Pub Date : 2022-09-02DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2138962
Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd
ABSTRACT In the early twentieth century, oil companies transitioned from merchants of light to merchants of movement. A discreet network of pipelines began to crisscross the Australian landscape. By the 1950s, the presence of petroleum was visible everywhere, circulating across a vast cultural infrastructure of sponsored cinema. Oil films extolled fertilisers which turned a wasteland into pasture, fitness programs to train a ‘nation of weaklings’ into a wartime army reserve and the promise of ever-more refined fuels to supercharge a motile world. Companies enlisted cinema to excite emotions and ready the mind to accept prompts for future action. In this article, I explore the emergence of the 1920s Australian animated oil film to trace a new structure of feeling attuned to energetic increase, growth and ease.
{"title":"Animating origins: the 1920s Australian oil film","authors":"Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2022.2138962","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2022.2138962","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In the early twentieth century, oil companies transitioned from merchants of light to merchants of movement. A discreet network of pipelines began to crisscross the Australian landscape. By the 1950s, the presence of petroleum was visible everywhere, circulating across a vast cultural infrastructure of sponsored cinema. Oil films extolled fertilisers which turned a wasteland into pasture, fitness programs to train a ‘nation of weaklings’ into a wartime army reserve and the promise of ever-more refined fuels to supercharge a motile world. Companies enlisted cinema to excite emotions and ready the mind to accept prompts for future action. In this article, I explore the emergence of the 1920s Australian animated oil film to trace a new structure of feeling attuned to energetic increase, growth and ease.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"16 1","pages":"232 - 244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47091500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-08DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2109099
Catalina Iordache, T. Raats, Sam Mombaerts
ABSTRACT Subscription video-on-demand services have been increasingly moving away from licencing content to producing their own content. The ‘original’ label is applied to different types of productions for which streaming platforms own exclusive rights, usually worldwide and for specific periods. This has also been part of Netflix’s global strategy to attract new and existing subscribers. Research into the Netflix Original has become particularly relevant, due to its impact on audiovisual markets and the label’s opacity. This article focuses on Netflix investments in original documentaries, due to the genre’s growing popularity and the platform’s notable interest in documentary films and series. The analysis focuses on the company’s strategies and investment patterns in specific regions, languages and genres over time by mapping all documentary titles produced between 2012–2021 labelled as ‘Netflix Original’, resulting in a database of 479 titles. We found that investments in original documentaries have been growing over the years, and the large majority of these are commissions or exclusive titles. The transnational production and distribution of Netflix Original documentaries reflect wider changes in cultural trade brought on by the streaming model. However, the company’s investment strategy is also influenced by established market dynamics and financing practices in documentary production.
