Australian Landscape and its Effects in Media. Examples of Works by David Malouf and Stephan Elliot’s Priscilla

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Theoretical Approach to the Representation of Landscape given in Australian Literature

3. Theoretical Approach to the Representation of Landscape given in an Australian Film

4. The Presentation of Landscape Across Media

5. Conclusion

6. Works Cited

1. Introduction

Different media can present and narrate landscapes, and these presentations evoke different reactions. There are several distinctions between the visual and linguistic demonstration of landscape that can be observed and must be considered when analysing either a written description or a pictorial representation, hence the focus is laid on differences between films and novels.

A novel and a film are two separate media which utilise different methods to present landscapes. A written text leaves more room for personal interpretations, whereas a film represents really existing landscapes. The viewer has to accept the actuality of the presented pictures, which is why films limit own interpretations compared to novels. This differentiation is noticeable in the provoked feelings for the reader, respectively viewer. Examples are the short-story collections Dream Stuff (2000) and Complete Stories (2007) by David Malouf and Stephan Elliot’s film Priscilla (1994). The film is about three drag queens crossing the Australian Outback on their road trip from Sydney to Alice Springs. Malouf’s short stories deal with people of different age who experience landscape in different ways due to distinct events and circumstances. Both, the short stories and the film, present the landscape of Australia, but in totally different ways because of distinct techniques. A director makes use of varying camera angles, focuses and colours which lead to the feeling of being within the scene for the viewer. An author discloses the protagonists’ thoughts and feelings; consequently, the reader is able to empathise with them.

At last, the outcomes of the first two parts are related to each other. Comparing the presented landscapes in novels and films directly illustrates different methods of representation. For example, feelings like loneliness or isolation are depicted differently in these two media. In addition, this analysis also examines the level of detailed depiction of landscape, showing that the representation of landscapes in novels is more detailed compared to the represented landscapes in films.

2. Theoretical Approach to the Representation of Landscape given in Australian Literature

On the basis of literary works by David Malouf, this part deals with ways landscape is represented in Australian literature. An analysis of his short stories demonstrates how he describes landscape and therewith underlines the theoretical approach to the representation of landscape by several different theorists.

First of all it is important to know that texts or any other type of written work is called ‘narrative’. Narrative consists of two parts, of which the first one influences the second. The first part consists of the “textual act of representation” (Ryan 9), which means that a text has a specific relevance or significance, although it is not obvious how this meaning is transmitted (Ryan 9). The second part is the “mental image” (Ryan 9). This part is a cognitive construction “by the interpreter [responding] to the text” (Ryan 9), whereby different emotions or senses are aroused. Consequently, the “cognitive construct” of one “textual act of representation” normally differs between several interpreters; “the story encoded in the text and the story decoded by the reader can never be extracted from the brain and laid side by side for comparison (Ryan 10)”. Hence, there are always varying interpretations, depending on own experience. Everyone experiences landscape in a different and personal way. This is expressed in the short story Jacko’s Reach by David Malouf, which is about a place called Jacko’s. The narrator announces “that’s Jacko’s for you” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 95) to the reader, which emphasises the concept of own experiences. With regards to landscapes these experiences can be made during a visit to another country or place, where tourists experience people – for example, the girl Valmay Mitchell, because “[e]very fellow […] knows Valmay’s name” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 97) at Jacko’s due to the fact that she is connected to this specific landscape –, cultures, animals and plants. All of these aspects contribute to the composite of landscape. The explained principle of narrative is similar to the hermeneutic circle: the whole cannot be understood without the single and vice versa (Danner 36). This is applicable to landscape in general, because the whole of landscape consists of single things in it.

