John Marsden’s “Tomorrow” series of young adult fiction was extremely popular in the 1990s. Last year, about seventeen years after the first publication, there was a film version released featuring almost the entire ex-cast of Neighbours and Home And Away. I don’t think the film has been quite as popular as the books. It was probably a mistake to set it in a present day time period; it just didn’t work. Maybe in 1993 it might have seemed plausible for a young person to have never heard of Two-Minute Noodles, but not in 2010. Likewise, in 1993 having an Asian and a Greek character might have been a good attempt at lip service to cultural diversity but it hardly passes now. It wouldn’t have hurt the plot to have included a few updates.
The main character, Ellie, is probably a bit more kick-arse than she is in the books. But despite her unbelieveably strong guerilla warfare skills being even better developed in the film, it still seems to be the male characters who dominate here. Which is unsurprising. And what’s with all the nauseating relationship shit? As always, compulsory heterosexuality is implicit.
I have a couple of comments to make here. They involve two aspects of the plot; one that has been subtly altered and one that has stubbornly remained the same.
Firstly, what the hell was a privileged White guy, who attended The King’s school in Sydney before going to university, doing writing an “invasion” story that mimics the way europeans invaded this land in 1788, and having no indigenous people in it at all? No indigenous characters, and no references at all to indigenous culture despite the setting being a fictitious rural location called “Wirrawee”? Was this guy taking the piss? There is even one cringeworthy scene in the bush oasis in which someone wonders out loud if perhaps they are the first people to ever go there! I’ve searched high and low and can find no criticism of this racist flaw.
Secondly, the underlying theme of the books was that Australia is hogging land and resources and needs to learn to share. This theme is much more consistent with the political climate at the time and completely plausible. The young people in the books are all from middle class homes on large tracts of land* occupied by three or four people. This might have been a comment on social inequality and uneven distribution of social resources. If it was then this is a theme that would be even more relevant now. Young people of the eighties and nineties did not fear invasion, we feared nuclear world war (former Nuclear Disarmament Party follower here). In the film version however, the fear of invasion by foreigners has really been played up and exploited. But the invasion as a plot device kind of leaves us hanging without the explanation that we have in the books. It’s just invasion for the sake of invasion and this is why I smell a rat.
What may have been a vague attempt at awareness-raising in the books, has been twisted and distorted in order to pander to White middle-class australia’s perception of vulnerability to invasion by nasty foreigners. Does that particular pernicious narrative ring any bells with anyone? Dark-skinned invaders are coming to steal our culture whatever the fuck that is and our language and our way of life. This is pretty much what we hear on tv and radio and what we read in newspapers. We are under constant threat all the time they tell us. This is why we need our government and our alliance with the US – to keep us safe, safe from those boat people and those terrorists. All the allegations of racism directed at the movie focus on the race of the invaders who are clearly identifiable as Asian. But that’s ok we are told, because no actual Asian nation is named. Marsden and Beattie (the director dude) claim that the broader sociopolitical context is not what’s important here, it’s the interaction between the young people and their responses to being invaded that’s where it’s all at. Um ok, so if the broader context was not important why not make it something else? Why not make it about a group of young radical lesbian feminist separatists seeking to overthrow The Patriarchy? Dude, don’t pretend that your context was irrelevant when it is so blatantly white supremacist! You can’t construct a narrative which supports the existing social order, enshrines the interests of those who benefit from the existing social order, and then fob us off with this postmodern bullshit about how it doesn’t really matter, that it’s merely coincidental. It’s intentional!
Just like it’s no coincidence that during this political climate, some dude somewhere decides to fund a young people’s movie that plays on the fear of a threat to the existing social order and invasion by less-deserving foreigners. A movie which positions mostly White, middle-class, property-owning young people, as the victims. Victims who heroically take matters into their own hands to defend “their” land. A movie that erases the experience of invasion by indigenous peoples. Sound familiar?
Male hegemony. Coming to a cinema near you. You can count on it.
*Ironically, Marsden himself has colonised a fairly large tract of land on which he now presides over an exclusive, elitist private school. The school caters to what appears to be a predominantly white student population of 87, on an 1100 acre campus. My readers know my views on educational institutions and I support in principle the need for alternatives. Just not when the aims of those alternatives are to facilitate the smooth transference of social resources and opportunities from one generation of rich white people to the next. This topic should really have it’s own post. Stay tuned.
