School of Culture and Communication - Theses

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After the apology: the Australian gothic and reconciliation melancholia

Harmsen, Andrew Frederik ( 2013)

This thesis discusses three Australian Gothic texts: the novel Bereft (2010) by Chris Womersley, Rachel Ward’s film Beautiful Kate (2009) and Andrew Bovell’s play When the Rain Stops Falling (2009). It investigates how these texts deploy the features of the Australian Gothic across contemporary literary, cinematic and theatrical forms. This thesis argues that each text interrogates the ongoing role that settler guilt plays in contemporary Australia from a distinctively non-Aboriginal perspective. As a result, this work suggests that these case studies can be read as Gothic allegories for an emerging ‘post-reconciliation’ Australian culture. The final component of this project is a play entitled Doomsday Devices. The play uses many of the conventions of the Australian Gothic in a way that suggests a further discussion of ‘post-reconciliation’ identity as outlined in the critical section of this thesis. The play is a ghost story set in Melbourne in the summer of 2015.