Although movies are generally seen as a means of escaping the everyday world to a few hours of fantasy, they can also have a profound impact on how we view the world around us, including our concepts regarding social or cultural issues. It is through the analysis of film that we can understand the values and ideologies emerging from our culture as well as how this culture has been passed along to us from the past.
Through this analysis, we are able to gain a glimpse into how the powers that be define us, a sort of ‘single voice’ that works to promote the status quo or to effect social change. However, it is also up to us, as the audience, to determine how we will interpret these messages. The ‘single voice’ typically belongs to those who hold the power and leaves very little room for differences of opinion. “Broadly speaking, the media exist in a very close, sympathetic relationship to power and established values.
They favor a consensus view of any problem: they reflect overwhelmingly middle class attitudes and experience. Basically, this unfits them for an authentic portrayal” (Hall, 1974). More than simply speaking of the news or documentary forms of media, Hall’s ideas encompass the world of entertainment media as well. He indicates that even here, where the goal is supposed to be strictly entertainment, the media continues its long-standing tradition of reinforcing middle-class society’s concepts of the world.
In order to appeal to the middle class, many of the films produced tend to reflect the hopes and dreams of this class of society. It tends to reinforce the thought that it is only through hard work and struggle that one can appreciate this good life. This is as true of the classical narrative of Australian film as it is of any other. An analysis of the film Gallipoli from a post-colonial perspective reveals how the Australian culture and identity is shaped both by its colonial past as well as through its focus on today’s individuality.
The film tells the story of two young Australian runners during World War I. The film begins in 1914 in Western Australia as the first young man, Archy Hamilton, trains with his uncle Jack for an upcoming running competition. They train in the early morning before Archy is expected out on the ranch helping his father and the ranch hands pull in the cattle. However, Archy demonstrates his loyal character early on when he stands up for one of his black friends who is his mate.
Although Archy is an up and coming star in the running circuit, he wants more than anything to enlist and fight for Australia in the war already raging. This story is interrupted to catch up with the other main character of the film, Frank Dunne. Frank is working with three other men on a railroad project in Western Australia when one of the men reads a story about the current situation in the war. Hearing of the treachery of the enemy, the other three men impulsively decide to join up, but Frank opts out, deciding he’d rather pursue other options when one of the men point out that it couldn’t be worse than what they’re doing.
Frank and Archy meet up for the first time at the competition that Archy has been training for. Archy is a regular contestant, but Frank enters at the last minute, having already developed a reputation as a sprinter in the past and attempting to win some quick money for himself through a little underhanded betting. Although the race is close between the two men, Archy wins the race and Frank loses his money. Uncle Jack immediately launches into a plan for Archy’s future running career, but Archy quiets him, informing him that he will not be returning home and then turns around to enlist. However, he is quickly identified as being underaged and turned away.
Rather than holding his defeat against Archy, Frank decides to help Archy enlist while also contriving to have Archy help him return home to Perth. He teaches Archy how to jump on trains and Archy teaches Frank how to survive the Australian desert. This shared experience unites them in a close bond of mateship that remains true throughout the film.
Upon arriving in Perth, Archy has convinced Frank to join the light horse, but Frank is unable to prove his ability and is left behind. However, he runs into his old friends again and signs up with them into the infantry. After a brief training session in Cairo, Frank and Archy meet up again in a mock battle and Archy convinces his commanding officer to accept Frank into their unit. From here, the boys are sent on to Gallipoli, where life on the battlefield seems largely like a unique form of playground until they finally reach the trenches.
Because of poor communication, the battle at Gallipoli turns into an Australian massacre as rank after rank of Australian soldiers throw themselves unquestioningly into the direct line of fire of the Turkish enemy. Working as a communications runner, Frank does his best to get the commanders to stop the massacre, but is unable to reach the lines in time to save Archy from going over the wall. The film ends as Archy’s body is slammed backward during his final run by the impact of machine gun bullets striking.
One of the major themes of the film is the theme of mateship, which is an important concept in the Australian culture. The first main character seen in the film is Archy, who lives on his father’s ranch and trains with his uncle for a career as a sprinter. Although he is obviously undergoing intense training in preparation for a big race, Archy decides to race against a difficult cowhand at the beginning of the film in order to uphold the dignity and respect of his black friend who had just been insulted by the same field hand. Archy’s simple understanding that this is his mate is enough for him to risk his life and career in order to uphold his friend’s dignity.
The race tears up his feet because he agrees to run barefoot through terrain that includes scrub brush, rocks and burning sand but he wins because the field hand fell off his horse just before reaching the gate. These injuries make it difficult for Archy to go about his regular business, but he does it anyway because, as he tells his uncle, “there were bigger things at stake” and “it takes more to win than body.” This early introduction to his character makes it easy to believe that Archy wants to join the war simply because he feels it’s his patriotic duty.
