Screen Theory Goes to Australia

Constantine Verevis

Framework: The Journal of Cinema and Media, Volume 51, Number2, Fall 2010, pp. 420-437 (Article)

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Framework 51, No. 2, Fall 2010, pp. 420–437.Copyright © 2010 Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201-1309.

There are networks of circulation, rather than spaces in communication, and the space—local, national, inter-national—where one is acting at any given time is criss-crossed by all those networks, each of them constructing “spaces” differently. . . . So what matters now is not the origin of ideas—here, there, coming in, going out—but . . . the performance of the text on the spot, and how intellectuals work to define their “spot” in the world, and its relations to other “‘spots.’”

Meaghan Morris

During its formative years (specifically, the period 1975–85), a crucial compo-nent in the consolidation of Australian film theory and criticism was the local and international exchange of critical formations facilitated by academic film studies (and associated) conferences and related organizations, includ-ing the Australian Screen Studies Association conferences and antecedents (1978–86), the biennial conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand and its precursors (1981–present), and (later) the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia annual conferences (1991–present). The first of these, the Australian Screen Studies Association (ASSA), developed out of the Australian Journal of Screen Theory (AJST ), a mid-1970s publication, initially edited by John Tulloch (and later by an editorial board consisting of Philip Bell, Colin Crisp, Stephen Crofts, Peter R. Gerdes, Neil McDonald, and others). The journal ended its short tenure in 1986, “the large gap in film and media studies within Australia created by [its] demise” filled substantially by Continuum: An Australian Journal of the Media (1987–present).1 This article (and its larger project)2 takes an interest in the sometimes idealis-tic, sometimes prescriptive nature of this “original” and formative moment in

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Australian film studies and reflects on its statements and achievements, on the theory and practice that shaped the moment, on its various intellectual and political engagements, and on the personal, professional, and institutional motivations that defined (and continue to define) Australian film studies. There is here, admittedly, a certain arbitrariness to the limits imposed on the inquiry, not only in selecting the decade-long period under investigation, but also in limiting the concept of “film studies,” which overlaps substan-tially with literary, communications, and cultural studies, and its geographi-cal demarcation (“Australia”) that elides the connections and exchanges of ideas and personnel from other parts of the world, and also the way that film studies develops differently in various locations across Australia.3 There is also a recognition—as once described by John Frow and Meaghan Morris—that the intellectual life of film (and cultural) studies in Australia was shaped by a “socially mixed but intensively familial urban subculture and the small jour-nal networks which sustained it.”4 Accordingly, this article takes an interest in (1) the relationship between AJST and the local conferences and small jour-nals network of the time; (2) the ongoing tension between theory and prac-tice—theory and history—that is played out at these events and in the pages of AJST; and (3) the way in which local (and imported) intellectuals engaged (in these forums) with new bodies of ideas and how these interacted with—and were indigenized by—native intellectual traditions and institutional contexts.

* * *In “A State of False Consciousness”—a broad overview of a range of film activities in Australia, published in Cinema Papers early in 1974—Barrett Hodsdon (then recently returned from some months studying film theory in New York and London on a grant from the National Film and Television School) argued for the need to discover links between film production and film education, to find connections between film theory and film history, and to forge a well-explicated theory of cinema:

Amongst industry interests and educators there is a reticence in acknowledging the importance of bridging the gap between film making and film study. Where film courses [in Australia] exist there is a tendency to polarize the approaches rather than discovering potential links between theory and practice. . . . Theory [for practitioners] is something academic and tenuous; it has nothing to say about the realities of production situations . . . because it is theory. . . . Not only should the relationship between narrative film, industry and ideology be pur-sued more rigorously but much more explicit recognition must be given to a historical view of cinema linked to a theoretical-analytical axis. . . . Film activity in the last few years has spilled over into an expanding impetus in film studies courses [but in] Australia film study is regarded with condescension. . . . The non-existence of concerted research activity at the tertiary level has meant minimal feedback into film education of crucial theoretical and critical devel-opments that have occurred in France, UK and the United States in recent years. As a consequence structuralism and semantics [semiotics] are virtually

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unknown here. . . . The film periodicals supposedly acting as a forum for debate on cinema fall in a limbo between reviewing and criticism. . . . Writing of this [low] calibre will continue as long as there is widespread ignorance as to the existence of an objective body of knowledge pivoting the study of film on theo-retical foundations.5

Designed as a polemic, Hodsdon’s article specifically invited reply, and responses were forthcoming from Ross Cooper (Monash University) and Ian Mills from the Media Centre at La Trobe University (the latter institution would—the following year—advertise Cinema Studies courses in “film theory and criticism”).6 More significant, though, in the uptake of Hodsdon’s con-cern—that new theories of film, notably semiological works, were “virtually unknown” in Australia—was the forum provided by the Tertiary Screen Edu-cation Association of Victoria (TSEA-V) conference, held in Melbourne in 1975. Reflecting on that event, Ian Hunter (now professor in the Centre for the History of European Discourse at the University of Queensland, but then a teacher in regional Victoria) recalls:

The event that [eventually] brought me to Griffith [University, 1976–2002] was a symposium on “screen theory” that was held in the then-Melbourne Teachers College. . . . Colin Crisp was in the audience and I gave a short talk on theoreti-cal challenges to Leavisite criticism. Mick Counihan [then at La Trobe Univer-sity] talked about cine-structuralism and was selling copies of a big double Christian Metz issue of Screen,7 and Meaghan [Morris] was either just going to Paris or had just come back from Paris [Morris was on her way to doing Letters at the University of Paris-VIII, 1976–1978], and anyway was the bearer-expos-itor of French semiotic work.8

Mick Counihan similarly remembers the 1975 conference:

I gave an introduction to [a] screen semiotics “workshop” as part of the regular program [of the TSEA-V conference in Melbourne, 1975]. As a short text to illustrate various points about specific/non-specific cinematic codes. . . . I used a panty-hose commercial which inter-cut a sleek model and a cat slinking down a staircase. . . . The discussion afterwards [sought to dismiss] my analysis [by] declaring that women simply are like cats. . . . Various others joined in to sneer at this arcane French nonsense. Meaghan [Morris] rejoindered, and it all went noisily downhill from there. . . . The bunfight led to a separate session a day or two later when the forces of progress and enlightenment re-grouped to strike back at the philistines. I was scheduled to run another workshop-type session but turned it into a panel stacked with friends/allies: Ian Hunter, Meaghan Morris, Albert Moran.9

And Brian Shoesmith, who in the late 1980s would go on (with Tom O’Regan, Noel King, Toby Miller, Alec McHoul, and others at Murdoch, Curtin, and Edith Cowan Universities in Perth) to raise the journal Continuum from the ashes of AJST, says of the same event:

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The turning point for me was a 1975 conference at Melbourne University. . . . This was the time that semiotics was introduced into Australian film discourse. Mick Counihan attempted to explain it to us [and] Meaghan Morris stepped in and clarified matters. In many respects it was a very formative moment for many of us setting out to teach film and media in the Australian tertiary sector. Shortly after the conference John Tulloch and Peter Gerdes began the Austra-lian Journal of Screen Theory.10

* * *In his account of the fate of Australian cinéphilia (and film culture) of the 1970s (and 1980s), Adrian Martin captures the moment in which AJST emerged: “[For] cinéphiles with a least one foot within the academy, 1976 was a bombshell. ‘Film Theory,’ all evidence of which had hitherto been quelled or delayed, was beginning to emerge—either in the form of powerfully charis-matic import personalities, or equally fervent local converts.”11 The front inside cover of the first (1976) issue of AJST carries the journal’s mission state-ment, and further admits to Martin’s assessment of the intellectual environ-ment in which the fledgling discipline sought to locate itself:

[The Australian Journal of] Screen Theory is a new, interdisciplinary film journal which, while an Australian publication, is oriented towards an international English-speaking market. The journal has the principal objective of providing regular interdisciplinary reflection on the increasingly complex body of film theory at a level suited to the many film courses springing up at tertiary and senior secondary level. . . . The journal is a response to the complaint of Aus-tralian tertiary and secondary teachers that there is a gap between the needs of their students and the hermeticism of existing journals of film theory. . . . Screen Theory [wants] to challenge that polarisation by explicating theories of film via detailed film analysis [and thereby] avoiding an undue emphasis on meta-theory in the abstract.12

Appearing within a year of the establishment of the Australian Film Commission (May 1975) and initially subsidized by the Film, Radio, and Television Board of the Australia Council, the first issues of AJST (in particu-lar, issues 1 and 2) are dominated by the work of founding editor John Tulloch. Initially trained as an empiricist historian, Tulloch joined the Department of General Studies at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 1973 after undertaking a Masters of Sociology in art, literature, and media (University of Sussex), and upon arrival found himself teaching film (in Australia) via UK Screen theory. As has been well documented, Screen—by the mid-1970s under the editorship of Sam Rohdie, and then Ben Brewster and later Geoffrey Nowell-Smith—had come to dominate the critical scene, transforming itself—through a reconceptualization of auteurism and the introduction of cine-structuralism—“from a professional education journal . . . into the main platform for a critical discourse which aimed at nothing less than the elabora-tion of a general theory of cultural functioning.”13 Tulloch’s move to establish a local journal of “Screen Theory” was not only a response to the perceived

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paucity of Australian film theory—Hodsdon’s “non-existence of concerted research activity”—but also symptomatic of his dissatisfaction with (1) Screen’s (much criticized) level of theoretical difficulty; (2) the limited instances of close textual analysis in Screen; and (3) the overwhelming emphasis (where there were analyses of films) of works from the classical Hollywood period.14 More than half the first issue of AJST is taken up by Tulloch’s long editorial, entitled “Genetic Structuralism and the Cinema: A Look at Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.”15 The opening pages of the article point to some of Tulloch’s con-cerns and reiterate AJST ’s mission statement:

In Australia, as in the UK, USA, and elsewhere, the serious study of film has proliferated over the last few years. . . . It is a common feeling among school and college film teachers [that] universities [are] doing little to guide them at the theoretical level, and it certainly does seem a very long way from the needs of many film students to the hermeticism of the few journals of film theory that are available. What we want to do with this journal is to challenge that polarisa-tion [between practice and theory], bridge the gap between on the one hand the large numbers of film enthusiasts—students and [film] buffs alike—who are seriously interested in the cinema . . . and on the other [hand] that narrow band of film heavies who seem increasingly to be writing to one another.16

While recognizing that the “conservatism of institutions” had made it inevi-table that the new area of film studies would develop (as it had overseas) within existing disciplines—English, drama, art history—in which film would often be “reduced to the terms of the encapsulating discipline,” Tulloch suggests that the way forward is not the “imposition of new dogma for film theory [but the adoption of] an interdisciplinary approach [one that] should be a process of presentation, explication and criticism of theo-ries and their underlying assumptions via common substantive concerns, a process in which a theory of that common area, in [this] case film, will be carved out but at the same time the separate disciplines may themselves be in part modified.”17 Accordingly, Tulloch notes that AJST ’s founding edito-rial board—Colin Crisp (Griffith University), John Flaus (National Film and Television School), and Noel Purdon and George Anderson (both Flinders University)18—is representative of most of the major areas that incorporated the teaching of film studies, and that each subsequent issue of the journal would seek to “present major, sometimes competing, theoretical approaches to film [and] hence each issue will implicitly, sometimes explicitly, stand as a critique of the ones before.”19

