Amit Sarwal and Reema Sarwal (eds),
Creative Nation: Australian Cinema and Cultural Studies Reader.
New Delhi: SS Publications, 2009
ISBN: 81 902282 0 X
AU$55 (hb)
600pp
(Review copy supplied by New Delhi: SS Publications)

In the past year, Australia has received some negative media coverage in India. This coverage has resulted largely from a spate of attacks against Indian students in Melbourne and Sydney. Hence, it was quite a change to read Creative Nation. This book is designed to provide Indian students and scholars with an optimistic overview of Australian cinema and cultural studies.

The editors, Amit Sarwal and Reema Sarwal, are New Delhi-based researchers. They conceived the idea for this book during their year as Honorary Research Fellows at Monash University in 2006-7 (p. xiii). Creative Nation contains essays by some of the most prominent names in Australian cinema and cultural studies. These essays cover topics as diverse as representations of Aborigines in film and literature, the cultural politics of hip hop, queer activism and/in the media, masculinity in Australian culture, and the “Asian turn” in Australian cultural studies and filmmaking (p. 316).

Many of the essays featured in Creative Nation have already been published elsewhere. They cover territory that would be familiar to most researchers of Australian popular culture. That said, the contributors have each conducted extensive research and advance some strong arguments. A personal highlight is Katherine Bode’s essay on depictions of “white male victimization” in contemporary Australian women’s fiction (p. 345). Bode traces this “crisis” to “the discourse of male victimization prevalent in the American media,” and argues that women writers do not always provide a feminist subversion of this “discourse” (p. 341). Also, I found Alan McKee’s analysis of the ways that Aborigines have been portrayed in Australian horror cinema to be compelling. I have a long-standing interest in horror films and cultural representations of Aboriginality, so to discover an essay that engages with both of these interests was pleasing.

Throughout the book, there are a number of lengthy lists. For example, in his foreword, John Ramsland lists the Australian movies that were cited (favourably, no doubt) in John Walker’s 2005 tome Halliwell’s Top 1000 (p. xxiv). Later, John Frow provides a list of big-name Australian cultural theorists. These long lists will be useful to those readers who want to enhance their knowledge of a particular discipline (I am thinking especially of university students in the early years of their studies). However, the lists become tiresome after a while. There is the sense that some contributors were more content in flaunting their knowledge of their research areas than with advancing an original argument.

The main problem with Creative Nation is the poor grammar that appears at different points throughout the text. Chris Healy’s (otherwise excellent) overview of Australian cultural studies is a prime example, featuring lines such as: “For Cultural Studies, in Australia, the current British-derived model of graduate training … is producing two serious problem” (p. 309). The frequent inclusion of such lines suggests a lack of editorial rigorousness. The editors’ introductory chapter itself contains some awkward passages, for example: “Australian academic institutions are among the first in the world to have introduced TV and film or cinema studies in the ir (sic) curricula as early as 1960s” (p. xxxiii). I am wary that these grammatical shortcomings might reflect a difficulty with, or relative newness to the English language. The passion that Amit Sarwal and Reema Sarwal show for Australian popular culture is infectious, but passion does not always make for easy reading.

Creative Nation offers nothing new to Australian cinema or cultural studies. Nevertheless, this comprehensive text will provide Indian readers and – more broadly – undergraduate students from around the world with an excellent introduction to these diverse and fascinating fields.

Jay Daniel Thompson,
University of Melbourne, Australia.

Created on: Saturday, 19 December 2009