AustLit
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'In this bold and cheeky meditation on religion, middle-aged muscleman, uncertain Catholic and wanna-be academic Sterling de Bortoli is a self-described Octaroon... Neither black nor white this part-blood Blackfella struggles with concepts of identity, moving between the two worlds but not really belonging to either. Thus he pursues a frustrated, anarchic, homeless existence in Canberra and Melbourne, until, through the influence of the Anti-Christ, his Dark Lord Maria, he travels to Islamic Morocco. It's a land completely foreign to his Dreamtime totem, and it's where de Bortoli learns to be a full-blood vampire ... a monster who never says sorry.'
Source: Author's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
Aboriginal Australian Vampires and the Politics of Transmediality
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Global Vampire : Essays on the Undead in Popular Culture Around the World 2019; (p. 165-176) Sucking vampiric winds, cannibalistic red-skinned monsters, and demonic autophagic silhouettes and shadows exist in contemporary Aboriginal Australian horror and Gothic texts. Figures based on myth, they have names like Namorrados, Yara-ma-tha-who, Gherawhar, or Quinkan, and they bear some striking similarities to Western vampires. The fluidity of the vampiric image in Aboriginal Australia is heightened by its transformation across media and complicated by racial and cultural controversies. This essay is a transmedial analysis of the Australian Aboriginal vampire that traces its adaptations from orality to ink, and from celluloid to digitization. Both Indigenous and White Australian visions of the vampiric shape-shifter have permeated Australian narratives and media. In the 1990s, Alan McKee stated that in Australia "there is no readily accessible 'backfella' tradition of zombies and vampires:' as conventional Western figures in film (1997a, 123); this is still the case. Productions like The Zombie Brigade (1986) show vampiric contamination of an Indigenous community, and by proxy the continued intrusion or incorporation of classic vampires with Aboriginal myths. On page, the Aboriginal vampire is recreated by self-identifying Indigenous Australians in modern texts such as Mudrooroo's Vampire trilogy (1990-1998), D. Bruno Starrs' That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! (2011), or Raymond Gates's "The Little Red Man" (2013). It also appears in Australian vampire fiction like Jason Nahrung's Vampires in the Sunburnt Country series (2012-2016). By surveying the figure as it has filtered across media, I analyze its transformations in relation to transmedialitv and theories of adaptation espoused by scholars like Jens Eder and Linda Hutcheon. Significant variations in the Aboriginal vampire are visible in relation to the scientific apparatus of horror, the Antipodean footprint of Bram Stoker, and shadow and light in the Sunburnt Country. Each permutation reflects transitions in cultural context and from literary to multimedia traditions. Thus, after explicating a critical approach, this essay delineates the transformation of the Aboriginal Australian vampire in various White and Indigenous productions, taking into account the politics of transmediality. Underlying such an analysis is the issue of cultural identity . and appropriation, which feeds into the metamorphic quality of Aboriginal Australian vampires in textual and digital forms.' (Introduction)
-
Writing Indigenous Vampires : Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic?
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: M/C Journal , August vol. 17 no. 4 2014; 'The usual postmodern suspicions about diligently deciphering authorial intent or stridently seeking fixed meaning/s and/or binary distinctions in an artistic work aside, this self-indulgent essay pushes the boundaries regarding normative academic research, for it focusses on my own (minimally celebrated) published creative writing’s status as a literary innovation. Dedicated to illuminating some of the less common denominators at play in Australian horror, my paper recalls the creative writing process involved when I set upon the (arrogant?) goal of creating a new genre of creative writing: that of the ‘Aboriginal Fantastic’. I compare my work to the literary output of a small but significant group (2.5% of the population), of which I am a member: Aboriginal Australians. I narrow my focus even further by examining that creative writing known as Aboriginal horror. And I reduce the sample size of my study to an exceptionally small number by restricting my view to one type of Aboriginal horror literature only: the Aboriginal vampire novel, a genre to which I have contributed professionally with the 2011 paperback and 2012 e-book publication of That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! However, as this paper hopefully demonstrates, and despite what may be interpreted by some cynical commentators as the faux sincerity of my taxonomic fervour, Aboriginal horror is a genre noteworthy for its instability and worthy of further academic interrogation.' (Introduction)
-
Writing Indigenous Vampires : Aboriginal Gothic or Aboriginal Fantastic?
