ABSTRACT Public reactions to recent tragic events in Aotearoa/New Zealand (the Tom Phillips case), a narrative that links closely to Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016), suggest an ironic similarity between ‘camping’ in Nature, ‘camping’ as ironic, gender-confusing artifice, and the campiness of mass culture and variety entertainment. Narratives about ‘Kiwi blokes going bush’ grip the public imagination but can also be read in terms of the campness/marginality of New Zealand settler (Pākehā) masculinity, a dominant local identity which grew paradoxically out of its historic subaltern role within the British Empire. The question remains as to how indigenous Māori filmmaker Taika Waititi interprets these narratives in his hugely popular film, to what degree its campness subverts or confirms local audience expectations, and the position of camp in an increasingly polarised contemporary cultural environment (of which the Phillips case is symptomatic).

ABSTRACT This article examines The Proposition (2005), directed by John Hillcoat and written by Nick Cave, as a spectral Western that reanimates rather than resolves the colonial foundations of the settler state. It argues that the film's formal and thematic architecture—its recursive temporality, oppressive landscape, and unsettling sound design—renders history not as a closed chapter but as an ongoing wound. Positioned within the cultural aftershocks of the Mabo (1992) and Wik (1996) decisions, as well as the delayed apology to the Stolen Generations, the film does not offer reconciliation but stages a cinematic haunting. Through its gothic landscapes, failed colonial masculinities, and spectral Aboriginal presences, the film enacts what Jacques Derrida terms “hauntology”: a recursive temporality in which violence does not pass but persists. Developing the concept of the spectral pause, a cinematic stalling of narrative and meaning, this article contends that The Proposition subverts Western genre conventions by suspending closure. Aboriginal figures are not narrativized but instead haunt the frame, asserting sovereignty through silence, opacity, and refusal. The film is positioned as a key text in the genre's decomposition, where the Western does not end but unravels into dread, ambiguity, and recursion.

ABSTRACT Australian settings in video games form an international dialogue. In a global medium where a game's content does not necessarily reflect its place of production, games with Australian settings have often originated from other countries. This article examines ways that video games have used Australian signifiers, particularly native animals, in settings that can be read as fantasy versions of Australia. The article expands discourse about representations of Australia by demonstrating how these worlds both exemplify games' distinctiveness and are part of a cultural landscape that includes film and television. The games Kangaroo (Sun Electronics, 1982, Japan) and Crash Bandicoot (Naughty Dog, 1996–, USA) situate Australian animals in settings that are presented as exotic for international audiences. Yet game worlds can also invoke legacies of inequities such as colonisation. In this context, Australian games have a capacity to challenge foreign perspectives and to expand ways of imagining Australia. Ty the Tasmanian Tiger (Krome Studios, 2002–) achieved international success by emphasising Australian elements and fuelled a diversification of dialogue among local developers. Australian games' capacity to invent new ways of using local settings is exemplified by fantasy versions of Australia in Innchanted (DragonBear Studios, 2023) and Webbed (Sbug Games, 2021).

ABSTRACT This article explores how humour in television comedy is used to satirise patriarchal and organisational power structures. The research combines feminist critique with Foucault’s theories of power to examine the moral viewpoints from which two comedy screenwriting academics target the objects of satire in their comedy television series, Fighting Fit (Cake) and The MILF Next Door (Leder). Cake establishes an anti-neoliberal moral viewpoint as the critical lens through which to satirise bureaucratic workplaces. Referencing narrative comedies such as The Office (2001–2003) and Utopia (2014–2024), her analysis highlights how Fighting Fit subverts corporate power structures by situating them within the context of a gym. Leder’s discussion of The MILF Next Door uses a feminist perspective, drawing upon Love (2016–2018) and Veep (2012–2019) to examine how transgressive female protagonists publicly and personally resist patriarchal power. By locating their series in relatable, suburban settings, the writers of Fighting Fit and The MILF Next Door, extend the reach of satire that provokes an ideological critique to a broader audience. The authors’ analysis demonstrates how satire is operationalised as a potent tool for challenging entrenched power structures. Their use of satirical feminist moral viewpoints enables a powerful form of creative resistance.

ABSTRACT A modicum of romantic comedies (or romcoms) have been produced within Australian cinema, but few filmmakers and academic scholars have embraced the genre. However, the recent release in Australia of a number of successful romantic comedies points to a possible re-emergence. This paper deploys the theoretical frame developed by Kathleen Rowe in ‘Comedy, Melodrama and Gender: Theorizing the Genres of Laughter’ (1994) to consider whether the representations of gender and identity in the Australian films Top End Wedding (Blair 2019), Love is in the Air (Powers 2023) and the US film Anyone But You (Gluck 2023) have generated ‘fresh angles’ that signal shifts in the genre and point to possible new directions for the Australian romantic comedy.

