Underbelly: A Case Study in Cultural Production

Abstract

Based loosely on the events which occurred in Melbourne during the period 1995-2004, Underbelly retold the story of how and why a gang war was carried out on Melbourne streets. It also told the story of why Task Force Purana was formed to bring the gang war to an end. Being scheduled for broadcast concurrently with the R v A trial, Underbelly raised concerns about the judicial process, namely the rights of the accused to a fair trial, free from external interference. I am not aware, nor was the Victorian judiciary, of the scheduling of any other television crime mini-series which had coincided with a trial. Melbournians were frequently subjected to the real events of the capital city’s gangland war which were widely reported in various newspapers, and which were broadcast on television, radio and the internet where viewers were confronted with gruesome images of victims. Capitalising on the popularity of such news stories were numerous books such as Big Shots (Shand, 2007a), Leadbelly (Silvester and Rule, 2004) and Underbelly (Silvester and Rule, 2008), still in print at the time of Underbelly’s broadcast and available to Victorians even when the series was banned. The news items and books informed the public about the controversial lives of those who chose to live outside societal norms. Yet these books were not censored or withdrawn from circulation before, during or even after any of the gangland murder trials, unlike the Underbelly television series.