Rock the Casbah!

I hope you enjoyed The Battle of Algiers as dark of a subject it may be. If you'd like to read an essay on it production history, click here. As I mentioned in class, some of you may be familiar with this track from The Clash: "Rock the Casbah." Check out this Wiki entry that tries to dissect how this song was inspired by the Casbah of Algiers. The song's not wholly political, but it's still interesting subject matter for being a hit single.

Peter Weir's The Last Wave

"The Last Wave" by Diane Jacobs

A sense of foreboding pervades an opening scene of Peter Weir’s The Last Wave, though the sun shines and young children play cricket as usual during recess at school. Then, suddenly, the wind picks up, dust rolls in like waves from the distance, and the children and their teacher race indoors, where bricks of hail pierce the windows and gouge their fragile skin. It is a classic horror image—only here the victims are not so much shocked as creepily fascinated. Destruction, seemingly unexpected, has answered their intimations of cataclysm and bliss.

From Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), where schoolgirls float off during an outing at Australian aboriginal sacred grounds, to The Truman Show (1998), where the hero braves death to escape the clichés of American television, all of Peter Weir’s films defy simple definitions of reality. But The Last Wave, Weir’s first film to be released in America, goes further—insisting on the tangible power of spiritual life.

The Last Wave involves a Chinese box of mysteries—from the sudden death of a healthy Australian aboriginal to the conundrum of a white Australian’s dreams. The plot line follows a Sydney corporate tax lawyer, David, who takes on a legal aid case involving a group of aboriginals accused of murdering a man outside their tribe. While the black men assure David that they are innocent, they refuse to divulge evidence that could save their lives. They fear something more terrifying than death, David figures, and he commits himself to discover what and why.

Peter Weir said he got the idea for The Last Wave when he asked himself, “What if someone with a very pragmatic approach to life experienced a premonition?” Fittingly, David’s preoccupation with the aboriginal murder is triggered by his own bad dreams. To understand his clients, he steeps himself in aboriginal history, then gets drawn to their tribal mysteries as well. Chris (Gulpilil), one of the defendants, becomes David’s spiritual guide, and the lawyer’s nightmares increasingly invade his waking hours as bathwater gushes off the landing of David’s staircase, and the skies shower soot on the windshield of his car.

Visually stunning from start to finish, The Last Wave exudes the excitement of the so-called “new Australian cinema,” which in the 1970s burst onto the international scene. Where the French New Wave auteurs had reacted against their predecessors, the films of Australia were practically suis generis—for a quarter century, Australian movie screens had been completely dominated by imported Hollywood (and sometimes British) product. Australians’ screen idols were John Wayne and Elizabeth Taylor; their movie landscapes were the streets of London and the American West. Then, in 1970, John Gorton’s government legislated an Australian film industry into existence: opening a state-financed film school and underwriting the early works of Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career), Fred Schepisi (The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith), Bruce Beresford (The Getting of Wisdom), and Phillip Noyce (Newsfront) as well as Peter Weir.

Along with these other gifted filmmakers, Weir set out to explore the nature of Australian identity. The Last Wave, like Schepisi’s The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith, grapples specifically with the dilemma of a native black race ruled by immigrant whites. City aboriginals are “no different culturally than depressed whites,” a colleague flippantly informs David, but the thrust of the film suggests the opposite—that aboriginals possess a powerful separate and more spiritual identity that whites ignore at their own risk.

Many of the great pleasures of The Last Wave derive from its acting. Richard Chamberlain brings a febrile intensity to the emotionally confused David, while the gifted Gulpilil, playing Chris, David’s alter-ego, manages to convey fierce tribal loyalty while flirting with the logic of the white man’s world. Chris’s tribe leader, Charlie, is far more intractable. Played with disconcerting calm by the arresting Nandjiwarra Amagula (who was a tribe leader in real life), Charlie represents the spiritual leader as both a dignified artist and a merciless god.

