The drover's wives and camp couture: Baz Luhrmann's preposterous national epic

Author: Jayamanne, Laleen

Source: Studies in Australasian Cinema, Volume 4, Number 2, December 2010 , pp. 131-143(13)

Publisher: Intellect

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Abstract:

This article frames Baz Luhrmann's Australia (2008) in terms of the texture of the image and its mode of acting. Through this twofold movement it elaborates on the compositional features of the image and theorizes the mode of acting as a variant of burlesque performance: acting in strobe. Through this framing, some of the unique features of Bazmark's camp aesthetic are mapped out and Catherine Martin's contribution to it is also acknowledged. Through these aesthetic strategies, Luhrmann is able to address the historical archive of Australia, and its popular memory bank in its own flexible camp epic idiom. Thereby the film is able to free itself from being enslaved to chronological articulation of time and history. Instead, it creates for itself mechanisms and devices that enable acts of storytelling that deflect the arrow of time.

Keywords: camp couture; strobe acting; burlesque; epic; texture; preposterous; Luhrmann

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/sac.4.2.131_1

Affiliations: 1: University of Sydney.

Publication date: 2010-12-01

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Launched in 2007, the journal engages in critical discussion of cinema from the Australian, New Zealand and Pacific region. Australia, New Zealand and other Pacific regions are home to many indigenous nations and immigrant cultures from all around the world. Studies in Australasian Cinema will maintain an emphasis on this diversity with a special interest in postcolonial politics and contexts.�
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