Tulloch goes on to state that the first issue of AJST is “devoted to socio-logical theory and film, in particular to genetic structuralism.”20 Tulloch’s choice looks back to his earlier work—specifically, his dissertation and subse-quent book, Chekhov: A Structuralist Study (1981)—which was partially informed by the “genetic structuralism” of aesthetician (and Georg Lukács disciple) Lucien Goldmann. Accordingly, issue 1 carries three short pieces (translated

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from the French by Crisp) of previously published work by Lucien and Annie Goldmann,21 as well as Tulloch’s extensive case study of Metropolis (Fritz Lang, DE, 1927), and broad analysis of the relation of film and society in Ger-man Expressionism. Tulloch’s work is also direct evidence of his dissatisfac-tion with, and response to, the linguistic and semiotic structuralism that had gained currency in mid-1970s Screen theory. Tulloch points out that while it is evident enough that the dialectical structure of Metropolis is organized around a set of “shifting antinomies,” what is “needed is not to reduce [the] film to these oppositions . . . but to explain the genesis of [a] vision which fused capi-talist and worker within a concept of materialism.” “Structuralist analysis,” he writes, “here needs to turn to a greater totality: the social and historical context of the expressionist movement.”22 Tulloch concludes—with reference to Christian Metz’s 1973 Screen essay, “Methodological Propositions for the Analysis of Film”23—that “the crucial point for the sociologist of film is [Metz’s] insistence that the ‘events’ we see in the film are themselves structured, and that these structures are extra-cinematic in origin. . . . It is at this level of the extra-cinematic ‘socio-cultural and historical signifying ensemble’ that the sociologist—and in particular the genetic structuralist—can make [a] distinc-tive contribution.”24

The second issue of AJST (1977) extended the publication’s interest in debates around structuralism and film,25 but the thematic and formal consis-tency of the first two issues of the journal was short-lived, with the editorial of issue 3 (December 1977) declaring a funding crisis due to lack of support from the Australian Film Commission (that had assumed general responsi-bility for the Film, Radio, and Television Board) and the absence of a local professional association comparable to the UK’s Society for Education in Film and Television/British Film Institute (SEFT/BFI).26 Enabled finally by a small grant from Griffith University’s School of Humanities, issue 3 features an expanded editorial board which includes Mick Counihan (La Trobe Uni-versity) and, in recognition of the fact that “the film study/theory situation is certainly more developed in the UK and USA,” Richard Dyer (Bulmershe College, Reading) as overseas editor “to keep [us] abreast with these develop-ments.”27 Along with the latter comes the explicit mission of wanting “to encourage Australian film teachers to grapple with theoretical issues which are often made to seem very arcane—such as the semiological debate [and] perhaps we can begin to provide some kind of theoretical overview of a debate which has hardly started in Australia.”28 The editorial concludes by returning to the polarizing presence of “theory” in Australian (tertiary) film studies: “It has been suggested that the very use of the word ‘theory’ in our [journal] title worries prospective readers and contributors. The term was . . . intended in the broadest sense: we shall, however, be dropping it from future issues.”29 Although the change of title—to “Australian Journal of Screen Stud-ies” (rather than “Screen Theory”)—never eventuated, the comment was taken up by Ian Hunter (in AJST issue 5/6), where he noted: “The humanist

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backlash which results in [the suggestion of] dropping the word theory from the title [of AJST ] is a response to market pressure; where it accepts theorie’s own self-understanding as ‘dis-embodied’ knowledge, where it associates the-ory and meta-theory with ‘difficult’ speech as opposed to the gestural solidar-ity and lucidity of those who talk of (and love) ‘film.’”30

* * *The fourth issue of AJST (1978), prepared by Tom Ryan, Freda Freiberg (TSEA-V), and Mick Counihan, put in place a strategy—of special confer-ence issues—that would become typical of the publication for the remainder of its tenure. The introduction (editorial), signed by Ryan, says that “the [1977] conference [held at Melbourne State College] which provided the framework for [issue 4] was conducted by the Tertiary Screen Education Association of Victoria (TSEA-V), an organisation founded with a two-fold commitment: 1. to provide a forum for teachers of film at a tertiary level; and 2. to ‘open out’ the discussion of film to members of the community in general—teachers, practitioners [and] critics.”31 Referring back to the “vac-uum” in Australian film studies (identified in—among other places—the pre-vious editorial), Ryan calls for “the creation of an Australian film culture” (outside of simply providing finance for production), and declares the need for “Australian film educators . . . to adopt some clear stance, preferably stances, in relation to the study of film.”32 Ryan goes on to say that “the sub-stance for an explication of the issues” is already evident in the articles col-lected in issue 4, notably Sam Rohdie’s use of the Greimas-Rastier linguistic model for an analysis of the narrative of Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, US, 1942),33 and Barbara Creed’s commentary on the patriarchal order appar-ent in Hollywood melodrama, in particular Dark Victory (Edmund Gould-ing, US, 1939), The Old Maid (Edmund Goulding, US, 1939), and (again) Now, Voyager.34 Prominent among articles not singled out for mention in Ryan’s introduction is Lesley Stern’s “Oedipal Opera: The Restless Years.” The essay—which anticipates a brand of audience studies that doesn’t gain currency until the mid-1980s—was described by Adrian Martin as “the most important piece of criticism produced in this country”:35