In the film’s seductive conclusion, David follows Chris through a cavern filled with talismanic paintings, then confronts apocalypse in the form of a swelling sea. But the ending is admirably ambiguous. For while Weir’s hypnotic images inspire the predictable awe and terror, The Last Wave refuses to resolve either the political or the spiritual issues it so eloquently pursues.

Midterm Questions

Here are the midterm questions in advance. I suggest getting together in groups or partners in order to find the best possible answers. This is really a test against time contraints (20 minutes or 2 minutes per question) so I suggest that you practice jotting your answers under similar time retraints.

1. What are the characteristics of postcolonial literature?

2. Why isn't the literature of The United States considered post-colonial?

3. What are the two stages of development in postcolonial literature?

4. Use an example from any of the stories we covered in class that supports postcolonial theorist Elleke Boehmer's idea that "text, a vehicle of imperial authority...performed the act of taking possession" (14).

5. How is the theme of colonial encounter and its consequences played out in any one of the stories?

6. How is indigenous (mis)perceptions a theme in any of the stories we've read in class?

7. According to the documentary film Guns, Germs, and Steel, how is inequality accounted for in its various way among nations?

8. Why is social-realist sensibility a strong feature in 20th century Australian writing?

9. How is Red Ochre in "Clothes Make the Man" representative of the environmental harshness to the Australian settler?

10. What thematic conflicts arise between the Aboriginal world and white society in The Last Wave?

Week 5

We are entering the midterm here in week 5 of the course. On Tuesday we will conclude the first half of the course and postcolonial literature with the film The Last Wave by Australian filmmaker Peter Weir (The Truman Show, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World). We will watch the film in class and have a discussion afterward. The Last Wave will mark the first film you must write a response to. Your prompt will be:

How can postcolonial theory and themes from the stories read be applied to the film?

On Thursday we will begin the class with a 10-question midterm that will last for 20 minutes. Afterward we will go over "The Land of Sad Oranges" and hopefully cover "Naema--Whereabouts Unknown."

Looking ahead to week 6 we might end up splitting the viewing of The Battle of Algiers.

"Cargo": An essay by Andres Fierro

Here is Andres Fierro's essay. Take notice how he uses quotations to support what he is trying to convey. Also he cites the quotation with a simple page number and parentheses. But in the second paragraph, Andres has a dangling quotation--a no-no. All quotations should be attached to commentary. Lastly, there is no reason to always and always put quotation marks around the word cargo. Once is enough. Overall this is an appropriate essay.

Abram and Cain are determined to find the secret to obtaining “cargo.” They believe that power, wealth, and all the material things that their people want come directly from their ancestors, and that the church not only is blinding them from finding the "cargo," but their Reverend Father holds the secret to obtaining it. The two boys are committed to find all the answers to their wants, and devise a plan to discover the secret.

Bola is an adversary of Abram and Cain, and recently his brother had returned from a trip with some fascinating news. Cain explains to Abram that Bolaʼs brother finds itʼs, “... the holy water and the Bible that is keeping us blind” (435). This finding convinces the boys that the church is responsible for their problems with obtaining "cargo." Furthermore, the Reverend Fatherʼs outhouse was conspicuously placed between their ancestors graves and his house. “It was thought to be the passageway to the dead peopleʼs cargo beneath the graves" (439). Abram and Cain decide to perform a ritual, such as what they see in mass, to catch the Reverand Father as he is in the outhouse. They believe that the Reverend, while in the outhouse, will be, “... tricking their grandfathers. Then they would explain where the cargo really went” (439). Unfortunately for the boys, their plan is obstructed as Bola and Mickle show up just as they find the Reverend Father in the outhouse.

The fascination with obtaining “cargo” has driven Abram and Cain to search for the secret to finding it. With all the power and wealth that the church has, itʼs clear that they have built animosity towards the church, and have declared the Reverand Father as the culprit to crippling them from obtaining that “cargo” from their ancestors. Abram and Cainʼs plan places them on the battlefront against the antagonist of the story, the Reverand Father. It is he that is in a position of respect, power, and authority, but reading this as a fable on the loss of native culture, he is implicated as the burglar responsible for cheating the dead ancestors into giving him the “cargo” instead of to their rightful bearers.

