“Stand By For Action… Anything can happen in the next half hour!” – so begins the opening narration of a British children’s TV series from 1964. Sixty years later, such a call for action and anticipation remains pertinent when considering our relationship with both ourselves and the world’s oceans.
4th October 1964 marked the seventh anniversary of the start of the Space Race, when the USSR launched Sputnik 1 into Earth orbit. It is noted that “Sputnik 1 demonstrated the feasibility of sending artificial objects into orbit. It inspired rapid technological evolution… Sputnik 1’s success accelerated research into new materials, propulsion systems, and miniaturization techniques.” Whether by coincidence or otherwise, the seventh anniversary of its launch also served as the launch date for “Stingray”, a ‘Supermarionation‘ children’s television series that explored another unknown frontier – Earth’s oceans; and although this TV series did not have the same immediate impact as Sputnik, it nevertheless pointed the way towards both technological and societal/attitudinal changes that would become as profound as the space program.
A Drop in the Ocean
“Most people think the bottom of the ocean is like a giant bathtub filled with mud — boring, flat and dark. But it contains the largest mountain range on earth, canyons far grander than the Grand Canyon and towering vertical cliffs rising up three miles—more than twice the height of Yosemite’s celebrated El Capitan” – Robert Ballard (2014).
Humans have had a relationship with the oceans since before we were human. Our earliest known ancestor may have been a microscopic aquatic creature over half a billion years ago. Subsequent aeons of evolution have left signs to show that we evolved from marine life and retain tantalising clues within our anatomy. Even as a modern land-based species, it appears that sea caves may have saved African homo sapiens from extinction less than 150,000 years ago. It is known that Australia’s own indigenous peoples have interacted with marine environments for probably over 50,000 years.
It might be said that looking up into the night sky – as Sputnik challenged us to do in 1957 – can fill us with awe as we contemplate that everything we know is merely a drop in an infinitely larger cosmic ocean. So too should we consider with awe that the Earth’s actual marine oceans comprise the planetary amniotic sac that birthed us, and were the home within which our distant ancestors grew and evolved. Such notions should be as natural to us as a human baby’s bradycardic response and “diving reflex”, or a child’s natural propensity to play at the beach.
And yet, despite the Australian tradition of visiting the beach and getting sunburnt, it appears that most people around the world cannot swim. In our quest for modernity, we have lost touch with our roots. Our imagination is one way we can cast a glance backwards (and forwards) to the oceans around us.
Photo of a turtle swimming underwater by Belle Co (Pexels)
Marine Science Fiction
Mike Nelson: “Underwater: That’s where I do my work.” – “Sea Hunt”.
There have been many imaginative attempts to explore underwater, oceanic or submariner worlds in literature, film and television. The earliest popular work is, “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1870) by Jules Verne, and the most overlooked might be Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 film about a submarine shrunk to microscopic size and injected within a human bloodstream. Both of these explore the marine world that is within or around us, and our relationship to that environment. Both posit that we are a part of that environment and should treat it with respect and care.
Aside from “Stingray”, two other popular TV shows in subsequent decades have featured a submarine crew. The first was “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea“, a US series based on a 1961 movie of the same name; commencing its television run on 14 September 1964 – almost the same date as “Stingray” – and concluding effectively four years later, on 31 March 1968. Featuring Admiral Harriman Nelson and Captain Lee Crane, the submarine Seaview and its crew encountered adventures ranging from spies and nuclear alerts, to aliens and monsters of the week.
The other show was “SeaQuest DSV” (12 September 1993 to 6 June 1996), a series following the adventures of the Deep Sea Vessel (submarine) SeaQuest, operated by the United Earth Oceans organization (UEO). With a 1990s flavour, the show featured action adventure mixed with politics, environmental issues, intrigue, military adventures, and a teenage prodigy.
Both “Voyage” and “SeaQuest” followed the same formula of “Stingray” in that they feature military structures under the command of a male who is entrusted with a ship and a crew in pursuit of a mission. Other TV series with marine themes, such as “Sea Hunt”, “Flipper”, and Australia’s own “Adventures of the Seaspray” and “The Rovers”, were all programs that featured seaboard or shipboard life rather than submariner adventures, and moved outside the collegiate (teamwork) principles of “SeaQuest”, “Voyage” and “Stingray”, focussing on more individualistic stories (the “Stingray” production team would venture into this individualistic perspective in their later – and most successful – series: Thunderbirds”).
The Future Was Fantastic
“Marina, aqua Marina,
What are these strange enchantments that start
Whenever you’re near?”
– Barry Gray (musician), ‘Aqua Marina’, in “Stingray”.
“Stingray” was produced by the creative team of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, the same people who went on to create a variety of increasingly technologically and conceptually complex series, including “Thunderbirds” and “Captain Scarlet”, and some live action series such as “UFO” and “Space: 1999“. Consequently, “Stingray” seems to have been largely overlooked, overshadowed by its successors – although it was groundbreaking in its own way.
“Stingray” was primarily a children’s action-adventure series, prominently featuring model work and vehicles from the same team that would later wow the world with explosions and space age vehicles in “Thunderbirds” and other productions. The Stingray submarine and its drydock were reminiscent of the Skydiver and its dock that would later appear in “UFO”, and the launch of this submarine would later evoke images of the launch of the “Thunderbirds” in that subsequent Anderson series; a myriad of such futuristic vehicles would inhabit the other worlds of the Andersons and their production team. One critic acknowledged that a strength of “Stingray” was its powerful Anderson trademark special effects work:
“Anderson and his colleagues were always far better as technical wizards rather than tellers of compelling tales. And when the eponymous sub unleashed hell via its torpedo tubes, the result is explosive in more ways than one.”
For a puppet show, it may be surprising that some of the groundbreaking material in “Stingray” was in its implicit portrayal of humans. The series had a surprising amount of subtle humour, but also some serious underlying messages. Commander Shore was a disabled man in a hoverchair, unrestricted by his disability to exercise leadership of his military unit. Marina was a mute young mermaid woman who manages to live, love, communicate and engage in cross-cultural interactions despite her disability and her culturally alien background. Such portrayals are rare even today. Furthermore, Marina and Atlanta Shore are shown as capable, proficient and accomplished women in their own right, despite the restrictions of their world – this form of female empowerment also appearing in other Anderson TV shows, including “Thunderbirds”, “Captain Scarlet”, “UFO”, and “Space:1999” – during the concurrent rise of second-wave feminism.
And despite the limitations of the stories and the exotic, other-worldly setting of the series – simplistic, deep sea “shoot-’em-up” adventures at the bottom of an alien ocean environment – the budding romance between Troy Tempest and the Marina might be seen as a symbolic love for exploration, new knowledge and reconciliation. This quest is set up in the opening scenes of the first episode:
Co-pilot Phones: “There are people living under the sea, and I’ve got fairies at the bottom of my garden.”
Troy Tempest: “Okay you can laugh, but someday I’m going to prove it, and maybe sooner than you think.”
Other meta-analysis in the series revolves around Titania’s deference to their god, Teufel – a fish whose divine fishbowl-lens wisdom leads his adherents to constant defeat. Perhaps humanist Gerry Anderson is challenging viewers to ponder whether their seeking of knowledge through religious perspectives assists or hinders their lives; and is encouraging them instead to use the lens of scientific, evidence-based reasoning that was supposedly the basis for the philosophies of the victorious aquanauts.
Cold Waters, Cold War
“War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.”
– Carl Von Clausewitz.
Artist: Louis Chow.
Reflecting the era of Cold War and Space Race, “Stingray” depicted a Cold War between the land dwellers of Earth versus the underwater denizens of Titanica. Led by aquanaut Troy Tempest (captain of the underwater craft “Stingray”) and his crew, the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (WASP) fought to repel the aggressive hostilities of King Titan and his spies and marine creature henchmen. On its most basic level, the series could be seen as a simple reworking of the traditional “good guys versus bad guys” theme, of heroes versus villains, as was later revisited in other Anderson shows particularly “Captain Scarlet” (humans versus Martians) and “UFO” (humans versus aliens). However, set in the domain of Earth’s largely unexplored oceans, “Stingray” metaphorically asked questions about who might win this underwater version of the Space Race; implicitly suggesting that the people of Marineville (land dwellers who were transitioning into people who explored the oceans) might be the best compromise for taming, colonising and exploiting this final frontier, and thereby win the quest for possible dominance of the world.
This was an era which we might now view in hindsight as being somewhat culturally problematic – women were portrayed in sexist, demeaning ways; James Bond movies were using “yellowface” to represent Asians – and while “Star Trek” was being created as an “Wagon Train in Space”, “Stingray” might be seen as an underwater version of the “western” template. The conflict with underwater denizens can now be seen as equivalent to an imperialist or colonial quest for dominance over indigenous people, complete with an Orientalist flavour and the placement of WASPS (or “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants” – a term that was becoming increasingly widespread in the 1960s) as the heroes by default. If “Stingray” was being produced today, it would undoubtedly be more nuanced in its portrayal of characters from both sides of the conflict. Children’s programs today are much more willing to explore discrimination, bullying, empathy and equality.
Photo by Pew Nguyen: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-can-on-the-shore-11607726/
Treasure Down Below
“The sea, the great unifier, is man’s only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: we are all in the same boat.” – Jacques Costeau.
