears on the australia.com webpage. What kinds of national identities are represented on this tourist website? Your essay should include screen-cap images of the pages that you discuss.
10. Explain the politics of indigenous representation in Australian culture.

                                                           SAMPLE SOLUTION

The feminist film theory has issued the drive for a significant number of the dramatic developments within movie studies since its start in the 1970s (Chesley, 2017). Feminist film theory nearly developed to be the convention of film theory, and such was its impact in the domain of movies (Smith, 1999). Its influence commenced being encountered in movie production with some of the independent as well as avant-garde and a significant quantity of mainstream movies relating theory to practice (Smith, 1999). Amid the overall cultural reaction against feminism starting from the 1980s, there emerged, in the film studies, a response against the feminist film theory (as certainly against the entire film theory) as a result of its abstract concepts and complex language (Chesley, 2017). This essay demonstrates the groundbreaking philosophies of some of the leading theorists: Teresa de Lauretis, Laura Mulvey and Barbara Creed whose work is well-versed with an intense commitment to both feminism and films. This essay will assists in the comprehension of the importance these theorists who have wholesomely made distinguishing influences to feminist film theory revealing why representing the female’s body is a feminists issue as well as why feminist issues are still essential in movies. The paper will begin with a demonstration of some of the works of the critical theorist concerning the representation of women’s body in films and which is followed by an illustration of the significance of using ladies bodies in film concepts to reveal the reason why these exhibitions have become a feminist issue.

The Representations of Women’s Body by the Key Cultural Theorists

While the representation of women’s bodies can be traced much earlier (markedly, Wollstonecraft Mary’s Vindication of the 1792 Women’s Rights), the suffragette drive of the period between the 19th and 20th century is regarded as the feminism’s inaugural wave (Butzel, 1989). The feminism film concept is nevertheless a creation of the second wave of feminism that was introduced in the early 1960s (Butzel, 1989). Having the catchphrase “the individual is the political”, the second wave not only brought attention to the domains of women’s encounters previously reflected as non-political, but also uncovered the concealed power systems at work which comprised their bodily appearance, fashion, language use, reproduction as well as family and home (Butzel, 1989). The objective of the second wave was to change the totality of women’s status and not exclusively a single feature, different from the hitherto suffragette movement which only concentrated on the campaign for women’s participation on voting that left other domains of women’s lives unbothered (Butzel, 1989). The works of Laura Mulvey, Teresa de Lauretis and Barbara Creed, are the representations of the second wave movement and are illustrated in the section below.