Fringe to Famous

Book excerpt: Fringe to Famous examines exchange between small scenes of cultural production and mainstream institutions and markets. Drawing on Australian examples in music, streetwear, comedy, screen and digital games, it argues that there has been much greater crossover between the two than is generally recognized. The book resists a tendency to represent fringe and mainstream as abstract opposites, bringing a focus instead to concrete historical formations. It offers an alternative both to romantic celebrations of a 'pure' fringe – discredited now by half a century of critical responses to the counterculture – and to an increasingly hardened anti-romantic reaction. Drawing on extensive original interviews, Fringe to Famous offers an overview of transformations in Australian culture since the 1980s, concluding with suggestions for cultural policy 'after the creative industries'. It proposes an idea of 'generative hybridity' between fringe and mainstream that allows us to imagine new possibilities for arts and culture in the 2020s and beyond.