{"title":"The Netflix Original documentary, explained: global investment patterns in documentary films and series","authors":"Catalina Iordache, T. Raats, Sam Mombaerts","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2022.2109099","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2022.2109099","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Subscription video-on-demand services have been increasingly moving away from licencing content to producing their own content. The ‘original’ label is applied to different types of productions for which streaming platforms own exclusive rights, usually worldwide and for specific periods. This has also been part of Netflix’s global strategy to attract new and existing subscribers. Research into the Netflix Original has become particularly relevant, due to its impact on audiovisual markets and the label’s opacity. This article focuses on Netflix investments in original documentaries, due to the genre’s growing popularity and the platform’s notable interest in documentary films and series. The analysis focuses on the company’s strategies and investment patterns in specific regions, languages and genres over time by mapping all documentary titles produced between 2012–2021 labelled as ‘Netflix Original’, resulting in a database of 479 titles. We found that investments in original documentaries have been growing over the years, and the large majority of these are commissions or exclusive titles. The transnational production and distribution of Netflix Original documentaries reflect wider changes in cultural trade brought on by the streaming model. However, the company’s investment strategy is also influenced by established market dynamics and financing practices in documentary production.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"17 1","pages":"151 - 171"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46654789","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-08-03DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2103773
Kim Munro
Referencing her 2002 manifesto, Jill Godmilow’s 2022 book of the same name, Kill the Documentary, is a strident, searing, and sometimes humorous critique of what she calls documentary-as-we-know-it (DAWKI). But to call it a critique is to understate the energy of each of the hundred and seventy pages of this radical addition to the field of documentary theory and practice. Godmilow, like Trinh T. Minh-ha who suggested ‘there is no such thing as documentary’ (Balsom 2018) argues for a dismantling of the tropes of conventional documentary. And in doing so, challenges non-fiction filmmakers to take up more daring, political and collaborative modes of storytelling. Subtitled ‘A letter to Filmmakers, Students and Scholars’ this manifesto-by-any-othername overflows with neologisms, poetry, anecdotes, analysis, and filmmaking strategies that challenge what Godmilow calls ‘the liberal documentary’. For Godmilow, this ‘liberal documentary’ relies on the creation of a safe and distanced feeling of empathy through which the audience, who are usually white, middle-class and educated, feel they are ‘caring citizens’ (xi). Critiquing the often ‘lazy’ impulse of the documentary maker, Godmilow argues that many filmmakers use realist strategies to construct a passive audience by describing the world through audiovisual means. In doing so, the DAWKI offers few opportunities for the audience to engage critically in their own construction of knowledge, meaning, and ultimately hope. As a filmmaker and educator of many decades, Godmilow draws from a broad array of sources in crafting her call to arms (and action). Her influences span from Bill Nichols (who also wrote the foreword), Michael Renov and Brian Winston to experimental filmmakers like Harun Farocki, Trinh T. Minh-ha and John Greyson. Ranging across disciplines, she also finds good company in critical theorists Edward Said and Michel Foucault as well as luminaries of the written word – Susan Sontag, Ursula le Guin and Jorge Luis Borges. Not limited to the ‘big thinkers’, Godmilow also extols the usefulness of Wikipedia, as both timesaving and an example