Johnson-Woods, Toni

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Johnson-Woods, Toni

PERSONAL:

Education: University of Queensland, bachelor's degree, 1987, Ph.D., 2000; University of Nebraska, M.A., 1992.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and writer. Speech pathologist at various locations in Australia, including Southport Hospital, Hobart General, and Cairns State School, 1987-88; Department of Education, Hawaii, high school teacher, 1988-89; Boystown, crisis counselor, 1990-92; University of Queensland, Ipswich, Queensland, Australia, research assistant then tutor/lecturer, 1992—. Other work experience includes Broadcasting Authority, London, England, public relations officer; personnel manager at a staffing center in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; marketing manager at a cosmetic company, Sydney.

MEMBER:

Australian Bibliographic Society, New Zealand Bibliographic Society, Popular Culture Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Recipient of scholarships, including Oxford Scholarship, 1990, and Rhoden Scholarship for Outstanding Master's Thesis, University of Nebraska, 1991.

WRITINGS:

Index to Serials in Australian Periodicals and Newspapers: Nineteenth Century, Mulini Press (Canberra, Australian Capital Terriotry, Australia), 2001.

Big Bother: Why Did That Reality-TV Show Become Such a Phenomenon?, University of Queensland Press (St. Lucia, Queensland, Australia), 2002.

Pulp: A Collector's Book of Australian Pulp Fiction Covers, National Library of Australia (Canberra, Australian Capital Terriotry, Australia), 2004.

Blame Canada! South Park and Popular Culture, Continuum (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Encyclopedia of the Novel, 1997; Representing Convicts: New Perspectives on Convict Forced Labour Migration, edited by Ian Duffield and James Bradley, Leicester University Press, 1997; Nineteenth-Century Media and the Construction of Identities, edited by Laurel Brake, Bill Bell, and David Finkelstein, Macmillan, 2000. Contributor to periodicals, including Overland and Australian Literary Studies. Columnist for Gold Coast Bulletin and the UQ Web site; literary editor of Brisbane Independent Review; reader for University of Queensland Press, 1993-96, and Queensland Writers' Centre, 1997—.

SIDELIGHTS:

Toni Johnson-Woods is an academic specializing in English. Her interests include literature, pulp fiction, media, and history. She is also the author of several books, including books on popular culture and television. For example, the author's book Big Bother: Why Did That Reality-TV Show Become Such a Phenomenon? examines the phenomenal success of the reality television show Big Brother which, since its creation in 1999, has gone on to air in more than forty different series in twenty countries. In Australia, the author's home, one of the show's final episodes for the year was watched by three million people, a huge amount of viewers for a country with an estimated twenty-one million people. Furthermore, in the United Kingdom, more people voted for contestants on the show than in the country's general election.

Johnson-Woods examines who created the program's phenomenal mass appeal and analyzes the media's stirring up a "big bother" whenever a program begins air- ing, especially in terms of the media's intense criticism of the program. She also explores the tricks producers used to manipulate the audience and examines the show within the broader context of the many reality television shows that have become enormously popular throughout the world. "Big Bother attempts to answer the question in its subtitle: ‘why did that reality-tv show become such a phenomenon?’, and satisfies this enquiry via a useful methodology that traverses textual and intertextual analysis, cross-cultural comparisons, and audience surveys," wrote Kate Douglas in the Journal of Australian Studies. "The book's eight chapters are divided between these different methodologies, exploring the various stakeholders who affected the Big Brother phenomenon." Douglas also noted in the same review: "Unlike other writing on the subject of reality television, Big Bother seems to be a labour of love for its author. Johnson-Woods, a lecturer in the Contemporary Studies programme at the University of Queensland (Ipswich campus), writes from the perspective of a genuinely interested observer who has engaged with this programme and its surrounding media."

In her 2004 book Pulp: A Collector's Book of Australian Pulp Fiction Covers, the author provides an illustrated guide to the heyday of pulp fiction in Australia, which occurred during the 1940s and 1950s, a time in which pulp- fiction authors achieved staggering sales rates. Johnson-Woods focuses primarily on the cover art for pulp fiction books, noting that these were the primary marketing tool for the books. "Sometimes the covers related to the stories, sometimes they did not," the author writes. "In fact the reverse was frequently true: authors wrote to a cover." She also discusses how the lurid covers rarely reflected what was in the books, which remained, for the most part, representations of the conservative values of the times. Simon Caterson wrote in the Age that Pulp is "ground-breaking, informative and lavishly illustrated."

Johnson-Woods examines the satirical American television show South Park with her book Blame Canada! South Park and Popular Culture. Popular for its satirical look at current events and popular icons, from the capture of Saddam Hussein to the public blunders of Michael Jackson, the show is known for its mixture of iconoclasm, cultural references, and intertextuality. As a result, the author sees the cartoon show as a lens through which she can examine contemporary popular culture in America along with television's role in creating that culture.

The author begins by looking at the show's history and origins and then traces its success over the years, via marketing, the Internet, and other outlets. Johnson-Woods examines how the show has satirized a wide range of topics, including chapters on God, politics, religion, and stereotyping. She also discusses how South Park has portrayed the media and explores the show's large community of fans. Other chapters focus specifically on an analysis of the show's humor, the sounds used in the program, how it portrays the community, and specific characters on the show. Johnson-Woods devotes an entire chapter to the show's treatment of celebrities, such as its programs on Mel Gibson and his movie The Passion of the Christ, or various shows about Tom Cruise being a homosexual. She also examines the "lessons" set forth in the various shows, such as the real meaning of tolerance.

Mike Tribby, writing in Booklist, called Blame Canada! "interesting reading for both committed fans and the merely curious." In a review in the New Statesman, Eric Griffiths noted that the author "amply … illustrate[s] the dire assortment of tyrannical civics (‘Eric Cartman, you respect other cultures this instant!’), shrunken history (‘Did you know that not one of your students knew who Sam Adams was?’, ‘Well, who cares about a guy that makes beer?!’), mealy-mouthing (‘So remember, kids, dressing like Hitler isn't cool. Now, do you have any questions?’) and well-intentioned mendacity (‘Don't lie, Stan. Lying makes you sterile.’) that passes for teaching in South Park."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Johnson-Woods, Toni, Pulp: A Collector's Book of Australian Pulp Fiction Covers, National Library of Australia (Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia), 2004.

PERIODICALS

Age (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), February 26, 2005, Simon Caterson, review of Pulp.

Booklist, April 1, 2007, Mike Tribby, review of Blame Canada! South Park and Popular Culture, p. 14.

Journal of Australian Studies, March, 2002, Kate Douglas, review of Big Bother: Why Did That Reality-TV Show Become Such a Phenomenon?, p. 184.

New Statesman, June 25, 2007, Eric Griffiths, "Young Offenders: For Ten Years, South Park Has Tackled America's Idiocies through Violence, Swearing and Song. But Two Academic Studies Miss the Joke," review of Blame Canada!, p. 56.

Times Literary Supplement, January 16, 1998, Alan Atkinson, review of Representing Convicts: New Perspectives on Convict Forced-Labour Migration, p. 29.