Towards an understanding of Australian genre cinema and entertainment : beyond the limitations of ‘Ozploitation’ discourse


Autoria(s): Ryan, Mark David
Data(s)

2010

Resumo

While Australian cinema has produced popular movie genres since the 1970s, including action/adventure, road movies, crime, and horror movies, genre cinema has occupied a precarious position within a subsidised national cinema and has been largely written out of film history. In recent years the documentary Not Quite Hollywood (2008) has brought Australia’s genre movie heritage from the 1970s and 1980s back to the attention of cinephiles, critics and cult audiences worldwide. Since its release, the term ‘Ozploitation’ has become synonymous with Australian genre movies. In the absence of discussion about genre cinema within film studies, Ozploitation (and ‘paracinema’ as a theoretical lens) has emerged as a critical framework to fill this void as a de facto approach to genre and a conceptual framework for understanding Australian genres movies. However, although the Ozploitation brand has been extremely successful in raising the awareness of local genre flicks, Ozploitation discourse poses problems for film studies, and its utility is limited for the study of Australian genre movies. This paper argues that Ozploitation limits analysis of genre movies to the narrow confines of exploitation or trash cinema and obscures more important discussion of how Australian cinema engages with popular movies genres, the idea of Australian filmmaking as entertainment, and the dynamics of commercial filmmaking practises more generally.

Formato

application/pdf

Identificador

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/32985/

Publicador

Routledge

Relação

http://eprints.qut.edu.au/32985/1/c32985.pdf

DOI:10.1080/10304312.2010.510597

Ryan, Mark David (2010) Towards an understanding of Australian genre cinema and entertainment : beyond the limitations of ‘Ozploitation’ discourse. Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 24(6), pp. 843-854.

Direitos

Copyright 2010 Routledge

Fonte

Creative Industries Faculty; Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation

Palavras-Chave #190201 Cinema Studies #190204 Film and Television #Ozploitation #movie genres #Australian cinema #paracinema
Tipo

Journal Article