There are many reasons why we should explore and protect the oceans. For one thing, it remains home to vast numbers of species and potentialities that we have yet to discover, leading Sir David Attenborough to compelled to declare in Blue Planet II that, “Hidden beneath the waves, there are creatures beyond our imagination.” The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) concurs:
“Scientists estimate that 91 percent of ocean species have yet to be classified, and that more than eighty percent of our ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored. While these statistics may sound daunting, they have not stopped the global scientific community from striving to amass as much knowledge as possible about ocean life.”
They also note that the oceans provide us with food and medicine, economic resources, and climate regulation.
But the oceans are the birthplace and cradle of life on this planet; the location of the natural terrestrial chemical laboratory within which natural tidal forces likely churned up abiogenesis, and the source of photosynthesis that created the oxygen in our atmosphere. These waters remain our largest unvanquished planetary frontier. We need to stop using them as a garbage can for our pollution, chemicals, wastes and plastics. Instead of worrying about treasures, pirates and monsters at the bottom of our seas, we need to tackle the problem of trillions of microplastic shards that humans have discarded, the species of marine life that we are making extinct due to overfishing; and the destructive impact of human-caused climate change upon the 70% of the Earth’s surface that makes ours the Blue Planet. Even NASA has joined the call, using space technology to further extend its mission to planet Earth.
To explore, respect and protect the world’s oceans is a worthy cause today, and groups such as Oceana and Ocean’s Harmony lead the way, with their appeals for support and volunteers and youth activism.
And let’s pay tribute to a humble children’s puppet series, launched sixty years ago today, that also contained a call for action regarding our oceans and marine life.
In the middle of a now-forgotten epidemic that killed millions of people, a now-forgotten Australian TV series presented its plea for rejecting stigma and discrimination, respecting diversity, and encouraging the dissemination of information and public education.
As the 1980s drew to a close, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation commenced a long-running soap opera which, like many other TV series before it, focused upon the professional and private lives of doctors and medical practitioners – but with a twist. Australian television historian Moran observes:
“In developing “G.P.”, the ABC took a leaf out of both Seven’s “A Country Practice” and Nine’s “The Flying Doctors” in focusing on the business of doctoring but smartly decided to orient the program towards an urban milieu.” (Moran, 1993, p. 204.)
Given this change of setting, G.P. promised to be less reliant upon utopian rural stereotypes, and more willing to examine modern reality in urban/suburban Australia. In this contemporary setting, G.P. offered more gritty realism and less faux nostalgia as could be found in some overseas medically-oriented fictional programs, such as, Doctor Finlay’s Casebook or All Creatures Great and Small.
7 March 1989 saw transmission of the first episode of G.P. (Shore, 1992, p. 48.) The series introduced a number of characters and storylines which covered a broad range of medical and social issues – and demonstrated a mature and inclusive attitude to diversity. This also meant that episodes portrayed a wide spectrum of people, including those affected by HIV/AIDS. Lasting eight years and running for 318 episodes (imdb.com, n.d.), this series tackled AIDS in a way that no other Australian TV drama series ever did before – or has done since.
Whereas A Country Practice and The Flying Doctors had contained tokenistic, usually single-episode stories on the epidemic that was killing thousands of Australians, G.P. took a more comprehensive approach. The series was willing to tackle stereotypes and invisibility, attempting new additions to Australia’s folklore and culture in the midst of a terrifying plague.
Paediatric AIDS
Like the producers of The Flying Doctors before them, the creators of G.P. fashioned a story about AIDS early in their series – the 22nd episode during their first year of production. Telecast on 8 August 1989 (imdb n.d. #2) and titled, “Toss A Coin”, the episode told the story of five year-old Zoe, who had contracted paediatric AIDS from her now-deceased mother. Complications were added when the little girl was victim of prejudice and discrimination at her school. The director, Geoff Nottage, reportedly cast his own daughter as the only school friend to stick by Zoe (Shore, 1992, p. 58). This episode won the 1989 Human Rights Award for TV Drama (ibid, p. 110).
Unlike the stories in The Flying Doctors and A Country Practice, this story in G.P. may have actually been inspired by real-life Australian events such as the case of Troy Lovegrove or – more pointedly, the experiences faced by Eve Van Grafhorst, a young girl with HIV whose family were ultimately hounded out of Australia. The producers of G.P. were clearly not afraid to reflect gritty realism, confronting viewers with nuanced stories that were more challenging and confronting to their own perspectives and prejudices – and more likely to inspire sympathy or empathy. Like the aforementioned TV shows, this episode avoided linking HIV and AIDS to gay men as the primarily affected cohort – but this invisibility would quickly change in the series.
Gay Men
It was not long before G.P. produced another story about AIDS – telecast on 3 April 1990, “Mates” was the eighth episode of their second season (imdb, n.d. #3) and this time, the series challenged Australian audiences to view gay men in a compassionate and respectful light.
One of the doctors, Steve Harrison, discovers that his friend, Mark, has been refused an operation to correct an injury which he sustained during a game of squash. It turns out that Mark had been tested for AIDS without his knowledge and that he had subsequently been diagnosed as HIV positive. Dr. Harrison must come to terms with this news and his own homophobia – but must also break the news to Mark and to Mark’s gay partner, Alex, who is not HIV positive (Shore, 1992, p. 70).
“Mates” was a breakthrough on Australian television because it presented gay men as otherwise fairly ordinary people who lived within society and who enjoyed the respect of their heterosexual friends and colleagues – it was just that some of them happened to have AIDS.
GP: “Lovers” (aired 1 May 1990 – from imdb)
Four weeks later, this story concluded in the episode “Lovers” which was telecast on 1 May 1990 (Zuk, 1998 – 2004). “Lovers” presented the reality of people dying with AIDS, and the discrimination faced by many gay couples at the hands of their own family members. At the time, Australian law did not recognize gay partners, and heterosexual family members had exclusive legal rights as next of kin. In a global context, the World Health Organisation did not remove homosexuality from its “Classification of Diseases” until 17th May that same year (IDAHOBIT, 2023), although tragically, AIDS would entrench an association between homosexuality and medicalisation for many years.
In “Lovers”, Mark is now dying of AIDS and his loving mother arrives – to be confronted by his homosexuality, his medical condition, and by his gay partner. Her furious homophobia puts a great strain upon the relationship between Mark and Alex, and it greatly adds to Mark’s distress as he loses the battle against his terminal medical condition. After his death, his mother freezes Alex out and even refuses to allow him to attend the funeral, despite Dr. Harrison’s pleas for compassion (Shore, 1992, pp. 71 & 72).
Such treatment of gay partners by hostile heterosexual family members was not uncommon in Australia at the time. It is to be hoped that this episode challenged such families to become more accepting of their children’s partners. Perhaps G.P. contributed to a growing groundswell of support that led to marriage equality, inheritance rights, and related family legal rights in the following decades.
“Lovers” reportedly won a number of awards (ibid, p. 71) including the 1990 “Penguin” Award for Best Direction (ibid, p. 110).
Heterosexual AIDS
On 16 November 1993, the episode, “Loose Ends” featured a minor character who was an HIV positive male patient. He chatted with the doctors about his forthcoming marriage. No further details were specified about his background, and he appears to have been included mainly to as a stock character to help “normalise” the existence of HIV positive people in society.
The series’ sixth and seventh years in 1994 and 1995 – the era when one of the doctors was a gay character – seemed to feature references to AIDS or related topics on a frequent basis.
“A Temporary Mess” (10 May 1994) focussed on a young female school teacher whose HIV status was publicly disclosed and she faced fear and prejudice from many of her colleagues, her students and their parents. The issues of privacy and prejudice were examined – and compassion was extended mainly by the gay doctor, Martin Dempsey; and one of the students, young Peter Browning, who had an adolescent crush on her. In a final, touching scene, Peter dismisses the HIV bigotry of his friends and their parents by calling them “dickheads” and shyly befriending his teacher.
Condoms
Safe sex condom ad from the era
Two episodes with references to condoms were run concurrently in 1995, and they both seemed to imply that condoms were not necessary for heterosexuals.
Dr. Sonia Kapeck lectures her younger sister about using condoms in the episode, “In Control” (4 April 1995) but the teenager returns the condoms to Sonia in a subsequent scene because she evidently doesn’t believe that she needs them. What may have been a covert reference to celibacy may have also been a warning about complacency against safe sex during an epidemic.
The following week (11 April 1995), the episode, “After Hours” featured an adult heterosexual couple having a casual sexual liaison without condoms and then asking each other if they should be concerned about “diseases”. The question is left open – maybe placing the onus for a decision upon the viewers themselves.
Australia was at that time emerging from an era when condoms had not been widely available like today: often only on sale over the counter, upon request from chemist shops (provided the chemist had no religious objection to selling them) – which made their availability especially limited within certain geographic or demographic cohorts; and which were still barely mentioned in polite society (often referred to by vague terms like “protection”). Following the “liberation” of the condom into widespread useage in 1986 following the arrival of AIDS (Blazey Peter Blazey, 1986, In coming years, scandals would break out in at least one state of Australia (Queensland) regarding the existence of condom vending machines. Such changes were happening across Australia – the colloquial “franger” was being lifted out of impolite backyard conversation and into polite society.
Just as the gay community had been forced to learn to love the prophylactic, mainstream Australian society was now also being challenged to embrace the rubber contraceptive. Forget embarrassment or old fashioned notions of morality – lives were potentially at stake! For any television program to mention condoms explicitly during this era was still an achievement of progressive courage, and maybe optimally possible on the ABC-TV network, whose non-commercial TV stations would not be subjected to the concerns of advertisers.
