Indigenous Mobility in Rabbit-Proof Fence and Australia: Landscape of Dominance, Space of Survival

Chi-Szu Chen

《小說與戲劇》 20卷2期 (2011/01) Pp. 39-64

並列摘要

After the publication of the 1997 national investigation report, Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Phillip Noyce's 2002 film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, and Baz Luhrmann's 2008 film, Australia, are two unusual examples of Australian directors' efforts in remapping the Australian cultural landscape with reference to the issues of ”Stolen Generations” and the denial of forgotten history. Through analyzing the representation of cultural landscape and the uneven distribution social spaces for different races in the two Australian films I will explicate the uneven development of mobility. I will focus on how politics of mobility and access is inscribed in the moral geographies and applied in creating space of survival in a colonial social sphere.
The escape narrative in Rabbit-Proof Fence the film and the book illustrates the unjust power geometry of mobility and the indigenous socio-spatial strategy of ”mobility as resistance.” As a cultural geographical device, the ”rabbit-proof fence” triggers postcolonial imagination on ”border.” For the colonial government, the moral geography of the fence is to control the racial Others in allotted spaces for further exploitation. The landscape framed by the fence signifies the power geometry of mobility. Noyce highlights how the half-caste indigenous children create space of survival in a landscape of dominance by depicting scenes and landscape with dialogic relation between people and the land. In contrast, the relation between human and the land in Australia is infused with conflict and sexual and racial dominance. The geopolitical imagination in Australia is conservative in that its representation of the white hero and heroine clings to the ideology of Australian ”bush myth” and Christian ”recovery narrative” whereas that of indigenous resistance is played down by romanticizing devices.
Luhrmann's cognitive mapping is regressive in that it re-territorizes the old colonial moral geography in a neocolonial landscape of dominance by recycling the European ”recovery narrative” and the Australian ”legend of bushman” with various Hollywood pastiches. Noyce's work is more progressive in that it deterritorizes the colonial grand narrative by evoking the lost history and inviting understanding for the indigenous resilient efforts in creating space of survival. Noyce remaps the cultural geography of the new Australian by closing-in observation of the dwelling-in-travelling experience of the ”Stolen Generations.”

並列關鍵字

moral geographies ； mobility ； Stolen Generations ； Rabbit-Proof Fence ； Australia

參考文獻

“Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Social Justic.” Australian Human Rights Commission. 29 Apr. 2010 .

Australia. Dir. Baz Luhrmann. DVD. 20th Century Fox, 2009.

“Australia 2008 (Film).” Wikipedia. 12 Oct. 2009 .

(1997).Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families.,未出版Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.

Calma, Tom. “Let the Healing Begin: Response to Government to the National Apology to the Stolen Generations.” Australian Human Rights Commission. 13 Feb. 2008. 14 Dec. 2009 .