Catherine Simpson

‘Shift – the way you move’: reconstituting automobility

Largely unquestioned throughout the twentieth century, the connections between cars, mobility and notions of progress are beginning to unravel. This paper traces an argument that loosens the path dependence of automobility and hints at alternatives. It begins with a critical engagement of the burgeoning literature on hegemonic automobility to develop our analytical lenses of multiple automobilities and ecologies of the car. We then provide examples of two contemporary trends that try to reconstitute automobility. The first sees the major automotive companies attempt to re-position the car through advertising as an environmentally friendly mobility option. The second one, carsharing, poses more substantial challenges to hegemonic automobility through its re-imag(in)ing of the car. These examples, we conclude, highlight the complex possibilities of technology and culture coalescing to shape future forms of automobility.

Australian eco-horror and Gaia's revenge : animals, eco-nationalism and the 'new nature'

ABSTRACT We hear so much about extinction in debates around climate change. But what about those animals that go feral and then return—bigger, hungrier and angrier—to wreak revenge on humans who may have done them injustice? Using an eco-postcolonial framework, this article examines how a number of exploitation horror films have dealt with environmental topics and issues of trespass. In particular, I examine the agency of animals—crocs, pigs, thylacines and marsupial werewolves—in some key Australian eco-horror films from the last 30 years: Long Weekend (Eggleston, 1978), Razorback (Mulcahy, 1984), Dark Age (Nicholson, 1987), Howling III: the Marsupials (Mora, 1987), Rogue (Greg McLean, 2007), Black Water (Nerlich & Traucki, 2007) and Dying Breed (Dwyer 2008). On the one hand, these films extend postcolonial anxieties over settler Australian notions of belonging, while on the other, they signify a cultural shift. The animals portrayed have an uncanny knack of adapting and hybridizing in order to survive, and thus they (the films and the animals) force us to acknowledge more culturally plural forms of being. In particular, these films unwittingly emphasize what Tim Low has termed the ‘new Nature’: an emerging ethic that foregrounds the complex and dynamic interrelationships of animals with humans.

Reconfiguring rusticity: feminizing Australian cinema's country towns

Abstract Country towns in Australian cinema are commonly seen in opposition to a fixed, imagined urban normalcy. The first part of this paper discusses the urban/rural dialectic in the construction of rusticity. The second section examines the role women play in the rustic sphere. The last decade has seen a feminizing of the country town in films made predominantly by female directors such as Radiance (Rachel Perkins, 1998), Somersault (Cate Shortland, 2004) and The Oyster Farmer (Anna Reeves, 2005). The final part of this paper focuses on two break-through films from the mid-1990s, also from female creative teams, which signal a significant shift in the portrayal of womens subjectivity and agency in country towns: Love Serenade (Shirley Barrett, 1996) and Road to Nhill (Sue Brooks, 1997). Although these films do not challenge the stereotype of country towns as ‘irrelievably dull’, their surreal lensing and black comic tone, I suggest, reconfigure rusticity.