of a great collaborative project – an inserted section that made me laugh out loud. Early in Kill the Documentary, Godmilow makes note that to call this book a letter allows her to avoid ‘academic prose and theoretics’ (xix). Throughout the volume, the tone is conversational, stirring and often irreverent – assuming that the reader can think for themselves, and can make films with limited means. Early on in the book Godmilow outlines her intention to provide strategies to deconstruct and read documentaries to identify their implicit ideology. Only through what she calls reading these films ‘aberrantly’ or ‘against the grain’ (4), can we begin to understand how the use of the realist and narrative strategies create the world as knowable to an audience. For as Elizabeth Cowie suggests, knowability is created through the film, not through reality (2011, 13). Kil
吉尔·戈德米洛（Jill Godmilow）2022年的同名书《杀死纪录片》（Kill the Documentary）引用了她2002年的宣言，对她所称的纪录片（DAWKI）进行了尖锐、辛辣、有时甚至幽默的批评。但称之为批判，是低估了这篇对纪录片理论和实践领域的激进补充的一百七十页中每一页的能量。Godmilow和Trinh T.Minh ha一样认为“没有纪录片这回事”（Balsom 2018），主张废除传统纪录片的比喻。在这样做的过程中，非虚构电影制作人面临着挑战，要采取更大胆、更政治、更合作的讲故事模式。副标题为“致电影制作人、学生和学者的一封信”的这本宣言，无论用什么名字，都充满了新词、诗歌、轶事、分析和电影制作策略，挑战了戈德米洛所说的“自由主义纪录片”。对戈德米洛来说，这部“自由主义纪录片”依赖于创造一种安全而遥远的同情心，观众通常是白人、中产阶级和受过教育的人，通过这种同情心，他们觉得自己是“有爱心的公民”（xi）。戈德米洛批评了纪录片制作人经常表现出的“懒惰”冲动，他认为许多电影制作人使用现实主义策略，通过视听手段描述世界，来构建被动的观众。在这样做的过程中，DAWKI为观众提供了很少的机会来批判性地参与他们自己对知识、意义和最终希望的构建。作为一名几十年的电影制作人和教育家，戈德米洛在创作她的《武装（和行动）》时借鉴了广泛的来源。她的影响从比尔·尼科尔斯（他也写了前言）、迈克尔·雷诺夫和布莱恩·温斯顿，到哈伦·法罗基、特林·明哈和约翰·格雷森等实验电影制作人。在跨学科的研究中，她还发现了批判理论家爱德华·赛义德和米歇尔·福柯，以及文学界的杰出人物——苏珊·桑塔格、乌苏拉·勒金和豪尔赫·路易斯·博尔赫斯。不仅限于“大思想家”，Godmilow还称赞维基百科的有用性，它既节省了时间，又是一个伟大的合作项目的例子——插入的部分让我开怀大笑。在《杀死纪录片》的早期，戈德米洛指出，将这本书称为一封信可以让她避免“学术散文和理论家”（xix）。整本书的基调都是对话式的、激动人心的，而且往往是不敬的——假设读者可以自己思考，并且可以用有限的手段拍摄电影。在这本书的早期，戈德米洛概述了她提供解构和阅读纪录片的策略，以识别其隐含的意识形态的意图。只有通过她所说的“反常”或“违背常规”阅读这些电影（4），我们才能开始理解现实主义和叙事策略的使用是如何创造观众所知的世界的。正如伊丽莎白·考伊（Elizabeth Cowie）所言，可知性是通过电影创造的，而不是通过现实创造的（2011,13）。《杀死纪录片》有四个部分，每个部分都分为多个小节，这使得它很容易导航和浏览——就像一本散文或诗歌书。第一章
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Pub Date : 2022-07-25DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2102187
M. Holly
ABSTRACT This article examines the potential of the art-installation as a space for experiential and sensory mediation of non-fiction film. Using the installation Commensal (2017) by Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor as a case study, I discuss the contribution of contemporary art to discourses on spectatorship and audience experience in non-fiction film. Taking Commensal as a starting point, I will examine how the experience of the visitor to the art installation might differ from that of the audience member at a cinema. How does the space, institutional context and institutional mediation of a non-fiction film installation contribute to the contamination of boundaries between fictional storytelling and objective truth? By comparing Commensal and Caniba (2017), the feature-length theatrical version of the same subject by the same filmmakers, I will propose that presentation and screening in the context of the installation space offers new forms of mediation for some non-fiction film works that are experiential as opposed to spectatorial.
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Pub Date : 2022-07-25DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2103774
Andy Rice
Balsom, E. 2018. “There is No Such Thing as Documentary’: An Interview with Trinh T. Minh-ha.” Frieze 199. https://www.frieze.com/article/there-no-such-thing-documentary-interview-trinh-t-minh-ha. Cowie, E. 2011. Recording Reality, Desiring the Real, Minneapolis. London: University of Minnesota Press. Godmilow, J. 2014. “Killing the Documentary: An Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker Takes Issue With ‘The Act of Killing’.” Indiewire, March 5. https://www.indiewire.com/2014/03/killing-the-documentary-an-oscarnominated-filmmaker-takes-issue-with-the-act-of-killing-29332/.
