http://www.informaworld.com
Journal of Australian Studies: Gendered and racialised discourses of national identity in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a919534640
Informaworld is another major publishing platform for academic journals, books, databases and encyclopedias. It includes all the journals by Routledge and Taylor & Francis, and is therefore a high-quality resource for information on culture and media.
It is also the digital home of the Journal of Australian Studies, a multi- and interdisciplinary journal on Australian culture, history and society by the International Australian Studies Association that has been around in print since the 70s, and is published quarterly.
One of numerous informative essays about Australian national identity in this journal that I found is Gendered and racialised discourses of national identity in Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Australia’, written in 2010 by Jackie Hogan from Bradley University.
The article discusses the blockbuster movie Australia, how it both contents and reinforces stereotypes of male, white Australian national identity at the same time. It touches on the theoretical concepts of Benedict Andersons ‘imagined communities’ and Claude Lévi-Strauss’ ‘floating signifiers’, and lays open how under its glossy surface, the movie reassures a male, dominant white superiority over women, Aboriginal people and also, Asians.
Particularly interesting is the last chapter, where Hogan comments on the relationship between economic and material interests and the discourses of national identity, and the $50 dollar international promotional tourist campaign by Baz Luhrman that was launched as part of the Australia franchise.
[...] It also includes the formal apology to the indigenous Australians by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and the Leader of the Opposition Brendan Nelson in 2008, which can be considered a milestone in the development of a shared Australian identity – and therefore, it is worth knowing more about it, especially when judging for example the mentioning of the apology at the end of Baz Luhrmann’s movie Australia (see link #14). [...]