Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Australia’s War through the Lens of Centenary Documentary: Connecting Scholarly and Popular Histories

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Australians and the First World War

Abstract

A significant gulf is evident between scholarly and popular understandings of the First World War. Although it is too simplistic to summarise this as a simple binary, there are nevertheless common features of each approach to its subject matter. Popular approaches, for instance, commonly privilege emotion, and emotion without accompanying cognition significantly limits an appreciation of the war’s complexities. Critical documentary has significant potential to broaden and nuance understandings by using a popular educative tool to embed scholarly approaches. This chapter analyses three examples of critical documentary from the centenary of Anzac—Why Anzac with Sam Neill, Lest We Forget What? and The War that Changed Us. It argues that the evolving form of historical documentary in these examples not only communicates revisionist scholarly interpretations, but also makes use of key devices to connect audiences to the lived experience of wartime and its impact.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 89.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 119.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Anna Clark, Private Lives, Public History (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2016), 82.

  2. 2.

    Frank Bongiorno, “Anzac and the Politics of Inclusion,” in Nation, Memory and Great War Commemoration: Mobilising the Past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, eds. Shanti Sumatojo and Ben Wellings (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014), 81, 96.

  3. 3.

    Catriona Elder, Being Australian: Narratives of National Identity (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2007), 249.

  4. 4.

    Michael Kilmister, James Bennett, Margot Ford and Jennifer Debenham, “Treading on Sacred Ground? Confronting the Anzac Myth in Higher Education,” History Compass (August 2017).

  5. 5.

    Clark, Private Lives, 73–80, 94.

  6. 6.

    See Kathryn Grushka, James Bennett, Robert Parkes et al., Visual Media Texts: Teaching and Assessing the Humanities and Social Sciences in a Post-Literate Age (Newcastle: The University of Newcastle, 2013).

  7. 7.

    Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Past within Us: Media, Memory, History (London: Verso, 2005), 231.

  8. 8.

    Kriv Stenders, Why Anzac with Sam Neill (DVD, Essential Media, 2015); Rachel Landers, Lest We Forget What? (DVD, Pony Films, 2015); Don Featherstone with Clare Wright, The War that Changed Us, 4 episodes (DVD, Electric Pictures, 2014).

  9. 9.

    Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 3–5, 21, 230.

  10. 10.

    Brian Winston, Claiming the Real II. Documentary: Grierson and Beyond, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 270.

  11. 11.

    Stella Bruzzi, New Documentary: A Critical Introduction (London: Routledge, 2000), 103.

  12. 12.

    Simon Schama, “A History of Britain: A Response,” American Historical Review 114, no. 3 (2009): 694, 697.

  13. 13.

    Philippa Mein Smith, “The ‘NZ’ in Anzac: Different Remembrance and Meaning,” First World War Studies 7, no. 2 (2016): 203; Nick Galvin, “Why Anzac with Sam Neill: The Actor Remembers His Fallen Family,” Sydney Morning Herald, 17 April 2015. Neill also co-narrated with Jeremy Irons the “Turkish flavoured” international feature-length documentary, Gallipoli, produced for the ninetieth anniversary of the campaign. See Tolga Örnek, Gallipoli: The Frontline Experience (DVD, Cinema Epoch, 2005).

  14. 14.

    Christina Twomey, “Trauma and the Reinvigoration of Anzac: An Argument,” History Australia 10:3 (2013): 107.

  15. 15.

    James Brown, “Anzac Instincts: The Missing Modern Military Voice,” Griffith Review 48 (2015): 272.

  16. 16.

    Stenders, Why Anzac. In an interview on ABC Television in the lead-up to the premier screening in 2015, Neill added the line “and I despise old men who send young men to war”.

  17. 17.

    See Galvin, “Why Anzac with Sam Neill.” Also see James Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession (Melbourne: Redback, 2014).

  18. 18.

    Stenders, Why Anzac.

  19. 19.

    Denis McLean, The Prickly Pair: Making Nationalism in Australia and New Zealand (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2003), 101–2.

  20. 20.

    Sam Neill and Judy Rymer, Cinema of Unease (DVD, Top Shelf Productions, 1995).

  21. 21.

    Dale Bradley, Chunuk Bair (DVD, Daybreak Pictures, 1992); Maurice Shadbolt, Once on Chunuk Bair (Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982). Also see Maurice Shadbolt, Voices of Gallipoli (Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988). Neil gives the incorrect date of 1981 for the film.

  22. 22.

    James Bennett, “Man Alone and Men Together: Maurice Shadbolt, William Malone and Chunuk Bair,” Journal of New Zealand Studies 13 (2012): 51.

  23. 23.

    See Clark, Private Lives, 64.

  24. 24.

    Australian historians have had curiously little to say about the Armenian genocide given its wider context. A rare example that discusses Gallipoli and the Armenian genocide together is Robert Manne, Making Trouble: Essays against the New Australian Complacency (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2011), 310–24. This neglect has only very recently been addressed with the publication of a monograph. See Peter Stanley and Vicken Babkenian, Armenia, Australia and the Great War (Sydney: NewSouth, 2016).

  25. 25.

    The National Commission on the Commemoration of the Anzac Centenary, “How Australia May Commemorate the Anzac Centenary” (Canberra: Department of Veterans’ Affairs, 2011), 75.

  26. 26.

