Rachel Perkins hybrid musical drama One Night the Moon set in the 1930’s Australian outback and Malala Yousafzai’s ‘speech to the UN’ in 2013 were composed to raise awareness and reveal truths of multiple perspectives, representing the voice of the unheard and disempowered in juxtaposition to the dominant and powerful. Both Perkins and Yousafzai challenge societal expectations of their context, advocating for all voices to be heard and for the potential unity between cultures and races through education and shifts in paradigm. Throughout both texts, Perkins and Yousafzai aim to highlight the unheard voice, who need to be given empowerment to be heard. The disempowered voice of Aboriginals is highlighted through the carriage scene in One …show more content…
Night the Moon, the long shot of Jim’s family being higher up in the kart and Albert’s family waking, contrasting their social status, indicating that white men are superior. While they walk pass, Rose holds down Emily’s hand as she waves at Albert, emphasising the superiority of white man and the truth that Aboriginals are looked down upon. In the duet ‘This land is Mine’, Jim and Albert’s lines “This land is Mine” juxtaposes “This land is me”, displaying different views of the traditional land, conveying how society segregates two races due to different value systems. Similarly in Yousafzai’s ‘speech to the UN’ she expresses the overlooked voice of young people through the extensive use of emotive language, showing how after her attack, “Nothing has changed in [her] life [other than]; weakness, fear and hopelessness died.”, revealing that nothing can stop one from achieving their goals in life. Both composers demonstrate the disempowered voice, Perkins expressing the disempowered voice of Aboriginals and Yousafzai portraying the overlooked voice of young people. Both composers, Perkins and Yousafzai convey the unheard voice of women.
The unheard voice of women in the 1930’s is highlighted in One Night the Moon through Rose as she pleads Jim to allow Albert to join the search, “please Jim, I think he knows something”, with the continuous repetition of “please”, her desperate tone demonstrates her vulnerability and the little power she possesses. The long shot of of Rose backing away as Jim says “I know what you’re thinking”, further emphasises that men are in charge and his ego won’t allow her to think that he is incapable. Rose challenges societal expectations when she asks for Albert’s help, since she stepped out of her ‘duties’ to only look after the family. Likewise in ‘Malala’s speech to the UN’, as a young woman, she stands up urging women to take action and make a stance, by repeating and applying stress to “we call”. She also encourages women to step forward and reveal their voice through the use of inclusive language, “but, this time, we will do it by ourselves”, uncovering the strength with women possess. She bravely confronts the brutal truth of the Taliban as they are “afraid of women and the power of education frightens them”, highlighting the power of women and how they should not be afraid to stand up for themselves. Bother composers challenge the stereotypes of women to take a stance and have a voice of their
own. The truth that humans of different background, different religion can exit harmoniously together is represented through both texts. Perkins portrays this in One Night the Moon, through the surreal scene of two hands on the rock losing grip through the close up of the young white hand reaching for the black hand, indicating the potential for Aboriginals and white men to live together. However, the hands losing grip reveals the barrier prohibiting the two from uniting, where society is the barrier segregating both races. The ending of the film reflects a sense of unity as Albert’s family attends Emily’s funeral establishes the deep connection formed between Rose and Albert. Not only this, the extreme long shot of ‘Emily’s sould’ leaving the body flows with nature, portraying the Aboriginal belief that everything returns to nature, indicating the union of two races. The same idea is conveyed in ‘Malala’s speech to the UN’ through the extensive amount of direct address and respectful salutations including all the “elders and [her] dear brothers and sisters”, promoting unity. She alludes to other religious leaders who have inspired her and who she has learnt from, such as “Muhammad - the prophet of mercy, Jesus Christ and Lord Buddha”. The fact that these spiritual leaders are from a variety of religions and backgrounds and have strived for the same reasons emphasises the truth that all humans can live in harmony. She states that “Islam is a religion of peace, humanity and brotherhood”, asserting a positive portrayal of Islam, showing that it is a religion of unity. Both Perkins and Yousafzai confront stereotypical views of races and religion from their context to promote unity. Overall, Perkins and Yousafzai express their purposes through their texts, highlighting truths about the disempowered voice of ones who are unheard and challenge stereotypes of women in order to encourage them to stand up through their texts One Night the Moon and ‘Malala’s speech to the UN’. Not only this, they also promote the fact that humans are able to live in harmony together regardless of what background or religion.
Throughout the story “Walk Two Moons” written by Sharon Creech, Mrs.Winterbottom is faced with internal and external conflicts that lead her to change.
