漫漫回家路

Rabbit Proof Fence tells a story about how the three girls, Molly and her sisters escaped from Moore River to walk nearly 2000 mile all the way to home. Molly and her sisters are considered as Stolen Generations that is, the Australian Aboriginal children who were removed from their families by the Australian stage government. The use of the word “stolen” implied the immorality and injustice of the robbery performed by the government to take off the identities from the Aboriginal children.
The assimilation conducted by A.O. Neville, the head of the government program, is considered by himsel as empathy to the Aboriginal half-caste children. He feels very proud and responsible for the carryout of the job. However, what he does in the film is cruel and cold-blooded that raises empathy among audience. Neville’s intentional empathy turns out to be cruelty and injustice to the Aborigines he wants to “save”. The unjustifiable assimilation makes audience feel empathetic about the Aboriginal children.
Not only the story but the advertisement tries to raise the universal empathy to the Aboriginal children. “What if the government kidnapped your daughter” pulls the world into the story even before the story begins. The victims of this story are mostly females, including children and their mothers, so naturally people will be easily moved by this kind of set. Also, the story is pulled to step out of the screen and becomes a more documentary style at the end of the film to evoke more empathy from the audience. This approach, similar to what Spielberg uses in Schindler’s List, manages to affect the audience outside the theatres. It provokes further discussion in people’s real life.
The leading roles of Rabbit Proof Fence are children and the camera stays around them for the most of the time. It is a wise idea because such style draws the audience closer to Molly and her sisters. The raw interpretation of the story brings more intensity. The audiences feel so relieved when the protagonists get their way home. Successfully, the director found three aboriginal children without any related experience to acting to carry out the main roles, adding the most important brick to the achievement of the film.
In the documentary on the making of the film, the director says that he is looking for children with special quality so that white Australians would like to say “they are my kids”. He needs children who keep intact traditional lifestyle and have recently come into contact with the white world; therefore they do not lose their nature. The point, as indicated by the director, is to get them “not to act” and to conquer the fear of these little actors doing an adult’s job. The director also manages to have a group of three girls who can work together as real sisters, leading the film more convincing.
Undoubtedly, the wise choice of actors and the effective training enables the film to trigger the real empathy and awareness of the issue from the bottom of the audience’s heart.

Additional Notes:

1. The Stolen Generations is a term used to describe those Australian Aboriginal children who were removed from their families by the Australian stage government. The use of the word “stolen” implied the immorality and injustice of the robbery performed by the government to take off the identities from the Aboriginal children.
2. This comparison efficiently translates the storyline of the long film into a simple plot: a wicked witch takes away the children and tries to put a spell of forgetfulness on them, and the children escape a long distance all the way to home. However, I do not think this analogy is really reasonable. First, in classic tales, the border between the good and the bad is very clear, so if the story is interpreted in this way, the government then is asserted as a “bad” side, ignoring the fact that the issue of the film is still controversial. “A spell of forgetfulness” is a wrong translation of what Mr. Neville wants to do to the Aboriginal children. His intention is to “save” the half-caste children from discrimination in the tribe, but unfortunately this leads to the destruction of their family and culture. So the fairy tale interpretation of the issue is too biased to be taken into account.
3. Not only the story but the advertisement tries to raise the universal empathy to the Aboriginal children. “What if the government kidnapped your daughter” pulls the world into the story even before the story begins. The victims of this story are mostly females, including children and their mothers, so naturally people will be easily moved by this kind of set.
4. “The Stolen Generation Narrative” refers to a true story on children’s view. It is a wise idea because such style draws the audience closer to Molly and her sisters. The raw interpretation of the story brings more intensity. The audience quickly finds himself so relieved when the protagonists get their way home. On the other side, this setting makes the film very biased that does not provide sufficient information on each side using narrative.
5. The story is pulled to step out of the screen and becomes a more documentary style at the end of the film. This approach, similar to what Spielberg uses in Schindler’s List, manages to affect the audience outside the theatres. It provokes further discussion in people’s real life.
6. The assimilation conducted by A.O. Neville is considered by him as empathy to the Aboriginal half-caste children. He himself feels very proud and responsible for the carryout of the job. However, what he does in the film is cruel and cold-blooded that raises empathy among audience. Neville’s intentional empathy turns out to be cruelty and injustice to the Aborigines he wants to “save”. So the assimilation and empathy are totally different in his case. Additionally, empathy is the feeling that the director wants to raise among the audience, while the unjustifiable assimilation is one of the reasons that audience feel empathetic about the Aboriginal children.