[Lesley Stern’s article] is exciting and invaluable in the myriad of possibilities it opens up. “In looking at The Restless Years [Grundy, AU, 1977–82],” she writes: “I want to challenge the notion of the audience for soap operas as passive con-sumers. . . . The pleasure derived from them may well have to do with the playful kind of work they invite from the viewer in producing meaning.” . . . Stern’s analysis [is] valuable because of the perspective it offers on conven-tional traditional narrative forms, while suggesting an alternative practice: a radical avant-garde in criticism and film production. This alternative, far from being impersonal and academic—as current mainstream opinion would have it—involves everything that is most crucial: our place in society, our pleasures, our capacity to change and rework repressive structures. [Martin asks:] Is that too utopian an ideal for a future Australian film culture?36

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Held over due to problems with “finance and deadlines,” the next issue of AJST published papers from the First Australian Film Conference ( June 1978, UNSW) in a special double issue (5/6, 1978) supported by the Faculty of Arts, UNSW, and Mitchell College of Advanced Education, Bathurst (now Charles Sturt University). The editorial (“A Note from the Publisher”), signed by Peter Gerdes (School of Drama, UNSW), announced that despite the growth of the local film industry, there was “an urgent need for critical evaluation, not only of local product but of film (and television) in gen-eral.”37 Once again, the theme of the editorial was the tension between—and need to create dialogue among—theorists and practitioners: “Some media-theory has by now reached such a state of isolation due to its esoteric-elitist thinking and the use of an almost unintelligible language that one may begin to have serious doubts about the purpose of such theory.”38 Again, it was Stern who strove to bridge the gap, this time with her “Independent Feminist Film-Making in Australia,” a work that formulated the female spectator in relation to local film practice, specifically two films: We Aim to Please (Robyn Laurie and Margot Nash, AU, 1976) and Seeing Red and Feeling Blue ( Jane Oehr, AU, 1976).39 Stern, who had moved from BFI Education to take up a post in Media Studies at La Trobe University in February 1976, remembers the background to a piece that Barbara Creed would later describe as “the first comprehensive feminist article on feminist filmmak-ing, its relationship to theory and the crucial nexus between processes of production, distribution and exhibition”:40

I was writing an article about a group of films from the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op, of which there was a feminist section. I borrowed the films and I was writing my article and I was all ready to present it at a conference [First Austra-lian Screen Conference, Sydney, 1978]. John Tulloch was one of the earliest people and he brought me, and other people, into it and then we formed it as a national body [Australian Screen Studies Association]. I was writing this arti-cle . . . when I got this phone call from somebody in the feminist group at the Sydney Filmmakers Co-op and they said: “We hear you’re writing this article about some of our films. Well, we’d like to know who you are and why you think you’re in a position to do this?” I was like really taken aback. I said “I’m kind of nobody. No, I’m not a filmmaker. Yes, I am a feminist, but I’m not a Sydney feminist.” The kind of interrogation went on and on about my qualifi-cations for doing it. Anyway I went ahead and I did it, and when I got to the conference I met all these people and we got on really well. Nevertheless there was a tension between so-called theorists and [practitioners]. . . . The Griffith boys—that’s Ian Hunter, Dugald Williamson and others—[were at the confer-ence].41 It was before Mick Counihan went [to Griffith University] but he also was friends with those people. . . . And so they gave their paper and the femi-nist cohort from Sydney were outraged by them and denounced them and their abstract theory. The girls hauled me, their new friend, in as a support, and the boys expected me to step up to the theory barricades. So there I was, an habit-ual scrapper, in the novel position of mediating.42

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Stern’s article—which appeared five years after the “Womenvision” event (March 1974), an “historic occasion [that] led to the women’s film workshop and formation of the Sydney Women’s film group”—located the growth in production of women’s film through the mid- to late 1970s not in an expan-sive film culture or government legislation, but rather in the grassroots “polit-ical activities of the Women’s Liberation Movement Organisations such as the Sydney Women’s Film Group (along with Women Media Workers and the Australian Women’s Broadcasting Co-operative).”43 More particularly, Stern writes, “the context of feminist film production involves a double move-ment: a struggle to gain access for women to the means of production . . . and a struggle on the level of meaning production, of image formation.”44 These two levels—of production and construction (text)—are in turn linked (as antici-pated in Stern’s “Oedipal Opera” essay) to questions of reception: who the films are made for, where they screened, how they are used, “talked about, thought about, conceptualised.”45 Stern’s aim is to “open out questions of dis-location in the area between cultural control over the means of production and the activities of producing and subverting meaning.”46 The perspective, she argues, that is essential to the development of any progressive feminist cin-ema becomes a recognition “that control over the means of production does not guarantee the subversion of the dominant ideology; it is little use changing the relations of exchange . . . without changing the language [of film].”47 Stern con-cludes that “Womenwaves,” a 1977 exhibition of Australian women’s films assembled by the Sydney Women’s Film group, occasions little discussion of film language, and she therefore advocates approaches to questions of cine-matic representation that had been opened up by “psychoanalytic and lin-guistic theories of the production of the subject and sexual differentiation,” in particular work produced by journals such as Screen and Edinburgh Film Fes-tival publications.48

* * *In an overview piece on the Sydney-based journal Filmnews, Jan McSweeney looked back to the First Australian Film Conference (referred to as the First Australian Screen Studies Association conference) and observed that “the conference’s theoretical jargon alienated many of the film-makers [present].” McSweeney nonetheless goes on to concede that papers such as Stern’s “[her-alded] the timely arrival of [the] Cinematic Sign [and] showed film theory to be a useful language tool, both for criticising sexism and interrogating the patri-archal structure.”49 Importantly (and as in Stern’s recollection of the event), it appears that whatever tensions existed among the delegation (of around two hundred), the 1978 Australian Film Conference—together with the success of the First History and Film conference (Canberra, 1981)50—led to an under-taking “[to] establish an association of people interested in the improvement of film teaching on a tertiary level.”51 The professional body—the Australian Screen Studies Association—was officially formed at the Second Australian Film Conference (Perth, 1980), and the First (official) Australian Screen