{"title":"Documentary’s expanded fields: new media and the twenty-first-century documentary","authors":"Andy Rice","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2022.2103774","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2022.2103774","url":null,"abstract":"Balsom, E. 2018. “There is No Such Thing as Documentary’: An Interview with Trinh T. Minh-ha.” Frieze 199. https://www.frieze.com/article/there-no-such-thing-documentary-interview-trinh-t-minh-ha. Cowie, E. 2011. Recording Reality, Desiring the Real, Minneapolis. London: University of Minnesota Press. Godmilow, J. 2014. “Killing the Documentary: An Oscar-Nominated Filmmaker Takes Issue With ‘The Act of Killing’.” Indiewire, March 5. https://www.indiewire.com/2014/03/killing-the-documentary-an-oscarnominated-filmmaker-takes-issue-with-the-act-of-killing-29332/.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"17 1","pages":"93 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42592580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-06-21DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2090701
Ryan Josiah Bramley
ABSTRACT Recent cultural representations of the Windrush Generation – economic migrants from African Caribbean nations who were invited to live and work in Britain between 1948 and 1972 – and their descendants have overwhelmingly represented British citizens of African Caribbean descent as ‘victims’. This is unsurprising; the so-called ‘Windrush Scandal’ in the late 2010s saw hundreds of members of the Windrush Generation wrongfully lose their British citizenship, many of whom faced detention and, in some cases, even deportation. ‘Windrush: The Years After – A Community Legacy on Film’, a lottery-funded heritage project in the North of England, represents the attempts of local filmmakers and community activists to instil a renewed sense of belonging for African Caribbean descendants who call Britain their home. The ethical innovation of this documentary filmmaking project lies in its ability to reframe descendants of the Windrush Generation as ‘more-than-victims’ – and, by extension, its redefinition of the role of the documentary ‘subject’ as an engaged participant and stakeholder. N.B. this article is an adapted version of a chapter from my PhD thesis, In Their Own Image: Voluntary Filmmaking at a Non-Profit Community Media Organisation (Bramley 2021b). The full open access version of this thesis can be found at: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/29258/.
{"title":"‘A Community Legacy on Film’: using collaborative documentary filmmaking to go beyond representations of the Windrush Generation as ‘victims’","authors":"Ryan Josiah Bramley","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2022.2090701","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2022.2090701","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Recent cultural representations of the Windrush Generation – economic migrants from African Caribbean nations who were invited to live and work in Britain between 1948 and 1972 – and their descendants have overwhelmingly represented British citizens of African Caribbean descent as ‘victims’. This is unsurprising; the so-called ‘Windrush Scandal’ in the late 2010s saw hundreds of members of the Windrush Generation wrongfully lose their British citizenship, many of whom faced detention and, in some cases, even deportation. ‘Windrush: The Years After – A Community Legacy on Film’, a lottery-funded heritage project in the North of England, represents the attempts of local filmmakers and community activists to instil a renewed sense of belonging for African Caribbean descendants who call Britain their home. The ethical innovation of this documentary filmmaking project lies in its ability to reframe descendants of the Windrush Generation as ‘more-than-victims’ – and, by extension, its redefinition of the role of the documentary ‘subject’ as an engaged participant and stakeholder. N.B. this article is an adapted version of a chapter from my PhD thesis, In Their Own Image: Voluntary Filmmaking at a Non-Profit Community Media Organisation (Bramley 2021b). The full open access version of this thesis can be found at: https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/29258/.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"17 1","pages":"115 - 132"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-06-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43789256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-24DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2078062
L. Busetta
ABSTRACT Focusing on two teenagers grappling with the difficult reality of Naples, Agostino Ferrente’s Selfie (2019) is a powerful depiction of an entire community at a significant time, when limited perspectives and the pervasive presence of organized crime – with a value system that is intrinsic to the Camorra – deeply influence the present and the future of a generation. Shot by two 16-year-old boys from the Traiano district (Naples), the film is a powerful example of how self-representation can be a strategic and political tool to immerse in a life and its context. Within the framework of studies on first-person filmmaking and self-representation, and mobilizing concepts from the theory of mobile films, this article argues that, through the filming carried out by the two teenagers, Selfie is able to offer us a wider glimpse of a generation, of its everyday life and imagination, and of its perception of the contemporary media imaginary. I argue that, by employing a reflexive mode of documentary and the linguistic forms of the photographic selfie, the film engages the spectator in an intimate flow of images, questioning authorial instances, the relationship of the iGeneration with filming devices, and the different approaches and aesthetic choices that form the basis of every representation of reality.
