RABBIT-PROOF FENCE - Go & see it!!

by singsongboi 20 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  singsongboi

  The 'Rabbit Proof Fence' is an australian movie that tells the story of some aboriginal children who escape from a camp established by evil white australians with the mentality of the biblical Joshua.

  It's just been released in the US.

  If you want to understand australia and australians you should see this movie. It tells a story that should deeply shame all modern australians, but sadly, many, maybe a majority, are NOT ashamed!!!!

  It was made by Phillip Noyce, who has also directed good movies like, Patriot Games, The Bone Collector, Clear & Present Danger, The Saint.

  Noyce & his male partner live in a funky old house at Palm Beach nsw, and their home & lifestyle was recently featured on national TV in an australian show called "Burke's Backyard.

  Hope this link to a site for the film works....

  http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?a=5770&s=Interviews
• 

  unclebruce

  G'day singsongboi,

  Only trouble is the film's full of shit. (with a plotline taken straight from hollywoods portrail of americas deep south)

  eg: the scene where the girls were transported in the back of a truck was an outright lie .. it didn't happen .. the girls were given a number of lifts by concerned 'whites' and always treated with the utmost respect, riding in the interior of cars and fed in roadhouses and reststops alongside thier hosts .. etc.. I've been around a bit and never seen people treat kids badly in the bush. It's a shame the film makers were so dishonest.

  A better film by far was Paul Kelly's "Follow the Moon". A true story about a pastoralist who let his daughter die in the bush rather than allow a black tracker search on his land. ( even the music is much better .. Paul Kelly being our best singer/song writer)

  If you think many average Australians of any era would treat aboriginies badly or not see them as equals you've a lot to learn in the real world. (pasturalists, police and church representatives are another story entirely and treated most other humans poorly if not condecendingly)

  I have travelled widely throughout the outback and could write many books on this subject. The weird kind of racism that the makers of "rabbit proof fence" were trying to show is more easily demonstrated in places like Papua/New Guinea where the "ex-pats" close themselves off in separate communities and the natives only rarely make contact with ordinary white folk (non missionary, non exploitative types)

  The filmakers have admitted 'exagerating to make a point'. I call it dishonest. Based on a true story yes but a true story no. (It'd be nice if life were that black and white.

  cheers, unclebruce (of pijanjara and english decent)

  PS: Unfortunatly I have no time to discuss this or any thing further at this time .. "please forgive my falling shorts" (a favorite JW prayer in PNG)

  PSS: I worked on the rabbit proof fence. (not the movie .. the actual fence! lol .. longest manmade structure in the world ya know .. my uncle still maintains a section in the SA outback)
• 

  MikeMusto

  I like the movie

  "Chelsea boys gone wild"

  but thats just one Hollywood insiders opinion.

  fyi: Attack of the clones is better than Phantom but
  not as good as the first 3
• 

  unclebruce

  shut up micky manifesto!, this singsongboy's just called all australians rascist pigs so i gotta rant some more .. lol ...

  having just been accepted into the local 'yuin' tribe (far south coast NSW) i have no time for race bashing, white, black, pink or yellow .. some of the 'full blood' aboriginies where i live need strangling. fair dinkum.

  example: In my town there is a very old willow tree. It is at what is called 'the meeting place' and made sacred with time (and perhaps an old blacks placenta buried next to it long ago)

  Several years ago an insensitive white mayor was sick of the loud drunken behaviour of the abos meeting there and had it chainsawed down at sun-up one Sunday morning (who ever heard of council workers up at that hour .. let alone a Sunday!)

  The tree has now grown back bigger and stronger than ever before (the Mayor has since been sacked and run out of the district for unrelated matters)

  So far so good .. when i moved down here i, pretty much by accident, made friends with the elders of the Aboriginie communitee. This giant old willow i was told is a sacred tree and it's luxuriant regrowth is a symbol of the survival of black culture etc...

  Now here's the sadd part - whenever i go to chat with the ol' folks i look inside the huge hollowed out trunk and what do i see? Disgarded cigarette packets, beer bottles, cans, sometimes a home-made bong. The younger generation use the giant sacred tree as a rubish recepticle! (and there is always a 'wheely bin' less than ten feet away)

  Things like that piss me off royally but what can a poor boy do? The world we live in is not ideal and I just remmembered why i prefer the solitude of my bush bolt-hole..

  cheers, unclebruce
• 

  outnfree

  Nice to see you here, uncle! We've missed you.

  Now I want to go to see BOTH films.

  outnfree

  If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you've never
  tried before.
• 

  singsongboi

  no arguments, uncle bruce...

  all films are propaganda .... just happened to like this one!!!

  and since i was born at pambula on the nsw coast, later lived at merimbula,

  and on the north coast at port macquarie, have some experience in whitie attitudes to original inhabitants.. and some experience with your comment about aboriginal problems.

  i was never allowed to play with aboriginal kids...

