Filmic Sports History: Dawn Fraser, Swimming and Australian National Identity

Abstract

Among a multitude of social memory representations of Australian swimming legend Dawn Fraser are several films, including a 1979 biopic, Dawn! This paper considers this feature film alongside other examples of filmic history, most particularly a 1964 documentary, The Dawn Fraser Story. While documentaries are generally valued more highly by historians than movies because of the perceived similarity of endeavour between documentary makers and written historians, in this case the biopic is more compelling because its narratives resonate more strongly with Fraser's role in swimming history, her connection with major national stereotypes and her position as a living sporting icon. In particular, Dawn! encapsulates a dominant, yet mythical, feature of Australian identity – the larrikin – through representations of Fraser as an anti-authoritarian, working-class ‘battler’. Simultaneously, however, the movie disrupts this larrikin portrayal through its depiction of Fraser's sexuality, and in particular a lesbian relationship, a parallel but competing theme which is trumped by larrikinism not only in subsequent filmic histories of the swimmer but in wider cultural representations of Fraser.