The first example about the representation of landscape in Australian literature is to be found in David Malouf’s short story Closer. In this story the distance and the differences between life in rural suburbs and life in a metropolis like Sydney are depicted. The grandfather of the narrator calls the big city “Sodom” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 26), whereby the reader is asked to connect Sydney with a presentation of a place given in the Old Testament (Mo 10,19). Generally, ‘Sodom’ stands for “an extremely wicked and corrupt place” (OED). The grandfather believes that the city has turned his eldest child Charles into a different person, who “has practiced abominations” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 26): Sodom “infected [him] by the plague” of homosexuality, the reason why “he is banished” and separated from the family (Malouf, Dream Stuff 26). This separation is emphasised by a “home-paddock fence” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 26), which composes a sense of isolation and loneliness for Uncle Charles. In contrast, the rest of the family lives “a healthy life” on a farm, “a very pleasant part of the country” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 27), which demonstrates the main difference between the two landscapes.

The farming area is defined by the already mentioned fence, consequently the family believes that everything placed outside of their area is different. “Narrative in general is […] concerned with marking out boundaries and bridging them, creating a complex network of differentiation and combination” (Brosch 280). This is illustrated with the detachment of the farm and the city on the one hand, and with Uncle Charles’s attempt to be included in the family again on the other hand. Additionally, these two converse sections of land symbolise the different opinions people have about sexuality. However, it also reveals the distance between people: on one side of the fence they are living in a progressing world and have “hands-free phone[s]” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 27) in their cars and on the other side of the fence people are still living in a rural world on farms. Both observations evoke a feeling of foreignness to each other.

Not only the fence, but also the described approach of Uncle Charles to the farm illustrates the sprawling distance this particular landscape in Australia entails. His approach is accompanied by several phone calls because “he likes to call and announce his progress” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 27), explaining where he is located at that moment. At his first call “[he is] approaching Bulahdelah” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 27), with the second call he is at “Wauchope” (Malouf, Dream Stuff 27). Although it is unknown where Amy and her family live, and readers might also not know where exactly the two addressed places are, they can imagine how Uncle Charles is approaching his family’s farm. Here it is important to add that the reader of the novel “is engaging with space as the dimension of [distance and] difference [for example, because Uncle Charles is different to his family due to his homosexuality]” (Hones 247). Consequently, the reader “is spatially connected not only to a story [and] a text, but also to a narrator [and] an author […]” (Hones 247). This quote can be explained with the help of words by Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan, who claimed that “it is humans that decide how to represent things [and landscape], and not the things themselves” (Barnes et al. 2). Interpretations are influenced by the already existing, thus “new worlds are made out of old texts, and old worlds are the basis of new texts” (Barnes et al. 3). Here, a cross reference could be Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author. His essay explains that the absence of an author transforms a text and a “book itself is only a tissue of signs [and already existing text]” (Barthes 5). Though, Barthes would claim that readers a spatially less connected to an author.

Furthermore, since a text is an entity of language it can define “[landscapes], objects and properties precisely […]” (Ryan 10). An example for a precise description of landscape is David Malouf’s short story The Village of Lagoons in the collection Complete Stories. At the beginning of the story, the narrator details a landscape. Here, the reader does not know what the sixteen-year-old protagonist addresses with the words “I knew it was here […]” (Malouf, Complete Stories 3). However, by reading the first paragraph of the story it is already possible to imagine what the landscape in the boy’s surroundings looks like, due to the detailed description:

Just five hours south off a good dirt highway, it is where all the river systems in our quarter of the state have their rising: the big, rain-swollen streams that begin in a thousand threadlike runnels and fall in the rainforests of Great Divide, then […] flow […] muddy-watered to the coast; the […] watercourses that make their way inland across plains stacked with anthills, and run north-west and north to the Channel Country, where they break up and lose themselves in the mudflats and mangrove swamps of the Gulf (Malouf, Complete Stories 3).

The BOMB Magazine presented an interview with David Malouf in 2007 which explained that the author had been to the referred landscape of The Village of Lagoons (Tóibín). Because he is able to describe the really existing landscape in detail readers can find themselves as part of the scene and are able to witness the events whereby specific emotions are induced.

