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Article Excerpt
Described as a 'shining aberration', the reformist agenda of Edward Gough Whitlam's brief prime ministership (1972-1975) profoundly affected Australia's cultural, social, and--ultimately--political landscape. (1) These reforms were indicative of a changing national mood. The efforts to forge a stronger sense of national awareness and identity were particularly noticeable within the cultural realm. While these initiatives stimulated Australian film and theatre, they also produced unforeseen results--the most notable being the ocker. The ocker was something of an aberration himself. Gulping tinnies of beer and puffing on Winfield cigarettes, he cut a lonely figure in Australia's so-called cultural renaissance. While symbolising the Australia that many hoped to leave behind, he owed his emergence to the very forces that sought to undermine him. Highlighting this paradox, Richard Young notes: 'The ironic thing about the fashion of Ockerism on TV is the two people who were really responsible--Gough Whitlam and John Singleton. Strange bedfellows indeed'. (2)
Examinations of ockerism have tended to focus on its relationship with the cultural developments occurring in the film industry and, to a lesser degree, the theatre. (3) However, the popularisation of the ocker during the 1970s cannot be understood without reference to the advertising industry. As Young noted, Singleton's name is inextricably linked to the ocker phenomenon. Lauded and pilloried as the 'ocker king', 'Singo' and his television advertisements brought the ocker into the suburban home. As other agencies followed suit, the ocker became a regular feature of daily life in 1970s Australia. Despite its role in the popularisation of the ocker image, only a passing mention is made of the advertising industry in discussions of ockerism. (4)
For Australia's advertising industry, the 1970s marked a watershed period. On the one hand, groups as diverse as community activists and giant transnational agencies were forcing it to yield to their demands. On the other hand, the industry was experiencing an enormous burst of creativity. Local agencies were finding a new voice: one that was distinctively Australian. Reflecting on the industry's 'cultural Renaissance' some thirty years later, Allan Morris, co-founder of the famous Mojo agency, recalled: 'It was something to feel pretty fucking good about, and things like 'C'mon Aussie' were a number one hit. It was the biggest selling record in Australia'. (5) As Morris suggests, Australia's advertising industry was simultaneously an audience to, and a proponent of, this growing upsurge of nationalist pride.
A similar pattern can be discerned in the industry's relationship with the ocker image. By comparing and contrasting the rise and fall of the ocker image in Australian theatre, film and advertising, this paper will demonstrate that the advertising industry played an important role in the popularisation of the ocker image and, indeed, its downfall. Moreover, this examination contends that the ocker phenomenon provides a revealing insight into the turbulent plight of the advertising industry during a decade of significant social, economic and political change.
The rise of the ocker
First recorded in 1916, 'ocker' is a diminutive form of 'Oscar'. It was also a popular character in the 1960s satirical sketch program, The Mavis Bramston show, which popularised the term to a national audience. (6) By the late 1970s, the ocker's evolution was complete:
He (a male) is a self-satisfied vulgarian, a beer-sodden slob uncouth in behaviour and thought, an ignorant bigot opposed to anybody unlike himself, of narrow outlook never rising above mindless hedonism and prone to sneer at anything or anybody rising higher ... 'one of the boys' spending his time and money in the pubs and giving no thought to the morrow, a grunting pig and a male chauvinist one at that. (7)
The ocker was the latest incarnation in a long line of national types. Harry Oxley traces the ocker tradition back to the 'typical Australian' image as outlined by Russel Ward in The Australian Legend. (8) The blossoming of the ocker image during the 1970s, he notes, 'has been as artificial as a garden of plastic flowers'. (9) John Rickard similarly identifies the ocker's historical precedent, drawing the 'obvious line of descent' from the larrikin to the ocker. Rickard, however, adds that there were also significant differences: 'While he retains the loud-mouthed, performing elements of the larrikin, the ocker is also boorish [and] bigoted'. (10)
By the 1950s, the line that stretched from the bushman to the Digger and then on to the lifesaver was beginning to fray. It was becoming apparent that a single figure could no longer personify modern Australia. The concept of the 'Australian way of life' was one way of circumventing the limitations of a singular image, yet maintaining the values enshrined in the previous incarnations of the national type. Moreover, it facilitated the emergence of new values such as consumerism. Yet, by the 1970s, this concept was also struggling to accommodate the increasingly complex nature of Australian life. That the ocker should appear at this very stage almost seems antithetical to the evolutionary development outlined by Richard White in Inventing Australia. (11) Not surprisingly, White's study makes no mention of this seemingly contradictory figure.
Looking at more immediate sources of inspiration, both Tom O'Regan and Lisa Jacobson draw attention to the impact that television, theatre, and popular journalism have had upon the ocker. (12) The interaction between this assortment of influences suggests that there is more to the ocker than swilling, smoking, and swearing.
Ocker on stage
While the ocker's paternal heritage is traced to the bush, his maternal roots lie in Melbourne's Moonee Ponds. In the late 1950s, Barry Humphries introduced Edna Everage to satirise suburban life in Australia. In More Please, Humphries recalls Edna's debut:
The dialogue was full of glutinous descriptions of the amenities and appointments of Edna's Moonee Ponds villa ... The sketch had a galvanic effect on Melbourne audiences because it described their own homes and their own taste in something resembling their own dialect. (13)
While Edna's fame would take her to the United Kingdom, the fundamental basis of her appeal--her distinct Australianness--was not lost on an emerging generation of writers. The inanities of daily life in Australia's suburbs also caught the eye of a young playwright named David Williamson.
First performed in 1971, Don's Party saw the ocker on stage in his own right for the first time. Williamson's play takes place at a suburban election party in 1969, and explores the interrelationships between various ocker characters. Peter Fitzpatrick notes that the ocker in Williamson's plays 'provided a form of satiric access to images of the contemporary culture which was both richly comic and apparently authentic'. (14) While the same could be said for Edna, Williamson's performances nevertheless developed certain aspects of Humphries's pioneering work. Don's Party, for example, occurs in Melbourne, yet the location has shifted to the outer suburb of Lower Plenty. As Williamson states, this decision performed a specific function:
What really polarised the Australian community, into an awareness of ockerism and its dangers, was the post-war surge of affluence, which dispersed Australians of working-class backgrounds into the affluent suburbs of the big cities, so that ocker values were seen to be exhibited by people living an apparently affluent, middleclass life-style. (15)
The materialism of the generation of postwar Australians had been raised by Humphries in the 1950s. As the 1960s drew to a close, the economic boom was in full swing. Rather than satirising the suburbanites' quiet pride, Don's Party sees Williamson...
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