All three authors recognize that difference constructs discrimination. The concept of othering (Hall 1997) and Anglo dominance presented by Moreton-Robinson (2015) help understand Judith Butler’s findings as to why oppression and exclusion cannot be reduced completely. It is same fear of the ‘other’ and white dominance in Australia that keep Australian institutions from reaching integration and equality—film being one these institutions. The filmmakers of The Sapphires attempt to tell the Aboriginal narrative. The scenes mentioned in the previous paragraphs, educate a diverse audience about Aboriginal discrimination in Australia in the 1960s. However, even though the filmmakers reveal some truths of Aboriginal discrimination, they do it in a way which the Aboriginal narrative is suppressed and Anglo dominance is maintained. “The Sapphires” plot is not centered on Aboriginal discrimination, rather a story of how four Aboriginal girls learn about love and friendship. Aboriginal discrimination in the 1960s forms only a small part of the journey to entertain American Troops in Vietnam. By presenting a musical comedy-drama film, the filmmakers sugar coat Australia’s dark past. The movie also ends on a good note. Cousin Kay who at some point rejected her Aboriginal roots, overcomes her prejudice and gets more in touch with the Aboriginal culture by partaking in an Aboriginal ceremony. By the end of the film the audience barely recalls the discrimination scenes and only remembers a happy ending. This is dangerous, as the film deceives its white Australian audience to believe that racial inequality in Australia is an issue of the past not the present. Therefore, promoting the idea that the Australia does not continue to privilege white people over Aboriginals
Throughout the unit of reading to write, as a class we have studied multiple quality texts. These ranging from essays like George Orwell's and short stories like ‘There will come soft rains’. One text I have chosen to deepen my knowledge in is Stan Grant’s speech about the ‘Australian Dream’. I feel it is a well written and spoken speech with a deep and powerful meaning behind. Throughout the speech he uses various language techniques like rhetorical questions and repetition to convey his ideas about the ‘Australian Dream’. Stan Grant sets a serious tone to get across his particular issue about actions towards Indigenous Australians from everyday Australians.
One Night the Moon (2001), is based on the events that took place in the harsh Australian outback in the early 1930s. The film evolves when a young girl, Emily, goes missing into the mountainous terrain of the Australian outback one night to follow the moon. Her family, European settlers, though desperate to find her, fail to employ the skills of a local Indigenous tracker, Albert Riley, due to their own racism. Perkins uses many literary elements such as camera angles, music, dialogue and editing to shape meaning and to influence her audience. One Night the Moon, introduces song into the Australian landscape, Indigenous people have always used song to talk about the land, and song itself has always been one of the central means of land management. One Night the Moon has been described as “A beautiful, seemless film with the ability to transport the audience.” Perkins endorses the idea that White settlers have failed to learn anything from the original inhabitants of this land and to support this statement, she layers the literary elements to highlight the racism, connection with the land and also contrasts the two male protagonists in the film.
The idea that indigenous Australian communities are underprivileged and do not receive the same justice that the white community accrues is represented through Jay Swan and his interactions with the corrupt white police officers and the indigenous locals of the town. My empathetic response to the text as a whole was influenced directly by way the text constructs these ideas as well as my knowledge of the way indigenous Australians are represented in the mainstream media and the behaviour of the police force as an institution. These contextual factors and the way Sen has constructed ideas influenced me to empathise with the indigenous
Have you had a time in your life, where everything just seemed to be going wrong, and life was hard. Then all of the sudden you actually have a good day. You made it through when times were bad. In the novels Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson, and Shooting the Moon by Frances O’roark Dowell the theme getting through the hard times so you can see the good ones, is shown by Jacqueline and her family not being treated fairly, Jacqueline leaving her home, and Jamie's brother going to war.
Good morning/ Afternoon Teacher I am Rachel Perkins And I was asked by The Australian Film Institute to be here to today to talk about my musical. My musical One Night The Moon which was the winner of the Australian Film Institute Award for Best Cinematography in a Non-Feature Film in 2001. I am also here to talk about how distinctive voices are used to show the experiences of others. The voices of Albert and Jim are two characters that give us two different perspectives this is due to their views. Albert one of the characters in my film is an Aboriginal character played by Kenton Pell who is hired by the police as a tracker. Albert is a very deeply spiritual person this gave him a spiritual voice throughout the play but when he get 's kick off the land and banned from the search the gets frustrated which gave him this really emotional voice. This event has a greater meaning which I will elaborate on later and now Onto Jim. Jim is your 1930s white Australian that owns a farm and is going through tough times because of the Great depression. Jim does not allow Albert to find his daughter, This is due to his racist and prejudiced views of black Australians. Jim has an authorial voice because he see’s himself as inferior. Near to the end of
Throughout the text, the white colonists are very racist towards the Aboriginals. Even cattle, horses and white women are placed hierarchically higher in society than the black people. In response to this, Astley constructs all narrations to be written through the eyes of the Laffey family, who are respectful towards Aboriginals, hence not racist, and despise societal ideologies. By making the narration of the text show a biased point of view, readers are provoked to think and feel the same way, foregrounding racism shown in the ideologies of early Australian society, and showing that Aboriginals are real people and should receive the same treatment to that given to white people. “They looked human, they had all your features.” (pg 27) There was, however, one section in the text whose narrative point of view was not given by a character in the Laffey family. This instead was given by a voice of an Aboriginal woman, when the Aboriginal children were being taken away from their families. By giving voice to the Aboriginal society, the reader is able to get a glimpse of their point of view on the matter, which once again shows that society was racist, and Aboriginals were treated harshly.
