Constantine Verevis

Transnational television remakes

This special issue of Continuum seeks to provide a cross-cultural investigation of the current phenomenon of transnational television remakes. Assembling an international team of scholars (from Australia, Germany, Israel, the UK and the USA), this edition draws upon ideas from transnational media and cultural studies to offer an understanding of global cultural borrowings and format translation that extends beyond those approaches that seek to reduce the phenomenon of television remakes simply to one of economic pragmatism. While recognizing the commercial logic of television formats that animates and provides background to these remakes, the collection develops a framework of ‘critical transculturalism’ to describe the traffic in transnational television remakes not as a unitary one-way process of cultural homogenization but rather as an interstitial process through which cultures borrow from and interact with one another (see Smith 2008). More specifically, the essays attend to recent debates around the transnational flows of local and global media cultures to focus on questions in the televisual realm, where issues of serialization and distribution are prevalent. What happens when a series is remade from one national television system to another? How is cultural translation handled across series and seasons of differing length and scope? What are the narrative and dramaturgical proximities and differences between local and other versions? How does the ready availability of original, foreign series (on services such as Netflix Instant and Sky Arts) shape an audience’s reception of a local remake? How does the rhetoric of ‘Quality TV’ impact on how these remakes are understood and valued? In answering these and other questions, this volume at once acknowledges the historical antecedents to transnational trade in broadcast culture – for example, the case of Till Death Us Do Part (UK 1962–1974), All in the Family (USA 1972–1977), and Ein Herz und eine Seele (DE 1973–1976) – but also recognizes the global explosion in, and cultural significance of, transnational television remakes since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Although recent years have witnessed a substantial body of critical work devoted to film remakes – Horton and McDougal (1998), Mazdon (2000), Forrest and Koos (2002), Verevis (2006), Loock and Verevis (2012), Smith (2015) – comparatively little has been produced specifically in the area of television. Notable exceptions include Moran (1998), Lavigne and Marcovitch (2011), McCabe and Akass (2013), and a short essay, ‘TV to Film’, in which Constantine Verevis describes the remaking of classic television series (of the 1960s and 1970s) as new theatrical feature films and potential cross-media platforms (2015, 129–30). This cycle of remakes – which has precursors throughout the 1970s and 1980s – intensifies with the critical and commercial success of The Addams Family (1991),

Disorder: Joy Division

Abstract Joy Division (2007) is the most recent of a group of feature and documentary films—including. 24 Hour Party People (2002), Control (2007) and Shadowplayers (2007)—tied to the legacy of Manchesters Factory Records and Ian Curtis and Joy Division. Actively promoted as a more authentic, emotionally deeper film than the Curtis biopic, Control, Grant Gees Joy Division documentary puts forward the idea that the cult band Joy Division was inextricably linked to the physical and social history of the city of Manchester. This article draws a line through the do-it-yourself ethos of punk (and post-punk) to the Situationist International (and the latters obsessions with psychogeography and drift) to provide a broad context for Gees film, and the emotional and graphical landscapes of the music of Joy Division.

Introduction: Remake | Remodel

Given that this collection of essays—“Remake | Remodel”—takes its title from the opening track of a retro-album, Roxy Music (1972) by Roxy Music, it seems appropriate to begin with music writer Simon Reynolds’ recent book, Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past. “Instead of being the threshold of the future,” writes Reynolds, “the first ten years of the twenty-first century turned out to be the ‘Re’ Decade. The 2000s were dominated by the ‘re-’ prefix: revivals, reissues, remakes, re-enactments” (xi). Across the book, Reynolds mainly takes an interest in a “retro-consciousness” prevalent in contemporary popular music— band reformations and reunion tours, album reissues and revivals, coverversions and mash-ups—but he notes that the current “malaise is not restricted to pop music. … Look at the Hollywood mania for remaking blockbuster movies from a couple of decades earlier. … When they’re not revamping proven box-office successes of the past, the movie industry is adapting much-loved ‘iconic’ TV series for the big screen” (xv). And Reynolds does not stop there. In addition to these “visibly fevered zones of retro-mania,” he discerns other areas of cultural re-production: retro fashion, retro toys, retro games, retro food, retro candy … even retro porn (xvii–xviii). Although the evidence suggests that “the 2000s’ most commercially prominent trends involved recycling” (xix), Reynolds is quick to point out that “Retromania is not a straightforward denunciation of retro as a manifestation of cultural regression or decadence” and that research into the book revealed “the extent to which retro-related issues have been a long-running preoccupation” (xxi–xxii, emphasis added).

Australian International Pictures

This issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema is devoted to what might loosely be termed ‘Australian International Pictures’. It re-examines the concept and definition of Australian film in relation to a range of local, international and global practices and trends that blur neat categorizations of national cinema. Although this shift or ‘turn’ to international production or influence is particularly acute in relation to such developments as the opening of Fox Studios in Sydney in May 1998, it is in fact a key element of many stages in Australian film history. It incorporates overseas financed and conceived films shot in Australia, films that ‘imagine’ Australia from a significant distance, films that rely heavily on international models of production and genre, truly independent or transnational films that emerge from particular developments in international relations, international or even ‘foreign’ films that feature significant Australian personnel, and films shot within large studio complexes that just happen to be situated on Australia’s Eastern Seaboard. Such an approach even suggests a rethinking of what might be included within ‘Australian cinema’ to embrace or incorporate the dominant consumption patterns of local audiences (who mostly do not watch traditional ‘Australian’ films).

Dead on arrival: The fate of Australian film noir

ABSTRACT In the late 1960s, producer-entrepreneur Reg Goldsworthy brought American television director Eddie Davis to Australia to make three feature films, It Takes All Kinds (1969), Color Me Dead (1969) and That Lady from Peking (1970). The second of these, Color Me Dead, was a direct (credited) remake of the film noir classic D.O.A. (Maté, 1949). Discarding the flashback structure of the original, Color Me Dead begins with an atmospheric night-sequence, but soon settles into a routine (if convoluted) thriller in which the poisoned protagonist attempts to track down his own killer. While the Davis version closely follows the dialogue and plot of Mates film, the form and style of the Australian remake owes less to its precursor than it does to post-classical noirs (Harper, 1966; The Detective, 1968; Lady in Cement, 1968), and television noir (Dragnet, 1951–1959; Naked City, 1958–1963; The Fugitive, 1963–1967). This article looks at the antipodean, cultural remaking of D.O.A., historically situated midway between its classic original (1949) and its second, neo-noir remaking, D.O.A. (Morton and Jankel, 1988). The remakes television aesthetic (and US cable release) adds weight to the suggestion that, through the 1960s, the noir of the classic sensibility was kept alive mainly through television series.

Essays from the inaugural Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand conference (2016)

The essays gathered in this issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema are selected from, and broadly representative of, the methods and topics brought together at the inaugural SSAAANZ conference. Collectively, the essays speak to a broad conception of screen studies and diverse critical concerns across film and television exhibition and reception, documentary film, pedagogy and screen culture. Constantine Verevis and Deane Williams’ article analyses the cultural history of Melbourne’s Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). Tessa Dwyer offers a detailed examination of the acclaimed television series Top of the Lake and the role cultural specificity and the authentic voice play in the context of transnational television. Simon Sigley investigates cinematic shifts in how Western Samoa was represented in three feature-length documentary films. Produced by the National Film Unit (NFU) of New Zealand between 1947 and 1962, the films cover a period during which ‘Samoa was administered as a United Nations (UN) trust territory by the New Zealand government’. Derived from a primary survey, Toija Cinque and Jordan Vincent’s article investigates the use of smart TVs and broadband-enabled mobile media devices for the viewing of movies, television programs and documentaries among other forms of screen content, often concurrently with social media devices, to understand audience practices in an increasingly fragmented mediascape. Vejune Zemaityte, Deb Verhoeven and Bronwyn Coate draw on big data in relation to feature film screenings and box office figures to interrogate the ‘10 per cent rule’ – the often made, but untested, claim in industry discourses that the Australian market represents 10 percent of the theatrical market for Hollywood films. Focussing on both Australian and US screening data from 2013, the article compares the popularity of selected American films in both the Australian and US markets to ‘contrast the differences that emerge in terms of distribution and exhibition’. Finally, Mark Ryan examines the pedagogy of screen content in undergraduate Australian screen studies courses. Together, the essays collected here provide a sense of the vibrancy and diversity of the research from the inaugural conference of Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, and anticipate its second conference, The Uses of Cinema: Film, Television, Screen, Monash University, Melbourne, November 21–23, 2018.

Before and after ACMI: a case study in the cultural history of Australia's State film centres

ABSTRACT The 2002 opening of the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne reconfigured the State Film Centre of Victoria (SFCV) for a new millennial moment of cinema and media, and within the context of the new languages of post-production, media convergence, digitisation, and globalisation. This occasion, with its ongoing emphasis on immediacy and the future, urgently requires a substantial research project that looks backwards and forwards at the same time: that is, a project that at once provides an understanding of the historical underpinning that gave rise to the present institution, and also of the current context that will give shape to the institution as it evolves into the future. Like all public institutions, ACMI evolved from, and is currently made up of, a complex series of threads drawing on a host of ancillary organisations, events, locations, and individuals that have a similarly intricate history that stretches back to the immediate post-WWII period. This essay provides an outline of a larger research project that will investigate the ways in which these various forces have given rise to the character of ACMI, informing an ongoing understanding of the place of ACMI within Australias cultural profile. In this way the project will explain how ACMI has become – and can continue to be – an enormously successful model for government-supported, cultural institutions locally and internationally.

Kangaroo: The Australian Story

Abstract In October 1950, the Adelaide Advertiser ran an article titled “Hollywood Insists on Kangaroos” (page 7). The story begins: “If you’ve got—or know of—any kangaroos who would like to become movie actors, send them to Director Lewis Milestone, Port Augusta, South Australia. He needs them to play themselves in the 20th Century-Fox production Kangaroo.” The article continues, explaining that producer Robert Bassler was looking to secure at least 300 kangaroos for the picture’s “most thrilling scene”, one without which the picture would lose much of its international appeal. Specifically, the script called for hundreds of thirst-crazed kangaroos to descend on a last remaining waterhole and put up a terrific battle for the water. In the same newspaper article, Bassler admitted that he didn’t exactly know how the scene would be accomplished, but said: “[T]he sequence … will be the most unique thing ever put on the screen. It could become the most talked-about scene in the history of movies.” This essay looks to the production and reception contexts of Kangaroo to consider some of the benefits and dangers of global film culture, and the difficulties of and possibilities for Australian (international) pictures in the post-war years.

Bizarre Love Triangle: The Creature Trilogy

The Creature (from the Black Lagoon) is the most unforgettable of many monsters that menaced humans in a cycle of “creature-features” — hybridized science fiction/horror films — of the 1950s. Produced by William Alland and released in 3-D (and flat formats) by Universal International, Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954) is about a scientific expedition to the Amazon River that discovers a prehistoric “Gill Man” — an amphibious hominid — living in a lagoon beside the river. Like its cinematic predecessor King Kong, the Creature is tragically drawn to the expedition’s lone female (scientist) and as the story develops it becomes a strangely sympathetic figure. One of the most widely circulated pop-cultural icons of the 1950s, the Creature spawned two sequels — Revenge of the Creature (Jack Arnold, 1955) and The Creature Walks Among Us (John Sherwood, 1956) — and is remembered in a scene in The Seven Year Itch (Billy Wilder, 1955) in which the Girl (played by Marilyn Monroe) exits a New York movie theater after viewing Creature from the Black Lagoon and admits to having a soft spot for the Creature. The Girl tells her escort, Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell), that she was not frightened by the Creature, but rather felt sorry for him: “He was kind of scary looking but he wasn’t really all bad. I think he just craved a little affection.

A Personal Matter: H Story

In the summer of 1963 Nobel Prize winning author, Kenzaburo Oe, visited Hiroshima to write the first of several essays, or “notes,” which were published serially in the monthly journal Sekai (World) and were later collected under the title Hiroshima Notes (Hiroshima Noto, 1965). Accompanied by illustrations reprinted from a small volume of A-bomb drawings, Pika-Don (Flash-Bang, 1950), Oe’s book is a deeply moving statement about the meaning of Hiroshima, written “on the spot” (in Hiroshima) while Oe’s first-born child lay in a Tokyo hospital incubator with an affliction that would leave the child with a permanent intellectual disability. At the same time as putting together his Hiroshima Notes, Oe produced a fictional work—a novel entitled A Personal Matter (Kojinteki na Taiken, 1964)—in which the child of the main character (“Bird”) has a monstrous deformity: a massive brain hernia. Briefly stated, the young father, Bird, is a character with anti-social tendencies who, when previously faced with life’s difficulties, has typically turned to drink and (sexual) violence. Confronted with the child’s deformity, Bird initially considers abandoning the infant—even killing it—before finally resolving to commit himself with “hope” and “forbearance” to its upbringing.1 As editor David Swain points out in the foreword to the English edition of Hiroshima Notes, “it is no secret that [at a time when the nuclear threat to human existence was mounting daily] Oe’s own commitment to his afflicted son drew great strength and inspiration from his encounters with the dignity of the A-bomb survivors in Hiroshima and with the authenticity of those who steadfastly cared for them” (9).