Have you seen Baz Lurhmann's film Australia? I went with some friends a couple of weeks back. It's a good-looking and often entertaining movie, expansive in scope and impressive in its cinematography. It also brings together some of our nation's most familiar myths and characters - the gruff cattle-droving hero who defies the big bad man who owns all the land; the deeply spiritual Aboriginal elder who stands in stark contrast to the ridiculous and incompetent missionaries; the delicate but adaptable white woman and the oppressed but resilient indigenous mother.
The film has stayed on my mind - but not because it at last explained to me what an authentic Australian is, or because it presented deep and challenging issues to wrestle with for weeks. It's lingered in my head for the opposite reason - because of the disappointing simplicity of its politics. Maybe I expected too much, but I was surprised to find that a film so expressly concerned with the stolen generations offered a very simple, and ultimately unchallenging suggestion for how indigenous and non-indigenous Australians might live together.
The film centers on the relationship between a childless English woman (Nicole Kidman) who moves to a pastoral property in the Northern Territory, and an Aboriginal boy of mixed decent (Brandon Walters) whom she meets there. She gradually comes to consider the boy as her son. He is not without connections to his Aboriginal family, however: his grandfather (David Gulpilil) is a tribal elder who inducts him into his traditional culture and, at a crucial point in the film, asks him to go walkabout to learn his country. There is some acknowlegment that Kidman's intense maternal interest in the boy and her impulse to refuse him permission to leave, borders on oppressive control and could undermine the boy's ties to his indigenous family just like the government's child removal policy. However, other events intervene before the matter is explored or resolved, and the plot moves on with the 'good guys vs bad guys' story of pastoral rivalries.
With the help of both the Aboriginal boy and his grandfather, Kidman and her gruff cattle-droving hero (Hugh Jackman) eventually overcome the bad guys (David Wenham) who are trying to push them off their property. In the end they settle down as small-scale pastoralists in the comfortable knowlege that, since the power of the large land-holders has been broken, they and the Aboriginal people of the area can just get on with amicably sharing the country. The film thus implies that well meaning white people can just run their hoofed cattle all over the land, while the indigenous people can go walkabout and keep doing whatever else they do. There will be no conflict of interest, no point at which these prove to be incompatible uses of the land.
One problem with this conclusion is that it obscures these larger and more challenging issues about conflict and compatibility; another is that it tends to overstate the adequacy of good intentions. It plays into the all-too-common habit of white Australians to think of themselves as basically good people who don't really need to change their behaviour because they don't set out to hurt anyone. But are good intentions really all we need to live in harmony and use resources equitably? I think the history of this country shows that well meaning white people are more than capable of inflicting serious injustices. We need to recognise this and make a practical as well as a symbolic commitment to redressing them as a national community.
3 comments:
germaine greer thinks the same thing.
Thanks for the link - I think she makes some really good points, though in her characteristically narky way!
I was thinking, too, that part of the problem with Lurhmann's film is that it tries to valorise both the cattle-drover and the aboriginal elder. Part of the problem with Australian culture is that it throws up images of hard working white Australians who struggle against the land - and who, because of their toil, are somehow entitled to it.
This sense of entitlement is not only based on what, for the vast majority of Australians, is a total myth - it can act as a psychological roadblock to reconcilliation. It undercuts the ability of white Australians who buy into the myth to recognise that others have legitimate claims to the land. It leaves little room for recognising other people's claims to ownership.
Hi Meredith,
We saw the film a few nights ago. I had sensed some of the things you mention, but your insight puts it into words.
I'm going to link to this on my Facebook page.
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