The Authentic Aboriginal Voice in Rolf de Heer's 'Ten Canoes' (2006)

By privileging Aboriginal language, Aboriginal-accented narration and the Aboriginal style of story-telling ("cascading repetition narration") in "Ten Canoes", writer, co-director and co-producer Rolf de Heer has made a film promoting indigenous Australian pride. He portrays the 'magpie goose people' of Arnhem Land as empowered and in control of their language, their culture and their lives, rather than conforming with the frequent media presentation of Aboriginals as passive victims of colonial maltreatment and disrespect. An era of idyllic well-being preceding white settlement of Australia can be imagined, and de Heer convincingly takes the viewer back to that black and white time of a thousand years ago – and suggests an even earlier more rapturous and colourful Dreamtime. In doing so, unlike other 'Aboriginal' films, he tells an authentic Aboriginal story in an authentic Aboriginal manner

The Evolving Human and Dream-like, Screen-based Media

With rare exceptions, film theorists have traditionally focussed on culturally symbolic criticism in a persistent denial of the biological function and benefit of film-going. There has been a recent reversal of this trend, however, with the development of a cognitive theory of film, which Nicolas Tredell describes as an approach whereby "A film can be regarded as a simulation of a (possible) real-life situation that engages the viewer’s intellect, emotions and body, and that involves a complex negotiation between fiction and reality" (2002: 259). One aspect of this attempt to include science in the understanding of film has been neoteric work by William Evans on the evolutionary aspects of film-going. He argues that "humans have evolved to prefer television and film to print media [… because] it seems real to us [and because] humans are hardwired to attend and respond to visual stimuli, especially when visual stimuli include other people [...] engaging in salient behaviour" (2005: 200-201). But this elegantly simple explanation of the evolutionary significance of film and other screen-based media needs further elaboration. Firstly, Evans fails to consider the evolutionary benefits that accrue from Revonsuo's 2005 theory of the threat rehearsal function of film-going, in that films are like dreams. Secondly, in emphasizing the reality of the screen's moving image, he neglects to consider why humans attend to unrealistic film such as animations, which I argue are even more dream-like than non-animated films, using the example of Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940). Thirdly, he omits consideration of the evolutionary function of a film auteur who is assigned the virtual status of tribal elder. Hence I make a tendentious claim regarding the evolutionary benefit of film-goers assigning the status of 'auteur' to an individual writer/director, despite the well known collaborative nature of film-making, and (dare I say) the out-of-fashion Barthesian notion of the death of the author. Regarding Disney once again, one notes the absence of certain genres of cinema in his otherwise heterogeneous body of work: he has never made a war film or action movie. Such exclusions, only apparent when the huge oeuvre he has helmed are considered as a single text emanating from an individual author, generate an understanding of the Disney worldview, in which family values are prioritised and prompts attitudes toward this auteurial individual akin to meaning-seeking villagers genuflecting to a wise tribal elder as he offers advice for survival of the species in the evolutionary struggle for survival of the fittest. In addressing these three omissions, my paper aims to gain credibility for a more comprehensive evolutionary theory of film

"Dance me to my song" (Rolf de Heer 1997): The story of a disabled dancer

Rolf de Heer’s "Dance Me To My Song" (1997) is a film with very little traditional dancing, being the story of a wheelchair-bound young lady who suffers from cerebral palsy. Two years before she died, real-life aphasic star and co-writer, Heather Rose, was the keynote speaker at the Pacific Rim Disability Conference in 2000 at which she said: "I wanted to create a screenplay, but not just another soppy disability film, I wanted to make a hot sexy film, which showed the real world." For Heather and other disabled persons, the real world does not necessarily preclude dancing. Thus, despite her twisted body and drooling visage, Heather’s story culminates in a joyous jig of triumph as the indomitable redhead dances in her wheelchair with the able-bodied Eddy, whose sexual affections she has won notwithstanding the best efforts of her emotionally stunted and jealous carer, Madelaine. In contrast to Paul Darke's 1998 conception of the "normality drama" genre of the disabled film, Heather has created a disabled character superior to her able-bodied antagonist. As de Heer has done in other films, he has given a voice to those who might otherwise not be heard: in Heather's case via her electric voice synthesizer. This paper argues that de Heer has found a second voice for Heather via Laban's language of dance, and in doing so has expanded understandings of quality of life for the disabled, as per the social model of disability rather than the medical model of disability. The film reinforces Petra Kupper’s notion that a new literacy in dance needs to be learned in which students "understand dance not only as a manipulation of the body in time and space, but also as a manipulation of the concept of 'the body' in its framework of 'normality', 'health', 'wholeness', 'intelligence', 'control' and 'art'." (2000: 128). Furthermore, Heather proves herself superior in the film-making industry by successfully assuming primary credit for the film. The ambivalent status regarding the screen-writing role for "Dance Me To My Song" creates a space in which authorship is contestable, although its other candidate, director de Heer, willingly concedes the credit to Rose, and this paper concludes that not only is Heather Rose the deserving author of this film, the film itself is deserving of a new genre label, that of "disability dance drama"

Sounds of silence: an interview with Rolf de Heer

Rolf de Heer's twelfth feature film, "Dr. Plonk" (starring Nigel Lunghi, Paul Blackwell and Magda Szubanski), premiered on closing night of the 2007 Adelaide Film Festival recently. Already feted as South Australian of the Year, De Heer received the Don Dunstan award on opening night to rapturous applause from his home town crowd. D. Bruno Starrs interviewed Australia's most successful non-mainstream film-maker about the black and white, silent slap-stick comedy three days before its inaugural screening

Colloidal dynamics in polymer solutions: Optical two-point microrheology measurements

We present an extension of the two-point optical microrheology technique introduced by Crocker \textit{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{85}, 888 (2000)] to high frequencies. The correlated fluctuations of two probe spheres held by a pair of optical tweezers within a viscoelastic medium are determined using optical interferometry. A theoretical model is developed to yield the frequency-dependent one- and two-particle response functions from the correlated motion. We demonstrate the validity of this method by determining the one- and two-particle correlations in a semi-dilute solution of polystyrene in decalin. We find that the ratio of the one- and two-particle response functions is anomalous which we interpret as evidence for a slip boundary condition caused by depletion of polymer from the surface of the particle

The Persistence of American Economic Power in Global Capitalism: From the 1960s into the Twenty-First Century

This dissertation intervenes in the more than four decades-long debate on the decline or persistence of American economic power. It argues that we cannot move forward without reconceptualizing the nature of economic power in global capitalism, especially by moving beyond national accounts (such as GDP). Too many commentators from across the diversity of perspectives assume that the relative rise and decline of national accounts approximates the relative rise and decline of national economic power. In contrast, this dissertation argues that in the era of globalization, national accounts are an inadequate measure of national economic power. Rather, we must investigate the transnational corporations themselves in order to encompass their transnational operations, and analyze the matrix of inter-linkages now characteristic of global capitalism in general, and American power in particular. Therefore, this dissertation draws upon extensive original empirical research, including the following: 1) the first aggregation of the national sales-shares of the world’s top 200 corporations from 1957 to 2013; 2) the first aggregation of the national profit-shares of the world’s top 2,000 corporations across 25 broad sectors from 2006 to 2013; 3) the first aggregation of the top 50 national acquirers and targets of all cross-border mergers and acquisitions worth $1 million or more from 1980 to 2012; and 4) the first national aggregation of the ownership structures of the world’s top 500 corporations. The results from this empirical research, among others, will illuminate a number of facets concerning contemporary global capitalism. First, the nationality of capital remains very relevant despite several decades of intensifying globalization at the turn of the twentieth century. Following from this, the persistence of American economic power from the 1960s into the twenty-first century is astounding, particularly at the technological frontier. Indeed, in advanced technology and even Wall Street, American dominance has actually increased since the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. There are no foreseeable contenders, including China. Therefore, this dissertation will demonstrate that far from relative American decline, in certain respects American economic power has never been stronger — and will conclude with a number of important implications from this analysis concerning the future of world order

Filmic Eco-warnings and Television: Rolf de Heer’s Epsilon (1995) and Dr. Plonk (2007)

The possibility is considered that Australian film-maker Rolf de Heer has followed Epsilon (1995) with another filmic eco-warning, Dr. Plonk (2007), in which, as Mark J. Lacy despairs, heroic "dynamic individuals" unhelpfully "reinforce a (neo)liberal imaginary" (2001: 636), thus obliging Judith Hess Wright's allegation that genre films maintain the social status quo by offering "absurd solutions to economic and social conflicts" (2003: 42). But rather than 'shouting' the message that a messianic hero-figure can save the world as in his first eco-politically correct film, it is argued that de Heer has subsequently made a silent film in which the saviour fails: the eponymous Dr. Plonk is imprisoned and makes a subtle, unspoken plea to the audience to get out from in front of their television sets and save the world from ecological apocalypse themselves. De Heer has expressed considerable disdain towards television but this paper suggests that to maximise reception of their eco-warnings the eco-conscious film-maker needs to recognise the potential of interactive television and other new media technologies to increase voter turnout and to effect the aversion of global apocalypse through audiences taking individual responsibility