(Photo supplied by Phil Carswell)
AFRAIDS – Associated Fears Relating to AIDS
Although many TV news programs and other fictional stories featured fear of AIDS (usually subconsciously incorporating it into their storyline without much self-examination), G.P. was the first Australian program to explore many facets of AIDS phobia and to infer its irrational nature.
On 18 April 1995, the episode “What About Your Heart?” included a scene of a doctor who was bitten by a mentally ill patient – then casually dismissing the incident because he claimed to have regular tests for HIV and hepatitis. As HIV is not transmissible by saliva, the scene was evidently an acknowledgement of the potential for people to have irrational fears concerning the virus.
Later that same year, the episode entitled, “Like Father, Like Son”, which was telecast on 15 August 1995, featured a father who needed heart surgery and who strongly encouraged his adult son to donate blood in order to protect him from contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion during surgery.
Another episode, “Hush Little Baby”, telecast on 7 November 1995, included a comment from a parent about her young son getting into a fight at school, in which a punch drew blood from his opponent and elicited a verbal scolding from the parent of the other child – what if he had AIDS?
On 17 August 1993, the creators of G.P. followed up with an episode called “Infected”, which starred gay actor John Hargreaves – who was later to tragically die of AIDS himself – playing a dentist with an irrational fear of infection and disease, including AIDS.
On 4 July 1995, the episode “Not Fade Away” introduced a two-part story which was possibly the nastiest story of the series. Young gay doctor, Martin Dempsey, is treating a gay patient with AIDS who is battling a declining quality of life and eventually indicates that he wishes to die with dignity. Dr. Dempsey assists in his euthanasia – and the patient’s sister reports him to the police. Significantly, the episode features a real-life AIDS Vigil in Sydney – the only known Australian TV program (outside news clips) to spotlight this authentic moment of pain and trauma in the Australian AIDS community.
The following week, on 11 July 1995. The episode title, “A Parting of Friends” is indicative of what ultimately happens between the professional partnership of Dr. Dempsey and his colleagues at the Ross Street clinic as a result of his actions to assist in a suicide of a terminally ill AIDS patient. Although the police enquiry is eventually dropped due to lack of evidence, the other medical staff react angrily to the disclosure of Dempsey’s actions – and the senior doctor sacks him. The departing doctor seems to maintain a friendly relationship with the others, but there seems to be a definite undercurrent of acrimony towards him, and this arguably portrays Dempsey’s colleagues – the main characters of the series – in a rather uncomplimentary light.
This story parallels a Hollywood movie (“It’s My Party”) which was released in April the following year – demonstrating that the writers of G.P. were at the forefront of social comment regarding AIDS.
This story also tapped into a powerful social controversy at the time, highlighted by AIDS – the rights of patients who were terminally ill with AIDS and who asked to be allowed to die with dignity. Their plight helped to bring the topic of voluntary euthanasia to the forefront of Australian politics and society, particularly in the Northern Territory, where the Territory government passed a law allowing terminally ill people to receive assisted voluntary euthanasia (Maddox, 2005, p.50) – the very same month that the GP aired this episode. Under conservative Prime Minister Howard, however, the Federal government responded during 1996 and 1997 with its own legislation which overruled this Territory law (ibid, p. 52). Victorian doctors were later to lead a public call for AIDS-related euthanasia (The Age, 25 March 1995, p. 1) and a veritable army of medical staff comprising a virtual underground army of assistants for those with AIDS who wanted to die with dignity (Magnusson, 2002, p. 23), it would take some decades for Voluntary Assisted Dying to be legally implemented across Australia.
Condoman was first a 1987 Indigenous health initiative to promote condom use.
Indigenous AIDS
During its fifth season, an episode of G.P. entitled, “Dancing with Death” tackled the topic of AIDS and the indigenous community. Telecast on 23 March 1993 (Wikipedia), the episode was notable because one character bore some resemblance to real-life Australian Dr. Fred Hollows – a man who had caused controversy because of his outspoken public comments on AIDS and indigenous people.
Women with AIDS
In season six, G.P. tackled the problem of women with HIV/AIDS in an episode entitled, “A Temporary Mess”. Airing on 10 May 1994 (Wikipedia), it featured a female character who faced prejudice and stigma once her HIV status was publicly revealed.
This was an era that was potentially more difficult for women with HIV than it was for gay men. The LGBT+ communities had support services available for their members, while women – a smaller cohort but impacted by their own specialist medical needs – were often invisible and overlooked. One female activist recalls the programs that were run by women for women:
“We had annual retreats and at each one, we didn’t know who would be alive the following year. It was scary times. Funerals were commonplace. Who would be next?”
While women had initially been at the forefront of leading the fight against AIDS and related stigma in Australia, it was still remarkable for an Australian TV program to sensitively feature a female character battling such difficulties.
Activists Fighting Amnesia
G.P. demonstrated that the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, as a government-funded broadcaster, was willing and able to go where commercial television did not dare. More than that, it seems possible that the ABC was keen to promote AIDS awareness in line with the policy of the same Hawke-Keating Federal Governments that had given Australians the frightening Grim Reaper as a way of imprinting AIDS within our collective community consciousness.
A generation later, G.P. has been largely forgotten – partly because it was telecast on a non-commercial network, and partly because it dealt with complex social issues (such as AIDS, itself now largely forgotten) in nuanced ways that defied the typical soap opera formula of stereotypical characters and simplistic binary solutions.
Its legacy may very well be that it helped to save lives by promoting safe sex, anti discrimination and acknowledging the existence of diversity. The program may have contributed to changes in societal attitudes – marriage equality, anti discrimination, condom usage, voluntary assisted dying, anti racism, equality for women – in ways that have now become so much a part of our collective consciousness that we forget where those modern perspectives originated. Most significantly, it served to educate and inform during a terrible epidemic, and its creators should be proud that, like so many other activists of that era, they role-modelled and served when lives were at stake.
Where some people might now see forgotten actors and artists, we should see and recognise them as heroes of their time and culture.
Seeking an annual Star Trek Day that really dares to Boldly Go
Cover of “Galaxy” magazine, April 1969, {isfdb.org]
Aiming for the Stars
A generation ago, SF author Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr) wrote one of the first Star Trek-related stories (and arguably, one of the earliest pieces of ‘Mary Sue‘ fan fiction) to ever be professionally published. ‘Beam Us Home‘ tells the story of someone who feels somewhat of an alien or outcast in their home world, but who finds shelter in utopian science fiction.
Although the story focuses on an individual, its collective title (‘Beam Us Home’) implies that such dreams and aspirations are universal. There are times when we all feel like we are alien, an outsider, a refugee from a hostile and uncaring world – somehow different – and science fiction can provide consolation, a community of likeminded individuals, recognition of shared identity or values, a sense of extended family, and optimistic inspiration for the future. This is why science fiction is filled with refugees: from Supergirl and Superman to Doctor Who (Burt, 2016). Star Trek has Kirk, Spock, Khan, Tasha Yar, Seven of Nine, the Maquis, and others who have been refugees at one time or another. Alien Nation features the Tenctonese; humans are refugees in Battlestar Galactica, Jericho, Logan’s Run, Planet of the Apes, Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Blakes Seven – and more. The seeds of subversion are sewn into the fabric of science fiction. The words of Charlie Jane Anders should both inspire and challenge us as we look for utopia:
“When you think about the archetypal science fiction story, chances are you think of the bold explorer, setting foot on a newfound planet in the name of a secure homeworld. But possibly the most pervasive narrative in science fiction is actually the story of refugees. They flee from planetary destruction, war, or just from overcrowding and ecological crappitude. The refugee story is the flipside of the gung-ho explorer story, but it might actually be the most uniquely science fictional story of all.” (Anders, 2008).
One of the most important lessons we can learn (as an individual or as a species) when growing into maturity is to empathise with others – to share their perspective, to learn to “walk a mile in their shoes”. Human empathy teaches us not only about others, but also about ourselves.
L’Oiselle published in 1909 features the first super hero. [Wikipedia]. (Couverture dessinée par Albert., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, who was one of the first three human beings to orbit the Moon, commented on his journey: “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.” Similarly, our fanciful fantasy journeys of space travel and science fiction – while enabling us to explore the cosmos in our imaginations – must also give us a ‘global’ perspective of ourselves, others, and of our shared aspirations.
Where No Man Has Gone Before
“We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.” – Ursula Le Guin.
Women comprise one group that has been traditionally marginalised, as noted by Tricia Rose in 1994 while exploring the idea that futurism can be contextualised by our past and present:
“If we don’t value the ways in which women create, it doesn’t really matter what we do or do not invent; we could stay on the farm and women would be just as oppressed. For that reason, I don’t really see science fiction models of the future as a necessarily more oppressive space for women than I do current fictions of an idealized past.” (Rose, 1994, p. 217.)
One stereotype in science fiction and related futurism is that traditionally, the genre was dominated by men until women became visible in the genre (as creators or readers) in the 1960s (thanks to Star Trek) and the 1970s (thanks to second-wave feminism).
Margaret Cavendish, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
This ignores the reality that Margaret Cavendish wrote Blazing World in 1666; Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert wrote “Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes” (“Lord Seton’s Voyage Among the Seven Planets”) in 1765: Mary Shelley (often considered “the mother of science fiction”) wrote “Frankenstein” in 1818; and Begum Rokeya wrote the Bengali Muslim feminist utopian fantasy, “Sultana’s Dream in 1905. In more recent times, Ursula Le Guin helped establish science fiction in Australia through her work as a Guest of Honour at Aussiecon (Melbourne’s first World Science Fiction convention) in 1975; and Australian SF writer Norma Hemming – although dying at the tragically young age of 32 – left a legacy including an award (from 2010 to 2020) to honour diversity in SF.
