cross-posted at overland
I had the misfortune of seeing Whaledreamers on Friday, part of the Sydney Travelling Film Festival that made its way through Alice Springs. We are a hardened audience for the sort of vacuous worship that filmmaker Kim Kindersley profuses for the Mirning people. In the whitefellas-talking-about-blackfellas stakes, we are territorial and deeply wary, but always up for a challenge. So it was with horror that I realised I was watching a film about a British ex-actor's spiritual quest to become an Aboriginal dolphin.
This man is sadly obsessed by his own journey. Every moment is infected with a terrible seriousness, as though the Southern Right Whale has a patent on profundity (perfectly good ancestral myths about stink bugs have proven less popular). His pat explanations of "the dreamtime" and the Stolen Generations will only please the ignorant who wish to remain so. The structure is hopeless, the delivery wretched. Even the nice underwater shots of whales swimming soon exasperate. In a studenty montage towards the end Kindersley suggests that gazing into the mystical eyeballs of charismatic megafauna will save us from George Bush. If only someone could save us from the plague of earnest hippies that crawl over Indigenous cultures like lice.
There is a serious conversation to be had here about the colonial fallacy of white ownership of Indigenous story. The ego boost some people seem to get from adopting Indigenous culture is a kind of consumerist racism. It seems to be Europeans who most enjoy thieving meaning in this way, though Aussies are not immune. I was also reminded of the execrable Mutant Message from Down Under.
The hippies come to Alice every winter looking for a culture more legitimate than their own, as if whiteness and its responsibilities can be sloughed off by rubbing against a witchetty bush. I am constantly surprised by the generosity and patience of Aboriginal people in continuing to share their culture in the face of such obvious disincentives.
The only pleasant thing about the evening was the performance before the film of a whale song by Bunna Lawrie, ex-Coloured Stone and secondary subject of the film. He came across as a gentle man with genuine concerns for the whale. It was a pity Kindersley couldn't make room for much of Bunna's story beside his own. Whaledreamers only got up through celebrity funding, but it's narrated by Jack Thompson and distributed by the SFF, and they should know better.
I had the misfortune of seeing Whaledreamers on Friday, part of the Sydney Travelling Film Festival that made its way through Alice Springs. We are a hardened audience for the sort of vacuous worship that filmmaker Kim Kindersley profuses for the Mirning people. In the whitefellas-talking-about-blackfellas stakes, we are territorial and deeply wary, but always up for a challenge. So it was with horror that I realised I was watching a film about a British ex-actor's spiritual quest to become an Aboriginal dolphin.
This man is sadly obsessed by his own journey. Every moment is infected with a terrible seriousness, as though the Southern Right Whale has a patent on profundity (perfectly good ancestral myths about stink bugs have proven less popular). His pat explanations of "the dreamtime" and the Stolen Generations will only please the ignorant who wish to remain so. The structure is hopeless, the delivery wretched. Even the nice underwater shots of whales swimming soon exasperate. In a studenty montage towards the end Kindersley suggests that gazing into the mystical eyeballs of charismatic megafauna will save us from George Bush. If only someone could save us from the plague of earnest hippies that crawl over Indigenous cultures like lice.
There is a serious conversation to be had here about the colonial fallacy of white ownership of Indigenous story. The ego boost some people seem to get from adopting Indigenous culture is a kind of consumerist racism. It seems to be Europeans who most enjoy thieving meaning in this way, though Aussies are not immune. I was also reminded of the execrable Mutant Message from Down Under.
The hippies come to Alice every winter looking for a culture more legitimate than their own, as if whiteness and its responsibilities can be sloughed off by rubbing against a witchetty bush. I am constantly surprised by the generosity and patience of Aboriginal people in continuing to share their culture in the face of such obvious disincentives.
The only pleasant thing about the evening was the performance before the film of a whale song by Bunna Lawrie, ex-Coloured Stone and secondary subject of the film. He came across as a gentle man with genuine concerns for the whale. It was a pity Kindersley couldn't make room for much of Bunna's story beside his own. Whaledreamers only got up through celebrity funding, but it's narrated by Jack Thompson and distributed by the SFF, and they should know better.
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10 Comments:
Aboriginal dolphin! hee hee
In alice springs we have a collective developed sensitivity to the complexities of representation of Indigenous people and their views in media. Let the apprehension that informs our own participation in representing and storytelling not hold us back from responsive and perceptive engagement. Let the shock that this film won awards and made it onto a national touring circuit only inspire us to create work that will explore the diversity we begin to comprehend.
that is the funniest thing I have read in ages, I have tears in my eyes.
but it makes quite a few great points about, from what Suzy and others have told me, was a woefully inadequate movie.
you are too good. glad you live on the island!
well written and well said sista. haven't seen the film but i felt your rage anyway.there needs to be a term coined to describe that particular kind of earnestness that thinks it stands above racism.
hehehe...Agent MonkeyPuzzleBox here.
to the horror of your fellow Australians, if this film is being embraced you've got more in common with us U.S. Amercans then you would ever wish nor care to admit too. Looks like you've got your own "Dances with Wolves" and Kevin Costner as your romanticized anglo journey man.
hehehe
i don't know if i'm terrified or humored by the persistency of such crap cinema perspectives on indigenous persons and white folks navigating their sense of entitled destiny within their traditions. Certainly unveils ugly untended to mentalities of European cultures even when they think their better than the outright bigots cause they're embracing the indigenous by looting their traditions.
Hope folks figure out how to embrace other cultures without feeling like they have to assimilate or appropriate them.
it would be so nice for my lil injun self and others.
thanx for saying it so plainly. that's why i love ya.
game on
p.s.Jesse called you a hippie
ha! only cause he's out of punching distance.
i hope so too monkey... and yes beth we need to keep trying - and calling each other on our shit.
looters is probably the word we are lookin for bj
Hear hear!
"The hippies come to Alice every winter looking for a culture more legitimate than their own"
-- is that what took you to Alice in the first place?
ha! no, i moved here from redfern. must have come for the aquatic mammals.
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