Convention and contradiction: Representations of women in Australian war films, 1914-1918

Australian Historical Studies

Volumn 29, Issue 113, 1999, Pages 215-230

  Reynaud, Daniel ^a  

^a AVONDALE COLLEGE OF HIGHER EDUCATION   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; AUDIOVISUAL EQUIPMENT; AUSTRALIA; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; HISTORY; LEGAL ASPECT; PERCEPTION; PROPAGANDA; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; VOLUNTARY WORKER; WAR; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

AUSTRALIA; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; MOTION PICTURES AS TOPIC; PROPAGANDA; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL PERCEPTION; STEREOTYPING; VOLUNTARY WORKERS; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS; WOMEN, WORKING; WORLD WAR I;

EID: 33846150716     PISSN: 1031461X     EISSN: 19405049     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10314619908596099     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. John M. MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion. 1880-1960, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984, pp. 2, 45-55, 68, 76;
2. Gary S. Messinger, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992, pp. 1-2.
3. Joan Beaumont, 'Australia's War', pp. 3-4
4. and Pam Maclean, "War and Australian Society', in' Joan Beaumont (ed.), Australia's War, 1914-1918, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1995, p. 64.
5. Peter Buitenhuis, The Great War of Words: Literature as Propaganda, 1914-18, and After, B.T. Batsford, London, 1989, pp. xvi-xvii, 8-12;
6. and Philip M. Taylor, What Did You Do in the War?, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1983, pp. 8-10, 20-1, 23, 35-6.
7. L.C. Jauncey, The Story of Conscription in Australia. Macmillan, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 162, 181, 196;
8. Kevin J. Fewster, Expression and Suppression: Aspects of Military Censorship in Australia during the Great War, PhD thesis. University of New South Wales, 1980, p. 330;
9. Ina Bertrand, Film Censorship in Australia, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1978, pp. 42-3.
10. Several scholars argue that the same self-censorship occurred during the 1970s and 1980s, under considerably less pressure than Hughes' government used during the war. Australian Film Commission funding for 'quality' projects led to the development of a so-called 'AFC genre'. See: Susan Dermody and Elizabeth Jacka, The Screening of Australia, vol. 2, Anatomy of a National Cinema, Currency Press, Sydney, 1988, p. 32;
11. Brian McFarlane, Australian Cinema, 1970-1985, Heinemann, Melbourne, 1987, pp. 25-6.
12. Marilyn Lake and Joy Damousi, 'Introduction: Warfare, History and Gender', in Joy Damousi and Marilyn Lake (eds). Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1995, p. 3.
13. R.W. Connell, Masculinities, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1985, pp. 21-7;
14. Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War, Basic Books, New York, 1987, pp. xii-xiii, 4;
15. and 'Introduction', in Margaret Higonnet, Jane Jenson, Sonya Michel and Margaret Weitz (eds). Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1987, p. 1.
16. and Joy Damousi, 'Marching to Different Drums', in Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans (eds). Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Sydney, 1992, pp. 351, 356.
17. See, for example: Marilyn Lake, 'The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the Masculinist Context', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 22, no. 86, April, 1986, pp. 116-31;
18. and Annabel Cooper, Textual Territories: Gendered Cultural Politics and Australian Representations of the War of 1914-1918', Australian Historical Studies, vol. 25, no. 100, April 1993, pp. 403-21.
19. Antonia Laut, Blackout: Reinventing Women for Wartime British Cinema, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1991, pp. 10-11.
20. and Andrew Pike and Ross Cooper, Australian Film, 1900-1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production, Oxford University Press in association with the Australian Film Institute, Melbourne, 1980, p. 64.