For decades, Star Trek and other science fiction portrayed women in ways that we would recognise today as being patronising: often called “girls” instead of “women”, they wore mini skirts or other minimalist clothing and were judged for their physical attributes rather than their intellectual prowess; they were helpless and needed saving from salacious aliens; they served as background decoration or romantic conquest for heroic male astronauts. In this sense, science fiction looked not so much into the future as the past, reinforcing traditional gender stereotypes and role models. (I remember being in a group of young fans watching an episode of the Logan’s Run TV series in the late 1970s, in which the fictional character Jessica stood by helplessly while the men fought fisticuffs. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, she picked up a discarded blaster pistol and stopped the fight by taking command – and the young audience around me spontaneously cheered. Science fiction had finally caught up to women’s lib and the highest ideals of its young fandom!)
Feminist perspectives benefit mainstream science fiction because they add layers of nuance, empathy and reality to the genre. They add the life experiences and consequent wisdom of half the world’s population. They add decades of background activism as advocates of intersectionality, such as “slash” fiction (the arguably queer-friendly fan fiction* which turned Star Trek into a multi-billion dollar franchise, even though the franchise creators still wilfully ignore this audience demand even today). They avoid the male gaze and the complaints of privileged white men who bemoan that Doctor Who became a woman, that Star Trek “genocided white men” by adding some powerful women of colour, or that gender and other diversity is being reflected in the literary SF scene. Such examples demonstrate the need (and potential) within science fiction to educate and inform its audiences and practitioners about creating and building celebratory inclusion for the future.
Joanna Russ spoke of the background problem for women in 1970, and we can speculate on how much has changed in the generation since then:
“Of course, you don’t want me to be stupid, bless you! you only want to make sure you’re intelligent. You don’t want me to commit suicide; you only want me to be gratefully aware of my dependency. You don’t want me to despise myself; you only want the flattering deference to you that you consider a spontaneous tribute to your natural qualities. You don’t want me to lose my soul; you only want what everybody wants, things to go your way; you want a devoted helpmeet, a self-sacrificing mother, a hot chick, a darling daughter, women to look at, women to laugh at, women to come for comfort, women to wash your floors and buy your groceries and cook your food and keep your children out of your hair, to work when you need the money and stay home when you don’t, women to be enemies when you want a good fight, women who are sexy when you want a good lay, women who don’t complain, women who don’t nag or push, women who don’t hate you really, women who know their job and above all—women who lose. On top of it all, you sincerely require me to be happy; you are naively puzzled that I should be wretched and so full of venom in this the best of all possible worlds. Whatever can be the matter with me? But the mode is more than a little outworn.
As my mother once said: the boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.” (Russ, 1975).
Gender inequity remains a terrible problem around the world, and science fiction is one way to recognise this and propose solutions. The genre encourages us to ponder the plight of “the other”; in learning about AIs or aliens, we can learn about ourselves. But when we realise that “the other” is also ourselves, we can begin our own journey towards reconciliation and healing. In acknowledging our weaknesses as a species, we finally find our possible strengths.
Indigenous Worlds
“Science fiction is often concerned with the ways in which cultures interact. By allowing writers to dramatize negotiations among radically differing world-views and ways of life, the genre becomes what Mary Louise Pratt calls an “art of the contact zone.” A contact zone, according to Pratt, is a space “where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths…. ” (Attebery, 2005, p. 385).
Australia beholds the Milky Way (Pixabay image)
Science fiction might seem to be a genre that includes exploration of indigenous cultures which could be found on other planets or across the boundaries of space-time. And yet for every “Fantastic Planet” story depicting truly alien worlds or cultures, there are dozens of others featuring human invasions, colonisation and conquests of indigenous alien worlds – or engaging in wars for supremacy, most obviously in stories of first contact or interplanetary warfare, where these can metaphorically (or more literally) recall ‘slipstream’, ‘native apocalypse’, or ‘returning to ourselves’ inherent in indigenous speculative fiction.
This offers a major opportunity for science fiction (metaphoric or otherwise): to truly explore strange, new worlds, and maybe learn from them. Jeanine Leane introduces the possibilities of reading First Nations Australian science fiction as one example:
“For weird mob everywhere and everywhen, our brave and strange thinkers, feelers, lovers, warlords and healers – those who are dreaming up new ways to tell our stories and are pouring them back into the river of our collective culture for the benefit of all.” (Leane, 2022)
Another example can be seen in the work of Kalem Murray:
“Yeah, you see that tree there, that one with the fan lookin’ leaves there?”
Shane lifted the gear up again and sighed. “You mean the pandanus?”
“Yeah, pandanus. You know what that means when you see a bunch of pandanus around?”
Shane wiped the built-up sweat from his brow with his free hand and onto the hessian sack.”It means water. It meant water the first time you asked, and it meant water last weekend. You literally ask me this every time we pass these trees.” (Murray, 2022).
Such earthy naturalism, amidst a speculative fiction story featuring horror and possible loss, provides a solid grounding for the material and keeps the audience grounded in reality even as fantastical developments emerge. Populist science fiction could learn from such pragmatic perspectives.
Instead, populist SF often perpetuates the binary colonialist views of yesteryear. For example, how much might we see Han Solo and Chewbacca from Star Wars mirror earlier portrayals of The Lone Ranger and Tonto? In Star Trek, indigenous cultures suffer a similar fate as native peoples from traditional “cowboys and Indians” stories, with the indigenous tribe in the Star Trek TOS episode, The Paradise Syndrome and Chakotay from Star Trek Voyager (complete with his tokenistic indigenous Maori tattoo) being victims of the same racist stereotyping:
“… Chakotay’s culture, as portrayed in the series, provides a perfect example of the generic “Indian” culture found in early American newspapers, where many individual cultures were merged into a single “Indian” culture.” (Adare, 2005, 45).
Beyond that, Star Trek featured a scattering of planets containing indigenous cultures that were predominantly white humans (many with nose bumps), except most notably for Next Generation episode Code of Honour, which is largely proclaimed as being openly racist due to its antiquated stereotypical depictions. (Brownhill, 2019; SFDebris, n.d.).
Tied to our wider collective human memory, our future visions and dreams have the power to dismantle and replace those earlier constructions of race and repression:
“The boy without a body watched as people who had similar faces to those he once called family, used majik and tech against the very people who destroyed his country. He watched as purple-green spears flew into the bodies of those as white as the linen they wore on Sundays. He watched as they fell on the ground, ans hands springing from the earth claimed their souls. Those who weren’t like him couldn’t see those hands or hear the words that were being chanted from underneath the soil, remember us, remember us, remember us…” (Gesa-Fatafehi, 2022).
“The notion of Afrofuturism gives rise to a troubling antinomy: can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures? (Dery, 1994, p. 180).
The term “Afrofuturism” was coined by Dery in 1994, but the phenomenon has been present as a cultural influence since at least as far back as 1931, thanks to George Schuyler (Loughrey, 2018), an African American who futuristically satirised the contemporaneous idiom of, “Get out, get white, or get along.” Afrofuturism gestated as a movement exploring what the concepts of science or futurism mean to people living within the continent upon which the human species originated – or the diaspora who have left and settled elsewhere because of fair means or foul. From our human cousins who are mindful of their past and present, what might embody their visions of the future?
“… a cultural movement that pulls from elements of science fiction, magical realism, speculative fiction and African history. Undergirding this movement is a longing to create a more just world.” (Monáe, 2022)
Since then, AfroFuturism has expanded to encompass many forms of artistic expression:
“Afrofuturism is one of the rare aesthetics that can encompass the visual medium, fashion, the written word, and music, and tackles themes such as feminism, alienation from your people, the grotesque, water symbolism, and reclamation of one’s identity through their roots.” (Author unknown, n.d.)
Through a combination of artistic, visual and audio media, Afrofuturism can marry past and present and give birth to a challenging and inclusive vision for the future. I try to imagine what Star Trek would be like if it took its predominantly white and American vision for a futuristic utopia, and combined it with edgy and exciting African multiculturalism, using new and bold forms of audio-visual presentation to present a more inclusive and more intimate version of a futuristic utopia borne from human struggle.
“The struggles I face in Botswana are emblematic of the broader issues many activists confront. Despite these difficulties, I am driven by the belief that my voice and my art can inspire change.” – AdAstra
One modern example is the music of “Adastra”, whose stage name comes from the Latin: “ad astra: to the stars” which ties strongly with the Afrofuturist perspective of aiming for a utopian future through science-fictional or speculative creativity. The gritty realism of Adastra’s appeal for a future without war (and its consequent suffering and injustice etc) presents a vibrant and no-nonsense message, with confronting imagery of real-life war and death, but threaded together with resilience and optimism – all for a fraction of the cost of one of Hollywood’s white-washed, sanitised studio fables.
VIDEO: Why War? by Adastra (used by permission).
[content warning on video: some warfare and carnage]:
The marriage of past and future, the intertwining of present alternate universes (African and western perspectives) can highlight our sense of awe and wonder – or of our alienation:
“It had been almost a year since we came to Mars. That was what I called this place although it had another name. It was Kensington Park or Windsor Estate or something like that but I couldn’t have said (t)hat because I could never remember it.” (Kwaymullina, 2022).
The cradle of humanity, and the cradle of civilisation, has a rich heritage from which to draw inspiration for its future – and maybe for the future of us all:
“With joy filling his heart, Pale Fox danced in Mother’s Garden, and a great river of stars washed over the sky.” (Jerry, 2022, p. 475).