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Studies Association Conference was held (two years later) at La Trobe Uni-versity (Melbourne, 1982). Appearing ahead of these developments, issue 7 and issue 8 of AJST (both published in 1980) occupy a kind of interval (and transition) ahead of the next conference issue (9/10) of the journal. Issue 7 was a special issue devoted to the relationship between film and theater,52 and issue 8 sought not only to continue the journal’s commitment to the devel-opment of film and media theory worldwide, but also announced its inten-tion to promote local film culture by “introducing a new format with sections devoted to current film culture, covering film reviews . . . book reviews . . . and comment concerning film cultural institutions.”53 Each issue also carries a full-page advertisement for the Second Australian Film Conference (Ned-lands College of Advanced Education, Perth, November 25–27, 1980), and issue 7 includes a call for papers with the following topics: “Film (theory and practice); Film Scholarship (The State of the Art); Bridging the Gap (The Application of Film Theory to Film Teaching); Film as History; Film Educa-tion (the Development and Implementation of Courses).”54

As it turned out, issue 9/10 of AJST was an immediate departure from the format announced in the previous issue, giving over all available space to proceedings from the Second Australian Film Conference. In the editorial, Brian Shoesmith (Western Australian College of Advanced Education) and Robert Hodge (Murdoch University) announced that “the whole conference could be seen as constituting a major event in film culture in Australia.”55 More particularly, the conference organizers acknowledged that the “major effort of trying to bring international figures [Manuel Alvarado, London Uni-versity; Ed Buscombe, BFI; Marc Gervais, Concordia University, Montreal; Brian Henderson, State University of New York, Buffalo] to the conference, representing different approaches to screen studies from three countries was worthwhile in its own terms, even if there was some disconcerting last minute withdrawals [Stuart Hall, Open University; Stephen Heath, Jesus College, Cambridge].”56 Asked more recently what informed the decision to invite a large number of international speakers to the Nedlands conference, Shoe-smith replied:

It’s always a problem to get people to come to Perth [from interstate] and it was even more the case in those days. So the hook was to get as many well-known [overseas] speakers as possible. . . . Stephen Heath was big, and so we invited him and he said yes and then he said no. . . . We actually invited Raymond Williams and he said no, I don’t travel. And Stuart Hall was supposed to come, but he decided that he couldn’t come either. . . . I knew and liked the work of Ed Buscombe and had been using the Hazel: The Making of a Television Series book (by Ed and Manuel [Alvarado]) in my teaching, using the BFI slide pack that came with it, and the students liked it. . . . Brian Henderson said he was quite happy to come from Buffalo in New York State, and Marc Gervais came from Concordia in Canada. Marc’s invitation was at Irma Whitford’s [Mur-doch University] insistence. She thought, probably correctly, that we were

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being too Screen, too Marxist-oriented, with the people we were inviting, and we needed to have some humanist film people as well.57

As both Shoesmith and Noel King note, an outcome of the 1980 conference was that it provided not only the impetus for later visits (Buscombe returned for a Griffith University conference and Alvarado visited several times, including a term as scholar in residence at Nedlands), but also helped facili-tate (international) conference and publication opportunities for local film academics. More immediately, conference proceedings collected in AJST included works by imported guests—Alvarado, Buscombe, Henderson, Ger-vais, and (with mild controversy) absentee Heath—and local work from Hodge, Stern, Laleen Jayamanne, and Ina Bertrand. Noel King’s paper, on Union Maids and Harlan County USA, appeared that same year in Screen.58

The editorial for issue 9/10 noted that reviews of the conference (which had appeared in Cinema Papers and Filmnews), while in general seeing “hope-ful things,” agreed that the “fundamental issue” raised by the conference was still a sense that “unfamiliar theories were making insufficient contact with particular exercises in film history and criticism and with current film mak-ing. . . . No new perspectives on the old issues [of theory versus practice] seemed to emerge as anything like a consensus and no individuals or groups appear to be dominant forces on the Australian scene.”59 Marc Gervais’s paper, “Toward a Renewed Humanism in Film Studies,” most directly addressed the editorial’s concern that no clear direction in Australian film studies had emerged from the conference. Gervais writes that while there is (globally) a “picture of serious, energetic activity [it] does not enjoy the kind of uniformity and sense of shared goals and procedures that have . . . been char-acteristic of older, related disciplines; the state of film studies as an academic discipline is far from satisfactory.”60 Gervais makes the claim that the closest that film studies has come to a “new, disciplined, scientific approach” that overrides the all-embracing cultural eclecticism of earlier humanistic approaches is Metz’s enterprise to bring a revolutionary scientific-objective (and political-ideological) approach to film, rendered through “the heady mix, sometimes mutually contradictory, sometimes mutually complemen-tary, of semiotics/structuralism, Marxism, and (Lacanian) Freudian psycho-analysis [referred to by Gervais as SSMP].”61 Gervais uses Metz’s work—specifically the materialistic triad of Semiotics, Marxism and Psycho-analysis—as a platform to project the “new humanism” (of the paper’s title) as a way forward that incorporates an awareness and understanding of the most creative insights and elucidations arrived at by SSMP, and then move toward “a genuine humanism that encompasses both the scientifically precise and vaguer more mystical models of learning.”62

The Second Conference—and the “renewed humanism” of Gervais’s paper—drew frustrated responses from Brian McFarlane (“A Long Way from Lana Turner”) and Adrian Martin (“Theory Weary”) in Cinema Papers.63

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McFarlane rued, in particular, the absence (across the Conference’s sixteen scheduled sessions) of any sustained analysis of particular films:

