Studying the role of the Western film genre in Australia’s changing political and cultural landscape.

Focusing on the influence of the cinematic Western in Australian cinema history, Outback explores how the American genre has been adapted to the changing Australian social, political, and cultural contexts of their production, including the shifting emphases in the representation of the Indigenous population.

Brian McFarlane emphasizes the ways film can, without didacticism, provide evidence of changing politics and culture. McFarlane explores Australian history with the genre by analyzing such films as Charles Tait’s 1906 The Story of the Kelly Gang and Justin Kurzel’s 2020 adaptation of Peter Carey’s The True History of the Kelly Gang. He further explores other key matters, including the changing attitudes to and representation of Indigenous peoples and of women's roles in Australian Westerns.
 

Brian McFarlane is adjunct professor in the Department of Media and Communications at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia. He is the editor of The Encylopedia of British Film and coeditor of The Oxford Companion to Australian Film, among others.

Acknowledgements
Chapter One: Australian Westerns?
Chapter Two: What constitutes a ‘Western’?
Chapter Three: Outlaws at large: the bushranging phenomenon
Chapter Four: 1940s-1960s: Australians and others tackle the genre
Chapter Five: The ‘revival’: Snowy River and others
Chapter Six: The Western in the new century
Conclusion
Select Bibliography
Index