As Abram and Cain have now become convinced that the church is responsible for impeding their ancestors "cargo” to reaching their hands, they blame the head of the church for the deceit on their grandfathers. The distribution of wealth is so one sided that those in power have not allowed for natives like Abram and Cain to enjoy the materialistic lifestyle that those in power lead. Thus, the envy that the boys have for those with a high status is fierce, turning their minds into planning out how to inform their ancestors about this treachery that the church and the Reverend Father are responsible for. As they find him in the outhouse they state, “When we think he is down the toilet we will follow him. We will then tell our kin why their cargo does not reach our hands” (439). They view the Reverend Father as a thief who is cheating them out of their “cargo.”

After all their efforts and plans have been spoiled, the boys are left still wanting answers to obtaining their “cargo”, hoping that they will find next time the Reverend Father in the act of lying to their ancestors. Do they really need this materialistic lifestyle? The church and Reverand Father have found a way to provide just enough to let them wanting more, and veering away from their native cultural ways.

Week 3

We will be covering more ground our third week than we have the previous two. For Tuesday have read the introduction to Ashcroft, et al's The Empire Writes Back. This intro will be about introducing you to some key concepts in understanding postcolonial lit theory. Come Tuesday you will be in groups breaking down these concepts. During the second half of class we will cover Colin Johnson's (aka Mudrooroo Nyoongah) selection from his novel Dr. Wooreddy's Prescription for Enduring the Ending of the World (1983).

On Thursday we will be covering two other pieces pertaining to the Aborigine: Katrine Susannah Prichard's "The Cooboo," which takes a look at the effect of colonialism on the female gender, and Xavier Herbert's "Clothes Make a Man" and it's look at hybridity.

Plan ahead as there may be up to three study question essay due by next Saturday. Looking into next week there will be more tweeking of the syllabus as class will be cancelled on Tuesday, February 3, yet we will have to take a midterm up to this point and watch our first feature-length film, The Last Wave.

An Introduction to Postcolonial Literature

The term “Postcolonialism” refers broadly to the ways in which race, ethnicity, culture, and human identity itself are represented in the modern era, after many colonized countries gained their independence. However, some critics use the term to refer to all culture and cultural products influenced by imperialism from the moment of colonization until today. Postcolonial literature seeks to describe the interactions between European nations and the peoples they colonized. By the middle of the twentieth century, the vast majority of the world was under the control of European countries. At one time, Great Britain, for example, ruled almost 50 percent of the world. During the twentieth century, countries such as India, Jamaica, Nigeria, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Canada, and Australia won independence from their European colonizers. The literature and art produced in these countries after independence has become the object of “Postcolonial Studies,” a term coined in and for academia, initially in British universities. This field gained prominence in the 1970s and has been developing ever since. Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said’s critique of Western representations of the Eastern culture in his 1978 book, Orientalism, is a seminal text for postcolonial studies and has spawned a host of theories on the subject. However, as the currency of the term “postcolonial” has gained wider use, its meaning has also expanded. Some consider the United States itself a postcolonial country because of its former status as a territory of Great Britain, but it is generally studied for its colonizing rather than its colonized attributes. In another vein, Canada and Australia, though former colonies of Britain, are often placed in a separate category because of their status as “settler” countries and because of their continuing loyalty to their colonizer. Some of the major voices and works of postcolonial literature include Salman Rushdie’s novel Midnight’s Children (1981), Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart (1958), Michael Ondaatje’s novel The English Patient (1992), Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place (1988), Isabelle Allende’s The House of the Spirits (1982), J. M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Disgrace (1990), Derek Walcott’s Omeros (1990), and Eavan Boland’s Outside History: Selected Poems, 1980–1990.

Source:
"Postcolonialism: Introduction." Literary Movements for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 25 January 2009. .