Abstract
We argue specifically that 'Jindabyne' is a product of “aftermath culture” (Gibson Transformations); a culture living within the ongoing effects of the past, where various levels of filmic haunting make manifest multiple levels of habitation, in turn the product of numerous historical and physical aftermaths. Colonial history, environmental change, expanding wire towers and overflowing dams all lend meaning in the film to personal dilemmas, communal conflict and horrific recent crimes. The discovery of a murdered indigenous woman in water high in the mountains lays bare the fragility of a relocated community founded in the drowning of the town of old Jindabyne which created Lake Jindabyne. Beatrix Christian (in Trbic 61), the film’s writer, explains “everybody in the story is haunted by something. […] There is this group of haunted people, and then you have the serial killer who emerges in his season to create havoc.” “What’s in this compulsion to know the negative space?” asks Gibson (Badland 14). It’s the desire to better know and more deeply understand where we live. And haunting gives us cause to investigate further.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | M/C journal |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Publication status | Published - 2008 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright 2008 Anthony Lambert and Catherine Simpson; licensee QUT Creative Industries. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.