To browse Academia. This article analyses John Hillcoat's film 'The Proposition' in relation to a spate of Australian films about violence and the post colonial encounter released in the early twenty-first century. Extending on Felicity Collins and Therese Davis' argument that these films can be read in terms of the ways they capture or refract aspects of contemporary race relations in Australia in a post-Mabo era, this article analyses how 'The Proposition' reconstructs the trauma of the Australian frontier; how from the perspective of the twenty-first century it worries over the meaning of violence on the Australian frontier.
It also explores what has become speakable and remains unspeakable in the public sphere about the history of the frontier encounter, especially in terms of family and race. The article argues that 'The Proposition and other early twenty-first century race relations films can be understood as post-reconciliation films, emerging in a period when Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians were rethinking ideas of belonging through a prism of post-enmity and forgiveness.
Drawing on the theme of violence and intimate relations in the film, this article argues that the challenges to the everyday formulation of Australian history proferred in 'The Proposition' reveal painful and powerful differences amongst Australian citizens' understanding of who belongs and how they came to belong to the nation. I suggest that by focusing on violence in terms of intimacy, relationships, family and kin, it is possible to see how this film presented an opportunity to begin to refigure ideas of belonging.
The Tracker and Red Hill are cinematic re-interpretations of Australia's colonial past, which they characterise by a sense of postcolonial longing and an expectation of intimacy. Both films are portals through which arguments about historical truth, subjective memory and contemporary realities are explored and tested.
In this article I argue that both these two films create the idea that the historical colonial space was a constant interplay of violence and beauty, and of hatred and friendship. As black and white characters negotiate their way in and around these seemingly polemical positions, viewers are also challenged to do the same.
