Place, platform, and value: periodicals and the Pacific in late colonial modernity

In the interwar period, the Pacific Ocean was crisscrossed by hundreds of passenger liners, and island themes and settings splashed across the silver screen and the pages of glossy magazines. New technology produced new touristic engagements with the region that reproduced the age old themes of colonial adventure but in nuanced ways that were sensitive to rapidly changing cultural values as the new media of film and photography reached critical saturation. This article considers the way that magazines, as inherently intermedial forms, were hinge platforms that showcased and facilitated a number of differently mediated encounters with this rapidly modernizing frontier, the last ocean to open up to mass transportation. Changing media values and familiarity with the region in late colonial modernity, we argue, were different on each side of the ocean, as were the cultural associations and levels of familiarity with the region and Hollywood. In this article we consider the space and place of the Pacific in two different magazines published across the Pacific basin in late colonial modernity: America's Sunset(1898-) and Australia's The BP Magazine (1928-1942)