To Asia and Beyond
City lights of Asia and Australia (NASA Earth Observatory photo)
“Science fiction is the literature of dreams, and texts concerning dreams always say something about the dreamer, the dream interpreter, and the audience.” – Ken Liu, 2016.
The European origins of modern science fiction are seen to have inspired similar literature around the world – because dreams are universal. Following the publication of Jules Verne stories, the first Indian Hindi science fiction, Aaschary Vrittant [“The Strange Tale”], was written by Ambika Dutt Vyas and serialised between 1884-88 in Peeyush Pravah magazine (Patel, 2021). Japanese author Shunro Oshikawa published The Undersea Warship: A Fantastic Tale of Island Adventure, in 1900 (Nathan, 2017); China followed with Yueqiu zhimindi xiaoshuo [“Tales of the Moon Colony”] by Huangjiang Diasou, serialised in the Xiuxiang Xiaoshuo [“Illustrated Fiction”] magazine between 1904 and 1905 (Isaacson, 2013, p. 33).
Subsequent Asian science fiction has been complicated with layers of Sinofuturism, Orientalism, and colonial/postcolonial ruminations (Briel, 2023). Vouloumanos asks why the western response to Sinofuturism is a racist perspective:
“Why does Asian-ness always lend itself to being the futuristic “other” for Western audiences in science-fiction visions of the future?” (Vouloumanos, 2019).
While Star Trek and other western science fiction entraps and stereotypes Asian characters as “convenient plot devices”, the local Asian response is much more complex. Chinese science fiction (kexue xiaoshuo) has evolved into Techno-Orientalism, an intersection of technology and race (see Ho, 2017). More widely, Xia Jia suggests that science fiction plugs into the “Chinese Dream” and it could be argued that this is much the same way as Hollywood SF taps into the “American Dream”:
“Chinese Dream” here refers to the revival of the Chinese nation in the modern era, a prerequisite for realizing which was reconstructing the Chinese people’s dream. In other words, the Chinese had to wake up from their old, 5000-year dream of being an ancient civilization and start to dream of becoming a democratic, independent, prosperous modern nation state. As a result, the first works of science fiction in Chinese were seen, in the words of the famous writer Lu Xun, as literary tools for “improving thinking and assisting culture.” On the one hand, these early works, as myths of science, enlightenment, and development based on imitating “the West”/“the world”/“modernity,” attempted to bridge the gap between reality and dream. But on the other hand, the limitations of their historical context endowed them with deeply Chinese characteristics that only emphasized the depth of the chasm between dream and reality.” (Xia, 2014)
The overall genre, from “The Three Body Problem” to anime, plugs into a variety of vibrant and varied material that ultimately spans our entire global village from the culturally troubled Middle Eastern nations to the “ciencia ficción” bookshelves of the Latin American subcontinent. Our culturally western, white and winsome genre lacks the depth of the full human experience.
“In reading Western science fiction, Chinese readers discover the fears and hopes of Man, the modern Prometheus, for his destiny, which is also his own creation. Perhaps Western readers can also read Chinese science fiction and experience an alternative Chinese modernity and be inspired to imagine an alternative future.” (Xia, 2016)
The Vulcan “IDIC” symbol from Star Trek, representing Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
Hollywood Futurism: Pride and Prejudice
The current series Strange New Worlds is one of the better Star Trek franchise products underway at present. It revisits some original Star Trek characters and episodes in a way that is respectful of the original material but fresh and modern. Old characters like Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Chapel are rebooted to suit twenty-first century audiences. New characters like Ortega and Aspen provide tantalising hints about modern understandings of diverse gender and sexuality. We even see one crossover episode with another Star Trek series (Lower Decks) which references animation as perhaps a stepping stone to link with the universe of anime.
Strange New Worlds promotes the ideals of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, who postulated that the human adventure is just beginning and that we should make it so by celebrating the Vulcan concept of IDIC (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations). New viewers are invited to explore familiar but strange new worlds, and the positive philosophies that such visits inspire.
Photo by Lisa Fotios: https://www.pexels.com/photo/a-close-up-shot-of-a-toy-6942407/
Yet it has not always been so. Star Trek has traditionally been militaristic, patriarchal and colonialist – its Federation serving as a metaphoric American empire across the galaxy, populating worlds with white culture. While much of Star Trek is posited as being progressive and forward-looking, we can see that much of its reality is the opposite. While it has been suggested that, “Star Trek is not just any utopia. It is a specific American utopia…” (Geraghty, 2008, 19), it is worth asking whose America is being represented in this fictional portrayal of a futuristic world. Its birth as a space age version of a western TV series (“Wagon Train to the Stars”) meant that conceptually, logistically and practically, it was overloaded with baggage from past times and past insularities. Even its glimpses of Africans (Uhura and M’Benga) and Asians (Sulu and Kim and Keiko O’Brien) were in the context of Americanised cultural traditions, wherein most people outside of the straight, white male stereotype were treated as second-class characters, often denied promotion, character development, or even first names.
Disability and sexuality also received very little (usually patronising) attention and were presented from the perspective of a straight, white, ableist male culture portraying lazy or stereotypical caricatures.
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
“The past is written. But the future is left for us to write and we have powerful tools… Openness, optimism, and the spirit of curiosity.”
– Jean-Luc Picard, ‘Broken Pieces’, Star Trek: Picard, 2020.
Amidst all this error, there was a spark of idealism. The original Star Trek always strove to be anti-racist, even if it was unable to understand and express racial equality beyond tokenistic white colonialist perspectives; nevertheless, its aspirations for equality and infinite diversity have enabled the franchise to attract a diverse fan base and survive. Star Trek has recently been rebooted, with characters including strong women of colour and a married gay male couple. We see similar evolution in the Star Wars franchise, where Princess Leia transformed from a helpless damsel in distress (in the 1970s) to a mature army general leading a rebellion (in the 2010s), and a young woman (Rey) take the mantle from Luke Skywalker. Meanwhile, modern audiences are flocking to a Marvel Cinematic Universe that has begun to explore Afrofuturism and other forms of diversity; and in Doctor Who, we see a white man transform into a woman and then into a gay Rwandan. Perhaps soon we will see further expressions of such diversity, epitomised in the writing of Ghanaian author Ivana Akotowaa Ofori:
“One of the TARDIS features the Worm adopted was the outer-appearance camouflage. In the Worm’s case, to readapt to its Ghanaian environs, it took on the shape of a dull brown shipping container – the kind that corner stores operate out of…
“She’s speaking Dagbanli, a language I recognise by its sound, but neither speak nor understand. Not that it matters, this close to the Worm; automatic, telepathic translation is yet another TARDIS thing it picked up.” (Ofori, 2022, pp. 428 & 430).
The world of literary science fiction today is likewise filled with diverse people – especially women – in a field that used to be seen as the predominant purview of Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and other white men writing space opera. Science fiction – a glimpse of possible futures – is no longer tied to the “space westerns with ray guns” mentality; it now explores ideas and speculations ranging from anime to cyberpunk and AI and beyond. Cultural acclimatisation across human societies must surely follow.
Solen Feyissa, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
Our dreams will not remain white bread; they will become as diverse as are our audiences and aspirations. In this sense, I look forward to a Chinese version of Star Trek, where aboard the starship Tiananmen Square, Captain Wang speaks to her crew in her mother tongue, and I am required, as a western audience member, to read subtitles and learn of new words, concepts, cultures and truly alien adventures outside of my personal life experience. With such steps, we will soon glimpse worlds and wonders as daring and diverse as human cultures and creations will allow; and where our dreams lead, reality may follow. We may begin to become the genuinely united world that is often alluded to within utopian science fiction and other visions of the future; a global village that is genuinely global; a federation of minds and cultures; an empire of disparity and dissidence. Within the next generation of dreamers, there will be fewer distinctions and binaries such as male or female, queer or straight, Israeli or Palestinian, western or Asian or African; the only ‘race’ that will matter will be the human race. Nigerian speculative fiction author Dare Segun Falowo points the way by presenting old perspectives through new eyes:
“In search of origin and motherworld, followed by the freed ori of Biscuit, the Offspring left behind the humans who took over in elevating their spirits beyond any dreams of gods. Guardians held on to nurturers, fathers held on to fathers, mothers to mothers and caregivers to the wise, as their Offspring took off for a forgotten home, shooting up into the eternal blue of Milk’s skies, leaving nothing behind but vapour trails.” (Falowo, 2022, p. 495).
From Alien Nation to Unification:
Science Fiction is a genre that looks ahead, pondering alternatives, and asking “what if?” It is the terrain of the explorer and adventurer; the literature of the outsider and the refugee; constructed in the language of the dissident and curious. Postulating possible futures is a way that we can explore what may lie ahead, and perhaps learn what future possibilities we actually want to forge and create. The ‘final frontier’ is time, not space, and Star Trek – postulated as boldly going into strange new worlds – remains constrained by its commercial and cultural limitations. Ahead, the future beckons; let’s explore myriad futures together, unshackling ourselves from the chains of traditional mindset and culture. Let’s boldly go into a future that is welcoming and inclusive of the whole human family.
“We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams.” ― Arthur O’Shaughnessy
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(*The issue of LGBT+ civil rights in science fiction, including Star Trek, has previously been discussed here (exploring the history of SF as a wider genre) and here (exploring fandom versus canon), and will be explored further in a subsequent blog.
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Bibliography:
Adastra, 2022. Why Wars?, independent music video, uploaded to YouTube on 22 July. Used with permission.
