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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'The following papers were first presented in December 2012 at the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia conference on ‘Materialities: Economies, Empiricism and Things’, hosted by the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. The theme for the conference was based on a renewed interest in questions of materiality, linking back to a long materialist tradition in Cultural Studies, and in methodological questions about how Cultural Studies should approach and understand cultural objects, institutions and practices. The renewal of this interest in the last 10 years has been furthered by attention to how human and non-human interactions are being transformed in a time of global economic and environmental change.' (Editorial introduction)
Notes
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Contents indexed selectively.
Contents
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Reel Indigeneity : Ten Canoes and Its Chronotopical Politics of Ab/Originality,
single work
criticism
(p. 850-861)'The awarded film Ten Canoes (2006) broke new ground in the cinematic representation of Indigenous Australia. Indigenous life in the remote area of Arnhem Land's Arafura Swamp was both documented and fictionalized in collaboration between the independent Dutch-Australian filmmaker Rolf de Heer and the Yolngu community in Ramingining. This essay draws on Homi Bhabha's work on the articulation of cultural difference in his essay ‘DissemiNation’, published in his volume Nation and Narration (1990), Martin Nakata's work on the Indigenous/non-Indigenous contact zone in the Australian context (2007), and the film's accompanying documentary, The Making of Ten Canoes, to analyse the eventful process of Ten Canoes' creation. The questions and doubts raised about the film's structure and content inside and outside the Aboriginal community reveal a dynamic yet tense ‘Cultural Interface’ of cross-cultural collaboration. Its very nature issues a call to veer away from a nostalgic search for Indigenous-Australian ‘authenticity’, ‘fidelity’ and ‘originality’ when Indigenous-Australian cultural dynamics inevitably move towards the incorporation of new, hybrid means of cultural production, as Ten Canoes' fruitful spin-off activities amongst the Yolngu prove.' (Publication abstract)
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Always the Larrikin : Ben Mendelsohn and Young Aussie Manhood in Australian Cinema,
single work
criticism
(p. 862-875)
'Ben Mendelsohn is Australian cinema's quintessential working-class larrikin of his generation. This paper will consider the kind of young, masculine, roguish, destructive character that Mendelsohn has been playing since the 1980s. It will argue that by borrowing from his cinematic forefathers and adding his unique contemporary stamp to the mould, Mendelsohn incites audiences towards a particular brand of masculinity where being young, being male and being Australian is normalized and idealized. For good and for bad, Mendelsohn is a powerful text by which Australian society constructs, maintains, protects, challenges and teaches concepts of manhood.
'Luke: When I talk to her, she'll change her mind. You know why?
Helen: Why?
Luke: Two things, you're a wog and sheila, right. I'm an Aussie and I'm a bloke. So when she talks to me, she's going to pack shit!
(Mendelsohn as Luke in Nirvana Street Murder 1990) (Publication abstract)
