AIDS and pro-social television : industry, policy and Australian television drama

摘要

This thesis examines the intersection of popular cultural representations of HIV and udAIDS and the discourses of public health campaigns. Part Two provides a udcomprehensive record of all HIV related storylines in Australian television drama udfrom the first AIDS episode of The Flying Doctors in 1986 to the ongoing narrative udof Pacific Drive, with its core HIV character, in 1996. Textual representations are udexamined alongside the agency of "cultural technicians" working within theudtelevision industry. The framework for this analysis is established in Part One of udthe thesis, which examines the discursive contexts for speaking about HIV and AIDSudestablished through national health policy and the regulatory and industry udframework for broadcasting in Australia. The thesis examines the dominant liberal uddemocratic framework for representation of HIV I AIDS and adopts a Foucauldian udunderstanding of the processes of governmentality to argue that during the period of udthe 1980s and 1990s a strand of social democratic discourse combined with udpractices of self management and the management of the Australian population. The udactions of committed agents within both domains of popular culture and health udeducation ensured that more challenging expressions of HIV found their way into udpublic culture.