Sierra S. Adare, 2005. “Indian” Stereotypes in TV Science Fiction: First Nations’ Voices Speak Out. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Charlie Jane Anders, 2008. “Science Fiction Is The Literature Of Refugees”, Gizmodo, 16 May.
Brian Attebery, 2005. “Aboriginality in Science Fiction”, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 32, No. 3, November, pp. 385-404.
Holger Briel, 2023. “Asian Futures or Western Futures? The Increasingly Varied Faces of Science Fiction”, Europe Now, 12 September.
Marie Brownhill, 2019. Where No Racist Has Gone Before: Code of Honor and the Representation of Blackness, Game Industry News, 20 June.
Kayti Burt, 2016. “From Supergirl to Doctor Who — Refugees in Sci-Fi TV”, Den of Geek, 7 April.
Mark Dery, 1994. “Black to the Future”, in Flame Wars, Durham & London: Duke University Press, pp. 179-222.
Dare Segun Falowo, 2022. “Biscuit & Milk”, in Thomas, Ekpeki & Knight (eds.) Africa Risen, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, pp. 477-495.
Lincoln Geraghty, 2008. “Eight Days that Changed American Television: Kirk’s Opening Narration”, in Geraghty, L. (ed.), The Influence of Star Trek on Television, Film and Culture, Jefferson: McFarland & Company Inc Publishers, pp.11 – 19.
Meleika Gesa-Fatafehi, 2022. “Today, We Will Rise”, in Rafief Ismail & Ellen Van Neerven (eds.) Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak and Black Fiction, Fremantle Press. [eBook]
Tamara C. Ho, 2017. “Review: Techno-Orientalism: Imagining Asia in Speculative Fiction, History, and Media by David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, and Greta A. Niu, eds”, in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 44, No. 3, November, pp. 587-591. [JSTOR]
Nathaniel Isaacson, 2013. “Science Fiction for the Nation: Tales of the Moon Colony and the Birth of Modern Chinese Fiction”, Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1, Chinese Science Fiction, March, pp. 33-54. [JSTOR]
Danian Darrell Jerry, 2022. “Star Watchers”, in Thomas, Ekpeki & Knight (eds.) Africa Risen, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, pp. 467-475.
Ambelin Kwaymullina, 2022. “Fifteen Days on Mars”, in Rafief Ismail & Ellen Van Neerven (eds.) Unlimited Futures: Speculative, Visionary Blak and Black Fiction, Fremantle Press. [eBook]
Associate Professor Jeanine Leane, 2022. Foreword in Mykaela Saunders (ed.), This All Come Back Now: An Anthology of First Nations Speculative Fiction, University of Queensland Press.[ebook]
Ken Liu (ed.), 2016. Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, Tor Books, 1 November.
Clarisse Loughrey, 2018. “Black Panther brings Afrofuturism into the mainstream”, The Independent, 13 June.
David Medlen, 2008. “I Wasn’t Expecting That: The Career of Norma Hemming”, Science Fiction: A Review of Speculative Literature Volume 17, Number 1, pp. 3–17.
Janelle Monáe, 2022. “What is Afrofuturism? An English professor explains”, The Conversation, 17 June.
Kalem Murray, 2022. “In His Father’s Footsteps”, in Mykaela Saunders (ed.), This All Come Back Now: An Anthology of First Nations Speculative Fiction, University of Queensland Press.[ebook]
Richard Nathan, 2017. “Ahead of Time: Japan’s early science fiction”, Red Circle, 10 October.
Ivana Akotowaa Ofori, 2022. “Exiles of Witchery”, in Thomas, Ekpeki & Knight (eds.) Africa Risen, New York: Tom Doherty Associates, pp. 425-440.
Dr. Hemantkumar A. Patel, 2021. “Evolution of Science Fiction in Indian Writing in English”, in International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR), Volume 8, Issue 3, July. www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138).
Mary-Louise Pratt, 1991. “Arts of the Contact Zone”, Profession 91, New York: MLA, pp. 33 – 40; cited in Brian Attebery, 2005.
In 1949, author Joseph Campbell wrote “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, which explored in part: “specific details about the continuing importance of mythic stories in current times, the energies that support such, and how the body of myths and stories can become corrupted, undernourished, assaulted, even destroyed — and yet return again and again in fresh and unusual ways.” (Estes, 2004, p. xxvi). This generational cycle of life, death and new birth is not just biological – it is cultural. Our heroes and villains are reborn or rebooted every generation. This constitutes a large part of our folklore.
“Narrowly, the term “folklore” has been traditionally considered the oral tales of a society. More broadly, the term refers to all aspects of a culture – beliefs, traditions, norms, behaviors, language, literature, jokes, music, art, foodways, tools, objects, etc.”
Every culture and every community has its own folklore – from religious ideologies to national cultures; from populist Hollywood storytelling to minority cohorts (for whom folklore is particularly important to provide collective identity and community cohesion). Folklore can not only mirror a culture, but it relies upon its cultural background to fully explain its own context: “the folklore of a people can be fully understood only through a thorough knowledge of their culture” (Bascom, 1954, p. 338). Folklore bridges generations, fuels ritual, inspires literature and art, and – in recent decades – has flavoured and influenced television, film, urban mythology, and social media memes.
In The Beginning
In 1918 in Oakland, warnings to wear a mask. Photo: public domain, Source: FoundSF.org
Folklore has provided a basis for many origins – whether the origin and life cycle of the world, or the ironic origin and death cycle of plague; from the Plague of Justinian (which may have caused the fall of the Roman Empire) to our most recent epidemic to impact the whole world (COVID), stories and cultural traditions thrive. Diane Goldstein explores one example of such origin stories:
“A significant part of AIDS legendary tradition betrays our obsession with origins. Whether the narratives focus on government conspiracies, African or Haitian AIDS, “patient zero” type characters, superbugs transmitting the virus through bites, or hundred-year-old AIDS cases, the concern is the same: establishing a first — a source for this thing that made our world change so irreversibly” (Goldstein, 2004, p. 77).
In seeking to address origins – of nations, of religions, of communities, or of our sporting rituals – folklore provides a secular outlet for the religious impulse. Our folkloric responses and rationalisations for plague (and other natural disasters) is perhaps among the most basic, primal versions of this impulse. Vampires and werewolves are attributed to folklore arising from cholera, rabies, and other diseases. The so-called “Spanish Flu” epidemic of 1914 – 1918 was not Spanish and its victims were not (despite recent COVID-inspired vaccine denialism) victims of poorly administered vaccines. Another, more unexpected example is provided by David Keys, who suggests that the Bubonic Plague may have contributed a macabre background to the stories of King Arthur:
“Contrary to all received wisdom, the sixth-century plague catastrophe may indeed have been preserved in the oral tradition and in literature which, centuries later, acted as source material for particular aspects of the medieval Arthurian romances – especially those associated with the quest for the Holy Grail” (Keys, 1999, p. 158).
Keys points out that the supposed life and death of King Arthur in the sixth century was contemporaneous with the time of famine and depopulation associated with the arrival of Plague and climatic change. The subsequent Arthurian legends and much of their associated medieval literature refer to the so-called “Waste Lands”, a concept of landscapes and society ravaged by war, pestilence, famine or plague (Keys, pp. 158 – 165). It could be conjectured that the medieval King Arthur stories may have grown from earlier memories of the plague times and the need for society to find a hero and a hope during times of devastation.
One lesson which might be inferred from this Arthurian legacy is that the full effect of modern plagues – such as AIDS and COVID – are yet to be determined and included within our own communal folklore. Perhaps we are yet to find our modern heroic Arthur – or maybe we have simply to recognise that we have already birthed many such heroes amidst their modern sufferings.
“This was a very terrible and melancholy thing to see, and as it was a sight which I could not but look on from morning to night (for indeed there was nothing else of moment to be seen), it filled me with very serious thoughts of the misery that was coming upon the city, and the unhappy condition of those that would be left in it.”
– Daniel Defoe, “A Journal of the Plague Year”, 1666.
In the nineteenth century, author Henry Murger’s novel, “Scènes de la Vie Bohème” (1851) inspired the 1890s Puccini opera, “La Bohème” and both productions included characters who were living and/or dying of consumption (tuberculosis). A century later, US playwright Billy Aaronson came up with a concept to update this material. The idea was developed into the Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway musical, “Rent”, by musical composer Jonathan Larson. Aaronson and Larson agreed that instead of tuberculosis, their afflicted characters would have AIDS (Evelyn McDonnell with Kathy Silberger, 1997, pp. 18 – 21). Thus we see popular art being used to change public understandings and perceptions of two epidemics: TB and AIDS.
Following World War Two, Nobel laureate Albert Camus wrote his story “The Plague” in 1947. His tale concerns a visitation of the Bubonic Plague to a French village of Oran in the 1940s, resulting in a quarantining of the town. This tale is seen as a largely allegorical retelling of the Nazi invasion of France during World War 2. Thus was Camus able to make statements without arousing political or partisan contention.(Tony Judt, Introduction, in Albert Camus (translated by Robin Buss), “The Plague”, Penguin Books, 1947 (2001), p. viii.) His tale remains one of universal truths regarding the nature of isolation, suffering and malevolence:
“From that point on, it could be said that the plague became the affair of us all.”
(Camus, 1947, p. 53).
Historic folkloric links united all people behind the common foe of plague; in recent times we have seen that change. Australia’s early cultural responses to AIDS are an example of this: after reference to the medieval imagery and fear of the Grim Reaper, Australian television (the genuine mass media of the era) was uncertain how to approach a problem that mingled sex, plague, homosexuality and death. Efforts included deferring the problem away from homosexuality, and generally ignoring it altogether. But early fictional approaches on Australian television demonstrated patchwork attempts to address it as a social issue.
