Re-visioning Australian Social Realism through a Feminine Lens by Grady Hancock BA (Hons) Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Deakin University October, 2013 Abstract Social realism is a popular and dominant mode in Australian filmmaking, and indeed is a key mode of address in critically motivated films that explore issues of the social and the political. A primary concern in addressing social realism as an important, and indeed dominant, mode of address in the Australian filmmaking landscape is the relative predominance of male-centric/masculine character-driven stories. What then of the female characters afflicted by the marginalising effects of their social status? Behind the closed doors of tenement flats, in destitute domestic spaces where mothers, children and families subsist on the meagre trickle of money earned by mainly men, the broader affective ramifications of fringe living have been left largely untapped in social realist filmmaking. In plumbing the depths of gynocentric social realist stories, this research explores a unique critical lens through which discourses of gender and the socio-political collide. This feminine lens looks to gynocentric concerns, those dictated to by both dominant feminine discourse and the social environments that come to be attributed to, and often inflicted upon, the female gender. In its application of more affective modes of address, the feminine lens utilises formal articulations that speak through dominant feminine discourse while simultaneously deconstructing it in an act of internal criticism. i Acknowledgements Thank you to Associate Professor Leon Marvell for your guidance and words of encouragement throughout this journey. Thanks also go to Dr Leonie Rutherford and Professor Deb Verhoeven for their assistance along the way. Thank you to the indispensable Deakin HDR admin and research staff. To my family and friends who have provided a lifetime’s patience and love—I owe you all. Thank you to Trent: how lucky I am to have an office buddy in you—thank you for your support and friendship. Warmest thanks to Lara for the intellectual, emotional and general life support—and for the laughter, always the laughter. To my Dad for teaching me to raise my hands against mediocrity—you are missed, this is for you. Most important and heart-filled thank you to my Ma, without your gentle words, fierce support and unwavering strength I would have crumbled long ago—this is because of you. Parts of Chapter 4 were presented at ‘The Twelfth Humanities Graduates Research Conference’ in Perth 2011, organised by Curtin University and subsequently published in Changing facts, changing minds, changing worlds as a chapter entitled ‘Teesh and Trude: things unsaid in discourses of gender’. Parts of Chapter 6 were presented at ‘RevCon Academic’ in July 2012, organised by Revelation International Film Festival and subsequently published in SCAN: Journal of Media Arts Culture as an article entitled ‘Visceral shock in Cate Shortland’s Somersault’. Full details are in the Bibliography. Parts of the conclusion of this research are to be published in Senses of iv Cinema in an article entitled ‘Can we have a falling horse: pushing the boundaries of social realist film in Amiel-Courtin-Wilson’s Hail’. Parts of Chapter 5 were presented at the conference ‘Assembling Identities’ held in Glasgow in May 2013, organised by the University of Glasgow. v Table of Contents Abstract ........................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ......................................................................... iv Table of Contents .......................................................................... vii Introduction .................................................................................... 1 0.1 A Process of Re-visioning.......................................................................................1 0.2 Australian Social Realism.......................................................................................3 0.3 Through a Feminine Lens .......................................................................................5 0.4 Methodology ...........................................................................................................8 0.5 Chapter Outlines....................................................................................................10 Chapter 1 ...................................................................................... 13 Social Realism: Shaking the Habitual ............................................ 13 1.1 Introducing Social Realism in Fiction Film..........................................................14 1.1.1 Brit Grit and beyond ......................................................................................16 1.1.2 The Social-now: Issues, Themes and Types ..................................................19 1.1.3 Form: Articulating the Social-now ................................................................21 1.1.4 Crusading Cinema: a Uniquely Critical Lens ................................................24 1.2 27 Finding an Australian Social Realism.........................................................................27 1.2.1 From Outback to Urban: Australia’s Social Landscape.................................31 1.2.2 Androcentrism in Australian Social Realism.................................................36 1.3 A Summation ........................................................................................................39 Chapter 2 ...................................................................................... 41 Finding Femininity in Australian Social Realism............................ 41 2.1 Femininity .............................................................................................................42 2.1.1 The Physical Life of Feminine Bodies...........................................................48 2.2 Backgrounding Women in Australian Social Realism..........................................52 2.2.1 Suburban Women, Feminised Space .............................................................57 2.3 62 Fran to Fistful of Flies: Articulating the Social Feminine from the inside out ..........62 Chapter 3 ...................................................................................... 67 Affective Articulation through a Feminised Lens in Social Realism 67 3.1 Affective/Reflective ..............................................................................................68 3.1.1 Affect and Film ..............................................................................................72 3.1.2 Social Realism and Affect..............................................................................76 3.2 A Feminine Lens...................................................................................................81 3.2.1 Melodramatic Rhetoric: Emotive Display .....................................................83 3.2.2 Poeticised Realism: Structuring Feeling........................................................85 3.2.3 Visceral Shock: Affective Intensities.............................................................88 3.3 Inward to Analysis ................................................................................................90 vi Chapter 4 ...................................................................................... 93 Teesh and Trude: Melodramatic Subversions .................................. 93 4.1 Teesh and Trude as Social Realism ......................................................................94 4.2 A Feminised Lens ...............................................................................................100 4.2.1 Feminine Objects .........................................................................................102 4.2.2 Disrupting the Domestic Feminine ..............................................................104 4.3 The Eternal Becomings of a ‘Good Woman’......................................................109 4.3.1 Maternal Failings .........................................................................................111 4.3.2 Sex and the Social........................................................................................116 4.4 Melodramatic Rhetoric........................................................................................120 4.5 Saying Things Unsaid in Feminine Discourse....................................................125 Chapter 5 .....................................................................................131 Blessed: Liminal Readings of Femininity ......................................131 5.1 Blessed as Social Realism ...................................................................................133 5.2 A Working Class Femininity ..............................................................................137 5.2.1 Marginalised Motherhood............................................................................138 5.2.2 Domestic Discourse .....................................................................................142 5.2.3 Sex (and Motherhood) .................................................................................144 5.3 Melodramatic Convention as Affective ..............................................................149 5.4 Social Affect........................................................................................................156 Chapter 6 .....................................................................................159