21. Theatre, 1 January 1916, p. 43.
22. Argus. 21 February 1916.
23. Sunday Times, 30 January 1916;
24. Bulletin, 24 February 1916.
25. Peter Cochrane, Simpson and the Donkey: The Making of a Legend, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 4-9.
26. and Theatre. 1 May 1916, 1 July 1916.
27. Australian Variety, 4 October 1916;
28. Graham Shirley and Brian Adams, Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, p. 47;
29. and Beaumont, 'The Politics of a Divided Society', pp. 39, 43-59.
30. Australian Variety, 7 February 1917, 11 April 1917;
31. and Footlighters, 24 May 1917.
32. Theatre, 2 July 1917.
33. Australian Variety, 8 January 1918.
34. Sunday Times, 10 March 1918;
35. and Sun, 10 March 1918.
36. Judith Smart, 'Feminists, Labour Women and Venereal Disease in Early Twentieth-Century Melbourne', Australian Feminist Studies, no. 15, Autumn 1992, pp. 30-1.
37. John Newton and Stefano Manfredi, 'Gottolengo to Bonegilla: From an Italian Childhood to an Australian Restaurant', Convivium, vol. 2, no. 1, 1994, pp. 62-3.
38. Katrina Strickland, 'Migrant's First Days Left a Bitter Taste', Weekend Australian, 27-28 September 1997.
39. Michael Symons, One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia, Duck Press, Adelaide, 1982, p. 155.
40. Beverley Kingston, 'Are We What We Eat?', in David Headon, Joy Hooton and Donald Home (eds). The Abundant Culture: Meaning and Significance in Everyday Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994, pp. 124-5.
41. Barbara Santich, Looking for Flavour, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 1996, p. 28.
42. Michael Symons, The Shared Table: Ideas for an Australian Cuisine, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1993, pp. 9, 236.
43. Symons, The Shared Table, pp. 2-4;
44. See, for example: Steve Bedwell, Suburban; Icons: A Celebration of the Everyday, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Sydney, 1992;
45. Sublurbia, Adelaide Festival Fringe, Adelaide, 1996.
46. See Terry Durack, 'Filled to the Gills', Sydney Morning Herald, 'Good Living' section, 1 October 1996.
47. Angels on horseback are 'party savouries' consisting of oysters wrapped in bacon and grilled. See Helen M. Cox, The Hostess Cook Book (1952)
48. Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1963, p. 182. The recipe for chocolate biscuit cake-alternate layers of sweet biscuits and chocolate filling-was used to promote the sale of Copha, a form of shortening.
49. See Australian Women's Weekly, 22 August 1951, p. 48.
50. Jennifer Craik, 'The Making of the Mother: The Role of the Kitchen in the Home', in Graham Allan and Graham Crow (eds). Home and Family: Creating the Domestic Space, Macmillan, London, 1989, pp. 54-8.
51. Cherry Ripe, Goodbye Culinary Cringe, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1993, pp. 7-11, 155-6;
52. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (1957), Paladin, London, 1973, pp. 85-7.
53. Rosalind Coward, Female Desires: How They Are Sought, Bought and Packaged, Grove Press, New York, 1985, p. 103.
54. Marion Halligan, Eat My Words, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1990, p. 17.
55. For a discussion of 'retro-style' in fashion, see Angela McRobbie, Postmodernism and Popular Culture, Routledge, London, 1994, pp. 135-54;
56. for discussion of 'the past' commodified for the tourist industry, see Tony Bennett, 'The Shape of the Past', in Graeme Turner (ed.). Nation, Culture, Text: Australian Cultural and Media Studies, Routledge, London, 1993, pp. 82-8.
57. Helen Townsend, The Baby Boomers' Cookbook, Simon & Schuster, Sydney, 1991, cover.
58. John Newton, Wogfood: An Oral History with Recipes, Random House, Sydney, 1996, p. 5. Other recent Australian publications that trace connections of migration, food and memory, while incorporating recipes, include Julie Capaldo, Love Takes You Home: A Novel in Thirteen Delicious Meals, Mandarin, Melbourne, 1995;
59. and Emma Ciccotosto and Michal Bosworth, Emma: A Recipe for Life, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Fremantle, 1995.
60. Deborah Lupton, Food, the Body and the Self, Sage Publications, London, 1996, pp. 49-50.