In general, the meaning of a narrative can differ depending on the location where it is read (Hones 428). Due to the fact that one reader pays more attention to one thing than another it is a logical conclusion that different interpretations exist of one and the same text. If a person writes a text about landscape the focus is laid on his or her interests and view on the landscape (Barnes et al. 3), consequently “writing about worlds reveals as much about ourselves as it does about the worlds represented” (Barnes et al. 3).

3. Theoretical Approach to the Representation of Landscape given in an Australian Film

Landscape can also be illustrated with the help of pictures, for example in a film. Here the director can make use of different camera angles, different settings of light and other equipment, as well as of actually existing places or landscapes and actors.

Films or pictures can present landscape in its expanse, which is shown in the film Priscilla (Queen of the Desert). This film is about three drag queens being on a road trip from Sydney to Alice Springs. When the protagonists Mitzi, Bernadette and Felicia fulfil their desire to climb Kings Canyon while wearing their costumes, the broad landscape is presented (01:28:29). During their walk up the camera angle changes from shallow focus to deep focus: firstly, the focus is laid on the three men’s content faces (01:29:30) who approached the peak of the rock. Here, the humans’ body language and facial expressions are clearly visible. Secondly, the camera lens gets shorter, the focus erases from the humans. The zoom-in still presents the protagonists standing on the rock, but within the wide nature of the Outback (01:29:54). With this change in camera angle the viewer recognises the ample landscape. The zoom-shot is used to prepare the viewer for the end of the film by taking away the focus on the protagonists and therewith creating sense of place: freedom and ease, which is emphasised through to the lift of their arms (01:29:57); this is visible, although the focus is broader. However, this movement of the protagonists could also symbolise alleviation or even loneliness. A similar scene appears at the beginning of the film, when the three drag queens are standing at the start of the Outback, in front of a straight street, far and wide nothing around them (00:15:34). This camera angle is more probable used to evoke a sense of loneliness. This could not only stand for them being lonely in the landscape, but moreover it can symbolise their loneliness in society, because trans- and homosexuality is not accepted in their society. However, this uncertainty of their feelings demonstrates films’ and pictures’ lack of detailing (Ryan 10). Additionally, through pictorial presentations and visual properties, the landscapes, their dimensions and people or things in the landscape can be presented wrongly with regards to the proportion (Ryan 10). Hence, they do not only exhibit a lack of detailing, but also a “lack of propositional ability” (Ryan 10).

Furthermore, by different camera angles, films are able to depict the differences in landscape, for example between urban and rural areas. When Mitzi, Bernadette and Felicia are at the beginning of their road trip they first of all have to leave the city. They leave skyscrapers and houses behind them until they are surrounded by trees (00:10:58). At the time the vehicle ‘Priscilla’ follows a street up a hill the camera exhibits the city in the far distance, filmed with the houses only blurred and very small. This angle demonstrates both at once, the natural landscape and the rural landscape, and with it creates space. Here, the ‘mise-en-scène’ (Prunes, 2 ‘Mise-en-scene’) is perfectly separated into foreground, middle ground, and background: the foreground presents the virgin nature, in the middle ground ‘Priscilla’ is visible, and the background is constituted by means of skyscrapers. This camera angle is connected to the term ‘deep space’ (Prunes, 3 ‘Cinematography’), which is “[utilised] when significant elements of an image are positioned both near to and distant from the camera” (Prunes, 2 ‘Mise-en-scene’), like the mentioned scene in the film. Additionally, this scene is presented with the help of ‘depth of fields’, which depicts “the distance through which elements in an image are in sharp focus” (Prunes, 3 ‘Cinematography’); this “technique [is used] to focus [the audience’s] attention on the most significant aspect of a scene” (Prunes, 3 ‘Cinematography’). In the addressed scene the focus is laid on the bus, the surroundings are blurred.

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