- Title
- Prurient exuberance : Early Australian sex hygiene films and the origins of ozploitation
- Creator
- Speed, Lesley
- Date
- 2017
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/170440
- Identifier
- vital:14181
- Identifier
- http://www.screeningthepast.com/2017/09/prurient-exuberance-early-australian-sex-hygiene-films-and-the-origins-of-ozploitation/
- Identifier
- ISBN:1328-9756
- Abstract
- Australian exploitation films that were made since the 1960s have received considerable attention in Mark Hartley’s 2008 documentary, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation! However, Hartley’s film and much of the subsequent interest in Ozploitation overlooks the fact that exploitation films existed in Australia since at least the 1910s. In its most basic definition, an exploitation film centres on a topic that is forbidden, such as sex or vice, while purporting to educate the public about it. This article examines the significance of two early Australian sex hygiene films, Remorse, a Story of the Red Plague (John E. Mathews, 1917) [1] and Should a Doctor Tell? (P. J. Ramster, 1923). Although these films do not survive, the information available about them reveals affinities with contemporaneous American and British exploitation films. They also form a precedent for the role of exploitation in the revival of the Australian film industry in the early 1970s. Purporting to explore the issue of sexually-transmitted disease while appealing to audience prurience, early sex hygiene films courted controversy in a manner that prefigures The Naked Bunyip: A Survey of Sex in Australia (John B. Murray, 1970), a significant early film in the revival and one of a cycle of local sexploitation films. Early Australian sex hygiene films expand understanding of Ozploitation by providing a glimpse of the diversity of early Australian film-making and forming a precedent for the role of exploitation in the development of Australian film.
- Publisher
- LaTrobe University
- Relation
- Screening the Past Vol. , no. 42 (2017), p. 1-11
- Rights
- Copyright © Screening the Past publications
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- 1902 Film, Television and Digital Media; 2005 Literary Studies; 2103 Historical Studies; Forgotten films; Found films; Exploitation films; Sickness in films; Diseases in films; Controversial issues in films; Sex education films; Sex in films; Australia
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