Mateship is, and always has been, an integral trait of Australian culture, a characteristic that is indeed mostly masculine. McFarlane attributes this overt masculinity to the nature of the nation’s birth, claiming “it is rooted in the early days of the country when men considerably outnumbered women”[1]. This masculinity is something that is easily threatened by factors that diverge from the concept such as femininity and homosexuality. And as such, it is something that it is fundamentally hostile. As Esnault states, “every film is a document concerning the people who have made it and the people who have seen it”[2], and thus, Australian cinema is no exception. From the dawn of Australian cinema with The Story of the Kelly Gang[3] in 1906, mateship has been portrayed in film and television as blatantly masculine and to some extent, it still does. There has however been an obvious evolution in these ideals, with the aforementioned threat of femininity, effeminacy and homosexuality coming into fruition in the form of films such as The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert[4], the Mad Max series, and Wake In Fright[5]. Therefore, through an analysis of filmic examples, one may firm a grasp on this threat, and on the evolutionary process that followed.
As seen in the aforementioned example of The Story of the Kelly Gang, masculinity as a feature of mateship is something that has been ingrained into the Australian culture since its birth, with the predominance of convicts being men. Therefore, when an infiltration of effeminacy or femininity occurs in Australian film cinema, the masculinity contained within mateship is understandably (albeit perhaps unfairly) hostile. In Australian film, the role of women and feminism in terms of mateship is considerably minimal with McFarlane reinforcing this, stating, “the idea of Australia as a man’s country…inevitably make the women’s roles seem marginal”[6] This rejection and objectification of women is common in Australian cinema and is present in Mad Max[7]. McFarlane states, “Max’s wife has to die to become significant, in providing a motive for action”. The women, thus become a plot device, much like the ‘damsel in distress’ cliché. Wake In Fright however, according to McFarlane, “is the most sharply aware of this.” There is a noticeable absence of women with only three female characters appearing in the film to reinforce the Australian landscape as a masculine wasteland. McFarlane expands on this, claiming that; “[John] Grant’s Sydney girlfriend appears only in his daydream, as a man’s views of allowable, respectable female appeal. The Yabba’ girl, Janette Tydon, who readily unbuttons her dress for him, is the subject for crude jokes”[8]. As such, the mateship with these women never appears nearly as intense as the one’s shared between the male characters in the film.
The boundaries of mateship were further tested in Wake In Fright through the exploration of sexuality. The film served as a social commentary on the state of mateship in Australia, and revealed significant threats to the masculinity of the concept. McFarlane said of Wake In Fright that, “Aussie hospitality and mateship are scrutinised and found to be mindless and potentially threatening”[9]. Not only did the film seem to point at Australian masculinity and mateship as excessive (evident in its gratuitous depiction of violence), but it also explored the sexual complexities of them. Perhaps one of the most memorable scenes of the film is the homosexual encounter between the protagonist, John Grant, and Doc Tydon. The incident followed the infamous kangaroo-culling scene in which masculinity and mateship are at their most excessive, and thus the homosexual act was brought on through this overtly masculine mateship. The film was a critical and commercial success in overseas box offices, however domestically it did not fare as well as Pike and Cooper suggest, claiming “it opened in Paris and ran for a highly successful five month season…In London again it was warmly received by the public and the press when it opened…In Australia, however, it made less happy progress; although critics were unanimous in their support, publicity was poor and the public stayed away.”[10] As such, it seems that the film had hit to close to home with Australian audiences, and thus, the flaws of the masculinity of mateship in Australian culture were firmly established.
Thus from this point, effeminacy and homosexuality had proven themselves as great threats to mateship, and many Australian films have explored this since. This ‘threat’ is something that has been brought to parodic light in films such as Bruce Beresford’s 1972 film, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie[11], which explicitly addressed the fear of homosexuality (“no poofters”), establishing effeminacy’s firm opposition to Australian masculinity and indeed mateship. Before this however, Wake In Fright uncovered the emergence of homosexuality as a result of the Australian landscape being, in many ways, a cultural wasteland. Rayner best illustrates this, stating: “significantly, the doctor can be seen as the embodiment of societal collapse, since his decline and assimilation into the town’s culture prefigures the teacher’s degeneration”[12]. The Mad Max films seem to follow along this vein. The post-apocalyptic theme, however in this case literal, showed effeminacy running rampant. The villains of the films flaunt their flamboyancy, with makeup being worn, and in the case of Mad Max 2[13], an openly homosexual relationship is portrayed. And as such, the post-apocalyptic settings/ temperament of both Wake In Fright and the Mad Max trilogy, resultant of the presence of ultra violence of mateship and masculinity, led to some kind of sexual straying amid Australian culture.
In saying this, a homosexual rebellion was indeed imminent. It came to full bloom in the 1990s, the height of global quirky ‘cinema’. Although there was certainly elements of homosexuality present in depictions of Australian mateship bonds previously in the 1970s and 80s, it was either subtly implied (such as that of the homosexual encounter in Wake In Fright), or established via psychoanalysis. Peter Weir’s adaptation of the Joan Lindsay’s novel, Picnic at Hanging Rock, was indeed a regressive adaptation in regards to the depiction of homosexuality with Cook claiming that the mateship bond between the two male characters, Albert and Michael, was “stripped…of its queerness and only develops their bond insofar as it pertains to the quest to solve the mystery of the girls’ disappearance”[14]. Bordwell stated that, “films bear the traces of the societies that made and consumed them.”[15] Thus, via an evolution of tolerance, and an array of other contributing factors such as the growing gay civil rights movement and the advent of the Mardi Gras, the Australian film industry seemed to be evolving relatively with society. As such, there was a significant shift in perspectives within the Australian screen industry in its portrayal of male effeminacy.
As stated, the development of effeminate/ homosexual mateship hit an all time high in the 1990s. Thus, as the 90s marked the peak of mainstream ‘quirky’ cinema, films with sexually radical tendencies such as The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Head On[16] and The Sum of Us[17], were not entirely out of place. Peach noted this social reflection in the history of funding for ‘queer’ cinema, claiming: “what becomes obvious when examining funding changes from the 1960s onwards in Australia, is the dramatic increase in resources for Queer film”[18]. He goes on to say that what started as privately funded operations, gradually gained government support by the 1990s, he says: “by the 1990s Dallas Doll, Priscilla and The Sum of Us and Head On were receiving several million dollars from the FFC. A huge shift in financial support had occurred”. As such, there was also a significant shift in the way the subject was dealt with. Rather than the severe, yet subtle, homosexual repression conveyed in films such as Wake In Fright and Picnic at Hanging Rock, films such as Priscilla were unashamedly flamboyant in dealing with effeminacy, while Head On was realistic and unflinching in its portrayal of homosexuality. At the time of Head On’s release, Peter Lowndes discussed its significance as an indication of society, stating, “the homosexuality issue appears less contentious than say twenty years ago when a film such as Head On would have enraged the majority with its bold motif.”[19] As both Head On and Priscilla were highly regarded by critics and warmly received by mainstream audiences, the evolution of the portrayal of homosexuals in Australia can be easily attributed to changes in societal values and the reformation on the rigid traits of masculine mateship.
Mateship in Australian cinema has thus undergone a notable evolution in its presentation and value of the masculinity trait. It is not an evolution that can be easily attributed to one or two processes, but rather a large array of exterior factors have contributed to this shift between the birth of Australian cinema with The Story of the Kelly Gang and contemporary Australian cinema. This includes the roles of feminism, gay rights, and far more other societal factors too numerous to mention. However, the evolution of society is not the sole reason for this filmic evolution, another notable factor that cannot go without mention is the films themselves. Films that challenged these rigid guidelines of masculine mateship such as Wake In Fright and Barry McKenzie were instrumental in uncovering the flaws of this complex concept. Films such as these pointed to the unseen traits of Australian culture such as femininity, effeminacy and homosexuality and addressed them rather explicitly. They therefore paved the way for the development of the notion of mateship and films such as Head On and Priscilla that further drew out the complexity of the issue.