  "why"?... i would ask..

  " because they re dirty.."

  i think that says it all...!!!
• 

  unclebruce

  Wow singsongboi,

  I was born and raised in SA but now live on 40 acres in the forest between Bega and Tathra. (the old Vimy Ridge gold mine) Pambula and Merimbula are just down the road. Small world!

  Aborigine issues are very hard to grip. (eg: We fought to give them equal drinking rights and now alcohol is ripping thier communities to shreds) A lot of bad things did happen to aboriginies and quite a few white men hung for outrages against blacks. Us southerners have always been sensitive to the mistreatment of blackfellas but in the '60's we emerged from a very paternal system. The power was not in the hands of the ordinary folk as it is now. In my experience there is much more ill feeling in towns out west about bad behaviour than anything else. I don't want loadmouthed abusive drunks living next to me black green or purple. (Even in Bega many of the abo kids use foul language non stop and it does scare the conservative folk i can tell ya. it's rare to see white kids acting that way. It annoys the crap outta me that these kids 'let the side down') We have a clash of cultures going on overlayed with poverty but not helped by a youngerr generation who'd rather sit on thier bums than work.

  Forgive me for saying too much. It seems that to say one sentence takes 50 on this subject.

  My sister was constantly harrassed by full bloods in Darwin for being a 'half caste' predjudice cuts both ways .. funny thing is that most folk just think she's white like me LOL.

  cheers, unclebruce.

  PS: Next time you're around this way it'd be great to do coffee.
• 

  Mazza

  Hi guys - and hugs to brucie! Anyhaw, I was going to give the film a miss coz of all the trouble they had with those kids trying to make the movie. Not to mention it would be racist. Twice I saw the documentary they made of the making of the movie and at least one of those girls gave em' hell. A second girl followed her lead most of the time and the other little one seemed well behaved. I didn't think they would ever get the film together and if they did, I didn't see how they could get enough reasonable footage without that girl throwing her weight around and messing up each scene. If Phillip Noyce managed to get her on track, he's a miracle maker. If she'd have been my kid I would have cheefully strangled her.

  Racism. It's everywhere. Every culture suffers from it. And those who accuse people of it also suffer from it. It's just the way we are. We are suspicious of anything different. Australia is not worse than any where else.

  What happened to the aborigines is shocking. It's a miserable mess. But had we been there at the time would we have done anything any different? It's all very well now that we live in an enlightened age - but back then people thought differently - people's opinions were moulded by their environement, their education and their financial situation. The people who got shipped out to TAsmania (my ancestors) didn't have it too good either. I don't feel responsible for that or anything else that happened back then. I only have to feel responsible for how I act now.

  Marilyn - reporting from Hong Kong - where there are hundreds of thousands of Filipino maids many of whose circumstances are disgraceful. Our maids room is the size of a broom cupboard it has no window and is only big enough to fit a specially made bed. I wouldn't even put my cat in there!

  sorry for raving.
• 

  COMF

  UB, good to see yazz again! What's a pasturalist?

  "Relevance? Huh?" - MikeMusto

  The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
  Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit
  Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
  Nor all your tears wash out a word of it.
• 

  singsongboi

  just stuffed up a long post and lost it all....

  so i won't try to repeat all i said, as i got another meeting to go into about 30 minutes...

  just some memories that came back...

  i think i know that bit of country where you are living... dad often used to take me over there to see a friend of his... lived on a flat swampy section near a river...seem to recall it being called nelson's bay or river..but maybe the name has changed... say, all the roads where dirt in those days and corrugated... shake you up driving over them

  got my first dog off this old guy -- a big, black, tough, raucous cattle dog.. so tough that when an uncle ran over him in a 'T' model ford, he just got up and kept running..

  he ussed to break his chain and run off-- then locals would be phoning my dad all night ---" your son's dog has been chasing our cows, and they have gone off the milk... what are you going to do about it ?''

  my dad got so angry one day, he was going to shoot the dog, loaded his shotgun and went out to find the dog... i let him off his chain, and he started running up and down the next door paddock, me in front of him -- or trying to be, bawling at the top of my voice and yelling out ..."shoot me, shoot me and not the dog"

  the dog loved it!!! not much in the world as exciting to a dog as running and yelling...!!!!

  i came home from school one day soon after, to find the dog gone... dad swore he had taken him up into the bush to live with some sleeper cutters..!!! i tried to get him to take me up to see him... but, he never would..

  dad got me a pomeranian for my next dog!!!! he got to like chasing cars and came to a bad end!!!!

  dog's eh??????

  talk again soon

  say!! unka bruce, in those days, you could sit in the backyard at night and still hear the dingos howling all round...

  any left in your parts?????