The Illusion of Equality: Machismo and Cuban Cinema of the Revolution

This article attempts to show how certain Cuban films both reflect and construct behaviour concerning male–female relations. In so doing, they illustrate how Cuban cinema provided a mainstream cultural forum for controversial and contradictory debates on gender relations. At times, films that attempt to produce images of gender equality, or at least the possibility of this, merely provide the illusion of equality while maintaining the status quo of patriarchy. That is, the images they present of male–female relations appear on the surface to represent an increasing desire to achieve absolute equality between men and women. However, close analysis of these films, using various tools of feminist and feminist film theory, reveals a continuation of certain patriarchal tendencies that the films themselves are attempting to criticise. The films to be discussed are: De cierta manera (Sara Gómez, 1974–1978), Retrato de Teresa (Pastor Vega, 1979) and Hasta cierto punto (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1983).     

The Australian Right in the “Asian Century”: Inequality and Implications for Social Democracy

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the policy discourse of Australian right-wing governments, exploring how such governments have combined neo-liberal economic policies with social conservatism, populism, cultural nationalism and forms of authoritarianism. It also examines the resulting response of social democratic political parties. As a predominantly Western country situated in the Asia-Pacific region, Australian experience offers interesting insights into the domestic politics of right-wing governments facing the changing geo-political and geo-economic imperatives of the “Asian Century.” Conservative Australian governments have reasserted traditional Anglo-centric national identity and used competition from key Asian countries to further justify market-driven policies, reduced welfare benefits and reduced industrial relations standards. The social democratic Australian Labor Party has responded to right-wing government policy by placing an increased emphasis on challenging social and economic inequality. However, Labor’s own plans for equitable economic growth potentially underestimate the challenges posed by the intermeshing of the Australian and Asian economies and provide insights into the dilemmas that a changing geo-economics poses for Western social democracy more broadly. Meanwhile Australian conservatism is facing not just challenges from its social democratic opponent but also from far-right populist forces critical of globalisation.     

‘Let them entertain themselves’: the fall of the Mubarak regime seen through Egyptian political cartoons

This article examines the issues underlying the downfall of the Mubarak regime from the perspective of Egyptian cartoonists. A total of 2734 political cartoons published in five leading newspapers between January 2010 and February 2011 are analyzed. Because they form a significant part of the cultural context within which these cartoons are created, popular political jokes are also referenced. The study identifies political stagnation, domestic issues and corruption as the three most significant issues that paved the road to the fall of Mubarak.     

Cinema’s Milieu: Negotiating the movies’ public and popular dimensions in early twentieth-century Brazil

Drawing on extensive archival research, this paper examines the controversies over the place and the role of cinema in early twentieth-century Brazil. It situates these debates in the context of Brazil’s struggle to come to terms with the powerful forces of modernity, in particular with issues of race, immigration, class formation and conflict, and changing gender roles. Tracing the discourses of Brazil’s cultural elites and also the practical responses of film entrepreneurs and exhibitors, the paper discusses how these interactions overlapped with changes taking place in Brazil’s cinematic landscape and illustrates how they had profound effects on film content, its function, and exhibition practices.     

Intimacy at work: servant and employer relations in Que horas ela volta? (The second mother)

ABSTRACT

This chapter examines servant/employer relationships in Anna Muylaert’s film Que horas ela volta? (The Second Mother, 2015). Written in the first person by someone who locates herself as a white, middle-class Brazilian from humble origins who has lived abroad for nearly 30 years, the chapter focuses on the sense of discomfort caused on her by the film and by Brazilian middle-class reliance on domestic servants, whilst at the same time analysing the role played by intimacy and servitude in the film. In dialogue with Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s definition(s) of “cordialidade” (and with later discussions of it), the chapter examines what “cordialidade” can mean in the context of employers/domestic servants relationships in contemporary Brazil.     

“Una tercera lectura”: the cinematic reader and the cult of virility in Manuel Puig's El beso de la mujer araña (1976)

In El beso de la mujer araña, Manuel Puig encourages a “tercera lectura,” informed by both cinema and literature. He creates a cinematic language reinforced by the spirit of “synthesis” and then incorporates a conceptual discourse which is beyond cinema because of the “límites de atención” of a “lector cinematográfico.” Puig expects readers to draw their own conclusions about the themes which emerge. I argue here that both the themes and aesthetic of the novel can be read as a challenge to the form and content of a literary and filmic “cult of virility.”     

“I’m awfully fed up with being a prisoner”* Australian POWs of the Turks and the Strain of Surrender

Nearly 200 Australians were captured and held as prisoners of war (POWs) by Ottoman Turkish forces during the First World War. They have largely been overlooked in Australian history and memory of the conflict with the result that little is known of their time in captivity or of its wider ramifications. In examining the emotional impact of their capture and imprisonment, this article offers intimate insights into how these Australian POWs felt about their captivity, from the moment of surrender until long after the war had ended. The humiliation of capture and confinement at the hands of a culturally, religiously and linguistically different enemy and the restrictions imposed by wartime imprisonment exacerbated the prisoners’ private feelings of shame and failure, feelings that were publicly reinforced in the aftermath of the war as the two dominant narratives of the conflict—the heroic Anzac fighter and the Turks as the honourable enemy—excluded or, at best, marginalised their experiences. Such analysis tells us much about the psychological dimension of wartime captivity, and adds to our understanding of the legacy of this POW experience.     

