Missed Tutorial.

I missed the tutorial this week, though I was present for both the lecture and the screening. The showing of Mad Max was timely, because I have just started research for a short piece of writing on Shaun Gladwell. Gladwell was chosen for the Venice Biennale of 2009 for his work MaddestMaximvs. Gladwell has spoken about his preconceptions of the outback being formed in a significant part by cinema, and I would have to concede to a similar idea. I could count on one hand the number of times I have really bushed it. It is interesting that the conception the rest of the world has of us is greatly infiltrated by images of the great outback, yet this reality figures on a microscopic level for most Australians.

I think one of the reasons for this is the uniqueness of our outback. Nothing much differentiates us on an urban level. An appropriate metaphor for this could be sought in the kind of Australian art that is recognised overseas (please note my hesitation in calling indigenous art, 'Australian', but for the purposes of being concise, bare with me). The art of figures like Shaun Gladwell, Tracey Moffatt, and Julie Rrap for instance figures in an incredible small way on the international art scene; mostly, because there is no recognisable style, essentially nothing all that unique. Aboriginal art however, possesses a totally new visual style and accompanying language.

Interestingly, this leads us back to something that has repeatedly been raised in our tutorials. The idea that perhaps the Australian film industry needs to develop a genre that it could specialise in. At the beginning of the semester, I was hesitant to accept this as a good proposition, but as the semester goes on, I see more Australian films in class (films that I have loved for years), I really am beginning to ask myself, "what are these films missing, why are they not competing overseas?" and perhaps the answer is, because they are too derivative (no matter how much they may subvert a genre) and do not require a new lexicon to decipher and discuss them.