Oz Magazine – The Voice Of Dissent
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Oz Magazine
The Voice of Dissent
Introduction
In an Australian context, the birth of alternative journalism in the 1960s came a time when the basic world-view of capitalist society came under challenge by an increasingly discontented middle class, driving an ideological struggle between mainstream and alternative lifestyle movements. When the satirical and controversial Oz Magazine emerged in 1963, it boldly set out to challenge the mores and values of what was then a conservative society. This essay will analyse twelve issues of Oz Magazine from 1963 and 1964, in order to discover the social and political role of Oz during this significant era of change. Briefly tracing the history of Australia back to the counter-culture of the sixties, this essay will outline the chronological events surrounding the birth of Oz. Subsequently this essay will explain the methodologies used to analyse Oz, followed by an analysis of the magazines. By systematically analysing Oz, this essay will seek to explain the social and political role of the magazine in terms of the historically significant events that surrounded the magazine during the 1960s.
Australia in the 1960s.
The 1960s began as an era of great political stability and increasing prosperity for Australians (Townsend 1988). Robert Menzies was Prime Minister from 1949 until 1966, and his fervently “pro-British nationalism and sleepy social and political conservatism was indelibly stamped on the nation (Townsend 1988)”. However as the decade progressed, society began to change. The primary social condition that gave rise to the popularity of Oz was the emergence of a form of public opposition, known as the counter-culture (Sinclair 1980). This opposition, which characterised all capitalist societies during the sixties, came to serve as a broadly descriptive phrase for a variety of movements and ideas that developed at the time (Sinclair 1980). Counter-culture served to describe an opposition to capitalist society and culture across the spectrum of radical politics, the rock sub culture, sexual liberation movements, the drug sub culture, spiritual movements, and ecological and alternative lifestyle movements (Altman 1980). The growth of tertiary education during the sixties also led young people to criticise precisely the kind of society for which their education was supposed to be fitting them:
“Prolonged, mass higher education was a major factor in Ðproducing millions of young dissenters from the social order that created them (Playford and Kirsner 1972).
The 1960s marked the beginning of a significant shift in the values and attitudes of Australian society, and Oz set out to capitalise on this diversification of society (Altman 1980). The relentless thrust of the counter-culture slowly but visibly changed Australian society, with the revolutionary Oz at the forefront of this social transformation (Altman 1980).
The Birth of Oz Magazine
Oz Magazine, a satirical humour periodical based in Sydney, was first published on April Fools Day in 1963. It was pioneered by a group of university students who decided to found a magazine of dissent, in order to provide “a desperate alternative to this countys puritan hang-over and monopolistic media structure (York 2001)”. The three principal enthusiasts, Richard Neville, Martin Sharpe and Richard Walsh, set out determinedly to challenge the Australian way of life: everything from censorship, racism, police brutality, through to sexuality and politics (Neville 1995). Religion, royalty, and Beatlemania were also sent up mercilessly and the editors instantly found themselves in trouble with the moral watchdogs of the time. Its radical libertarian and anti-establishment thinking coupled with obscenity and pornography pushed Oz to the limits of liberalism (Turner 2005).
When a policeman picked up the first issue of Oz and was shocked by what he read, the police attempted to have the magazine banned (McGregor 1968). The students pleaded guilty and then charged on relentlessly for their cause. They were prosecuted again on similar charges, and sentenced to hard labour. Fortunately, the charges were quashed on appeal. When the word spread of their encounters with the law, Oz circulation rose from 4000 to 40 000 (Cockington 1992) in a short period of time. The magazine continued to confront the big issues until 1968 when Neville and Sharpe moved Oz to England (Cockington 1992)”.
Methodology
The analysis of texts using diverse methods of investigations is a long established practice in the pursuit of academia (McQuail 1977). It is widely used in media research because it is an effective technique of analysing media content (Wimmer and Dominick 1983). Over a period of seventeen months, twelve issues of Oz were selected for analysis.
Magazines chosen for analysis include issues 1 Ð- 12 (Sharpe and Neville 1963/1964). The content of the magazines, including the front page and illustrations, were investigated to reveal the wider social and political context of Oz. The following themes were also identified and analysed: political protest, censorship, racism, sex and religion.
Analysis
Political Protest, Racism and Censorship
Political Protest
In 1963, political protestations and confrontations with the police were at the forefront of Oz arsenal of weaponry against the conservative Liberal government. Every issue selected for this analysis revealed a constant stream of political satire and revelations of government misconduct. Police conduct and brutality were also recurrent throughout the publication. In the analysis it was revealed that the majority of the articles had a political slant, followed closely by censorship, racism and religion and articles about sexuality.
Alternative media often see themselves as proponents of the Gramscian notion of counter-hegemony (Atton 2002), and use journalism to rebalance the power structures of society. In this analysis, it became obvious that one of the main political roles of Oz was to challenge hegemony and to provide their audiences with alternatives to mainstream news and commentary in ways that would address contentious social and political issues of the time