February 26, 2008

their feet scuffed up dust that settled behind them as quickly as it was raised. They lifted their eyes with each step they took, peering toward the horizon for the first red rays of the sun. She went down the road drawing one foot from behind and hurling it in front of her with her might. There was no other way she could move herself over the ground.

---Erskine Caldwell

文明的可笑之处大抵在于身处于任何一种文明中的人都自以为掌握了真理。用一种倔强坚持自己的文明，用一种粗暴去干涉另一种文明。
我更愿意相信文明与文明之间只是不同，而不在于高低。在无数类似的故事中，白人对于被征服的文化略显可爱or可笑地企图去消灭或同化，而在他们看来只是是在做一件对的善事，为何那些低等之人反而不领情。无论是什么方式，或许都只是文明的幼稚和不自信。文明与文明之间是否需要互相妥协，是否可以互相理解。有时候甚至连理解都是不需要的，而是承认相互的不同，而由此给予彼此空间和尊重。
至于电影的细节，其实无须太过苛求。喜欢那种不带太多情感渲染的叙事方式。真正的坚持和向往，并不需要用力过度。那些单纯的心灵总是拥有更简单直接的坚持和力量。

转载自http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/movies/rabbitprooffence.html

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)
Director - Phillip Noyce
“Nevertheless, there’s still plenty worth watching from the land of Oz and starting on October 28, Beijing is hosting its annual Aussie film festival…But(sic) the highlights are(sic) Noyce’s Rabbit Proof (sic) Fence, shot by Chris Doyle, which deals with the plight of aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families under a racist government programme designed to destroy aboriginal culture (sic) and forcibly integrate native Australians.” (2005 advertisement for Australian movies in China)

Australia does not have a commercially successful arts sector and the ideologies displayed in the creation and promotion of Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence helps explain why. Rabbit-proof Fence was a typical product of the contemporary Australian artist that feels status in making ignorant statements about their culture, and inevitably undermines any sense of affinity the Australian public has to their arts sector as a result.

In theory, Rabbit-Proof Fence was meant to be a political movie showing support for Aboriginal culture and educating Australians about the untold Aboriginal story. In practice, the movie contained almost no examples of Aboriginal culture. Even the music was foreign. Director Phillip Noyce preferred the music of Englishman Peter Gabriel to the music of the people he claimed he was fighting for. Furthermore, despite claiming that he wanted to give Australians a history lesson, Noyce showed that he wasn't particularly educated in the very basics of Aboriginal history himself. When promoting his movie, Noyce said:

"For me, Rabbit-Proof Fence the movie will be as much about stolen history. History that we Australians needed to reclaim...Until 1967, Australian Aborigines couldn’t vote and were not counted as citizens." (1)

In truth, the 1967 referendum that Noyce was referring to had nothing to do with Aboriginal voting rights or citzenship. When the colonies of Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and NSW framed their constitutions in the 1850s, they gave the vote to all male subjects over the age of 21, Aborigines included. Admittedly, most Aborigines didn’t know about their voting rights and perhaps didn’t care. It wasn’t until the 1890s that any Aborigines actually commenced voting.

When the various colonies federated into one nation in 1901, Aborigines were not given the federal vote. However, they did retain their state voting rights and these state voting rights gave them federal voting rights. Under section 41 of the federal constitution, any person who held a state vote also held a federal vote. Legally, Aborigines in NSW, Tasmania, Victoria, and South Australia have been allowed to vote in all federal elections. Aborigines were formerly given the federal vote in 1962.

