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Marcia Langton analyses the making and watching of films, videos and TV programs by Aboriginal people in remote and settled Australia. She introduces theoretical perspectives to investigate concepts of Aboriginality and presents case studies of films such as Jedda, Tracey Moffat's Night Cries, Brian Syron's Jindalee Lady and Ned Lander and Rachel Perkin's film of the Warlpiri Fire Ceremony Jardiwarnpa. The central requirement is to develop a body of knowledge on representation of Aboriginal people and their concerns in art, film, television or other media and a critical perspective to do with aesthetics and politics, drawing from Aboriginal world views, from western traditions and from history.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Inscription and the Settler Colony : Theorising Aboriginal Textuality Today
2024
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 25 May vol. 39 no. 1 2024;'In recent years, the study of Aboriginal literatures has moved from a marginal interest of Australian literature to a site of global inquiry. Due to limited Aboriginal representation in the formal institutions of literary studies, this shift has arguably not coincided with sufficient reciprocal interpretive mechanisms capable of situating the Aboriginal text in a dynamic relationship with Aboriginal culture. As such, many of these discourses have reconstituted culturally inappropriate anthropological mechanisms in their engagements with contemporary Aboriginal literatures (Araluen, ‘Shame’). The unstable entanglements of power, sovereignty and exclusion that frame the Australian conditions of settler coloniality are manifest in the institutions and disciplines that teach, publish, and interpret Aboriginal literature. In the space of Indigenous research discourse and practice, Ngati Awa and Ngati Porou academic Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s pioneering work on decolonial Indigenous methods and practices, Decolonising Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (1999), demonstrates that the concept of the discipline is not only an organising system of knowledge but also a system of organising people and bodies. She argues that the intellectual productions of nineteenth-century imperialism, including notions of civilisation and the Other, are bound to and assert geographic and economic forces of appropriation, expropriation and incorporation (69). These knowledges not only form academic disciplines but have also been used to discipline the colonised through exclusion, marginalisation and denial.' (Publication abstract)
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Respecting Protocols for Representing Aboriginal Cultures
2014
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 3 2014; 'This essay undertakes a detailed discussion of how respecting protocols for representing Indigenous cultures supports the interests of Indigenous communities and producers of stories with Indigenous content. To highlight the importance of Indigenous protocols I review the prominence and reception of Aboriginal stories in Australian film and literature and discuss how protocol guidelines can prevent problematic representations. I demonstrate how protocols influenced writing Calypso Summer (2014), a novel exploring issues relating to my cultural group, the Nukunu, to illustrate the challenges encountered and benefits gained from employing Indigenous representation protocols. ' (Author's introduction) -
Hybridity, Power Discourse and Evolving Representations of Aboriginality (1970s - Today)
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 26 no. 1 2012; (p. 29-34) 'This essay examines the changing role played by the politicized concept of hybridity in filmic representations of Aboriginal identity over the past four decades...' (29)
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Samson & Delilah : Herstory, Trauma and Survival
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011; 'The historical trauma of the Aborigines and white Australian nation-building are not simply contemporaneous - the latter is part of what made the former possible. The subject of black-on-black violence within Aboriginal communities has been a hot issue in Australia for the past few years, more specifically that perpetrated by Indigenous men against Indigenous women and children. The situation of many Aborigines today demonstrates a paradoxical relation between destruction and survival, the incomprehensibility at the heart of traumatic experience. Aboriginal film-maker Warwick Thornton's 2009 movie, "Samson & Delilah", tells the story of two teenagers caught up in this situation. Trauma theory, which focuses on the destructive repetition of violence is used as a tool for the analysis of this film, repetition being a structural principle in the narrative. For example, after repeating the same self-defeating ritual every day, Samson sniffs petrol to escape from the desolation and neglect, in the throes of what appears to be a post-traumatic death drive. Delilah's life is equally repetitive but less desolate until her grandmother's death plunges her into a cycle of violence and horror that also leads to petrol-sniffing and near death. But, in Thornton's fictional world, the women are the Samsons. Delilah defends herself and her intended against both white and black violence and, through 'herstory', the film-maker passes on not only the story of a crisis but that of a survival.' (Author's abstract)
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"Once Upon a Patriachy" : Cultural Translation in the Poetry of Romaine Moreton
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Partnership Id-Entities : Cultural and Literary Re-Insciption/s of the Feminine 2010; (p. 31-44)
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Required Reading
2009
single work
correspondence
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , November no. 316 2009; (p. 4) -
Narrative and Intervention in Aboriginal Filmmaking and Policy
1994
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : The Australian Journal of Media & Culture , vol. 8 no. 2 1994; -
"Once Upon a Patriachy" : Cultural Translation in the Poetry of Romaine Moreton
2010
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Partnership Id-Entities : Cultural and Literary Re-Insciption/s of the Feminine 2010; (p. 31-44) -
Perpetuating White Australia : Aboriginal Self-Representation, White Editing and Preferred Stereotypes
2009
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Creating White Australia 2009; (p. 156-172) -
Samson & Delilah : Herstory, Trauma and Survival
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 11 no. 2 2011; 'The historical trauma of the Aborigines and white Australian nation-building are not simply contemporaneous - the latter is part of what made the former possible. The subject of black-on-black violence within Aboriginal communities has been a hot issue in Australia for the past few years, more specifically that perpetrated by Indigenous men against Indigenous women and children. The situation of many Aborigines today demonstrates a paradoxical relation between destruction and survival, the incomprehensibility at the heart of traumatic experience. Aboriginal film-maker Warwick Thornton's 2009 movie, "Samson & Delilah", tells the story of two teenagers caught up in this situation. Trauma theory, which focuses on the destructive repetition of violence is used as a tool for the analysis of this film, repetition being a structural principle in the narrative. For example, after repeating the same self-defeating ritual every day, Samson sniffs petrol to escape from the desolation and neglect, in the throes of what appears to be a post-traumatic death drive. Delilah's life is equally repetitive but less desolate until her grandmother's death plunges her into a cycle of violence and horror that also leads to petrol-sniffing and near death. But, in Thornton's fictional world, the women are the Samsons. Delilah defends herself and her intended against both white and black violence and, through 'herstory', the film-maker passes on not only the story of a crisis but that of a survival.' (Author's abstract)