Tokens or Totems? Eccentric Props in Postcolonial Re-enactments of Colonial Consecration

Looking Back?

“…Stephen Crofts (2000) considers 77 reviews in his analysis of critical reception across four countries*Australia, Britain, France and the United States. There have been many more since, including two recent books*Gail Jones' The Piano (2007) and Kathleen McHugh's Jane Campion (2007)*and several recent papers (Klinger 2006;Ramsey-Kurz 2007;Rothermel 2007), including one in the pages of this journal . There are at least 40 scholarly articles or parts of books dedicated to the movie and two full collections of essays edited by Coombs and Gemmell (1999) and Harriet Margolis (2000a).…”

“…DuPuis argues that the film raises the spectre of colonial guilt only to resoundingly refute it; through converting conquest into romantic spectacle, Māori land is, for her, appropriated again as a cinematic resource cf. Reid 2000;Neill 1999;Ramsey-Kurz 2007). Such trenchant criticisms of how the film 'romances' colonialism perhaps fail to fully register the ironic, critical way in which Campion approaches the mythology of her own Pakeha genealogy.…”