The 1967 referendum that Noyce mistakenly believed was about giving Aborigines the vote was really about whether to include Aborigines in the federal census and whether the federal government should be allowed to make laws specifically for Aborigines. When the Australian constitution was written in 1901, the federal government had been denied the power to make laws specifically for Aborigines. Although it could make laws for all Australians, Aborigines included, it could not single Aborigines out. For example, it could not make laws to remove Aboriginal children from Aboriginal parents, even if the removal was deemed to be in Australia's interests or the interests of the children. This power had been reserved for the states.

It is not without irony that it was only in 1967 that the federal government gained the power to make the Aboriginal-specific laws that Noyce believed it had from 1900-1970, and believed it had used to create the stolen generations. Perhaps Noyce was aware of the truth, but simply lied about it because it conflicted with his political aim of making the federal government apologise to the stolen generations. If not, he was an extremely arrogant man for relying upon incorrect oral history for his facts and thinking this oral history was sufficient for him to then go forth and play the teacher to other Australians.

In regards to citizenship, Aborigines became British citizens the moment Captain Cook annexed Australia in 1772, in accordance with British law. However, counting them in censuses was difficult because Aborigines did not have fixed addresses, did not lodge birth certificates, did not lodge death certificates and often changed their name according to which tribe they lived in. Furthermore, they often did not speak the same language as the census officers and might well of speared any census officer that came wandering with census forms.

Even though Aborigines were British citizens in 1772, giving Aborigines the protection of British citizenship was problematic. For most of Australia's early years, being a British citizen meant little more than obeying British laws designed to protect each citizen or a vested interest. These laws could not easily be applied to hunter gatherer tribes. For example, to protect women from men, from 1838 to 1902 it was declared illegal to swim during the day in NSW. The exposure of flesh was deemed to put men into uncontrollable states. Even though the law was deemed to be in the individual's welfare, it simply wasn't pratical to send soldiers out into the hunter gatherer communities to force Aborigines to wear clothes. Furthermore, even if the laws could have been applied to hunter gathering communities, Australia's penal colonies were not the type of societies that any individual could be considered fortunate to be part of. To the contrary, if an individual wasn't bound by the laws, then there was some good fortune in that. Arguably, the bush was so important to the early colonial identity because the bush offered an escape from British citizenship, and the oppressive laws that British citizens were bound by.

After Rabbit-proof Fence won best picture in 2002, Noyce used his acceptance speech to criticise the federal government for not apologising for "its" policy of removing mixed race children from their communities from the 1900 to 1970. He then criticised Australians for losing their humanity.

Although some Australians were attracted to the "moral courage" shown by Noyce, other Australians were turned off by a movie that undermined the sense of community that could motivate Australians to think that their arts sector had value. As for people in the arts who supported making the movie, the story itself undermined their sense of pride in being Australian. It certainly didn't make them want to get out onto the streets to wave the Australian flag.

Ironically, some journalists highlighted the fact that Noyce himself shared a number of parrallels with A.O Neveille, the bad guy of the movie. Firstly, Noyce also scoured bush camps to find his Aboriginal actors and believed he was giving them an opportunity for a better life. Secondly, Everlyn Sampi, the star of the movie, was not always grateful for the opportunity given to her by the white man. She was rude to Noyce and kept running away. In response, Noyce abused her and said she showed “signs of the worst behaviour that I’ve observed. ” Noyce then explained to journalists,

“During the rehearsals, she ran away twice. We found her in a telephone booth ringing up inquiries trying to book a ticket back to Broome….I found myself thinking, ‘I have to look after her. She can live with us. I’ll send her to school.'”

When reporter James Thomas asked Noyce if he had noticed a commonality between his own attitudes and those of Neville, Noyce said,

“Well, I suppose in one way you could say that in a different context, in a different time, I’m A.O. Neville promising these young Aboriginal children a better life, asking them to do things that are against their instincts, perhaps because it’s for their own good. But we do live in a slightly different world...”

Noyce failed to elaborate on how the worlds were different. For many Aborigines in bush camps, the lifestyle today isn’t much different to what it was like 70 years ago. Furthermore, whites such as Noyce continue to look upon the camps with the same judgemental attitudes that they did in the days of A.O Neville. The only real difference is that the whites deal with their prejudices in a different way. A.O Neville dealt with them via a policy of assimilation. Although Noyce was assimilationist in his actions, he was also in denial about himself.