For anyone interested in film it is gratifying to see the growth of a substantial body of screen theory. It may even be reasonable that such theory appears to have little connection with actual films. It may also be reasonable that film theorists may be so fiercely uncompromising in their diction as to preclude easy access to their formulations. . . . Nevertheless I cannot but feel that many of the intelligent accounts given of ways of perceiving and reading film would be more persuasive . . . if they could be more firmly anchored in the texts.64

Martin made a point of expressing his commitment to “the development of knowledge within the sphere of film analysis,” but declared that “something [had] gone wrong with film theory”:

The power struggle that is going on over who will claim the right to set the agenda for film studies has almost nothing to do with film. It has a great deal to do with a political line. The “new” criticism that has finally moved into a position of prominence within a number of tertiary institutions, involving to various degrees the concepts elaborated within semiotics, structuralism and feminism, is . . . a “materialist discourse,” a highly advanced version of Marxism.65

Martin goes on to say that contemporary film theory denies the possibility of “positing real objects—particular films, cinema history—and asking that a the-ory be adequate to them.”66 He concludes his review by saying that “if I have diagnosed the split between old [empiricist] and new [materialist] camps cor-rectly [then] I see little immediate hope for fruitful exchange.”67

Despite the dour assessment, the Second Conference boasted—as its “most significant outcome”—something that had been proposed at the First Conference in Sydney but which only came to fruition in Perth: namely, the foundation of the Australian Screen Studies Association.68 The inside cover of issue 9/10 of AJST carried the Association’s founding resolution: “[to] assure the continuity of conferences, the publication of the journal, and a common front for securing further support for screen studies.” And the same issue of Cinema Papers that published the McFarlane and Martin conference reports declared: “The newly formed Australian Screen Studies Association is a body whose concern it is to provide a focal point for the stimulation of an Austra-lian media culture. Its ambition is to draw together members who are active in the Australian film and television community. . . . A major conference . . . is planned for 1982 in Melbourne.”69

Issue 15/16 (1983) of AJST published papers from what became known as the First Australian Screen Studies Conference (held La Trobe University, December 1982). Among the articles was Albert Moran and Tom O’Regan’s paper, “Two Discourses of Australian Film,” which—like Philip Brophy and

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Adrian Martin’s contemporaneous “The Archaeology of Culture”—carried (in its title) a harbinger of Foucault, and a sense of what was to come.70 Specifi-cally, each signaled a return to empirical investigation and an attempt to negotiate the tension between theory and history via a (non-totalizing) con-cept of difference, one which could attend to the heterogeneity of historical material. Within a few years, the issue of AJST that carried papers delivered at the next [Second] Australian Screen Studies conference (Griffith University, December 3–7, 1984)71 announced under the title “Vale: Australian Journal of Screen Theory” (and with apparent indifference):

This is the final issue of Australian Journal of Screen Theory. . . . Australian Screen Studies are alive and well, although contributions to a journal seeking to expand what in the mid-seventies was called “screen theory” have declined. This may be a healthy development—media studies, “communications” and related courses are now well established in many Australian tertiary (and sec-ondary) institutions. We trust that AJST has contributed to this development.72

* * *Postscript. The Australian Journal of Screen Theory is no more. Noel King remembers a conversation (Fremantle, 1987): “I think I said, that in one of his interviews, Foucault claims that the concept of discontinuity is overstated in commentaries on his work, and that if one looks harder there are continuities to be found.” Shoesmith corroborates: “That sort of clinched it, you coming out with this in your diffident manner, this profound quote from Foucault; so [the new Australian journal of the media] became Continuum.”73 And so, Philip Bell, who laid AJST to rest, returns in Continuum, to mark out direc-tions—in television and historical reception studies—that were to be taken up in the late 1980s (and beyond):

The most recent [it was the Third and final] biennial conference of the Australian (now Australasian) Screen Studies Association was held in Sydney in December 1986. The papers printed here represent many of the issues considered, and reflect on the theoretical perspectives which the conference was intended to interrogate. Although it has not been possible to represent all the strands of the conference, three principal foci might be discerned in the following papers: First, a reassessment of film theory, especially in the light of recent work (such as Bordwell and Thompson’s) on Hollywood narrative. Second, a questioning of the future directions of what has for a decade been a most productive conjunction of psychoanalytic and feminist theorising. Third, the debate concerning TV as a cultural form in the light of studies focussed on active, diverse audience sub-cultures, and the popular/populist controversy.74

And, in closing, Bell reflects upon the decade-long period in which screen theory came to Australia:

Although old theoretical habits die hard, all of the [collected] papers show a determination not merely to reproduce the somewhat one-dimensional preoccupations of

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much 1970s–80s work which all too frequently sought to appropriate film or TV texts to illustrate the subtlety or fashionability of recently patented and imported “theory.” The historical and cultural specificity of film and TV was repeatedly emphasized during the conference, as were the limitations of totalising theory generally. Hence, the papers published here are eclectic, although they employ or develop theory in relation to concrete, sometimes quite “empirical” questions. This is a confident and positive movement, indicating that the search for monolithic theories “of film” or “of TV” textual practices has been left behind.75

Constantine Verevis is senior lecturer in Film and Television Studies in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University, Melbourne. He is author of Film Remakes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006) and co-editor of Second Takes: Critical Approaches to the Film Sequel (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010).

NotesThe epigraph is taken from Meaghan Morris and Stephen Muecke, “Relations of Theory: Meaghan Morris talks with Stephen Muecke,” in Outside the Book: Contemporary Essays on Literary Periodicals, ed. David Carter (Sydney: Local Con-sumption Publications, 1991), 77.

1. See “Editorial,” Continuum 1, no. 1 (1987): n.p. Continuum was initially published by Murdoch University and Western Australian College of Advanced Education. The journal’s subtitle changed twice: The Australian Journal of Media and Culture (1996) and Journal of Media & Cultural Studies (1998). From January 1998 it was published by Carfax, and more recently by Taylor & Francis.

2. This article is part of research conducted with Noel King and Deane Williams for an Australian Research Council Discovery project, titled Australian Film Theory and Criticism, 1975–1985. For an overview, see Noel King, Constantine Verevis, and Deane Williams, “Australia,” in The SAGE Handbook of Film Studies, ed. James Donald and Michael Renov (London: Sage, 2008), 112–22. My thanks to Noel and Deane, and also Adrian Martin and Christine Geraghty, for their comments on, and assistance with, this article.

3. The limitations—of concept and location—are identified by John Frow in a (some ways related) mapping of a cultural studies “moment of theory.” See “Australian Cultural Studies: Theory Story, History,” Australian Humanities Review 37 (December 2005). www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-Decem-ber-2005/frow.html.

4. John Frow and Meaghan Morris, “Introduction,” in Australian Cultural Studies: A Reader, ed. John Frow and Meaghan Morris (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993), xxvi. See also Ross Gibson’s account of a “panoply of emerging critics . . . pub-lishing in vibrant small presses (Filmnews, Cantrills Filmnotes, Tension, On the Beach, and Art & Text)” in “Moving Image—‘Quickness,’” in Innovation in Austra-lian Arts, Media and Design: Fresh Challenges for the Tertiary Sector, ed. Rod Wissler, Brad Haseman, Sue-Anne Wallace, and Michael Keane (Brisbane: Post Pressed, 2004), 66.

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5. Barrett Hodsdon, “A State of False Consciousness: Australian Film,” Cinema Papers, no. 2 (April 1974): 127.

6. See letters from Ross Cooper and Ian Mills in the following issue, Cinema Papers, no. 3 ( July 1974): 278; and a half-page advertisement for the Media Centre, La Trobe, Cinema Papers, no. 4 (December 1974): 382.

7. Screen 14, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1973). 8. Ian Hunter, “Another Way of Being an Intellectual,” interview by Noel King,

Communication, Politics & Culture 41, no. 1 (2008): 47. 9. Email correspondence, December 12, 2008. 10. Brian Shoesmith, “Through the Lens: Interviews from the Australian Film The-

ory and Criticism Project, Brian Shoesmith interviewed by Noel King,” Metro, no. 161 (2009): 139.

11. Adrian Martin, “No Flowers for the Cinéphile: The Fates of Cultural Populism 1960–1988,” in Island in the Stream: Myths of Place in Australian Culture, ed. Paul Foss (Sydney: Pluto Press, 1988), 129.

12. Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 1 (1976): n.p. 13. Paul Willemen, “An Introduction to Framework,” n.d. www.frameworkonline.

com/about2.htm; see also Paul Willemen, “Remarks on Screen: Introductory Notes for a History of Contexts,” Southern Review 16 ( July 1983): 292–311; and Andrew Britton, “The Ideology of Screen,” Movie, no. 26 (1978–79): 2–28. For a detailed account of the Screen theory moment and its larger context, see Terry Bolas, Screen Education: From Film Appreciation to Media Studies (Bristol: Intellect, 2009), esp. 227–57.

14. John Tulloch, unpublished interview with Deane Williams, Wales, August 30, 2007.

15. John Tulloch, “Genetic Structuralism and the Cinema: A Look at Fritz Lang’s Metropolis,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 1 (1976): 3–50.

16. Ibid., 3. It is worth comparing Tulloch’s editorial with similar mission statements of the same period from local publications, such as Cinema Papers. See Constan-tine Verevis, “Writing the Revival,” Metro, no. 150 (2006): 168–69.

17. Tulloch, “Genetic Structuralism and the Cinema,” 4. 18. Crisp was known as a French cinema expert, having published a book on Fran-

çois Truffaut (1972), and Purdon had come to Flinders from Cambridge and Bristol and had been involved with the UK film journal Cinema.

19. Tulloch, “Genetic Structuralism and the Cinema,” 5. 20. Ibid. 21. Annie Goldmann, “Structuralism and Film—Problems of Methodology,” and

Annie and Lucien Goldmann, “Structures of Absence in the Films of Godard, Bunuel [sic] and Pasolini,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 1 (1976): 51–66 and 67–80, respectively.

22. Tulloch, “Genetic Structuralism and the Cinema,” 16. 23. Christian Metz, “Methodological Propositions for the Analysis of Film,” Screen

14, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Summer 1973): 89–101. 24. Tulloch, “Genetic Structuralism and the Cinema,” 43. 25. See, most obviously, Tulloch’s review of Will Wright’s Sixguns and Society (1976),

a book that he describes as “the best substantive structuralist study of film [to date]” and one that “deserves a place on the booklist of every film theory and film and society course.” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 3 (1977): 92. See

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also Tulloch’s analysis of Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, SE, 1957), an essay that points to the thematic and structural similarities between Bergman’s film and Chekhov’s A Dreary Story to “suggest a way in which sociological analysis of artistic roles can contribute to an understanding of artistic works” and to argue that “Wild Strawberries is structured according to an existentialist problematic.” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 3 (1977): 35.

26. See the recent print symposium on SEFT/BFI: “In Focus: The British Film Insti-tute,” ed. Toby Miller, Cinema Journal 47, no. 4 (Summer 2008): 121–47.

27. “Editorial,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 3 (December 1977): 6. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. Not insignificant as a measure of currents animating Australian film studies,

and of the voracious appetite for (film) theory in the later 1970s, is the number of publications advertised in issue 3, including ads for Jump Cut (nos. 12–16), Cam-era Obscura (no. 2), Framework (issues 1–7), Working papers #3 1977 (which included Meaghan Morris’s review of Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality 1 and Anne Freadman’s review of Roland Barthes’ S/Z), Metro, Filmnews, and Screen Film Reader 1.