The Flying Doctors season 1 (telecast 26 May 1986 – 17 November 1986, Nine Network)
The Flying Doctors
“I came home to die. But home isn’t there any more.”
– Les Foster, fictional character dying of AIDS in “The Flying Doctors” (written by Morphett, 1986).
From Skippy and Bellbird on 1960s television; from Boney and Matlock Police to Against the Wind in the 1970s; with films ranging from Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Getting of Wisdom in the 1970s to Crocodile Dundee in the 1980s; Australians appeared to have a love affair with rural lifestyles. Into this tradition came the TV series, The Flying Doctors, fictitiously based upon the real-life organisation, the Royal Flying Doctors’ Service, in the equally fictitious outback town of Cooper’s Crossing (and which is NOT to be confused with the more recent RFDS. which was launched in 2021). After beginning as a 1985 mini-series of three episodes (Zuk, 1998a), The Flying Doctors returned between 1986 and 1991 for a successful run of 221 episodes (Zuk, 1998b). In 1986, during the series’ first year of regular telecast, the episode entitled “Return of the Hero” featured a gay character.
Given that gay characters were quite rare on Australian television at that time, and notwithstanding that this token gay character appeared for only one episode and was dead before the episode ended; his appearance nevertheless marked a courageous stand taken by writer Tony Morphett and all the others who were involved in the episode’s creation. Getting a prominent Australian actor like Gerard Kennedy to play the gay character was also a bit of a coup for Aussie TV at the time.
In the story, a local old boy, Les Foster, returns to Cooper’s Crossing after many years of living in Sydney with his “business partner”, Johnnie. Les is clearly sick but reluctant to reveal the details of his condition to his brother or the other townsfolk. However, he does disclose to Dr. Chris Randall that he is suffering from Kaposi’s sarcoma and AIDS, and that he has come back to Cooper’s Crossing to die.
Encouraged by Dr. Randall, Les “comes out” as gay to his brother Ted, who doesn’t want to know – he prefers to think of his brother as a local war hero. Les dismisses Ted’s hero worship and states that his wartime experience was a very small part of his life. He wants Ted instead to acknowledge and love his whole life. This is a pivotal scene which perhaps could be seen as a metaphor for the battle facing everyone with HIV/AIDS – rather than society making it a “big deal”, their medical condition constitutes only a small fraction of their total life experience and it reflects little upon their actual personality.
In the meantime, the medicos of Cooper’s Crossing discuss Les’ HIV/AIDS status amongst themselves –a breach of Les’ privacy which, in the context of its times, was seen as acceptable and “responsible”. This culminates in a nurse refusing to admit Les to the hospital and telling his friends that he has AIDS. Such breaches of medical ethics regarding people with AIDS were not unheard of in the 1980s.
Following this public exposure, the townsfolk clearly have trouble accepting that Les is a “poofter” and this adds to their fear and stigma. The men folk refuse to drink from glasses at the pub because they fear contagion from the glasses in the dishwasher; and poofter bashers attack Johnnie (with an explicit comparison being made between homophobia and racism). Shortly before he dies, Les faces up to his former friends in the pub. They had not physically participated in the poofter bashing attempt, but their attitudes and bigotry had contributed to the atmosphere which had allowed such violence to thrive. Les implicitly berates them for this by throwing his Korean War medals onto the floor:
“I killed young men in the name of freedom… and look what I got! Well you can find yourselves another hero, fellas. I resign!” (Morphett, 1986).
One surprising incident reveals that Les and Johnnie have their own irrational AIDS fears – in a scene which mirrors the pub incident when others refuse to share glasses, Les and Johnnie attend a communion service but decline to share a communion cup with others. This causes the local priest, Father Jacko, to guess the true nature of Les’ illness. Jacko becomes the only townsman to offer Les, Johnnie and Dr. Randall his unconditional support. During his pastoral chats with Les, Jacko concedes that his church contains both “poofter bashers” and others with compassion. Jacko even assists in a reconciliation between Les and Ted during the penultimate scene when they all share communion (and the communion cup) together. Perfect love evidently casts out all fear.
Les is finally struck down with terminal pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, another opportunistic disease common for people with AIDS in the 1980s. He dies in the arms of his lover Johnnie. Later, when the townsfolk attend his funeral, they admit their shame at their own actions, wherein they had expressed intolerance and fear.
A cursory assessment of this episode might suggest that the storyline mirrors the same concepts evident in those few films coming out of Hollywood during the following decade which dared to touch upon the issues of homosexuality or AIDS (often taken to mean the same thing) – featuring stigmatized gay men and outraged or repulsed heterosexuals as a justification for implicit homophobia. Hollywood movies such as “An Early Frost” (1985), “As Is” (1986), “Our Sons” (1991), “Philadelphia” (1993), “My Brother’s Keeper” (1995) and “In The Gloaming” (1997) largely portrayed gay men as the “other” and used plotlines which focused to varying extent upon their heterosexual relatives, friends or acquaintances coming to terms with this shame and the loss caused by their son/brother/friend’s homosexuality and/or his imminent death from AIDS.
Yet it would be unfair to suggest that this episode of “The Flying Doctors” was implicitly endorsing such views. As such, this storyline paralleled the real-life discrimination faced by some Australian gay men with HIV/AIDS at the time, and it metaphorically compared their battle with that of Les as a war veteran. During the eulogy, one character states that “Les Foster was a genuine hero” and perhaps, by extension, the writer sought to imply that all gay men who faced the double-whammy of HIV/AIDS and societal prejudice were heroes of that modern-day battle.
Perhaps the creators of this episode also wanted to challenge their audience to examine their own prejudices as reflected within the shame felt by the other characters at the funeral. This is further demonstrated by the fact that the creators focused largely on the societal rather than the medical problems faced by Les. They avoided the horrifying stereotypical images which were so common in the mass media at the time – of skeletal, emaciated AIDS figures covered in KS legions and confined to hospital beds. In this medically sanitized world, Les Foster’s skin remained unblemished and generally healthy (except for his pasty white face). And despite his terminal pneumonia, he had no cough or breathing difficulties – just a general malaise and he collapsed a couple of times to demonstrate that he was unwell.
Overall, however, this episode demonstrated to its mass audience that AIDS had potentially reached everywhere in Australia – even the fictitious outback town of Cooper’s Crossing – and that it was being accompanied by an epidemic of fear and prejudice.
Conversely, the limitations in the episode are also worth of note. The gay characters made a token appearance in only one episode for the purposes of facing discrimination and death – a cinematic tradition inherited from Hollywood. They came to Cooper’s Crossing – itself an isolated country town – as a metaphor for the social isolation faced by many gay men from the heterosexual community in real life. Moreover, they were presented as isolated and friendless back in the metropolitan city that had lived – there was no gay support network, no care teams, nobody to support and care for them. Perhaps these errors can be attributed to the heterosexist ignorance of the writer and creators, or possibly to the creative restrictions of a television program with a limited time constraint within each episode; either way, all these shortcomings could have been addressed by a small verbal reference in a passing scene.
Significantly, “Return of the Hero” was only the seventeenth episode of this series to be telecast, and the producers were undoubtedly taking some risk by presenting such a controversial story so early in the run of the series. They should be commended in the eyes of history for their willingness to tackle a very strong and deeply felt societal prejudice.
A similar theme was used in episode 92 (season 4, 1988), “A Shadow of Doubt”, in which a mysterious illness was linked to racist fears and potential scapegoating. Once again, the series producers were willing to address the issue of ‘the other’.
Perhaps most significantly, the theme was revisited during Season 8 (July 1991), “Being Positive”. This story also features a visitor to Cooper’s Crossing – this time as a former patient, anthropologist Jerry Davis, who previously suffered a terrible accident that resulted in “lots of blood” being spilt – who reveals that he has tested positive to HIV, and the doctors who saved his life must await the results of their own HIV tests while battling with questions of patient confidentiality and their own fears. It turns out (unsurprisingly) that none of the medical staff has been infected with the virus, but the word slips out around town and bigot Jock Cavendish leads the outrage. Other characters also express intolerance, presuming that Davis is “one of them” until it is finally revealed that he was exposed to the virus during his work in Africa. He is safely heterosexual, and their biggest concern now is whether or not to tell his female paramour.
This episode made some attempts to address discrimination, leading one character to respond to homophobia with a comment that: “There’s not a sliding scale of respectability among victims of this thing. They’re just victims”, a well-intentioned attempt at eliciting sympathy, but which was ironic given that this was around the time that real-life people with AIDS were seeking to no longer be identified as “AIDS victims” but as “people living with AIDS”. Another response: “You should feel sorry for anyone who’s got it” comes across as patronising and lacking authenticity. A concession was made when confronting homophobia: “People like Jock Cavendish and the AIDS virus have got a lot in common: the less you fight them, the more powerful they become”. These well-intentioned attempts to address discrimination nevertheless remain problematic and flawed.
In seeking to address HIV/AIDS among heterosexuals, this episode contextualises ‘the other’ as themselves, and identifies people with AIDS as including haemophiliacs and infants with paediatric transmission, implicitly pointing out that gay men are not the only cohort impacted by the virus. However, the major flaw in this episode was its failure to explicitly mention or directly acknowledge homosexuality or gay men, effectively contributing to homophobic stigma and helping to make homosexuality invisible (or unmentionable) during an era when a medical scourge was decimating the gay male population. While trying to be rational and level-headed, the episode came across as just another example of TV and films (mentioned earlier) that attempted to reimage AIDS as a heterosexual problem and contextualise the stigma as affecting only heterosexuals. While its overall treatment of AIDS was less hysterical than in the earlier episode, its exclusion of homosexuality served to perpetuate the very homophobia that the earlier episode attempted to address.