Unfortunately, calling Australians racist was not a way for him to open his own mind, provoke discussion on a very difficult topic, or foster respect for the Australian arts sector. All he did was show that if Australia had a history of bigotry, that history is alive and well today amongst people who think they are free of it. It takes more than calling a long-dead figure of history a racist to be open-minded. The only reason to do it would be to show one's own perceived superiority.

Noyce's innability to deal with cultural diversity
Many supporters of the stolen generations campaign have argued that the state government policies that resulted in mixed race children being removed from their mother's communities were a form of cultural genocide. Ironically, Rabbit-proof Fence was also a form of cultural genocide because it almost completely omitted any evidence of Aboriginal cultures. Instead, the movie was about whites doing bad things to Aborigines. By victimising Aborigines, Noyce didn't have to learn anything about them or show their culture in any meaningful form. Such was the focus on white culture, the music of Peter Gabriel, an Englishmen known for his progressive humanitarian causes, was used in preference to Aboriginal music.

The cultural censorship was not surprising considering the morality of hunter gatherer communities was, and continues to be, confronting to people living an urban existence. For example, in 2005 an Australian court heard that a 55-year-old Aboriginal elder had anally raped a 14-year-old girl, imprisoned her for four days and repeatedly beat her with a boomerang. In the man's culture, his actions were perfectly acceptable. The girl had been promised to him at the age of four, and she had dishonoured him by having a boyfriend before their marriage. According to traditional law, the elder was perfectly entitled to educate her in the manner that he did. In fact, a case could be made that if he didn't, he was not fulfilling his duties as an elder. The girl's family had further legitimised the actions of the man. Her grandmother had collected the girl, and taken her to the man so that he could rape and punish her.

The case posed numerous questions that had to be answered. Firstly, should the man be punished in light of the fact he was practicing his culture? Secondly, what protection did the child deserve under the Australian legal system? Thirdly, what should be done with the child in light of the fact that her family had arranged the child’s marriage, and then facilitated her rape to teach her a lesson? Should she be removed from the family, or left in its care? (The judge gave the man a one month prison sentence and sympathised with him in regards to his cultural predictament. The feelings of the child were not made public other than the fact she had lodged the initial complaint with police. While the man's culture had been respected, it had come at the expense of recognising the equality of the child as an Australian.)

From the 1900s to 1970s, the same questions were dealt with by social workers wanting to help Aborigines. Should they have respected traditional law and excluded the child from the protection of the Australian legal system, or removed the child in the belief the child would have had a better life by doing so? Either choice would have reflected a form of racism. To deny the child protection of the legal system would have meant the child was not being recognised as an Australian. To provide protection would have been a form of cultural imperialism.

Because such cultural dilemmas were too problematic for Noyce to think about, he simply omitted all aspects of Aboriginal culture that he couldn't deal with. In a nutshell, he put himself in denial to deal with his prejudices. He called others racists in order to see himself as open-minded.

Noyce showing Neville talking about advancing Aborigines to white status. If the depiction were true, then Neville would have been no different to every concerned citizen that defines Aborigines as "disadvantaged" today. By defining Aborigines as disadvantaged, concerned citizens are defining non-Aborigines as the advantaged models that Aborigines should aspire to be like. All government funded programs to lessen "disadvantage" are really programs to "assimilate." While the labels might be different, in substance they are the same.

 
1)Rabbit-Proof Fence: Phillip Noyce's Diary http://www.landmarktheatres.com/Stories/rabbit_frame.html

如果看了剧情简介，大概就不想看这部片子了，因为太像片子里那些白人的口吻在说话。
在茉莉的眼里一切阳光和微笑都是虚伪的魔鬼，而遮蔽太阳的乌云，磅礴的大雨才是逃向自由的天使。是呀，指向自由的是逃。
茉莉能逃过众多人的追踪包括擅长追踪术的土著，她的精明源自与苍鹰翱翔于天际的自由同样的空灵，也许逃不过猎枪，但它的一生是自由的一生。

辛德勒的墓碑上堆满石子，那是一个民族为一位永生的灵魂代代歌咏的见证。记录种族大屠杀的卢旺达饭店，保罗支起希望的棺盖，那是向善的人性之花绽放出的最神奇的光。

   因为贪婪，人类总是无法分享宁静与美好，破坏宁静与美好，然后重建宁静与美好，在反复的蠢恶中定义着弱肉强食的条目。于是我们看到人性中存在的极其愚蠢极其卑劣的细胞因子，就像我们的影子，在背光处，显得愈发强大。总之，人绝对不是宇宙中最美丽的物种。

   末路小狂花，改编自著名的小说《防兔篱笆》，记录了一段真实的历史。就电影的格局与传播度而言，虽然，这朵“”名不见经传“”的小花，比不上那些血染的玫瑰惊艳，但片子余香萦绕久不散去的感动，为它写点什么却是我发自内心的。

  三个孩子寻家，寻母亲的历程，在逃亡与行走中留存了一个民族的尊严与生存权利，看这样一部让人咀嚼不出幸福味道的影片，最终能令自己寻到一条回味、回想、回望的路，这就是不错的收获。

  人们喜欢用美丽的文字来雕琢内心的胆怯与虚伪，喜欢用充满爱与正确的文字来粉饰一切的恶与错误。二十世纪初，澳大利亚的统治者开始进行一种灭绝当地土著的计划，他们举着保护与拯救的旗帜，说着一切与善有关的话题，背地里却在向灭绝当地原住民的罪恶行道开进。

  人若有高低贵贱之分，那也只能存在于灵魂抑或教养上，与权力、金钱、肤色、习俗、种族毫无关系。白人与土著通婚，以此来改良血统，这只是为所欲为的借口。当时，自以为高贵的澳大利亚政府完全是在玩一种罪恶的权力游戏。从母亲身边把孩子夺走，让孩子失去母亲，让母亲带着愧疚含恨而死，高举改良土著血统的牌，正是灭族的人性泯灭之为。自以为聪明的掠夺者，在历史的书页上肆无忌惮地编造谎言，但只要站在公正的战场上，一个孩子的眼神就可以彻底地打败他们。

 
  在这部影片中姐姐Molly 和妹妹Daisy就像太阳和月亮，她们在狂风暴雨中，顽强地寻找着属于她们的天空。那条通往母亲方向的篱笆墙，那只翱翔在家乡天空的大鸟，一道道需要穿越的沙漠与河流，一个个必须面对的敌人与猎枪，在大自然的怀抱里，两个女孩子成为了真正的勇士。我想那个可怜的小女孩，Molly的表妹Gracie，作为牺牲品，她是最不幸的，因为她曾经离自由与幸福那么近。

  自由的鸟鸣声，无助的哭泣声，还有那带着远古世界里神秘的音乐声，当这些不和谐的声音混杂在一起谱成一曲哀歌刺穿你耳膜的时候，你也许会在无意中发现自己早已被影片催眠了。

  仅仅是一段历史，一段胶片的生命价值，活着的依然活着，都该释然淡化了。但成人们借口修整这个地球的时候，有多少人能够真正聆听孩子的哭泣声呢？

 PS：关于现在Molly和Daisy的情况。（摘选影片资料）Molly现已结婚，并生有2个孩子。当孩子们长到4岁和2岁时，Molly和她的孩子们又被抓回到穆尔河。Molly再次回到吉加朗时，她带回了她的小女儿安纳贝尔(Annabelle)，而大女儿多丽丝则离开了她。当安纳贝尔3岁时，她也离开了Molly，莫利从此再未见到她。多丽丝与她母亲再次见面则是30年以后的事了。她把母亲的故事写成了小说，并改编成了这部电影剧本。如今，85岁的Molly利和79岁的Daisy仍生活在吉加朗。直到1971年，在澳大利亚政府的政策下，澳大利亚土著孩子们仍然被隔离于他们的家庭。这些被隔离的孩子们现在被称作“被偷走的一代”。