Bibliography:
- Bordwell, David, Doing Film History in http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/doing.php, University of Wisconsin (September 2008)
- Cook, Ann-Marie, More than Mateship?: Queer Desire in Picnic at Hanging Rock in Uneasy Humanity: Perpetual Wrestling With Evils. Colette Balmain and Nanette Norris (eds), Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, London (2009)
- Isenberg, Michael T., War on film : the American cinema and World War I, 1914-1941, Rutherford : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (1981)
- Lowndes, Peter, Gays In Australian Cinema, http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=2171&s=features (1998)
- McFarlane, Brian, ‘Ch.4: Mates and Others in a Wide Brown Land: Images of Australia’ in McFarlane, Australian Cinema 1970-1985 (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1987)
- Peach, Ricardo, Queer Australian Films from the 1990s Onwards, in Queer Cinema As A Fifth Cinema In South Africa And Australia, UTS, Sydney (2005) p.292
- Pike and Cooper, Oxford Australian Film 1900-1977. Australia, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, (1998)
- Rayner, J. Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction, Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, (1988)
Filmography:
- The Adventures of Barry McKenzie (Beresford, 1972)
- The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, (Elliott, 1994)
- Head On, (Kokkinos, 1998)
- Mad Max, (Miller, 1979)
- Mad Max 2, (Miller, 1981)
- The Story of the Kelly Gang, (Tait, 1906)
- The Sum of Us, (Burton and Dowling, 1994)
- Wake In Fright, (Kotcheff, 1971)
[1] Brian McFarlane, ‘Ch.4: Mates and Others in a Wide Brown Land: Images of Australia’ in McFarlane, Australian Cinema 1970-1985 (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1987), p.52
[2] Michael T. Isenberg, War on film : the American cinema and World War I, 1914-1941, Rutherford : Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (1981) pg.2
[3] The Story of the Kelly Gang, (1906) Dir: Charles Tait
[4] The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Head On, (1994) Dir: Stephan Elliott
[5] Wake In Fright, (1971) Dir: Ted Kotcheff
[6] Brian McFarlane, ‘Ch.4: Mates and Others in a Wide Brown Land: Images of Australia’ in McFarlane, Australian Cinema 1970-1985 (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1987), p.52
[7] Mad Max, (1979) Dir: George Miller
[8] Ibid.
[9] Brian McFarlane, ‘Ch.4: Mates and Others in a Wide Brown Land: Images of Australia’ in McFarlane, Australian Cinema 1970-1985 (Melbourne: Heinemann, 1987), p.51
[10] Pike and Cooper, Oxford Australian Film 1900-1977. Australia, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, p259
[11] The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, (1972) Dir: Bruce Beresford
[12] Rayner, J. Contemporary Australian Cinema: An Introduction, Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 1988, p27
[13] Mad Max 2, (1981) Dir: George Miller
[14] Ann-Marie Cook, More than Mateship?: Queer Desire in Picnic at Hanging Rock in Uneasy Humanity: Perpetual Wrestling With Evils. Colette Balmain and Nanette Norris (eds), Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, London (2009) pg.10-11
[15] David Bordwell, Doing Film History in http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/doing.php, University of Wisconsin (September 2008)
[16] Head On, (1998) Dir: Ana Kokkinos
[17] The Sum of Us, (1994) Dir: Geoff Burton and Kevin Dowling
[18] Ricardo Peach, Queer Australian Films from the 1990s Onwards, in Queer Cinema As A Fifth Cinema In South Africa And Australia, UTS, Sydney (2005) p.292
[19] Peter Lowndes, Gays In Australian Cinema, http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=2171&s=features (1998)
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