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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
Xavier Herbert's classic Australian novels Poor Fellow My Country (1975) and Capricornia (1938) are acknowledged as directly influencing Baz Lurhmann's film Australia. Aboriginal children have a particular significance in white imaginings of a distinctly Australian race destiny. Moreover, the creamy Aboriginal child has become a redemptive emblem of reconciliation in cultural imaginings. This article revisits Herbert's Aboriginal child character, Prindy, in Poor Fellow My Country, to assess Herbert's nationalist ambitions and how they were embodied by the mixed-descent child in his work. It situates this aspiration within an acquisitive impulse towards racialized children that characterized British colonialism, and that re-appears in Luhrmann's Australia.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Indigenous or Exotic? Trees in Australian Cinema
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Etropic : Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics , no. 10 2011; (p. 141-152) 'This article examines trees in three Australian films to assess if they are seen from a white point of view or an Indigenous point of view.' (Author's abstract)
-
Indigenous or Exotic? Trees in Australian Cinema
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Etropic : Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics , no. 10 2011; (p. 141-152) 'This article examines trees in three Australian films to assess if they are seen from a white point of view or an Indigenous point of view.' (Author's abstract)
Last amended 15 Jun 2017 09:23:27
97-113
A Nation So Ill-Begotten : Racialized Childhood Belonging in Xavier Herbert's Poor Fellow My Country and Baz Luhrmann's Australia
Studies in Australasian Cinema
Studies in Australasian Cinema
Subjects:
- Poor Fellow My Country 1975 single work novel
- Australia 2008 single work film/TV
- Capricornia : A Novel 1938 single work novel
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