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: M/C Journal , August vol. 17 no. 4 2014; 'The usual postmodern suspicions about diligently deciphering authorial intent or stridently seeking fixed meaning/s and/or binary distinctions in an artistic work aside, this self-indulgent essay pushes the boundaries regarding normative academic research, for it focusses on my own (minimally celebrated) published creative writing’s status as a literary innovation. Dedicated to illuminating some of the less common denominators at play in Australian horror, my paper recalls the creative writing process involved when I set upon the (arrogant?) goal of creating a new genre of creative writing: that of the ‘Aboriginal Fantastic’. I compare my work to the literary output of a small but significant group (2.5% of the population), of which I am a member: Aboriginal Australians. I narrow my focus even further by examining that creative writing known as Aboriginal horror. And I reduce the sample size of my study to an exceptionally small number by restricting my view to one type of Aboriginal horror literature only: the Aboriginal vampire novel, a genre to which I have contributed professionally with the 2011 paperback and 2012 e-book publication of That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! However, as this paper hopefully demonstrates, and despite what may be interpreted by some cynical commentators as the faux sincerity of my taxonomic fervour, Aboriginal horror is a genre noteworthy for its instability and worthy of further academic interrogation.' (Introduction) -
Aboriginal Australian Vampires and the Politics of Transmediality
2019
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Global Vampire : Essays on the Undead in Popular Culture Around the World 2019; (p. 165-176) Sucking vampiric winds, cannibalistic red-skinned monsters, and demonic autophagic silhouettes and shadows exist in contemporary Aboriginal Australian horror and Gothic texts. Figures based on myth, they have names like Namorrados, Yara-ma-tha-who, Gherawhar, or Quinkan, and they bear some striking similarities to Western vampires. The fluidity of the vampiric image in Aboriginal Australia is heightened by its transformation across media and complicated by racial and cultural controversies. This essay is a transmedial analysis of the Australian Aboriginal vampire that traces its adaptations from orality to ink, and from celluloid to digitization. Both Indigenous and White Australian visions of the vampiric shape-shifter have permeated Australian narratives and media. In the 1990s, Alan McKee stated that in Australia "there is no readily accessible 'backfella' tradition of zombies and vampires:' as conventional Western figures in film (1997a, 123); this is still the case. Productions like The Zombie Brigade (1986) show vampiric contamination of an Indigenous community, and by proxy the continued intrusion or incorporation of classic vampires with Aboriginal myths. On page, the Aboriginal vampire is recreated by self-identifying Indigenous Australians in modern texts such as Mudrooroo's Vampire trilogy (1990-1998), D. Bruno Starrs' That Blackfella Bloodsucka Dance! (2011), or Raymond Gates's "The Little Red Man" (2013). It also appears in Australian vampire fiction like Jason Nahrung's Vampires in the Sunburnt Country series (2012-2016). By surveying the figure as it has filtered across media, I analyze its transformations in relation to transmedialitv and theories of adaptation espoused by scholars like Jens Eder and Linda Hutcheon. Significant variations in the Aboriginal vampire are visible in relation to the scientific apparatus of horror, the Antipodean footprint of Bram Stoker, and shadow and light in the Sunburnt Country. Each permutation reflects transitions in cultural context and from literary to multimedia traditions. Thus, after explicating a critical approach, this essay delineates the transformation of the Aboriginal Australian vampire in various White and Indigenous productions, taking into account the politics of transmediality. Underlying such an analysis is the issue of cultural identity . and appropriation, which feeds into the metamorphic quality of Aboriginal Australian vampires in textual and digital forms.' (Introduction)
Last amended 13 Nov 2019 15:17:10
Export this record