This is a response to the video The Thousand and One Nights. The Thousand and One Nights is a book of stories. One of the main characters in the story was Scheherazade. Scheherazade is queen, storyteller, the wife of Shahryar, and the daughter of Vizier. The premise of the story is when faced with a challenge, for things to change sometimes someone has to step up and do something different.
This creates a despair, of hopelessness and of downheartedness. The woman, on multiple occasions, wrote down, “And what can one do?” This lets the reader know that women as a whole were very oppressed in ...
Throughout history society has been controlled by men, and because of this women were exposed to some very demanding expectations. A woman was expected to be a wife, a mother, a cook, a maid, and sexually obedient to men. As a form of patriarchal silencing any woman who deviated from these expectations was often a victim of physical, emotional, and social beatings. Creativity and individuality were dirty, sinful and very inappropriate for a respectful woman. By taking away women’s voices, men were able to remove any power that they might have had. In both Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, we see that there are two types of women who arise from the demands of these expectations. The first is the obedient women, the one who has buckled and succumbed to become an empty emotionless shell. In men’s eyes this type of woman was a sort of “angel” perfect in that she did and acted exactly as what was expected of her. The second type of woman is the “rebel”, the woman who is willing to fight in order to keep her creativity and passion. Patriarchal silencing inspires a bond between those women who are forced into submission and/or those who are too submissive to maintain their individuality, and those women who are able and willing to fight for the ability to be unique.
The power of voice within both stories shows that by withholding or using one’s opinions, thoughts, or feelings, they can cause a ripple in the pool of society’s values and structure. By taking that voice and transcribing it into text, it become physical proof of having used that voice for others to read and share many times over. These two authors raise many questions about the male dominated publishing market, like how they achieved recognition for their talents and allowed the privilege of
Nature is an essential part of life. From the start of Before Night Falls, nature is definitely essential to Reinaldo Arenas’ life. Nature centers around different parts of Arenas’ life and is intertwined in many facets of his life. From early childhood, with a cradle carved out of the earth’s dirt, to the end of his life, when Arenas hides from authorities amongst nature and finds solace in the moon. He even compares his love of Lazaro to nature. Nature supports Arenas through his life in a great variety of ways. It provides him solace through his life, is his means of sexual exploration and in the end prompts the title of his memoir. In Before Night Falls, Arenas shows his readers how essential nature is to his
...present powerful characters, while females represent unimportant characters. Unaware of the influence of society’s perception of the importance of sexes, literature and culture go unchanged. Although fairytales such as Sleeping Beauty produce charming entertainment for children, their remains a didactic message that lays hidden beneath the surface; teaching future generations to be submissive to the inequalities of their gender. Feminist critic the works of former literature, highlighting sexual discriminations, and broadcasting their own versions of former works, that paints a composite image of women’s oppression (Feminist Theory and Criticism). Women of the twenty-first century serge forward investigating, and highlighting the inequalities of their race in effort to organize a better social life for women of the future (Feminist Theory and Criticism).
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar pursue a definition for what it means to be an authoress in a male dominated culture of writers. The central question for Feminists, according to Gilbert and Gubar, is: “Does the Queen try to sound like the King, imitating his tone, is inflections, his phrasing, his point of view? Or does she ‘talk back’ to him in her own vocabulary, her own timbre, insisting on her own viewpoint?” However, I cannot overlook the prospect of a man feeling just as mad and cooped up writing a text that others would view as out of his league. Chinua Achebe is the epitome of this Madman in the Attic. Born and raised in London, and brought up Christian he was as far away from being Okonkwo as I am as a white middle class American female. If Gilbert and Gubar are accusing women of feeling out of place writing in what then was a man’s field of expertise then Achebe masterfully channels the feminine madness into Things Fall Apart by writing a culture of strong independent women masked by silent passive girls.