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form y separately published work icon Australian Rules single work   film/TV  
Adaptation of Deadly, Unna? Phillip Gwynne , 1998 single work novel
Issue Details: First known date: 2002... 2002 Australian Rules
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

In Prospect Bay, a remote fishing town in South Australian, the only thing that connects the two communities - the Goonyas (whites) and the Nungas (blacks) - is football. The underlying racism and class warfare threatens to make the team's greatest victories irrelevant, though. Two members of the team, Gary Black (the son of a white fisherman) and Dumby Red (the team's star player), are an exception, however, having been best friends since childhood despite their different cultural and family backgrounds. The jubilation that occurs when the team wins the local premiership is short-lived when Dumby is inexplicably overlooked for the 'best on ground' award. This incident subsequently sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy.


[Sources: Weekend Australian 22-23 December 2001 pp.14-15 and Australian Screen]

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Teaching notes  from Australian Children’s Television Foundation.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Works about this Work

Guilt and Migrant Experience in Australia: Narratives of Happiness and Hatred Thomas Brami , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media and Cultural Studies , vol. 37 no. 1 2023; (p. 46-60)
'This paper investigates the role that guilt plays in Australia’s construction of its outsiders by focusing on contemporary migrant experience. I build upon Sarah Ahmed’s work on the politics of emotion to read migrant interviews in relation to media: films, political speeches, and other discursive structures that facilitate social organization in Australia. In the first part of this paper, I argue that a ‘multicultural narrative’ positions the nation as a ‘happy home,’ and examine how this can displace feelings of guilt in the migrant by rendering possible social transgressions positive steps towards attaining a greater social good. In the second section of this paper, I discuss Australia’s ‘hatred narratives.’ I do not define hatred as a necessarily aggressive emotion, but instead, demonstrate the way particular words can be affectively charged because of the histories they invoke, and show how this affect can be mobilized to create outsiders who are not welcome in the national imaginary and Australian society. These narratives however, are not fixed: political parties can appeal to tropes that have accumulated in affective value – such as the ‘home’ – in order to achieve different political goals, and to organize social groups by aligning individuals with or against affectively charged objects.' (Publication abstract) 
(Sweet) Sixteen Great Australian Teen Films Erin Free (editor), 2016 single work column
— Appears in: FilmInk , 20 May 2016;
The Gift and the Ethics of Representing Aboriginality in Australian Children's Literature Xu Daozhi , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Aboriginal Studies , no. 2 2016; (p. 33-45)

'This paper draws on theories of the gift to address the ethics of representing Aboriginality in Australian children's literature, which is a contentious debate that centres on who is eligible to tell Aboriginal stories and how the stories can be told. Considering the historical indebtedness in Australian racial relations, the paper suggests that children's books that incorporate reference to Aboriginal cultural elements constitute a metaphorical 'gift' exchange between Aboriginal custodians as the givers and writers as the recipients who are expected to 'return' such an intellectual gift through their books in an appropriate manner. In this view, the paper specifies the ethical issues confronted by non-Aboriginal writers for children, including Patricia Wrightson, Phillip Gwynne and Kate Constable, and examines the way in which the gift relationship sheds light on the question of how to avoid infringement of Aboriginal protocols without submitting to self-censorship. A caring gesture, underlining the relationship between self and others in gift exchanges, is identified to negotiate the writer's interests in Aboriginal stories with cultural sensitivity against unauthorised appropriation. The paper therefore argues that the morality of gift exchanges, which demands a balanced consideration of disparate interests in obligatory reciprocation, offers a possible solution to the dilemma of non-Aboriginal writers in the treatment of Aboriginal subject matter.' (Publication abstract)

Seriously Funny : History and Humour in The Sapphires and Other Indigenous Comedies Rose Capp , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Senses of Cinema , July no. 63 2012;
'The Sapphires (Wayne Blair, 2012) opens in an idyllic rural setting. A group of young Aboriginal girls run home across the paddocks in the fading evening light to sing for a gathering of family and friends. But this benign atmosphere rapidly switches to terror as white Australian Government officials arrive on the scene and forcibly remove one of the girls from the Cummeraganja Mission community. It is the late 1960s, and State and Federal Government "child protection" policies allow the removal of so-called "half-caste" Aboriginal children from their families, leaving a devastating and traumatic legacy that the film goes on to address.' (Author's introduction)
Reconciliation and the History Wars in Australian Cinema Felicity Collins , 2012 single work criticism
— Appears in: Exhuming Passions : The Pressure of the Past in Ireland and Australia 2012; (p. 207-222)
'When The Proposition ( a UK/Australia co-production, directed by John Hillcoat and scripted by Nick Cave) was released in 2005, film reviewers had no qualms about claiming this spectacular saga of colonial violence on the Queensland frontier as a 'history' film. A reviewer on BBC Radio 4 described The Proposition as 'a bushranger Western...set in violent 1880s Australian outback exposing the bitter racial tensions between English and Irish settlers. A Sunday Times review declared that 'Australia's brutal post-colonial history is stripped of all the lies in a bloody clash of cultures between the British police, the Irish bushrangers and the Aborigines.' Foregrounding the film's revisionist spectacle of colonial violence, an Australian reviewer predicted that, despite 'scenes of throat-cutting torture, rape and exploding heads...The Proposition could be the most accurate look at our national history yet'. (Author's introduction, 207)
[Review] Australian Rules Emma Gallager , 2003 single work review
— Appears in: Fiction Focus : New Titles for Teenagers , vol. 17 no. 3 2003; (p. 14)

— Review of Australian Rules Phillip Gwynne , Paul Goldman , 2002 single work film/TV
More About Race Than Aussie Rules Philip O'Brien , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: Canberra Sunday Times , 1 September 2002; (p. 22-23)

— Review of Australian Rules Phillip Gwynne , Paul Goldman , 2002 single work film/TV
Too Contrived to be Affecting Evan Williams , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 31 August-1 September 2002; (p. 11)

— Review of Australian Rules Phillip Gwynne , Paul Goldman , 2002 single work film/TV
[Review] Australian Rules Magella Blinksell , 2002 single work review
— Appears in: Muse , October no. 222 2002; (p. 15)

— Review of Australian Rules Phillip Gwynne , Paul Goldman , 2002 single work film/TV
Back Tracking Brian McFarlane , 2003 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , vol. 62 no. 1 2003; (p. 59-68)
Examines some issues raised by the making of Australian films about Aboriginal people in historical settings by white filmmakers.
Shared Dreamings Waiting to be Filmed Mark Byrne , 2005 single work column
— Appears in: The Australian , 31 May 2005; (p. 15)
Re-Visions of Two Aboriginal Histories : 'Rabit-Proof Fence' and 'Australian Rules' Sue Ryan-Fazilleau , 2006 single work criticism
— Appears in: Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies , Spring-Fall vol. 12 no. 1-2 2006;
White Men Can Tell Stories But... : Reading Australian Rules and The Tracker at the Adelaide Festival of Arts, 2002 (A Festival of Truth and Reconciliation) Lorraine Johnson-Riordan , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Placing Race and Localising Whiteness 2004; (p. 178-196)
Elites and Battlers in Australian Rules and Walking on Water Felicity Collins , Therese Davis , 2004 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Cinema after Mabo 2004; (p. 41-58)
In this chapter Davis and Collins examine how the national 'imaginary' is shaped by new conditions involving the politics of identity 'informed by the tension between the claims of history and social mobility in the new economy.' The authors imply that the 'contemporary experiences of dislocated identities' underpinned by particular cultural notions regarding 'nation, class, race, ethnicity or gender' also involve the politics of memory based on a 'whitewashed version of British heritage.' Source : Australian Cinema After Mabo (2004).
Last amended 9 Jul 2018 13:37:02
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