Another very interesting and dynamic week of lecture and tutorial for Australian Film with another fun debate mainly centering around what is ‘Bad’ Australian film, how we determine value and the ‘well intentioned’ and ‘worthy’ and why there is so little celebration of ‘badness’.
Greg spoke about cultural value being Art cinema or ‘elite art’ seen more significant in national cinemas than in Hollywood, as other cinemas are more ‘worthy’ than the mundane and formulaic Hollywood system, and also those films that are experimental or independent, which seem to be films that are more credible than mainstream films.
He then discussed commercial value as being Popular art, visceral films, cult films, films ‘throbbing with energy’ preferred to those ‘elite’ films, ‘quality’ or prestige films, and award-winning films.
Along with the readings I learnt that the Trash aesthetic has a commercial focus, often sensationalist and perverse with superficial storylines, references to the ‘forbidden’ and cheap production values. I also learnt that ‘exploitation cinema’ broadly applies to films whose purpose is to titillate or shock through sex, violence, gore or nudity and that the common sub-genres include sexploitation, blaxploitation, snuff and gore/splatter cinema – closely tied to adult cinema and soft-core pornography, the horror genre, underground filmmaking, sci-fi, zombie and the slasher film.
I really found ‘Not Quite Hollywood’ an insightful film because it brought to my attention a lot of the history of Australian films in general, a lot that I had not heard about and also explored the history of significant changes in society and values. I intend on checking a few of the films out that were mentioned and shown.
