https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dressmaker_(2015_film)

I have an aversion to australian cinema…

there i said it out loud! I could never never really place why so many australian films set my teeth on edge. When the other day my partner was watching the Ladies in Black Now it was quite a cute film, but what stood out to me immeadiately was the undercurrent, the ‘myth’ of who we were as ‘australians’

Grumpy dour father, down the pub, wheres my dinner, no you wont be doing that!!

Dour, stressed, almost depressed mother, always by the kitchen sink, subtle soft side.

Images Left to right. 1-3 Ladies in Black, 4 The Dressmaker, 5 We of the Never Never, 6 The Dressmaker - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladies_in_Black_(film)

The stereotypes and myths about who we were are thick and bountiful. And as I watched this I started to think about other australian films and how deeply this has ingrained in me a collective understanding of what it was like to be an australian in the past. The types of people we were - back in the day!

I’d never really questioned this before. Are those assumptions real? Were people all really ground down with the weight of the world on their shoulders. No time to laugh or show affection or have any type of humour apart from the ‘larrikin’ who seems to breeze past the picket fence once a day or can be found glued to the corner stool in the old pub.

And if this is our australian myth then every country must have their own, and everything I have grown up watching and processing has given me assumptions and judgements about people and countries identities.

On a subtle level, these can just be tropes that we can have a little laugh at, Like Paul Hogan, but on the flip side these can be points of division and hate and violence. All this is based on a ‘myth’ a story someone told and retold and retold until it becomes a truth. Ingrained in us from birth.

A myth can be wonderful, like Thor and Asgard, like Queen Nefertiti. Distant and magical and wonderous.

Or it can be, a heavy, emotionless, angry, drunk man, lording over his family with a bellow and his belt. A mans man. A bloody good hard working salt of the earth australian man.

When a myth isnt magical, does it hurt our development as human beings? Stunt national growth and identity.

I see myth in politics, as much as it exists in advertising, film and literature. A dangerous myth can be used against us, againt progress…

This week opened my eyes to a dangerous side of ‘myth’. And how pervasive these stories can be.

All hail to the subversives!!!

For anyone who has the strength to challenge myth and poke a bloody great hole in them!

Pip Pip Tally Ho!

the annotated journal

the australian myth

I have an aversion to australian cinema…

Grumpy dour father, down the pub, wheres my dinner, no you wont be doing that!!

Dour, stressed, almost depressed mother, always by the kitchen sink, subtle soft side.

And if this is our australian myth then every country must have their own, and everything I have grown up watching and processing has given me assumptions and judgements about people and countries identities.

A myth can be wonderful, like Thor and Asgard, like Queen Nefertiti. Distant and magical and wonderous.

Or it can be, a heavy, emotionless, angry, drunk man, lording over his family with a bellow and his belt. A mans man. A bloody good hard working salt of the earth australian man.

When a myth isnt magical, does it hurt our development as human beings? Stunt national growth and identity.

I see myth in politics, as much as it exists in advertising, film and literature. A dangerous myth can be used against us, againt progress…

This week opened my eyes to a dangerous side of ‘myth’. And how pervasive these stories can be.

All hail to the subversives!!!

For anyone who has the strength to challenge myth and poke a bloody great hole in them!

Pip Pip Tally Ho!