Jonathan Rayner

Live and dangerous? The screen life of Steve Irwin

Abstract This article examines the star status and screen persona of the late Steve Irwin. Through reference to his appearances in television series, but principally in relation to his performance in his only feature film (Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, 2002) it offers an analysis of the nature and construction of his star image, its integration within other incarnations of Australian cultural identity, and its significance in national terms. This star persona is compared with other character types and embodiments of national identity propagated by the Australian cinema. On the basis of this analysis, the significance, pervasiveness and popularity of the Irwin image as a national icon, consumed by an international audience, is considered within its global media context.

‘Where “Daddy” and Danger Were’: The Portrayal of Children in War Illustrated, 1914–16

Abstract This paper examines the representation of children in the popular British First World War publication, War Illustrated. Images of children occur within several contexts, linked to dominant contemporary propaganda discourses. These include concepts of national mobilisation within total war, qualities of sacrifice, endurance and patriotism and the demonisation of German tactics of ‘frightfulness’ (i.e. atrocities inflicted upon civilians). The magazine’s visual representations of children, in photographs and illustrations by war artists, mobilise them as resources in propaganda, to support the prosecution of the war through the propagation of patriotic principles and the vilification of the enemy. Images of women and children in Europe reinforced contemporary propaganda discourses (such as the pervasive ‘rape of Belgium’ narrative). By comparison, children in Britain became symbols of the ideals of family and country which British soldiers had to defend. However, beyond their representation as victims of the war, children were also represented as participants in the conflict, in some cases assuming the status of combatants comparable to adults. This adaptation of children’s roles was matched and eventually overtaken in the magazine’s images by the reporting of the transformation of the status of women, and their burgeoning contribution to the war effort as the conflict continued.

Adapting Australian Film: Ray Lawrence from Bliss to Jindabyne

Abstract This article offers a reconsideration of the films and career of Ray Lawrence, a critically acclaimed Australian director whose most recent film Jindabyne was a national and international successes in 2006. Although to date his output consists of just three feature films completed since 1985, Lawrences work can be seen to embody, unite and typify several disparate ideals, debates and tendencies present within Australian film-making over the past twenty years.

Introduction. Filmurbia: Cinema and the Suburbs

This volume is devoted to discussions, debates and analyses of the cinematic suburb—the outer city, the urban edge field, the margins of metropolitan activity and existence that international film has mapped, defined, celebrated and denigrated across the full spectrum of realist, narrative, formalist, artistic, dramatic and documentary film. While film’s unrivalled capability in the rendition of photographic reality might suggest the potential for socio-historical recording of the suburb’s post-war development, the strength of its contribution lies more constructively within the socio-cultural construction and interpretation of the concept and experience of suburbia. Therefore the essays in this collection reflect not only the moving image’s ability and responsibility to document and portray the burgeoning of outer city life since the mid-twentieth century: it also acknowledges and revels in cinema’s capacity to interrogate, theorize and construct the suburb as a filmic and wider popular cultural concept—a filmurbia.

The Suburban Australian Gothic in Lake Mungo and Beautiful

The brand of horror cinema labelled Australian Gothic has traditionally focused on manifestations of the uncanny, the convergence of the ordinary and the extraordinary, and the ‘stubborn bias’ of the normal ‘towards the perverse, the grotesque, the malevolent’ (Dermody and Jacka 1988: 51). One stereotypical register of Australian Gothic, in films such as Long Weekend (Colin Eggleston 1978), Razorback (Russell Mulcahy 1984) and Primal (Josh Reed 2010), has been the horror in, of and emanating from the natural landscape in forms of the eerie and the abject connected intimately with the unfathomability and inhospitability of the Australian environment and fauna themselves. A complementary form of the Gothic, in films such as Heat Wave (Phillip Noyce 1982), Goodbye Paradise (Carl Schultz 1983) and Georgia (Ben Lewin 1988), has explored the occurrence of arbitrary malice, violence and conspiracy in human environments. These films have portrayed persistent and unpunished wrongdoing as an unavoidable characteristic of urban living, and thus have evoked comparisons with American film noir. A key Gothic characteristic, then, is the representation of malice hidden within the mundane:

‘The deadliest thing that keeps the seas’: the technology, tactics and terror of the submarine in The War Illustrated magazine

ABSTRACT This paper explores the representation of the submarine as an embryonic and influential factor in the First World War. In War Illustrated, reporting of German and British submarines assumed a high profile because of spectacular successes (such as U-9’s sinking of HMS Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue), and because of the perceived inactivity of the opposing battle fleets. The evolution of the magazine’s reporting of the submarine (from dismissal of its danger, to condemnation of its ‘piratical’ deployment, to celebration of its technological advancement) reflected the divisive characteristics of submarine warfare and the troubled reputation of the Royal Navy in the public imagination. The submarine’s emergence within twentieth-century warfare can be traced through the problematic popular responses to its unique capabilities and contribution to the naval campaign.

Naval Narratives of Re-enactment: In Which We Serve and Sea of Fire

This essay examines two narrative examples of the Royal Navy and naval combat on screen, exploring their resemblances in the re-enactment of naval history and their portrayal of the past through consistent representational strategies. In Which We Serve (Noel Coward and David Lean, 1942) and Sea of Fire (Ian Duncan, 2007) use deliberate and self-conscious recreations of the past to authenticate their interpretations of British naval history, and evince comparably conservative stances towards the Royal Navy and perceptions of its traditions. The similarity of their narratives, which describe the events leading up to the loss of two Navy destroyers, helps to reveal and reinforce the tonal, structural, and stylistic parallels in their depictions. The correspondence in their portrayal of naval combat and the institution of the Royal Navy illustrates the consistencies of representation which characterize the naval war film as a distinctive, definable narrative form. Above all, their commitment to the recreation and re-enactment of identifiable historical events underpins their importance in the representation and commemoration of the national, naval past. It is this aspect of both productions which is significant in the exploration of the role of visual representations to construct, affirm, and broadcast pervasive and persuasive versions of popular history.

The cinema of Michael Mann : vice and vindication

AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. Manns Style: The Jericho Mile, LA Takedown, Miami Vice2. Pursuing the Professional: Thief, Heat, Collateral3. Endangering the Domestic: Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider4. Adventures in Genre: The Keep, Ali, Public Enemies5. ConclusionFilmographyBibliographyIndex

‘Entrusted with the ruling of the waves’: Images of the post‐war royal navy in the NMM film archive

This paper offers an examination and interpretation of a selection of the films held within the National Maritime Museum’s Film Archive. Although the films discussed here constitute only a fraction of the collection of naval and maritime footage contained within the Archive, they represent a particularly pertinent and revealing portrait, or perhaps series of sketches in progress, of the Royal Navy in the post-war era. The varied film texts included for discussion cover a period of almost twenty years, from the late 1940s until the mid-1960s, and emanate from a range of official and institutional bodies: the Central Office of Information, the Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty itself. They span several distinct yet interrelated types of non-fiction filmmaking: documentary records, public relations and information films, and recruitment presentations.