>> > >For me, Campion's use of geography and surroundings in "Holy Smoke" and "The >Piano" are used much in the same way as they were in "Sweetie", that being >backdrops which allow us to focus on the character. The remote settings in >India and New Zealand enhance the characters isolation, and endear them to >us as the hero. Her contrasting of the outback with the city in "Sweetie" >supports the film greatly. The family leave the city and enjoy harmony,for The treatment of the "remote" locations in Piano and H. Smoke are quite different from that of Sweetie. while the outback is more integral to the make-up of the character in Sweetie, it is just a backdrop in the other films. Strange how some tropes just don't go away, regardless of all the postcolonial scholarship of the last 25 years or so. Especially from somebody like Campion who was trained in Anthropology, perhaps because of it, perhaps they don't really teach McClintock and Shohat in Australia. Shashwati ------------------------------------------- Shashwati Talukdar [log in to unmask] Ph: (917) 243-7522 ---- Screen-L is sponsored by the Telecommunication & Film Dept., the University of Alabama: http://www.tcf.ua.edu