Redeeming the bastard child: exploring legitimacy and contradiction in Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACTBaz Luhrmann's Australia is here considered as a lengthy meditation on the problem of national legitimacy, particularly in relation to the Stolen Generations narrative. Using psychoanalytic and structuralist frames of reference, the article analyses the film's storyline as an unfolding resolution of that problem, represented by the bastard (fatherless) status of Nullah. It also shows how the resolution occurs through the intercession of Lady Sarah Ashley and Drover as ‘godparents’, who represent Australia as a nation defined as a specific conjunction of land and law (sovereignty). The godparenting links Nullah to his maternal grandfather, King George, whose God-like status is invoked as part of the film's extensive use of Christian imagery, thus situating the redeemed and redeeming Nullah as a kind of national Messiah. The article concludes with a reflection on how Australia, as myth, is linked to the reality of Aboriginal affairs since the beginning of the assimilation era, the time in which the film is set, considering how the film symbolically portrays not only the post-1930s assimilation policy, but also the post-1970s self-determination era and the more recent turn towards neo-paternalist calls to balance Aboriginal ‘rights’ with ‘responsibilities’.