Aboriginal Critique Of Wolf Creek
Horror Film Review From Indigenous Viewpoint
Why is the film "Wolf Creek" so scary? Is it because it unmasks the Jolly Swagman, revealing the true face of the outback hero, a myth concealing a history of horror?
"Wolf Creek" is so terrifying that it isn't an easy film to watch. But it's no more bloody and violent than other horror flicks, so how does it achieve its overwhelming mood of dread and unease?
Haunted Landscape
Firstly, it could be the way the landscape is framed. You can actually feel the absence of people in the landscape, the emptiness. But this silence manifests as a ghostly presence. The outback isn't presented as untouched wilderness, but kind of like a haunted house whose occupants have been murdered. This is done very masterfully, to give the setting a sense of menace. My only criticism here is that in Western Australia the sun doesn't rise over the ocean (this reductionist oversight shows just how disconnected the invading culture is from the land it has stolen!).
Aussie Bushman Myth Exposed
When the villain is introduced, it's like exhuming the monstrous pioneering psychopath ethos upon which the dodgy myth of the "Aussie Bushman" was built. His sinister and obscene use of the Croc Dundee line, "That's not a knife, this is a knife," (just before severing a woman's fingers and spinal column) is the final nail in the coffin of Australian outback mythology. Clancy of the Overflow, the Man From Snowy River, Crocodile Dundee, The Jolly Swagman - the larrikin exterior is stripped away to reveal the hideous doppelganger lurking beneath the Australian identity. This ugly, rude "roo shooter" drugs three tourists and abducts them in the middle of the fabled "outback". He rapes, tortures, mutilates and finally executes his victims, but not before they discover his vast collection of souvenirs from an array of missing persons - artifacts, cars, photographs, camping gear, and of course body parts.
The jaded dominant culture audience is not sure why this disturbs them more than other films that are twice as bloody. They are unaware of the shadowy Mick Dundee doppelganger that lingers at the core of their identity, pricking their conscience and giving them the heebie-jeebies at the thought of being stranded alone in the haunted outback, alone with the truth of their ancestors and the angry spirits of murdered Aboriginal multitudes.
Mainstream Martyr Purges Colonial Guilt
But ironically, this film enables them to work through this guilt, and allows them to identify with the victims of colonisation. They undergo a kind of ritualistic martyrdom to cleanse them of the sins upon which their comfortable lifestyles are built. The one surviving character is even crucified by the psycho swagman, giving the colonial public a Christ figure to take away the guilt of invasion and ongoing Indigenous genocide.
There is a sense of relief when the film is over, a feeling of renewal, and a thankfulness that it was "just a movie". Viewers may even look back on the experience with feelings of delicious terror or perhaps a morbid voyeuristic thrill, accompanied by the classic Aussie, "wwhooarrrh!".
The Real Horror Movie
Well, for us the horror never ends. Our children have to recite poetry at school celebrating the exploits of psychopaths who abducted and raped our women, tortured, mutilated and murdered our people. And this isn't just a thing of the past. Every Aboriginal family has at least one family member who has died in police custody in the last decade. Every language group is missing ancestral remains that are obstinately held in museums by sociopathic academics - grisly trophies of people kidnapped and murdered, not unlike the bloody souvenirs kept by the psycho Aussie bushman from "Wolf Creek".
Aboriginal people live in a horror movie every day, with no end credits in sight.