{"title":"‘Do you want to film yourself?’ Narrating the personal and rewriting reality in Agostino Ferrente’s Selfie (2019)","authors":"L. Busetta","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2022.2078062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2022.2078062","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Focusing on two teenagers grappling with the difficult reality of Naples, Agostino Ferrente’s Selfie (2019) is a powerful depiction of an entire community at a significant time, when limited perspectives and the pervasive presence of organized crime – with a value system that is intrinsic to the Camorra – deeply influence the present and the future of a generation. Shot by two 16-year-old boys from the Traiano district (Naples), the film is a powerful example of how self-representation can be a strategic and political tool to immerse in a life and its context. Within the framework of studies on first-person filmmaking and self-representation, and mobilizing concepts from the theory of mobile films, this article argues that, through the filming carried out by the two teenagers, Selfie is able to offer us a wider glimpse of a generation, of its everyday life and imagination, and of its perception of the contemporary media imaginary. I argue that, by employing a reflexive mode of documentary and the linguistic forms of the photographic selfie, the film engages the spectator in an intimate flow of images, questioning authorial instances, the relationship of the iGeneration with filming devices, and the different approaches and aesthetic choices that form the basis of every representation of reality.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"17 1","pages":"99 - 114"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44545290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-20DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2066326
Deane Williams, G. C. Russell, Mick Broderick
ABSTRACT While Australian cinema is generally defined by the feature filmmaking tradition, at least since the 1970s, ‘utilitarian filmmaking' represents a significant but barely visible portion of screen culture in Australia, a portion that has had an emphatic but unexamined influence on the media industries, education systems, industrial relations, research culture and national culture. Recent scholarly work undertaken internationally has shown how this vital strand of cultural and industrial history has often been overlooked; worse, it has often been expunged from cultural memory, either by critical neglect or through the destruction of archives previously deemed worthless by businesses and collecting-agencies. Given the insights and impacts of the latest studies of utilitarian filmmaking in the US and Europe, it is no exaggeration to propose that local, Australian holdings in the genre will come to be understood as a hitherto overlooked skein of ‘DNA’ in our national media systems. To study this heritage is to deepen our understanding of general/global and local/national characteristics of audiovisual culture and aesthetics as they operate in Australia, as well as to contribute in a major way to the burgeoning scholarship in international media archive research.This Introduction will focus on the manner in which ‘utilitarian cinema’ operates in relation to conceptions of Australian national cinema as well as to how this term can also contribute to formulations of transnational cinema. It will introduce the findings of this Australian Research Council funded research project being conducted by Ruby Arrowsmith-Todd, Stella Barber, Mick Broderick, Ross Gibson, John Hughes, Grace Russell and Deane Williams as well as introducing the case studies that were undertaken.
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Pub Date : 2022-05-11DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2066327
J. Hughes
ABSTRACT Created for the Uses of Cinema conference (SSAAANZ, Monash University, November 2018), the video Film for a Purpose (13 minutes, 2018) offers a précis of my research with the ARC Discovery project ‘Utilitarian film in Australia 1945-1980'. The video essay ironically deploys certain tropes of the sponsored film - the green screen, the authoritative presenter, the wallto-wall narration, the literal illustration, etc. - in its exposition of the studies cited. An overview of the National Archives of Australia (NAA) where moving image collections of Australian government agencies are collected then drills down to films from the CSIRO (Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation) Film Unit. Uses of Cinema then turns to films of the Australian labour movement through the lens of Tom Zubrycki's controversial documentary film history of the Australian trade union movement, Amongst Equals (1986-1991). Each case study brings to light certain problems pertinent to the broader category: the ‘utilitarian film', in the Australian context. Finally a fourth research paper, completed after 2018, examines the surveillance image and its uses in political propaganda and investigative documentary. This ‘pictorial introduction' lightly annotates a selection of freeze frames from the film, explicating aspects of their ‘screen design’ and treatment.
