From National Hero to National Problem: The Image of the Worker in Pix (1938–1954)

ABSTRACT Despite its reputation as a frivolous and licentious magazine, Pix (1938–1972) published a large number of documentary photo essays on work and the daily strife of the Australian labourer. More importantly, the popular magazine promoted a stern work ethic, presented as a sign of patriotism and moral virtue. Pix’s politics are hard to pin down insofar as the magazine never endorsed specific parties or social movements; instead, it adopted an apparently neutral stance in relation to political issues, giving equal coverage to the three mainstream parties of the time. If the national narrative of work that Pix glorified was, fundamentally, a bipartisan narrative, was Pix really apolitical and value-free? I say no: the locus of Pix’s politics has to be found in the way the magazine mobilised the discourse of the work ethic. By reducing work to a moral obligation, Pix tended to individualise and normalise waged work, concealing the unequal and coercive relations informing the social space of the factory. In so doing, the magazine conveyed and championed values such as independence and entrepreneurship that were central to the liberal ideology that found expression in Robert Menzies’s contemporary speeches.