That Archy has been thinking about joining the war is made clear as he discusses it with his uncle. As they discuss his uncle’s past, having run away from his family at around age 16, it is clear that the uncle is well-aware of what Archy is thinking of. His uncle’s responses continue to sound resigned and discouraging, continually insisting that war is different from what he had done as a younger man.
However, having always been loved and supported, even if it also meant he had to work hard, gives Archy a sense of belonging and responsibility. This attitude is revealed to Frank when he says, “I’d be ashamed of myself if I didn’t fight.” That much of his life is lived within these idealistic ideas is revealed as he remains cheerful and bright even as he and Frank land on the beach at Gallipoli among a shower of shrapnel from a just-landed bomb.
At every point through the film, when Archy is asked about the background of the war, he cannot answer how it started, why the Australians are involved or even why he feels it’s necessary to protect the deserts of his home. Even when he’s recognized by one of his commanding officers and is requested to serve as a runner, Archy argues, desiring above all to fight and thus choosing his own death in the ill-fated attacks to come.
Frank, on the other hand, agrees with the other boys at the railroad that the war is terrible, but doesn’t join them in their ideas of patriotic duty. Rather than disdaining anyone with a sense of patriotism, Frank adopts a live and let live approach. Although he chooses not to join the other boys in signing up for the army, he does choose to leave his current place of employment and ends up in the same race as Archy. While Archy is trying to make a name for himself, Frank is trying to support himself. This reveals a very different motivation for Frank that would necessarily make him more cynical of the world that has neglected to support him.
However, it is Frank’s cynicism that enables Archy to find a means of enlisting as he shows him how to jump a train and suggests going to Perth. Frank tells Archy the reason he doesn’t want to join is because it’s an English war and he wants nothing to do with it. He is prevented from taking a strictly negative approach to Archy’s innocence, however, by Archy’s ability to successfully lead him through the desert when the train they hopped leaves them stranded while they’re sleeping.
Frank’s purpose in joining the war when they finally get to Perth is to “learn a thing or two and come back an officer,” although he doesn’t show a great deal of interest in learning about the Sphinx or the pyramids when he gets the opportunity, preferring to remain involved in more ‘normal’ Australian activities such as playing football or making fun of British officers. However, Frank is well aware of the risks he’s taking even after his reunion with Archy gives him a lift into the light horse division.
He is quick to leave his old mates, but his attachment with Archy seems somehow deeper, perhaps because of the depth to which they’d had to depend upon each other to survive in the desert. Where Archy sees only a grand cause, Frank understands the underlying forces behind the war and cannot reconcile himself to so many Australian dead. However, he remains devoted to his duty, whatever he is assigned to do and does what he can for his mates, both old and new.
The attitudes of the boys reflect the conflicting sides of colonialism. The term colonialism is typically used to refer to a situation in which one nation enforces its rules, customs and beliefs upon another nation while removing its resources. Europeans acting in the 15th century as they discovered and dealt with the Americas certainly fit this definition. The ‘New World’ was discovered at a time period in which the European nations were strong in navy and merchant shipping.
As a result of these relatively recent advances in society, the Europeans discovered new lands at an opportunistic time to colonize, especially when those lands were filled with people who were less technologically advanced. This wasn’t a new practice as it was also what the Romans did and the Greeks did before them. The ‘New World’ conquest in America and elsewhere yielded new lands, mineral riches, natural resources and slave labor which set-off an imperialistic hunger that spread through most of the ‘developed’ world, meaning those nations that had similar access to ships and shipping routes. As they explored, the Europeans quickly claimed jurisdiction over most regions of Africa and Turkey as well as other areas.
The British conquered India and did modernize its economy but it was to their own benefit. European nations also claimed mass regions of Southeast Asia (McDougal-Littell, 1999) and expanded their penal colonies into Australia.
Although the coast of Australia had been explored by European sailors from early in the 17th century, it wasn’t until the 1790s that the continent first began to be settled by the British. Just before the turn of the century, the British claimed the east coast of Australia as settlement land for penal colonies established to reduce the burden on English prisons (Dept. of the Environment, 2008). To survive, these early colonies depended heavily upon the assistance of the local natives who also provided the colonizers with the knowledge necessary to begin settling Western Australia as well beginning in 1801.
As the natives began to realize the degree to which European settlement was disrupting their previous way of life and consuming much-needed resources, conflicts began to emerge, but none so organized that the British colonies were unable to overcome. The first European-style government was put in place in New South Wales in the 1820s. “In 1823 the British government established a New South Wales parliament by setting up a Legislative Council as well as a Supreme Court under the New South Wales Act 1823 (UK). This Act is now seen as a first step towards a ‘responsible’ Parliament in Australia” (Dept. of the Environment, 2008).
While there was some recognition of native rights, they were inconsistently applied and natives were expected to adhere to British law. Well into the 20th century, aborigines were still struggling to gain full rights under the modified British law that had been imposed upon the continent, yet all other individuals felt a strong connection to Britain, having been first given a second chance at life and then given the opportunity to participate in their own parliament, modifying the laws to give criminals greater rights than they would have had in England.
The primary goals of colonization were to gain new wealth and resources by exploiting these from other lands. Africa was another attractive target to quench the Europeans’ thirst to create far-away empires. Colonization provided the Europeans with the means to control territories that held the raw materials needed to maintain and grow their prosperous economies at home, including the concept of using black people as a sub-human workhorse.
This well-developed attitude most likely fed into the Europeans’ perceptions of the native Australians who shared the African tendency toward darker skin tones and living close to the earth. By the mid 19th century, the major European powers were already in a large-scale struggle to determine who would gain and control the vast un-plundered resources of Africa. In this struggle, a great number of justifications were brought forward to excuse their behavior to the greater public sphere including national pride, Christian dogma and the need for expansion. Obtaining new colonies was widely believed to be an accurate gauge of a nation’s global prominence.
Another justification was based on the prevalent racist attitude. “Europeans thought that they were better than Africans” (McDougal-Littell, 1999). Church officials and missionaries encouraged imperialism because the natives of conquered territories were easier to convert to Christianity against their will if they were already subdued by the oppressive elements of colonialism and with the backing of armed soldiers.
While European countries were already familiar with how to strip a nation of its inhabitants as seen in America and to enslave those inhabitants for personal gain as was done in Africa, they also learned how to annex large portions of Southeast Asia because of its close proximity to China as a means of national security as well as to obtain new sources for raw materials such as coffee, sugar, fruits, rubber and cocoa (McDougal-Littell, 1999).
As the amount of trade increased in this region of the world, European nations were able to increase their conquered territories thanks to new support as a result of increased wealth for the homeland. Indonesia was controlled by the Dutch; Malaysia, Burma and Singapore were British owned. France took what is now Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Though local Asian farmers were growing much more rice under European rule, much of it was being exported which caused a shortage of food in these areas (McDougal-Littell, 1999).
Colonialism did bring some favorable features of modern technology such as higher quality schools and methods of sanitation but the economic changes were to the Europeans’ benefit. In addition, large-scale plantation-style farming techniques merged together different people from all areas of Asia and this mixture of various religions and cultures caused conflicts. Some of the current conflicts between peoples of this region had its origins during this period of mass imperialism (McDougal-Littell, 1999). Many of these issues can be traced through the culture and expression of culture in Australian literature and film.
The effects of colonialism can be traced through Gallipoli through the two characters as they both adhere to a strongly Australian concept of mateship, but place their loyalties differently based upon their experience of and reaction to the forces of colonialism. While Archy has lived a relatively secluded life on his father’s ranch, easily identifying himself with both the aborigines and the settlers of the region, he continues to feel much of his family’s well-being and success is owed to the British empire that helped found them.
He doesn’t question the call to war but simply responds to it, believing that the more powerful British must know what they are talking about and have nothing but good intentions in calling the Australians to war. Frank, on the other hand, is more experienced in the world and has been more exposed to the effects and intentions of the British in Australia, having come from a city and traveled around.
He is well aware that the war being fought is not simply a question of wrong or right and understands that the British intend, once again, to exploit the resources of its former colony in order to promote their own agenda and welfare. The intense personal nature of the filming reflects the Australian emphasis on individuality while the struggles encountered by its primary characters reflect the often conflicting sense of responsibility felt by its people.
References
Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. “European Discovery and the Colonization of Australia.” Culture Portal. Australian Government, 2008. Web.
Gallipoli. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Mark Lee, Mel Gibson, Bill Kerr, Harold Hopkins & Heath Harris. Australian Film Commission, 1981.
Hall, Stuart. (1974). “Black Men, White Media.” Savacou, Journal of the Caribbean Artists’ Movement. Vol. 9/10.
McDougal-Littell. “Telescoping the Times: The Age of Imperialism, 1850-1914.” (1999). Web.
Kelly, Martin. “Overview of World War II.” About American History. (2007). Web.
Provides a good overview of the major events of the war.
Pape, Robert A (2005). “Al Qaeda’s Strategy.” The New York Times. Web.
Discusses the basics of the Iraq War.