Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Uncanny Parallels : Jennifer Kent’s the Nightingale, Violence, and the Vandemonian Past
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Set in mid-1820s Van Diemen’s Land, The Nightingale depicts a dark and disturbing Tasmanian past populated with redcoats, convicts, Aboriginal people, and a few free settlers. Controversial scenes include the repeated rape of a young female convict, the murders of her husband and infant, and the rape and murder of an Aboriginal woman. Uncanny parallels can be drawn between the on-screen experiences of the white female lead, and the violence visited on the bodies of Tasmanian colonial woman Elizabeth Tibbs, her husband, and infant in 1826. After situating the film within its historical context, this paper provides a mimetic reading through elaborating these parallels. It interrogates key points of divergence between these fictional and historical accounts of women’s lives to explore what they reveal about gender, class, race, violence, and justice in colonial Van Diemen’s Land and its depiction in twenty-first century Australia.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Studies in Australasian Cinema vol. 14 no. 1 2020 20904158 2020 periodical issue 'The most powerful films are frequently divisive and often stay with you, making an impression that requires a response. After my first viewing of Jennifer Kent's (2019) film The Nightingale, I felt heavy and immobilised. I felt the weight of the film in my body, and at the same time was unsure as to whether to be angry at the violence or to see it as an absolute diegetic necessity; to question the spectacle of both victimhood and agency, or to loudly applaud a different representational perspective of Australian/Tasmanian history, colonial violence, space, gender and indigeneity. In truth, the film invites all of these reactions and more, as evidenced by the contributions featured in this special issue of Studies in Australasian Cinema, guest edited by Michelle Arrow and James Findlay. Multiple threads of temporality, identities, bodies, emotion, language, critique, memory, sound and location are, like the film, interwoven in a series of passionate and provocative responses, from Arrow and Findlay's vital ‘Critical Introduction’ to rigorous articles from Joanne Faulkner, Kristyn Hamer, Catriona Elder, James Findlay, and the inclusion of Rebe Taylor's remarkable conversation with Jim Everett, the film's associate producer and Aboriginal consultant, taken from the symposium ‘The Nightingale: Gender, Race and Troubled Histories on Screen’ held at the University of Technology, Sydney in December 2019.' (Editorial introduction) 2020 pg. 35-46
Last amended 21 Dec 2020 12:30:06
35-46 Uncanny Parallels : Jennifer Kent’s the Nightingale, Violence, and the Vandemonian Pastsmall AustLit logo Studies in Australasian Cinema
Subjects:
  • Van Diemen's Land (1803-1856), Tasmania,
  • Tasmania,
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