image of person or book cover 7836050765806560197.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Piano Lessons : Approaches to The Piano anthology   criticism  
Issue Details: First known date: 2000... 2000 Piano Lessons : Approaches to The Piano
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Jane Campion’s The Piano achieved critical acclaim at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 and followed up by winning three Academy Awards. Piano Lessons is a provocative collection of essays examining the critically acclaimed film. An assembly of international academics, drawn from film and cultural studies disciplines, offers a unique examination of the film through diverse approaches–auteurist, feminist, psychoanalytic, post-colonial, melodrama and romance.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Contents

* Contents derived from the Sydney, New South Wales,:John Libbey Publishing , 2000 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
Performing the Piano: Feminism in Five Movements, Ruth Barcan , Madeleine Fogarty , single work criticism (p. 3-18)
With Choices Like These, Who Needs Enemies? The Piano, Women's Articulations, Melodrama, and the Woman's Film, Neil Robinson , single work criticism (p. 19-43)
Female Sexuality, Creativity, and Desire in The Piano, Richard Allen , single work criticism

'In an informed analysis of the film, Richard Allen provides a comprehensive rationale for the "elective mutism" of Ada McGrath. He introduces the relation of muteness to the Gothic melodrama and explains how Jane Campion subversts and transforms the conventions of melodrama in her subject positioning of Ada.' (p.xii)

(p. 44-63)
The Sickness Unto Death : Dislocated Gothic in a Minor Key, Kirsten Moana Thompson , single work criticism

'Kirsten Moana Thompson, based at New York University, focuses on the soundtrack and how the narrative movement between the three central melodies emblematises the conflicts and struggles between different parts of Ada's interiority. Thompson investigates how the thematic important of these melodies functions as aural emblems evoking the physical and psychological confinements in which Ada is placed. Ada, who had not voice, produced a strong representation of her self trhough her piano. The audience engages with both the sight of the musician and the sound of the music through the melodies used on the film soundtrack and plated by Ada. Thompson builds on the idea that the music, sound and silence are riddled with allegorical resonances.' (p.xii)

(p. 64-82)
In the Body of The Piano, Felicity Coombs , single work criticism

'Felicity Coombs' essay [...] reads the narrative framing of Ada through a relationship formed by feminine and colonial representations imbued in the physical body of her piano. Here, the distinct prominence of the piano uncoversthe social positioning not only of women in the nineteenth century, but also its social role: how the piano functions in the context of this film "as a vehicle for the symbolic representation of the close link between women and the Victorian domestic culture". The essay also points to the sonoric connection of their bodies teasing out an aural world of interaction between Ada, the piano, and Baines.' (p.xii)

(p. 83-96)
Tempestuous Petticoats : Costume and Desire in The Piano, Stella Bruzzi , single work criticism

'Stealla Bruzzi writes of the complex sensual and sexual relationship of both costume and body in The Piano. Under Campion's direction, the camera subverts the scopophilic gaze from the male subject creating instead an interrelationship between an active female subject and the feminine sense of touch. Bruzzi evaluates the unconventional portrayal of the female heroine, Ada, as instating a female subjectivity.' (p.xii)

(p. 97-110)
The Return of the Repressed? : Whiteness, Femininity and Colonialism in The Piano, Lynda Dyson , single work criticism

'Lynda Dyson skilfully argues that the film is so preoccupied with upholding Ada's courgeois femininity and securing her fate in the colonial culture that it glosses over the history of Maori resistance. She locates her argument in the contemporary post-colonial anxieties over New Zealand's past, teasing out the primitivist discourse in the film that positions the Maori collectively outside of culture and history.' (p.xii)

(p. 111-121)
From Land Escape to Bodyscape : Images of the Land in The Piano, Laurence Simmons , single work criticism

'By exploring the landscape of the film, Simmons traces the history of New Zealand landscape, weaving "a network of textual invocations" in colonial art and literature traditions of both the European and colonial environment. Analysis of these images provides a departure point for an examination of themes of cultural nationalism in the earlier stages of his argument. He interrogates colonialism's discursive practices through moments of irony, the fractions and occlusions of its formal syntax, and the psychoanalytic paradigms of its discourses of the body in opposition to a patriarchal order. He argues that ultimately The Piano re-narrativises the strategies of previous attitudes to the land where only the post-contact European possesses the ability to enunciate and represent the "other".' (p.xii)

(p. 122-135)
A Land without a Past : Dreamtime and Nation in the Piano, Anna Neill , single work criticism

'Anna Neil argues that the film gives a voice to a national identity untroubled by Maori claims for sovereignty, as the Maori do not exist in the historical space of the colonising culture but rather are frozen in a sacred time prior to colonisation. She draws on other texts that attempt to write difference out of the modern myths of nation and to replace it with the notion of a shared relationship to the past, one that mourns the loss of an unrecoverable Maori history. In doing so, she exposes the selective version of post contact history that The Piano portrays.' (p.xii)

(p. 136-147)
Birth of a Nation? : From Utu to The Piano, Bridget Orr , single work criticism

'A common inclusion of the colonialist genre, the Western is placed alongside the Romance to explore the production and reception of The Piano as a revisionist reworking of the two genres -- just as current Hollowood films often rework established generic codes. Bridget Orr recalls the implication of film in the construction of national identities. Taking the role of such cinematic origin myths as Griffith's Birth of a Nation as a starting point, she compares several films to explore the parody of these generic conventions in The Piano. Central to this investigation is the apparent decentring of the (Pakeha) male pioneering subject.' (p.xiii)

(p. 148-162)
Cutting it Fine : Notes on The Piano in the Editing Room, Claire Corbett , single work criticism autobiography

'Claire Corbett offers a richly personal account of working as second assistant editor on The Piano. Her story unfolds both as a look behind the scenes at the unfamiliar world of the feature film cutting room, the technical processes and work practices, and also the rigid structures at play in the hierarchy of a film crew. Her paper reveals much about the nature of lower echelons of film work, as well as film lore -- well unerstood by crew members but rarely made explicit.' (p.xiii)

(p. 163-210)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

Last amended 11 Jul 2017 14:02:54
Subjects:
  • The Piano Jane Campion , 1993 single work film/TV
Newspapers:
    Powered by Trove
    X