Concept Analysis – Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Picnic at Hanging Rock is a film that explicitly speaks of cultural adaptation in need at the time. The film was released in 1975, around which time Australia was under enormous pressure to integrate various cultures that were coming into the country. This was due to the abolition of the White Australia Policy in 1974, which encouraged differences but at the same time became more or less a duty for the privileged white Australians to regulate their behaviours and perceptions of the other to a non-racist level if there were any.

At first glance the narrative of the film seems to operate only within the society of the white Australians, and indeed the whole film is comprised only with the ‘superior’ race or perhaps the ‘true’ Australians. The Apple Yard College is a girl’s school for the relatively wealthy and the students are well-behaved, disciplined, educated and respectful. It is only when they all go to the Hanging Rock on St. Valentines day that we find their naiveness and underestimation of the wild. Four curious girls wander off to the rock and three of them, and later a teacher as well, somehow disappears without a trace. Despite one of the girls comes back mysteriously, the others remain vanished.

There is a peculiar mixture of two cultures in the film; one being the still very ‘English’ members of the college with their dress, accent and the way they carry themselves around, and the other the nature, including the Hanging Rock. To see the English girls at the Hanging Rock observing the nature and relaxing under the sun is perhaps ordinary devoid of any cultural significance, though the whole of the community (college) is faced to deal with the disappearance of the four members. This could be seen as a confrontation with the nature, which clearly represents the social unrest the country was going through at the time, for the land is the Aboriginal cultural architect. Although we do not see any other races in the entirety of the film other than the English settlers, it is as if the nature were instilled with life to advocate for the culturally segregated.

Advertisement