ABSTRACT This paper analyses Australian documentaries via Homi Bhabha’s Third Space, an idea that allows for a fruitful examination of the migrant experience and subsequent cultural exchange. Textual analysis of two recent films entitled Welcome to Yiddishland [Horin, Ros, director. Welcome to Yiddishland. Racing Pulse Productions, 2024] and Welcome to Babel [Bradley, James, director. “Welcome to Babel.” Bonsai Films, 2024a] reveal that journey metaphors, polyphonic narratives and artistic practice as a therapeutic tool are vital screen methods that filmmakers may deploy in addressing themes of displacement and cultural identity. Both films forge an unbounded space of overlapping cultures in which to discover new identities and have the power to bring about healing, resilience and shifts in power imbalances in cross-cultural contexts. Ultimately, the author argues for greater understanding of the way documentarians approach narratives of migration in Australia by comparing different approaches to migration narratives and emphasises the value of artistic expression in describing and portraying nuanced experiences of migration.

ABSTRACT The television writers’ room is a major site of screen production that brings writers together for funded periods of development for series ideas with potential, and the script development processes for series in production. Maloney and Burne have described Australian television writers’ rooms as, ‘a place where story developers, script editors, script writers and script producers gather to create stories, devise character arcs and plot episodes’ [2021, So Much Drama, So Little Time: Writers’ Rooms in Australian Television Drama Production.” In Script Development. Critical Approaches, Creative Practices, International Perspectives, edited by Craig Batty and Stayci Taylor, 185–204. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan]. Television production in Australia, and many other countries, has a history of creative hierarchies and script departments, isolated from the rest of production, with highly systemised creative processes [Maloney and Burne 2021] [O’Meara 2022, “Scriptwriting on the Inside: The Streamlined System of Prisoner and the Collaborative Community of Wentworth.” In TV Transformations and Transgressive Women: From Prisoner: Cell Block H to Wentworth, edited by Radha O’Meara, Tessa Dwyer, Stayci Taylor, and Craig Batty, 63–80. London: Peter Lang]. This article considers Australia’s evolving writers’ room dynamics and hierarchies by way of an observational study of a ‘training’ writers’ room. The ‘trainees’, a new generation of writers, were more diverse than the typical writers’ room demographic. The point of the simulation was to educate the 10 new writers in the norms of behaviour expected in writers’ rooms and the values of ‘good’ television storytelling. A senior writer in Australian television drama led the writers in developing a hypothetical second series of an existing drama. The room was run according to industry standards, with some exceptions. The room explicitly practised inclusivity, and as a training exercise, common roles, expectations and values – often tacitly accepted in professional settings – were explicitly questioned and discussed. One of the authors, Radha O’Meara, participated in the room. From this fieldwork, the authors are able to make a study of the possibilities for disrupting power dynamics and unproductive hierarchies, building on other observational studies of television production [Born 2005; Hartzheim 2024. “Crafting Consensus in Anime’s Writer’s Room: Uchiawase as Script Development.” Mechademia 16 (2): 75–98; Phalen and Osellame 2012. “Writing Hollywood: Rooms with a Point of View.” Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 56 (1): 3–20; Redvall 2013. Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan].

ABSTRACT Autofictional cinema is broadly understood as a genre of filmmaking that unsettles the generic limits of documentary and fiction film by using the director as subject [Forné and López-Gay 2022. “Autofiction and Film: Archival Practices in Postmillennial Documentary Cinema in Argentina and Spain.” In The Autofictional: Approaches, Affordances, Forms, edited by Alexandra Effe, and Hannie Lawlor, 1–18. London: Palgrave Macmillan]. This article examines how Ted Wilson’s debut Australian feature film, Under the Cover of Cloud (2018) further complicates autofictional cinema with its use of storytelling as a collective activity to present a world that is part ambiguous, part unashamedly utopian, in which uncertainty co-exists with goodwill, and individual pursuits fold into collective pleasures.

ABSTRACT Globalization, the internationalizing of the Australian screen industry, is having a strong, negative impact on the production of culturally specific stories. Recently, there has been push-back against this and calls for more ambitious measures to protect and promote Australian content. Lotz and Potter have proposed a ‘place-based’ culture test for projects funded by Australian taxpayers. (Lotz, Amanda, and Anna Potter. 2022. ‘Effective Cultural Policy in the 21st Century: Challenges and Strategies from Australian Television.’ International Journal of Cultural Policy 28 (6): 684–696). This paper considers the efficacy of a ‘place-based’ test in relation to two feature films, Frank and Frank (2023) by Adam Morris and The Rooster (2023) by Mark Leonard Winter. The case studies confirm Lotz and Potter's contention that a ‘place-based’ test will help ensure the production of culturally specific stories. However, the test does not address the question of the form in which the stories are told which also conveys deep cultural values.