61. Helen Townsend, Baby Boomers: Crowing Up in Australia in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, Simon & Schuster, Sydney, 1988.
62. Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson, 'Introduction', in Raphael Samuel and Paul Thompson (eds), The Myths We Live By, Routledge, London, 1990, p. 16.
63. Symons, One Continuous Picnic, p. 176.
64. Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 157-73.
65. " Townsend, The Baby Boomers' Cookbook, pp. 1-5.
66. Hugh Mackay, Reinventing Australia: The Mind and Mood of Australia in the 90s, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1993, pp. 209-10.
67. Paul Kelly, The End of Certainty: Power, Politics and Business in Australia, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994, pp. viii-ix.
68. Stephanie Alexander, Recipes My Mother Gave Me, Viking, Melbourne, 1997, pp. 128, 130.
69. Townsend, The Baby Boomers' Cookbook, p. 56.
70. Michael Bittman and Jocelyn Pixley, The Double Life of the Family: Myth, Hope and Experience, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994, p. 113.
71. See Deirdre Macken, The Death of the Kitchen', Sydney Morning Herald, 7 September 1996;
72. Kate Legge, The Kitchen Sinks', Weekend Australian, 'Weekend Review', 31 May - 1 June 1997, p. 5;
73. Michelle Gunn, The Death of the Family', Australian, 10 September 1997.
74. Ann Harding and Martin Robinson, Forecasting the Characteristics of Consumers in 2010, National Centre for Economic Modelling, University of Canberra, Canberra, 1998, pp. 25, 28-9.
75. For a more detailed discussion of these memories, see Jean Duruz, ;Laminex Dreams: Women, Suburban Comfort and the Negotiation of Meaning', Meanjin, vol. 53, no. 1, 1994, pp. 104-5;
76. Jean Duruz, 'Suburban Houses Revisited', in Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (eds). Memory and History in Twentieth-Century Australia, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 178-83.
77. Interview 2 with Helen Edwards, p. 54.
78. Interview 4 with Helen Edwards, p. 11.
79. See also Belk's summary of literature on gifts and gift-giving, ranging from the classic work of Malinowski (Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1922)
80. and Mauss (The Gift: Form and Functions in Archaic Societies, 1925)
81. to recent work by McGrath, Sherry and Levy ('Giving Voice to the Gift: The Use of Projective Techniques to Recover Lost Meanings', Journal of Consumer Psychology, vol. 2, no. 2, 1993, pp. 171-92), which examines the frustrating and hostile elements of giving and receiving.
82. Russell W. Belk, 'Studies in the New Consumer Behaviour', in Daniel Miller (ed.), Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies, Routledge, London, 1996, p. 69.
83. For example, see a recent series of advertisements, sponsored by the Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation, which asserts: 'Lamb. The Multicultural Meal'. Individual advertisements are titled as follows: 'The Indian Women's Weekly', 'The Thai Women's Weekly', The Italian Women's Weekly', and include, respectively, recipes for Tandoori Easy Carve Leg, Thai Lime and Chilli Cutlets, Italian Round Roast. Australian Women's Weekly, November 1997, pp. 132-5.
84. In the early 1990s at Cafe Salsa, an Italian restaurant at West Beach in Adelaide, I was told that the location of the restaurant had been chosen with a middle-class Anglo-Australian clientele in mind. It was presumed that Italians would not patronise the restaurant as 'they can eat this sort of food at home'. For a discussion of 'authenticity' in regard to restaurants and 'ethnic food', see Ghassan Hage, 'At Home in the Entrails of the West: Multiculturalism, "Ethnic Food" and Migrant Home Building', in Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley Johnson, Julie Langsworth and Michael Symonds (eds), Home/World: Space, Community and Marginality in Sydney's West, Pluto Press, Sydney, 1997, pp. 134-8.
85. Ghassan Hage, 'Locating Multiculturalism's Other: A Critique of Practical Tolerance', New Formations, vol. 4, no. 24, 1994, p. 19.
86. Ien Ang, 'The Curse of the Smile: Ambivalence and the "Asian" Woman in Australian Multiculturalism', Feminist Review, no. 52, Spring 1996, p. 41.