试析近现代中日教育文化的阶段性发展

中日两国的教育文化交流有着悠久的历史,中国的古代教育对日本教育的思想、制度及方法给予了巨大的影响。然而清朝的闭关锁国束缚了中国教育的发展。近代日本教育在中国的教育发展中起到了举足轻重的作用。本文试从历史的角度出发,结合文化发展的四个阶段,分析各阶段日本教育在中国教育发展中的作用及其所扮演的角色。     

Australia’s Army Nurse: Locating a Woman as the Heart of Sacrifice in the Hall of Memory

This article contests the misconception that the Hall of Memory of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, represents an irreligious space. While accommodating the expectations of a post-secular society, this belief fails to recognise the influence of Christianity upon the generation that experienced World War I and developed the memorial practices that arose in response to it. Veteran-artist M. Napier Waller embedded complex religious symbolism in the scheme of three windows he designed and executed for the hall. Drawing on his individual experience of battle, personal philosophy of art and the medieval customs of his forebears, Waller told the story of Australia’s experience of the war and aligned a nation’s sacrifice with that of Christ: His Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension are symbolised in the south, west and east windows, respectively. The inclusion of a nurse was central to Waller’s plans and required he manipulate the men creating the memorial to achieve his goal. In doing so, he neutralised the greatest threat to his vision: its founder, Charles Bean, and located a woman of many identities—a Martial Madonna—as the heart of national sacrifice in Australia’s premier war memorial.     

“Team Australia”: Cartoonists Challenging Exclusionary Nationalist Discourse

In the context of the “war on terror”, Australian leaders announced that an increased threat of terrorist activity existed within Australia in 2014, which was generated by young people travelling to engage in military activity in the Middle East and returning “radicalised”. The prime minister at the time, Tony Abbott, called on Australians to rally together, in the face of such a threat, as “Team Australia”. This article analyses the responses by cartoonists to this call, focusing on the way the notion of Team Australia is portrayed as a challenge to core aspects of Australianness, such as mateship, multiculturalism and the “fair-go”. Frame analysis is used to explore how the cartoons connect with the broader populace and represent, challenge, reconstruct and rely on implicit and explicit understandings of Australianness. The cartoons frame Abbott’s Team Australia as exclusionary, unfair, politically elitist, anti-multicultural and “un-Australian”, even while pursuing a nationalist project.     

Introduction

John King’s introduction to this section surveys the development of Latin American film studies in the UK over the past 25 years. All three papers explore the interplay between local and global factors in the development of Mexican cinema. Andrea Noble introduces the work of Carlos Monsiváis and discusses the role that early and Golden Age cinema played in the processes of modernisation in Mexico. Carlos Monsiváis pays particular attention to the image of the city in recent Mexican cinema, exploring the use of language and the depiction of sex. Geoffrey Kantaris offers a number of theoretical pathways into an exploration of contemporary cinema in Mexico, analysing how ideas of place and identity are disrupted by the crisis of the nation state in a globalised, postmodern world.     

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and the Art of Revolutionary Cinema

Tomás Gutiérrez Alea has been widely acclaimed for his cinematic production and for his role as a key figure in the elaboration of a distinctively Cuban aesthetic. Drawing on notions such as Martín-Barbero's mediations, Billig's banal nationalism, and Gutiérrez Alea's own viewer's dialectic, consideration is given here to the mutual influences of the Revolution's cultural policies on cinema, and of cinema on the Revolution. Analysis will focus on the films Memorias del subdesarrollo (1968), Hasta cierto punto (1983), Fresa y chocolate (1993) and Guantanamera (1995), which will allow for discussion of some of the director's key themes, including gender issues, the place and role of intellectuals and artists in relation to the Revolution, and the defence of a critical space in which to explore such issues.     

Pearson’s Mission: Revisiting Noel Pearson’s Revisionist History of Hope Vale

In 2000, Noel Pearson drew on his experiences of growing up on the Hope Vale, the Guugu Yimidhirr–speaking community that emerged from the Cape Bedford mission in the south east of Cape York, to write a revisionist history of the region. Indigenous communities were “strong, if bruised” in the wake of colonisation, he argued, but had descended into chaos since the 1970s because alcohol and welfare benefits had undermined the formerly resilient Aboriginal norms of “responsibility”. This paper offers a critical review of this politically potent account of the past, drawing on alternative oral histories, ethnographies and ethnohistories of Hope Vale, including Pearson’s own honours thesis (1986). Without challenging this sketch of his own experience, nor the sincerity of his nostalgia for the mission of his youth, I argue that Pearson’s more recent retellings are selective. In particular, his revisionist history overlooks evidence of drug abuse in the early colonial period and overstates both Guugu Yimidhirr agency in the process of missionisation and the uniformity and representativeness of the community that developed at Cape Bedford. Finally, I offer some possible personal, philosophical and political explanations for Pearson’s shifting approach to the past.     

Storytelling and fraught histories: Phila Ndwandwe’s Blue Dress

Twenty years after the final hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, researchers are unearthing and examining the stories, discourses and processes that formed the transition from the apartheid to post-apartheid periods. In this paper, I investigate the story of Phila Ndwandwe, killed by the security police in the late 1980s, whose body was the first to be exhumed by the commission. Ndwandwe’s story has been framed through various narrative devices, most prominently by an artwork by Judith Mason colloquially titled the Blue Dress. Tracing the stories constructed about Ndwandwe, I consider the performative and transformative potentials of storytelling and argue for a commitment to listening that resists mere understanding.