AustLit

'This article explores the marketing and non-Indigenous critical responses to the film The Nightingale (2018) by reading it alongside the reception and responses to a similar film, made over a decade earlier, a film that also studies the multi-layers of colonial violence. Using the film The Proposition (2005) as a foil this article considers the ways that violence figured by two non-Indigenous directors working in a postcolonial Australian context is interpreted by the critics reviewing films. The articles considers the different tropes, non-Indigenous critics offer viewers of the film. How do they suggest consumers interpret or experience the film? The argument is that the tropes, and cues can be understood both in terms of the immediate film experience, but also, for Australian viewers in terms of two ‘events’ – Reconciliation and the Uluru Statement – that help shape what national and counter histories of Australia have power at different times. The objectives of the article are therefore twofold. The first is to catalogue some of the ways each films’ marketing machine and then some key critics explained or described the plot and narrative of the two films, in particular how they explained the idea of colonial trauma in relation to the two events. The second objective is to examine how the reviewers/marketing material explained how each film deployed these ideas in order to challenge historically powerful understandings of history and belonging – in its multiple meanings – in Australia.' (Publication abstract)

'Arrow, Baker and Monagle begin Small Screens: Essays on Contemporary Australian Television with a suggestion that engaging with television operates as a type of ‘cultural duty’ for citizens (vii), and they have brought together a group of historians who demonstrate the change and continuity associated with this duty. Nick Herd kicks off the collection with a fantastic overview chapter on local television. He presents the data alongside effective summaries of key incidents in television history around technological change, advertising and censorship. The chapters that follow demonstrate that these changes have not ‘killed’ television culture, but transformed it into a series of subcultural communities, and they produce snapshots of many of these communities alongside a comprehensive argument for the continued importance of television.' (Introduction)

'In the late 1980s Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians continued a set of conversations—conversations that had emerged during the bicentenary—about the need for proper recognition of Indigenous peoples by the state. These discussions focused on legal and political issues and took place alongside an increased interest from non-Indigenous people in thinking about ways of ending racism. In 1991 Reconciliation was posited by the federal parliament as the key state intervention to deal with these issues. This article traces the 35 years of reconciliation since the Council of Reconciliation Act was passed in 1991. It engages with questions asked by Tessa Morris-Suzuki (9) about who the parties are that are involved in the reconciliation process and what reconciliation would look like if it were achieved. This analysis draws on the historical sociological theory of the event to undertake this work. In this perspective events are ‘that relatively rare subclass of happenings that significantly transforms structures’ (Sewell cited in Clemens 541). Elisabeth Clemens, drawing on Marshall Sahlins’s work notes that some events ‘may be capable of disrupting established associations and oppositions’ (541). For example, the legislation that mandated a decade of reconciliation in Australia produced a situation where citizens thinking about Australian race relations had their cause legitimated in a new way.' (Introduction)

'While recently teaching in Japan, I used the Australian film Bran Nue Dae (2009), directed by Rachel Perkins, in one of my courses. The mixed, but non-Australian students, were interested to discuss why a film that was partly about family and historical trauma was a comedy. Extending from the interest, this article considers whether there has been a similar response in Australia to Indigenous-themed films. Are Indigenous issues in Australia, today, also understood to be best represented as serious; that is, to be presented in terms of trauma and with a focus on the difficult moments? Why might many people—the Tokyo students, but also non-Indigenous people in Australia—find it hard to laugh with (or even at) Aboriginal peoples doing funny things? Using Bran Nue Dae, and my students' reactions, this article examines the usefulness and limits of the sometimes careful attendance to issues of race and pain, which are often the way non-Indigenous people engage with Indigenous peoples and issues. Drawing on the success of Perkins' film, the article also explores the usefulness of comedy.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'New Voices, New Visions brings together a collection of papers that engage with the ideas of nation, identity and place. The title New Voices, New Visions harks back to earlier scholarship that endeavoured to explore these issues. It therefore makes links between old and new stories of Australian identity, tracing the continuities, shifts and changes in how Australia is imagined. The collection is deliberately interdisciplinary, gathering work by historians, literary and film scholars, communication and cultural theorists, political scientists and sociologists. This mixed perspectives enables the reader to trace ideas, concepts and theories across a range of disciplines and understand the distinctive ways in which different disciplines engage with ideas of nation, space and Australian identity.

'The book is written in an engaging and accessible manner, making it an excellent text for undergraduate and postgraduate students in the fields of Australian Studies. It will be especially useful for the growing number of students living outside Australia who engage with Australian literature and culture. The book provides a range of topics that introduces students to key issues and concepts. It also situates these ideas in historical context.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The re-release of Ted Kotcheff's 1971 film Wake in Fright was a highlight of the 2009 Sydney International Film Festival. The film had been 'lost' for decades but in the early twenty-first century, members of the original production team began searching for surviving copies. In one of those truth as stranger than fiction turns, a copy was found in a vault in Pittsburgh 'marked for destruction and imminent disposal'. Dedicated collaborative work between film technicians, digital experts, sound engineers and film archivists meant a restored version was produced and screened at Cannes and Sydney in mid-2009. Almost forty years after the original film had opened in Sydney, Paris and London, it resurfaced to much acclaim...The re-released version of Wake in Fright re-envisions Australia for a new generation of viewers. Though it was made decades ago, to watch it today is to engage with new ways of understanding Australian-ness. The shifts in cultural norms around attitudes to the environment, to Indigenous rights and culture, to gender relations, sexual relations, and taboos and prejudices, mean that the same scenes shot in Broken Hill in 1970 resonate in both familiar and alien ways.' (p. 388)

Catriona Elder explores the origins, meanings and effects of the many stories we tell about ourselves, and how they have changed over time. She outlines some of the traditional stories and their role in Australian nationalism, and she shows how concepts of egalitarianism, peaceful settlement and sporting prowess have been used to create a national identity.
(Publisher's blurb)