The comedian comedies : George Wallace's 1930s comedies, Australian cinema and Hollywood
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2008
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Metro Magazine: Media & Education Magazine Vol. , no. 158 (2008), p. 76-82
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: The article analyzes five significant films from Australian director George Wallace's comedic personalities. These films were considered more than simply entertaining as these films reveal much about the Australian film industry in the 1930s, including to its relationship to Hollywood's output and the representation of national identity.
Loose cannons : White masculinity and the vulgar teen comedy film
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2010
- Type: Journal article
- Relation: The Journal of Popular Culture Vol. 43, no. 4 (2010), p. 820-841
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Although infamous for its focus on adolescent sexual strivings, the vulgar teen comedy film has been the subject of little sustained analysis. Yet there are numerous reasons to examine more closely this teen subgenre, of which the most prominent examples are Porky's and American Pie. The vulgar teen films of the early 1980s and late 1990s exemplify contemporary Hollywood production strategies and reflect changes in youth's social and economic status. In particular, the pivotal early 1980s cycle reflects a crisis in young, middle-class men's presumed right to behave hedonistically on other people's territory. Such films as Porky's, Losin It and Spring Break revolve around characters whose belief in their hedonistic freedom is oblivious to the social implications of their actions. A waning male, middle-class privilege is evident in the failure of the male sexual quest in Porky's and prefigures the subsequent suburbanization of teenage sexuality in American Pie. Vulgar teen comedy films thus reflect the changing social status of male youth.
Australian comedy films of the 1930s : Modernity, the urban and the international
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2015
- Type: Text , Book
- Relation: The Moving Image
- Full Text: false
- Reviewed:
- Description: Comedy has been a perpetual part of Australian film, in which humour reflects Australia's adaptation in times of crisis, social change and technological advances. This was never more so than in the 1930s, when Australia produced more comedy feature films than in any other decade before 1970. These films of the 1930s embraced the new technology of sound, made local vaudeville performers into movie stars, offered escape from the Depression and revealed a diverse and international Australia. In these films, Australia moved further from Empire and the bush, forged the Digger legend, responded to cultural diversity and viewed itself as a modern, urban nation. Influenced by Hollywood, Australian comedies of the 1930s adapted international styles to local points of view. Based on research at the National Film and Sound Archive, Lesley Speed's book provides new insight into Australian comedy films of the 1930s and the extraordinary period of social change in which they were produced.
Comic investigation and genre-mixing : the television docucomedies of Lawrence Leung, Judith Lucy and Luke McGregor
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2020
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Continuum Vol. 34, no. 5 (2020), p. 690-702
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- Reviewed:
- Description: In an era in which comedians have been positioned as public commentators, a cycle of Australian television documentaries centres on the premise of a comedian’s investigation of a theme of existential significance. Produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, these series are Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure (2009), Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey (2011), Judith Lucy is All Woman (2015) and Luke Warm Sex (2016). This article examines the relationship between genre-mixing and cultural commentary in this cycle, which explores themes of life goals and identity, spirituality, gender and sex. Employing conventions of personalized documentary, these docucomedies use performance reflexively to highlight spectacle and explore the humour of awkward situations and contemporary and changing cultural values. Central to each series is the positioning of the comedian as commentator, central participant, therapeutic subject and performer. Using humour to address uncertainties about what is acceptable in today’s society, these docucomedies draw on traditions of Australian screen comedy and non-fiction representation to serve as public pedagogy about twenty-first-century concerns, from spirituality and mediated intimacy to pornography. © 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Reading, writing and unruliness : Female education in the St Trinian's films
- Authors: Speed, Lesley
- Date: 2002
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Cultural Studies Vol. 5, no. 2 (2002), p. 221-238
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- Reviewed:
- Description: This article examines how the St Trinian’s films (1954–1980) engage with shifts in the social organization of gender and class, while celebrating the defiance of social constraints on women. Focusing on the films’ depiction of unruly female behaviour, the article addresses the historical and social dimensions of the films in relation to carnival, adolescence and education. The films express public responses to the increasing public significance of female youth, and celebrate the predominantly female environment of the girls’ school.
- Description: C1
- Description: 2003002837