The girl with the bush knife: women, adventure and the tropics in Age of Consent and Nim's Island

Craven, Allison, and Mann, Christopher (2010) The girl with the bush knife: women, adventure and the tropics in Age of Consent and Nim's Island. Etropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics, 9. pp. 1-11.

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Abstract

The paper concerns the distinction of the heroines, Cora in Age of Consent(dir. Michael Powell 1969)and Nim of Nim's Island (d. Mark Levin and Jennifer Flackett, 2008), from the more typical ‘bush women’ of Australian cinema and literature. The figure of the title, the 'girl with the bush knife', refers to the way both heroines adapt to their respective tropical environments as Cora hunts on the Barrier Reef, and Nim is a child adventurer on an island. Their appearances in films 40 years apart are as much the object of inquiry as the femininities they perform, in that these films also represent minor milestones in Australian cinema at points at which the film industry has undergone change. The contexts of these changes are signified by the use of tropical locations and settings, and attention is drawn therefore to the way these female characters are accompanied by the spectacle of the tropical place in its difference from the more mythologised bush and desert landscapes of Australian cinema.

Item ID: 16801
Item Type: Article (Research - C1)
ISSN: 1448-2940
Keywords: cinema, tropics
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Date Deposited: 11 May 2011 04:20
FoR Codes: 19 STUDIES IN CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 1902 Film, Television and Digital Media > 190201 Cinema Studies @ 85%
20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2005 Literary Studies > 200502 Australian Literature (excl Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Literature) @ 5%
20 LANGUAGE, COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE > 2005 Literary Studies > 200599 Literary Studies not elsewhere classified @ 10%
SEO Codes: 95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9502 Communication > 950205 Visual Communication @ 50%
95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9502 Communication > 950204 The Media @ 50%
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