SlamDunk! Studios

Watchmen (1987) is a twelve-issue comic series, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. It depicts an alternate history of the world in which superheroes began emerging in the 1940s and 50s, and aided the United States government during the Cold War. The series itself is set during the 1980s, after the Watchmen have been outlawed and disbanded by a totalitarian American government, and the nation readies itself for nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Moore contrasts...

Lines 356–400 of The Prelude (Wordsworth, 1850) explore the notion of guilt in a young boy. Wordsworth recounts the finding of a little boat. He argues that it was Nature herself that lead him to the vessel. The environment has taken on a voice of its own, and the boy is letting himself be guided and swayed by the forest and the river. On the other hand, perhaps the boy is very much in control, and is using the still canvas of nature to pour out his own whims and desires. A nervou...

The Book of Thel (Blake, 1789) suggests that you cannot know life until you experience it for yourself. The maiden Thel is fascinated by what the future holds for her. She asks four different individuals, at different stages of maturity, for answers. However, none of their advice prepares her for the reality of life, with all of its torment and heartbreak. The sublime experience of the “hollow pit” cannot be understood at an intellectual or academic level. It had to b...

Horror films often portray images of intense violence and gore. This filmic technique is not unique to the genre of course, as action films, thrillers, and especially war dramas also depict scenes of violence. However, in those cases, the violence is contextual. The threat applies to the characters in the film, and works more as a plot device than a subject of examination. In horror films, the violence is universal. It reaches past the screen, and affects the audience members viscerally...

The term “cultural cringe” was first used in 1950, by the Melbourne critic Arthur Phillips, and refers to the ingrained feelings of inferiority felt by local intellectuals, writers and musicians. Phillips pointed out that the public widely assumed that anything produced by Australian artists was inherently deficient, when compared to British and European works. He argued that the only way local art professionals could gain public esteem was by travelling overseas and receivi...

Voyeurism in the “True Crime” Narrative

Charlie Bronson, “Britain’s most violent prisoner”, has spent 38 years beyond bars, most of it restricted to solitary confinement. Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2008 film is a dramatic recounting of Bronson’s life, and an example of the “true crime” narrative. True crime texts are generally inspired by media headlines, which reflect press and public obsessions with v...

Maralinga is a remote desert area of western South Australia. It is the home and hunting grounds of the Tjarutja people, who had lived in the region for thousands of years. In the 1950s, however, the Australian government granted the United Kingdom access to the area, so that their scientists could test nuclear devices and atomic weaponry. Fatefully, the name Maralinga translates into “Fields of Thunder”, which is exactly what the Tjarutja people witnessed on 27 September 19...

In 1992, the High Court of Australia rejected the notion of terra nullius, and legally recognised the occupation of Indigenous People’s before and during the process of British colonisation. It was the first time, in the eyes of the law, that Aboriginal people had been acknowledged as the traditional custodians of the land. The ruling introduced the concept of native title, which is the recognition that “some Indigenous people have rights and interests to their land th...

When Night of the Living Dead (Romero 1968) was first released, American society was in a state of cultural and racial conflict. It was fighting two wars – the war from within and the war from without. One was being fought amongst its own people, expressed through the racial clashes between black and white Americans. The other war was being fought in the far away jungles of Vietnam, against the faceless, nameless enemy dwelling in the shadows.

The...

Education is one of the most important elements of Indigenous self-determination and cultural integrity, and yet it is also the institution most in need of reform. Nationwide, Indigenous students achieve consistently poorer results than their non-Indigenous counterparts. The problems that Aboriginal students face at secondary and tertiary levels of study are systematic, as well as psychological. Indigenous education is plagued by systemic bias and structural violence, as well as a perva...

The aliens encountered in District 9 (Blomkamp 2009) are treated with the same level of distain and indifference usually reserved for refugees and ethnic minorities. While the majority of “alien invasion” films depict humanity’s initial contact with extra-terrestrial life, District 9 concerns itself with the aftermath of “first encounter”; the process and struggle of co-existence. The film is set in South Africa and bears significant similarit...

The Proposition (Hillcoat 2005) is bleak, brutal depiction of Australia’s colonial history, which challenges the romanticism of the bushranger legend. The film presents ideas of heroism, villainy and innocence with a degree of ambiguity (Stadler 68). This moral vagueness is manifested through the characters of the film.

The protagonists struggle to do right, but are tortured and oppressed by the forces of man and nature; meanwhile, the truly despicable cha...

The Early Australian Film Industry

Australia was quite prolific during the silent era of movies, along with America and France. It even produced the first full-length feature film, in the form of 1906’s The Story of the Kelly Gang (Tait). During the 1920s, however, there was a critical decline in audience attendance rates. Following World War I, there was simply a lack of interest in Australian stories, which was further aggravated by the banning of bushra...

Moral panic regarding the depiction of violence has dogged video game culture for almost thirty years. Scott’s (1995) study was unable to establish a correlation between playing violent video games, and increased aggressiveness. He found that the participants who were exposed to a number of violent games had their aggressiveness marginally increased, while those who played the moderately violent games actually decreased their aggressiveness. However, given that this study was cond...

Strength, bravery, boldness, and resilience – these are some of the characteristics that embody the hero of Homeric legend. This classical hero, almost always a man, is as much a symbol of masculinity as he is moral virtue. At first glance, Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist of The Hobbit (Tolkien 1937), could not be further from this portrait of gallantry. He is polite, nervous, and concerned chiefly with personal comfort and social perception. Yet, beneath this timid persona ...

  Sole closed his eyes, and listened to the crackle of flames… and felt their heat upon his skin… and smelt the burning of rotten oak… and the salt of the sea breeze.

  When he opened them again, the Merion fleet had disappeared over the horizon, and a wave of relief washed over him. Whatever else had been lost this day, they were safe; safe from the madness that had infected these lands. It was night-time now, and the full moon had risen, cold and ...

The breeze that warms the meadow is the wind that frosts the peaks;

The light that yields the garden is the heat that chars the trees;

The stream that feeds the prairie is the wave that rears the seas;

The pup that guards the shepherd is the wolf that wears the fleece.

The maid that loves the roses is the Queen that wields the thorn;

The babe that...

They’re a Weird Mob (Michael Powell 1966) presents a unique portrait of Australian society, through the eyes of an Italian immigrant. It takes place during the period of the White Australia policy, before the nation adopted multiculturalism. Thus, racial, religious, and geographic divisions are still quite pronounced, and a feeling of “us against them” pervades many of the characters. The film depicts Australia as insulated and resistant to the...

  Saria was wading through thesnow, her grey fur crusted with ice. Her breaths were deep and raspy, paintingthe air white in front of her snout. The great she-wolf limped towards theroots of a spider tree, and collapsed beneath its twisted shadow. The days weregrowing cold and brief. There was no warmth left in this place; no creatures tofeed on; no caves or hollows to escape the bitter winds. There were only theharsh white snows, that stretched eternal; and the cruel, brooding sky above...

King Lear (William Shakespeare 1623) traces a father’s decent into madness, after dividing his kingdom up between two of his three daughters, based on flattery. The King’s foolishness brings about tragic consequences for his family and people. Lear’s own insanity grows in parallel with the chaos and bloodshed that has befallen his realm, and many of the characters begin to ask themselves why the gods torment them so; for their sins of for “sport”. Th...