A Country Practice
Australian television had also enjoyed a popularity of traditional, family-oriented drama programs. Popular series had included The Sullivans and Bellbird in the 1970s; with the show, Neighbours (commencing in 1980) featuring a number of families living in a fictional Melbourne suburb.
A new addition to this tradition, and combining itself with the previous genre of stories set within rural settings, A Country Practice, (ACP) began on Channel 7 at the end of 1981, coincidentally around the time when AIDS was first appearing on the radar. Set in a small fictional country town of Wandin Valley, the series ran throughout the 1980s to generally healthy audience ratings. Major characters included Molly Jones, a young woman whose on-screen death from breast cancer on 5 June 1985 caused national shock-waves; in the words of one commentator: “a nation was in mourning” (Mercado, 2004, p. 165). The show thereby demonstrated that it had the capacity to rouse within its audience great compassion for people afflicted with terrible medical problems. After the series concluded, creator James Davern was quoted as expressing pride that the show had tackled social issues including gay bashing, AIDS, alcoholism, rape, and domestic violence (ibid, p. 170).
In 1986, however, that same producer of ACP expressed reservations about portraying two social issues: incest and AIDS. Davern explained that topics such as AIDS were deemed unsuitable for a family-oriented show:
“We have given it a lot of consideration, and we find that, at this date, February 1986, still not enough is known about how the disease is transmitted, and I don’t believe in scaring people. And the fact that it’s linked so strongly with homosexuality makes it very difficult to make a homosexual AIDS victim a ‘goody’ and sympathetic.” (Tulloch & Moran, 1986, p. 291).
Davern’s assertion that it would be difficult to portray a gay character sympathetically is somewhat a reflection of his times – as explained by Tulloch and Moran when they clarified that the challenge faced by Davern was in “trying to make social deviants realistic yet sympathetic” (ibid) – but was also somewhat untrue. Australian television had been presenting gay and lesbian characters sympathetically (albeit extremely rarely) – since 1972 when the popular and controversial Number 96 had thrust gay character Don Finlayson onto the screen. Other Australian dramas with sympathetic gay or lesbian characters had included, Prisoner and All The Way. It appears that Davern had wanted to steer away from the stereotype that gay=AIDS, and to avoid a repetition of the storyline from The Flying Doctors which examined the prejudice faced by gay men.
Davern’s other assertion that “…not enough is known…” about AIDS and that he wanted to avoid needlessly frightening his viewers, is an interesting one. Taken at face value, it seems incorrect: by February 1986, medical science had clearly identified the virus which caused AIDS, had identified the risk factors, and had even produced a blood test to help identify those who had been exposed to it. What appears to have worried Davern was increasing public concern about AIDS as a potentially heterosexual problem – a concern which would soon be expressed on Australian TV in the form of the Grim Reaper:
“Davern was also aware of the controversy among the medical profession over whether heterosexuals were even at risk from HIV/AIDS, and he apparently wanted to wait until the medical profession had ‘got its story right’. He decided to wait until a different angle could be found and the ‘story’ of heterosexual transmission had been confirmed.” (Tulloch & Lupton, 1997, p. 102).
Nevertheless, following the appearance of the Grim Reaper and Suzi’s Story, the producers of ACP evidently felt further pressure from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) to finally broach the subject of AIDS:
“According to James Davern, the AMA had been putting ‘some pressure’ on him since 1987, trying to persuade him to produce an AIDS story for ACP.” (ibid, p. 101).
His response was to adopt this ‘new angle’ to AIDS, focusing on the danger suggested by the Grim Reaper: that is, that non-gay Australians were also at risk of exposure to AIDS *(ibid, p. 102). Specifically, the dangers faced by females and injecting drug users became the focus of a four-part ACP story, episodes numbers 591 to 594 (MacAlpine, 2009?a), entitled, Sophie, telecast in 1988.
Sophie was the daughter of the major character Dr. Terence Elliott. She was a news journalist who had travelled the world for her work MacAlpine, 2009?b) – also developing a drug habit along the way. Her death from AIDS gave viewers a glimpse of AIDS which avoided the gay stereotype, but it simultaneously revisited the subject matter of the Grim Reaper advertisement and Suzi’s Story in that it presented a young woman dying of AIDS. The only ‘new angle’ in the story was that Sophie was an injecting drug user – a topic which might raise questions at that time about whether it comprised “wholesome family viewing” relative to homosexuality.
One of the writers of these episodes was Tony Morphett, who had previously written the first AIDS episode of The Flying Doctors. He was reportedly quite keen to produce a story about injecting drug users because he felt that this was a target audience which needed to be informed and educated about the dangers of AIDS.
Despite this, in the context of history, then, ACP can arguably be seen as a disappointment because the story of young Sophie Elliott and her battle against AIDS lasted only 4 episodes – and in the final episode of the series, a “flashback” included recognition of actress Lorraine Bayly who had played the mother of an “AIDS victim” in another story (Mercado, 2004, p. 169) – taking the number of episodes to feature AIDS to a mere 6 in the entire run of 1058 episodes. At the time, gay men were primarily afflicted with AIDS, but ACP evidently shied away from this topic apparently because of Davern’s previously-stated concern that a gay character with AIDS would not attract viewer sympathy. This was not an unwise perspective: societal homophobia was still rampant across Australia, and positive portrayals of homosexuality might easily have led to viewer protests, outrage or boycotts.
This treatment of AIDS ties in with American television’s treatment of the same issue at that time: up until 1988, the only characters to die of AIDS in US daytime soap operas had been women (eg. see Waggett, 1997, p. 36). That did not change until 1988, when the program As the World Turns introduced a gay character whose off-screen lover was HIV-positive (ibid, pp. 62 & 63).
We can see these programs as interacting with communal folklore: although not necessarily folklore in themselves, they were influenced by – and, in turn, contributed to – our national AIDS folklore at the time. Other TV shows that came later (in particular “GP” on ABC television) had more inclusive and diverse perspectives, and will be examined in later blog posts – as will books and films.
How To Have Sex in an Epidemic:
One of the earliest COVID fiction books to be published was Love in the Time of COVID, and its author is attributed with exploring a more individualistic approach to the impact of this most modern of epidemics:
“Have a nice big helping of residual simmering rage (so great for the immune system!) at being abandoned by our ‘leaders,’ at the profiteers and incompetents and liars, at a cleverly murderous microscopic entity that wants to exploit you as a host and strip your organs for parts.” – Kipnis, 2022, quoted by Iglesias, 2022.
This appears to contradict another COVID story which is more in line with the writings of Plague-era Daniel Defoe:
“People were dying in the city. Some more than others. The virus had roamed the earth but had chosen to settle down there.” – Dee Cameron, watching the COVID epidemic from afar, in “Our Country Friends” (Gary Shteyngart, 2021).
It seems our modern folklore of AIDS, and COVID (and its consequent epidemic of loneliness) has yet to be invented and written. Will we remember our heroes, or our denialists?
[EDIT: This blog was edited on 4 September 2024 to add and reinterpret material from its analysis of the “Flying Doctors” episode “Being Positive”.]
William Bascom, 1954. “Four Functions of Folklore“, The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 67, No. 266), October – December, pp. 333-349 (JSTOR).
Albert Camus, 1947. (Robin Buss translator), The Plague, Penguin Books, reprinted 2001.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., 2004. “Preamble: INTRODUCTION TO THE 2004 COMMEMORATIVE EDITION”, in Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton University Press, 1949 (reprinted 2004), pp. xxiii – lxv.
Diane E. Goldstein, 2004. “What Exactly Did They Do with That Monkey, Anyway? Contemporary Legend, Scientific Speculation, and the Politics of Blame in the Search for AIDS Origins”, (chapter) in Once Upon A Virus, University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press, pp. 77-99.
Gabino Iglesias, 2022. “Are we ready for COVID-19 as a central theme in literature?”, npr.org, 24 February.
Tony Judt, 2001. “Introduction”, in Albert Camus (translated by Robin Buss), The Plague, Penguin Books, originally published in 1947.
Kitty MacAlpine, 2009?b. “A Country Practice: Dr. Terence Stephen Elliott”, http://acountrypractice.com/Char/tselliott.html[dead link], accessed 16 January.
Evelyn McDonnell with Kathy Silberger, 1997. Rent by Jonathan Larson, HarperCollins Books.
Andrew Mercado, 2004. Super Aussie Soaps, Pluto Press.
Tony Morphett, 1986. “Return of the Hero”, The Flying Doctors, Crawfords Productions.
Gary Shteyngart, 2021. Our Country Friends, Random House.
John Tulloch & Deborah Lupton, 1997. Television, AIDS and Risk, Allen & Unwin.
John Tulloch & Albert Moran, 1986. A Country Practice: ‘Quality Soap’, Currency Press.
Gerard J. Waggett, 1997. The Soap Opera Encyclopedia, HarperPaperbacks.
T. Zuk, 1998b. “The Flying Doctors/RFDS“, Australian Television Information Archive, page created 10 November.
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This was preparatory work for my PhD studies on, “A Social History of HIV/AIDS in Melbourne During the ‘Crisis Years’ 1981 to 1997”; this latter work was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
