‘Racial’ Referents: Images of European/Aboriginal Relations in Australian Feature Films, 1955–1984

Abstract

The article discusses fifteen feature films which re-present aspects of European/Aboriginal relations. Through an analysis of the narrative structures of the films, three basic themes are identified and outlined, each of which could be implicated in the processes through which racist ideology inheres in the encoding/decoding nexus. The concept of ‘racial’ register is utilised to signify the limits to these forms of representations. It is argued that at both the levels of the narrative theme (intertextual) and the syntagmatic (intratextual), the ‘racial’ register works to reconstruct ‘race’ as an overdetermined ideological notion which cements ideas of essential difference and fixes them to ideas of place. The article concludes with an examination of three films which lie partially outside the ‘racial’ register.