Shotgun weddings and bohemian dreams
Jazz, family values and storytelling in Australian film
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v8i1-2.26756Keywords:
Jazz, Film, Australia, film noirAbstract
Recent research on jazz presence in Australian film has demonstrated how the genre was once used to enhance narratives about both the threats and the perceived benefits of impending modernisation during the 1920s and 1930s. This article charts out the way in which the musical trope of the bluesy solo horn – established in American and Australian film noir productions of the 1970s and 1980s – was used in contrast to conjure a sense of nostalgia in Australian films produced during the early 1990s. Despite pivoting a period of 60 years, analysis undertaken in this article of Gillian Armstrong’s The Last Days of Chez Nous (1992) and Paul Harmon’s Shotgun Wedding (1993) reveals the continued deployment of jazz sounds to rhetorical ends within Australian films bent on exploring competing societal visions. In turn, its identification of a shift from the sound of jazz in general as a marker of the modern to the sound of the bluesy solo horn as a nostalgic trope reinforces the need to read the semiotics of jazz presence in Australian film against particular historical frames.
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Winton, T. (1991) Cloudstreet. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble.
Brett, J. (2003) Australian Liberals and the Moral Middle Class. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481642
Butler, D. (2002) Jazz Noir: Listening to Music from Phantom Lady to The Last Seduction. Connecticut: Praeger.
Corris, P. (1983) The Empty Beach. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Coyle, R., ed. (2005) Reel Tracks: Australian Feature Film Music and Cultural Identity. Sydney: John Libbey Publications.
DeVeaux, S. (1991) ‘Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography’. Black American Literature Forum 25/3: 525–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3041812
——(1997) The Birth of Bebop. Berkley: University of California Press.
Edgar, D. (1980) Possible Directions for an Australian Family Policy. Melbourne: Institute of Family Studies.
Floyd, S. (1995) The Power of Black Music: Interpreting Its History from Africa to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press.
Focus on the Family Australia (n.d.) ‘The Focus Logo’. http://www.families.org.au/default.aspx?cat=5 (accessed 30 January 2015).
Ford, P. (2008) ‘Jazz Exotica and the Naked City’. Journal of Musicological Research 27/2: 113–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01411890801989596
Francke, L. (1993) ‘Dark Side: Alison Maclean, the Director of the Unsettling Crush, Talks with Lizzie Francke’. Sight and Sound 3/4: 18–19.
Garner, H. (1995) The First Stone: Some Questions about Sex and Power. Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia.
Hill, M. (2011) ‘Beneath Clouds and The Boys: Jazz Artists Making Film Music’. Screensound: The Australasian Journal of Soundtrack Studies 2: 27–47.
Howland, J. (2009) Ellington Uptown: Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and the Birth of Concert Jazz. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Hutchison, H. (2009) ‘Family Values’. In The Culture Wars: Australian and American Politics in the 21st Century, ed. Jim George and Kim Huynh, 110–26. South Yarra: Palgrave Macmillan Australia.
Johnson, B. (2000) The Inaudible Music: Jazz, Gender and Australian Modernity. Sydney: Currency Press.
——(2004) ‘Tools Not of Our Making: Shaping Australian Jazz History’. In The History and Future of Jazz in the Asia-Pacific Region, ed. Philip Hayward and Glen Hodges, 6–17. Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Publishing Unit.
——(2009) ‘Jazz and Nation in Australian Cinema: From Silents to Sound’. Journal of the National Film and Sound Archive, Australia 4/1: 1–12.
Johnson, B., and G. Poole (2005) ‘Scoring: Sexuality and Australian Film Music, 1990–2003’. In Reel Tracks: Australian Feature Film and Music and Cultural Identities, ed. Rebecca Coyle, 97–121. Eastleigh: John Libbey Publishing.
Jupp, J., and M. Sawer (1994) ‘Building Coalitions: The Australian Labor Party and the 1993 General Election’. Australian Journal of Political Science 29 (Special Issue): 10–27.
Keating, P. (1992) Address to the National Family Summit, Parliament House, Canberra ACT, 11 November 1992. http://pmtranscripts.dpmc.gov.au/browse.php?did=8719 (accessed 30 January 2015).
Kelly, P. (2009) March of the Patriots: The Struggle for Modern Australia. Carlton: University of Melbourne Press.
Liberal and National Parties of Australia (1991) Fightback! Taxation and Expenditure Reform for Jobs and Growth. Fyshwick: Pirie.
Lunn, H. (1978) Joh: The Life and Political Adventures of Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press.
MacCannell, D. (1993) ‘Democracy’s Turn: On Homeless Noir’. In Shades of Noir: A Reader, ed. Joan Copjec, 279–98. New York: Verso.
Mayer, G. (1993) ‘A Hard-Boiled World: Goodbye Paradise and The Empty Beach’. Literature/Film Quarterly 21/2: 112–20.
Naremore, J. (1998) More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ness, R. (2008) ‘A Lotta Night Music: The Sound of Film Noir’. Cinema Journal 47/2: 52–73. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cj.2008.0011
Peake, R. (1992) ‘Family to “Fight Back”’. Canberra Times, 13 November: 3.
Russell, G., D. James and J. Watson (1988) ‘Work/Family Policies, the Changing Role of Fathers and the Presumption of Shared Responsibility for Parenting’. Australian Journal of Social Issues 23/4: 249–67.
Spicer, A. (2013) ‘Introduction: The Problem of Film Noir’. In A Companion to Film Noir, ed. Andrew Spicer and Helen Hanson, 1–13. Sussex: Blackwell. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/9781118523728.ch0
Tucker, S. (2005) ‘Deconstructing the Jazz Tradition: The “Subjectless Subject” of New Jazz Studies’. Jazz Research Journal 2/1: 31–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/source.v2i1.31
Uhlmann, C. (1993) ‘AMA Plans Impress Hewson’. Canberra Times, 23 February: 1.
Whiteoak, J. (1999) Playing Ad Lib: Improvisatory Music in Australia 1836–1970. Sydney: Currency Press.
Winchester, H. (1990) ‘Women and Children Last: The Poverty and Marginalization of One-Parent Families’. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 15/1: 70–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/623094
Winton, T. (1991) Cloudstreet. Melbourne: McPhee Gribble.
Published
2015-06-16
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Coady, C. (2015). Shotgun weddings and bohemian dreams: Jazz, family values and storytelling in Australian film. Jazz Research Journal, 8(1-2), 144-162. https://doi.org/10.1558/jazz.v8i1-2.26756
