Sounding Country: Tracking Cultural Representations in the Soundtracks of Contemporary Australian Landscape Cinema

Abstract

While recent scholarship demonstrates a significant increase in the level of interest in Australian film music, very little attention has been focused on the soundtracks of contemporary Australian landscape cinema — including films that explore the contentious aspects of Australia’s colonial legacy. This thesis is intended to respond to this research gap, in particular by employing textual and production analysis methodologies to track cultural identifications and representations within four recent landscape films. The films are Rabbit-Proof Fence, The Proposition, Australia and Samson & Delilah; and I look specifically at their sonic dimensions — namely, the amalgam of score, dialogue and sound effects.

The study explores the particular aesthetics and ideologies of the soundtracks; it is concerned with codification and how the soundtracks amplify — consciously and subconsciously — new and oppositional insights with respect to contemporary understandings of Australian identity and landscape. The study also argues that the soundtracks are powerful modes of expression and, as such, are themselves engaged in contemporary debates surrounding Australian history such as the ‘history wars’, ‘Mabo’ decision and the Bringing Them Home report. Unlike other important studies on Australian cinema and more specifically Australian landscape cinema, my research suggests that attending to the hitherto neglected soundtrack may present an opportunity not only for achieving a more comprehensive film criticism but also for extending the ways we address Australia’s past. Such a project, focusing on the sonic dimension, may also prove to be of fundamental significance to our present-day challenge of securing a more productive social and psychological engagement with Aboriginal Australia.