Abstract: This article focuses on two of Chauvel’s early films to show how representations of Aboriginality and landscape often subtly, though sometimes violently, prioritise white sovereignty. Ultimately, whiteness (a way of seeing and being in the world) can be read as a lens Chauvel uses to both shape his representations of Aboriginality and landscape and simultaneously justify white sovereignty in Australia. When films such as Chauvel’s are viewed with this relationship in mind, the fictionalised manipulation of landscape and Aboriginality, which is characteristic of whiteness in Australian cinema, is undermined as a legitimising discourse of white sovereignty.
Keywords: Aboriginlity; Chauvel; cinema; landscape
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