Darkness Subverted

Representations & Reflections Studies in Anglophone Literatures and Cultures Volume 2 Edited by Uwe Baumann, Marion Gymnich and Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp Katrin Althans Darkness Subverted Aboriginal Gothic in Black Australian Literature and Film With 33 figures V&R unipress Bonn University Press Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ISBN 978-3-89971-768-6 Publications of the Bonn University Press are published by V&R unipress GmbH. © Copyright 2010 by V&R unipress GmbH, D-37079 Goettingen All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover image: © Katrin Althans, without title. Printed in Germany. Contents Acknowledgements .................................................................... v Introduction: Resistance to the Un-Australian..................................... 1 I. AboriginalGothic................................................................. 11 II. AboriginalAppropriations....................................................... 31 1. Re-Biting the Canon: Mudrooroo’s Vampire Trilogy .................. 31 a. ClassicsRewritten................................................... 31 i. Bram Stoker’s Dracula .............................................. 31 ii. William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair .................... 40 iii. Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick ..................................... 47 iv. Ancient Mythology.................................................. 51 b. Australia’s ›Legendary‹ History Reassessed...................... 57 i. ElizaFraser........................................................... 57 ii. RussianJack.......................................................... 61 iii. TheMyallCreekMassacre ......................................... 64 c. IdentityReclaimed .................................................. 69 2. De-Composing the Epic: Sam Watson’s The Kadaitcha Sung ......... 89 3. Un-Singing Historiography: Kim Scott’s Benang ....................... 103 4. Con-Juring the Phantom: Spectral Memories .......................... 116 a. Trauma Interred: Alexis Wright’s Plains of Promise ............ 116 b. Pasts Discovered: Vivienne Cleven’s Her Sister’s Eye ........... 122 c. Plains Undermined: Beck Cole’s Plains Empty .................. 132 5. Trans-Muting Cinema: Tracey Moffatt’s Films ......................... 147 a. Family Melodrama Assimilated: Night Cries .................... 147 ii Contents b. Documentary Appropriated: beDevil ............................ 158 i. »MrChuck«.......................................................... 158 ii. »ChooChooChooChoo« ......................................... 165 iii. »Lovin’ the Spin I’m in« ............................................ 174 Conclusion: Creation in Resistance.................................................. 183 Bibliography............................................................................. 189 IndexofNames ......................................................................... 211 List of Figures Figure 1: Front cover Benang ................................................. 105 Figure 2: Opening credits ..................................................... 139 Figure 3: Clothing styles....................................................... 139 Figure 4: Theghost............................................................. 140 Figure 5: Darkness and light .................................................. 141 Figure 6: Night .................................................................. 142 Figure 7: Unsafe ground ....................................................... 143 Figure 8: Black hole ............................................................ 144 Figure 9: DVD cover ........................................................... 146 Figure 10: Sunset scenes ........................................................ 151 Figure 11: Title screen........................................................... 151 Figure 12: Interiors .............................................................. 152 Figure 13: Opening title of Jedda .............................................. 152 Figure 14: Close-ups of mother and daughter ............................... 154 Figure 15: Mother and daughter caring ...................................... 157 Figure 16: Daughter in foetal position ........................................ 158 Figure 17: Film vs Video ........................................................ 160 Figure 18: Aerial shots of Bribie Island ....................................... 161 Figure 19: Camera zooming out ............................................... 162 Figure 20: Black men ............................................................ 164 Figure 21: The camera’s gaze ................................................... 166 Figure 22: Theghosttrain ...................................................... 166 Figure 23: Aerial shot............................................................ 167 Figure 24: Interacting with the Camera ...................................... 168 Figure 25: Bush cuisine I........................................................ 170 Figure 26: Bush cuisine II....................................................... 170 Figure 27: Ruby denoting blindness........................................... 172 Figure 28: Menacing studio set ................................................ 172 Figure 29: Ruby faces the Gothic menace .................................... 174 Figure 30: Black Magic .......................................................... 175 iv List of Figures Figure 31: Staging ................................................................ 177 Figure 32: Spectres unleashed.................................................. 179 Figure 33: Aboriginal man...................................................... 181 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Prof Dr Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp for her invaluable professional and personal support and Prof Dr Norbert Schaffeld for his work as co-supervisor. Thanks also to A/Prof Sue Kossew and Dr Anne Brewster from the University of New South Wales and to Prof Gerry Turcotte from the University of Notre Dame (Australia) for their fruitful input on Australia, Aboriginal culture, and the Gothic during my stay at the UNSW. For their spon- soring of my research in Australia, I would like to thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Special thanks go to Mr Simon Rosenberg for his ever so exhilarating but still professional comments on every word I wrote, to Mr Alan Smith, and to all my fellow postgrad students of Indigenous studies I met at home and abroad. I would finally like to thank my parents, Helma and Horst, for their love and ongoing support, and my husband Patrick, who patiently endured all my moods even under Coogee’s bright sun. Last, but not least, my thanks go to my brother Jörg. Without his example, I might not have come so far: no more »Penfold, shush!« Introduction: Resistance to the Un-Australian The Australian mind seems to be obsessed with the invocation of its ›un-national‹: apart from newspaper headlines, advertisements on television,1 or signs tacked to lamp-posts in suburban Sydney, even the Macquarie Dictionary shows a preoccu- pation with the ›un-Australian‹. Having introduced the lemma only as recently as 2001 in their Federation edition, the lexicographers already updated it in the subsequent 2005 edition by adding a fourth entry to account for the increased use of the word in the popular domain: »violating a pattern of conduct, behaviour, etc., which, it is implied by the user of the term, is one embraced by Australians«.2 Despite this zeal for determining the un-national, little attention has been paid to its positive counterpart, thus making it easier to exclude people on grounds of their ›un-Australianness‹ than to welcome a national diversity. Especially Australia’s indigenous and female population as well as its citizens of non-British descent face constant contempt because of their alleged ›otherness‹. Yet notions of Australian identity as exclusively male and Anglo-Celtic are more and more contested, and even though only the last few decades witnessed the rise of indigenous artists, their voices now challenge Anglo-centric ideas of national identity loud and clearly. Concerned with questions of Aboriginality, they reject white constructions of Aboriginal people as the demonized ›other‹ and decons- truct Anglo-Celtic myths of Australianness by combining both European literary modes and indigenous cultural traditions. Among those artists who have used this technique are Vivienne Cleven, Beck Cole, Tracey Moffatt, Mudrooroo, Kim Scott, Sam Watson, and Alexis Wright, who all apply a hauntingly European mode of narration in their works, that of Gothic fiction. While Vivienne Cleven in her novel Her Sister’s Eye of 2002 resurrects the dark secrets of a rural country-town’s past, Mudrooroo’s vampire trilogy, consisting of The Undying (1998), Underground (1999), and The Promised Land (2000), rewrites Western canonical classics and revamps Australian legends and historical details. Like Vivienne Cleven, Alexis

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