{"title":"Film for a purpose: a pictorial introduction","authors":"J. Hughes","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2022.2066327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2022.2066327","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Created for the Uses of Cinema conference (SSAAANZ, Monash University, November 2018), the video Film for a Purpose (13 minutes, 2018) offers a précis of my research with the ARC Discovery project ‘Utilitarian film in Australia 1945-1980'. The video essay ironically deploys certain tropes of the sponsored film - the green screen, the authoritative presenter, the wallto-wall narration, the literal illustration, etc. - in its exposition of the studies cited. An overview of the National Archives of Australia (NAA) where moving image collections of Australian government agencies are collected then drills down to films from the CSIRO (Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation) Film Unit. Uses of Cinema then turns to films of the Australian labour movement through the lens of Tom Zubrycki's controversial documentary film history of the Australian trade union movement, Amongst Equals (1986-1991). Each case study brings to light certain problems pertinent to the broader category: the ‘utilitarian film', in the Australian context. Finally a fourth research paper, completed after 2018, examines the surveillance image and its uses in political propaganda and investigative documentary. This ‘pictorial introduction' lightly annotates a selection of freeze frames from the film, explicating aspects of their ‘screen design’ and treatment.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"16 1","pages":"204 - 218"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46473002","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-11DOI: 10.1080/17503280.2022.2066330
G. C. Russell
ABSTRACT ‘Utilitarian’ films - those not for the purposes of art or entertainment - include instructional films addressing workplace safety. Large quantities of these were made in Australia between WW2 and the advent of video and were viewed by many workers in different industries. Their content, social significance and relationship to a wider dispositif of media and labour is therefore a fertile source of information about how work was performed and how it was discursively conceptualised. We can glean information from these films about the presumed class, proclivities, and attitudes that Australian workers were assumed to have. Their address is also gendered, almost exclusively targeting men. In analysing one unusual workplace safety film targeted at women workers, Don’t Be Scalped (R.D. Hansen, 1960 Fortune films and the NSW Department of Labour and Industry), aspects of working-class male subjectivity commonly spoken to in workplace safety films are thrown into relief. This article examines how gendered address in industrial safety films constructs and perpetuates gendered inequalities in broader discourses about health, danger and industrial labour. Don’t Be Scalped illustrates how gender difference is one way this form of utilitarian text polices and normalises attitudes to safety through targeted and specific forms of subjectification.
{"title":"‘Women in industry are not meant to be weightlifters’: Gender and the Australian industrial workplace safety film","authors":"G. C. Russell","doi":"10.1080/17503280.2022.2066330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2022.2066330","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT ‘Utilitarian’ films - those not for the purposes of art or entertainment - include instructional films addressing workplace safety. Large quantities of these were made in Australia between WW2 and the advent of video and were viewed by many workers in different industries. Their content, social significance and relationship to a wider dispositif of media and labour is therefore a fertile source of information about how work was performed and how it was discursively conceptualised. We can glean information from these films about the presumed class, proclivities, and attitudes that Australian workers were assumed to have. Their address is also gendered, almost exclusively targeting men. In analysing one unusual workplace safety film targeted at women workers, Don’t Be Scalped (R.D. Hansen, 1960 Fortune films and the NSW Department of Labour and Industry), aspects of working-class male subjectivity commonly spoken to in workplace safety films are thrown into relief. This article examines how gendered address in industrial safety films constructs and perpetuates gendered inequalities in broader discourses about health, danger and industrial labour. Don’t Be Scalped illustrates how gender difference is one way this form of utilitarian text polices and normalises attitudes to safety through targeted and specific forms of subjectification.","PeriodicalId":43545,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Documentary Film","volume":"16 1","pages":"245 - 257"},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42295334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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