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The Sapphires was the most popular Australian film of 2012. Loosely based on history, the film tells the story of four Indigenous young women, three of whom move in 1968 from a country reserve to Melbourne, who are transformed from singing hymns and country and western to becoming a soul group in the mould of the Supremes and who then tour Vietnam during the war entertaining the American troops. This article analyses the reasons for the popularity of the film. I argue that beyond the feelgood drama, including a romantic comedy subplot, the film minimizes the mistreatment of Indigenous Australians during the 1950s and 1960s, elides the 20 years era of self-determination and suggests a positive continuity between the period of assimilation and paternalism and the John Howard Liberal-dominated government's neoliberal ideology of personal responsibility. To this end, the film also plays down the racism of the assimilationist period and, through the character of Kay, implies that the policy of taking children away from their families (the Stolen Generations) had positive results. The film denies the young women's agency by introducing the character of the Irish Dave Lovelace as the creator and manager of the Sapphires. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

In the present article, I think about the importance of Perth's culture as a crucial context in which the popular music of Perth has developed. In the case examined in the present article, Perth music in the 1960s and 1970s can be understood as a scene that evolved in situ. Its localism was certainly not a function of any attempt to market 'Perth music'. Rather, as we shall see, the Perth music scene as I describe it has arisen in a particular geographic place with specific qualities and, as I will argue, these qualities have had identifiable effects on the music produced in Perth. Refereed/Peer-reviewed