    Santanu Das, ed., Race, Empire and First World War Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 4.

  27. 27.

    For details, see James Bennett, “Māori as Honorary Members of the White Tribe,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 29, no. 3 (2001): especially 43.

  28. 28.

    As Clark has noted, “nostalgia is the enemy of critical historical engagement.” Clark, Private Lives, 135.

  29. 29.

    Bart Ziino, “Who Owns Gallipoli? Australia’s Gallipoli Anxieties 1915–2005,” Journal of Australian Studies 30, no. 88 (2006): 4.

  30. 30.

    See, in particular, Bruce Scates, “In Gallipoli’s Shadow: Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War,” Australian Historical Studies 33, no. 119 (2002): 1–21; Bruce Scates, Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Mark McKenna and Stuart Ward, “‘It Was Really Moving, Mate’: The Gallipoli Pilgrimage and Sentimental Nationalism in Australia,” Australian Historical Studies 38, no. 129 (2007): 141–51; Bruce Scates, “The First Casualty of War: A Reply to McKenna’s and Ward’s Gallipoli Pilgrimage and Sentimental Nationalism,” Australian Historical Studies 38, no. 130 (2007): 312–21.

  31. 31.

    See “Lest We Forget What Press Kit,” Pony Films, accessed 24 June 2016, http://ponyfilms.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/LEST-WE-FORGET-WHAT_Press-Kit_V3.pdf. Also see Craig Stockings, ed., Zombie Myths of Australian Military History (Sydney: NewSouth, 2010).

  32. 32.

    Lisa Featherstone, Let’s Talk About Sex: Histories of Sexuality in Australia from Federation to the Pill (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 94–5, 105.

  33. 33.

    Ibid.; Frank Bongiorno, The Sex Lives of Australians: A History (Melbourne: Black Inc, 2012), 142. Also see Raden Dunbar, Secrets of the Anzacs: The Untold Story of Venereal Disease in the Australian Army (Melbourne: Scribe, 2015).

  34. 34.

    Robin Prior, Gallipoli: The End of the Myth (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009). Also see Robin Prior, “The Suvla Bay Tea-Party: A Reassessment,” Journal of the Australian War Memorial 7 (1983): 25–34.

  35. 35.

    Peter Weir, Gallipoli (1981; DVD, 20th Century Fox, 2015).

  36. 36.

    There is considerable anecdotal evidence to support this finding. It is also corroborated by the initial findings of the author’s ethics-approved survey of students enrolled in a first year History service course at his university.

  37. 37.

    Don Murray, Anzac: A Nation’s Heritage (1965; DVD, National Film and Sound Archive, 2011).

  38. 38.

    Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013).

  39. 39.

    See Philippa Scarlett, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Volunteers for the AIF (Canberra: Indigenous Histories, 2012), 67; Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770–1972 (1996; repr., Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2008), 157.

  40. 40.

    Landers, Lest We Forget What?

  41. 41.

    Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War (Melbourne: Penguin, 1974); Janet Butler, Kitty’s War (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2013); Ross McMullin, Pompey Elliott (Melbourne: Scribe, 2002); Jeff Sparrow and Jill Sparrow, Radical Melbourne: A Secret History (Melbourne: Vulgar Press, 2001); Jeff Sparrow and Jill Sparrow, Radical Melbourne 2: The Enemy Within (Melbourne: The Vulgar Press, 2004).

  42. 42.

    Don Featherstone with Clare Wright, “Special Features,” The War that Changed Us (DVD, Electric Pictures, 2014).

  43. 43.

    Ibid.

  44. 44.

    Graeme Davison, “Speed Relating: Family History in a Digital Age,” History Australia 6.2 (2009): 43.7. Davison’s comment was made specifically in relation to the documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?, but his point has much broader relevance.

  45. 45.

    For some penetrating insights on the clash of wills between these two powerful personalities, see “Paddy’s War,” Compass, aired 24 April 2016, ABC TV. This documentary includes contributions from Mannix’s most recent biographer. See Brenda Niall, Mannix (Melbourne: Text, 2015).

  46. 46.

    Anne Maria Nicholson, “Play Black Diggers to Shed New Light on Anzac History of Indigenous Australians,” ABC News, 17 December 2013.

  47. 47.

    See Marina Larsson, Shattered Anzacs: Living with the Scars of War (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009).

  48. 48.

    I am indebted to Leah Riches for this observation. Bruce Scates, Rebecca Wheatley and Laura James, World War One: A History in 100 Stories (Melbourne: Viking, 2015), especially the Introduction.

  49. 49.

    Örnek, Gallipoli; Wain Fimeri, Revealing Gallipoli (DVD, December Films, 2005).

Select Bibliography

  • Beaumont, Joan. Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Janet. Kitty’s War: The Remarkable Wartime Experiences of Kit McNaughton. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Niall, Brenda. Mannix. Melbourne: Text, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

    James E. Bennett

Authors
  1. James E. Bennett
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James E. Bennett .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Newcastle , Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia

    Kate Ariotti

  2. University of Newcastle , Callaghan, New South Wales, Australia

    James E. Bennett

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Bennett, J.E. (2017). Australia’s War through the Lens of Centenary Documentary: Connecting Scholarly and Popular Histories. In: Ariotti, K., Bennett, J. (eds) Australians and the First World War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51520-5_13

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51520-5_13

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51519-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51520-5

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation