Abstract | In 2011, something surprising happened in terms of Australian feminist cultural memory: a celebratory feminism arrived in the shape of the hugely popular ABC television mini-series,Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo. Eschewing dour social realism for a stylish and ludic narrative,Paper Giants uses the story of the women's magazine Cleo to tell the story of Australian women's liberation. This essay analyses the components of the mini-series' celebratory feminist aesthetics, examining the ways in which it mobilises feminist tropes to speak an intelligible feminist language in postfeminist times. Further, I detail how women's liberation becomes central to the national historical narrative underpinning the programme.
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