30. Ian Hunter, “Fetishism in Film ‘Theory’ and ‘Practice,’” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, nos. 5–6 (1978): 66n22.

31. Tom Ryan, “Introduction,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 4 (1978): 3. 32. Ibid. 33. Sam Rohdie, “Semiotic Constraints in Now, Voyager,” Australian Journal of Screen

Theory, no. 4 (1978): 19–25. Another “import personality,” Rohdie moved to La Trobe University from the British Film Institute in 1977.

34. Barbara Creed, “The Position of Women in Hollywood Melodramas,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 4 (1978): 27–31. Sometimes referred to as the “Casey Robinson conference,” the event had as its guest Casey Robinson, screenwriter of these melodramas (and other Hollywood films). See “Casey Robinson on Dark Victory,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 4 (1978): 5–10.

35. Adrian Martin, “Review of Australian Journal of Screen Theory, issues 1–4,” Cinema Papers, no. 29 (September–October 1979): 575, emphasis added.

36. Ibid. 37. Peter R. Gerdes, “A Note from the Publisher,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory,

nos. 5–6 (1978): 3. 38. Ibid. 39. Lesley Stern, “Independent Feminist Film-Making in Australia,” Australian Jour-

nal of Screen Theory, nos. 5–6 (1978): 105–21. 40. Barbara Creed, “Medusa in the Land of Oz: The Female Spectator in Australia,”

Camera Obscura, nos. 20–21 (May–September 1990): 58. 41. The Griffith contingent (Stuart Cunningham, Ian Hunter, and Dugald William-

son) published their papers as “Industry—Ideology—Analysis,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, nos. 5–6 (1978): 36–81.

42. Lesley Stern, unpublished interview with Deane Williams, San Diego, August 21, 2007.

43. Stern, “Independent Feminist Film-Making in Australia,” 105–6. 44. Ibid., 106. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid.

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47. Ibid., 111, emphasis added. 48. Ibid., 114–15. See also Stern’s later “Feminism and Cinema—Exchanges,” Screen

20, nos. 3–4 (Winter 1979–80): 89–105. As well as signaling its alignment with UK Screen theory, Stern’s article marks its distance from the discourse of film found in local journals. Stern says that a journal like Cinema Papers “represents a heterogeneous collection of views and interpretations [yet] it is this very plural-ism which gives the stamp of integrity . . . to Cinema Papers, and accords it a hegemonic status within Australian film culture. . . . By suppressing . . . theoreti-cal investigations the dominant tendency of Australian film culture . . . constrains and contains changes in the processes of film production.” “Independent Femi-nist Film-Making in Australia,” 107.

49. Jan McSweeney, “Filmnews,” Framework, no. 24 (1984): 99. 50. For an account of the first and other History and Film conferences, see Ian Ber-

trand, “‘Wot’s in a Name?’ and How Did We Get Here from There?,” paper presented to the twelfth Film and History Conference, Canberra 2004. www.afiresearch.rmit.edu.au/fhc2006/about.html.

51. Gerdes, “A Note from the Publisher,” 3. 52. Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 7 (1980), ed. Peter R. Gerdes and Neil N.

McDonald. 53. “Editorial,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 7 (1980): 3. 54. Australian Journal of Screen Theory, no. 7 (1980): 153. 55. “Editorial,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, nos. 9–10 (1981): 5. 56. Ibid. 57. Shoesmith, “Through the Lens,” 140. 58. Noel King, “Recent ‘Political’ Documentary: Notes on Union Maids and Harlan

County USA,” Screen 22, no. 2 (1981): 7–20. 59. “Editorial,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, nos. 9–10 (1981): 5–6. 60. Marc Gervais, “Toward a Renewed Humanism in Film Studies,” Australian Jour-

nal of Screen Theory, nos. 9–10 (1981): 87–88. 61. Ibid., 89. 62. Ibid. 63. Brian McFarlane, “A Long Way from Lana Turner” and Adrian Martin, “Theory

Weary,” Cinema Papers, no. 31 (March–April 1981): 40–41, 101. 64. McFarlane, “A Long Way from Lana Turner,” 40. 65. Martin, “Theory Weary,” 41, 101. 66. Ibid., 101. 67. Ibid., emphasis added. See also a letter of reply from Bob Hodge and Peter Jef-

fery, Cinema Papers, no. 32 (May–June 1981): 114. 68. “Editorial,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, nos. 9–10 (1981): 6. 69. “Australian Screen Studies Association,” Cinema Papers, no. 31 (March–April

1981): 9. 70. Albert Moran and Tom O’Regan, “Two Discourses of Australian Film,” Austra-

lian Journal of Screen Theory, nos. 15–16 (1983): 163–73. Philip Brophy and Adrian Martin’s “The Archaeology of Culture (or: How to Say Everything at Once),” published in Cantrills Filmnotes, nos. 37–38 (April 1982): 44–53, was presented at the previous year’s History and Film Conference (Canberra, November 1981).

71. The conference was organized by Stuart Cunningham and Dugald Williamson with assistance from Mick Counihan and Jill Weber. It attracted over 150

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academics and filmmakers from around Australia. Overseas guests included Mandy Merck (Screen editor), Paul Willemen (BFI), and Andrew Tolson (Queen Margaret College, Edinburgh).

72. Philip Bell, “Vale: Australian Journal of Screen Theory,” Australian Journal of Screen Theory, nos. 17–18 (1986): 1.

73. Shoesmith, “Through the Lens,” 140. See also Shoesmith, “Recalling Things Past: An Introduction to Continuum,” Continuum 20, no. 1 (2006): 1–5.

74. Philip Bell, “Introduction,” Continuum 1, no. 2 (1987): n.p. 75. Ibid., emphasis added.