Listening Activity: Learning Indigenous Language at School November 13, 2009

Learning Indigenous Language at School

1. Open the following listening activity word document and complete the activities while listening to the first three minutes of a radio program called Learning Indigenous Language at School which was on Triple J’s Hack on the 24th of November 2008.
2. To listen, follow the link Learning Indigenous Language at School , scroll to the bottom of the page and click on another link called “listening to learning indigenous language at school” which is an MP3. This will open in a media player.
3. During the first hearing, listen only. During the second you may take notes and answer the questions.
4. Use the information you learn from the listening task to answer the following question as an extended response.

A sense of belonging is subjective. To what extent do you agree/disagree?

 Extension: Evaluate this blog post. What effect does the above image have?

Image courtesy of Eureka Street

Belonging to a text: Shearing the rams November 9, 2009

An individual’s context may allow them to feel a sense of closeness to or a sense of alienation from a text. Also, an author is able to manipulate the forms and features of a text in order to establish the audience’s sense of aesthetic distance or affinity with their work. Consider Tom Roberts’ Shearing the Rams (1890) (image courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria).

Tom Roberts
Shearing the rams 1890
oil on canvas on composition board
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 1932

What are some of the underlying assumptions made by the painter?

Who might feel excluded from this image?

Compare this to the appropriation Convicts by heritage, Guilty by choice which is from an advertising campaign for ‘aussieBum’ underwear. According to the National Gallery of Victoria, ‘the designer, Sean Ashby, described his advertisement as ‘promoting what it means to be Australian today’ – an aim very close to Roberts’s own when he made Shearing the rams’.

 

Convicts by Heritage, Guilty by Choice
aussieBum www.aussiebum.com

What assumptions about men underpin this image?

Does this image support or subvert Australian stereotypes?

Does it challenge your understanding of what it means to be an Australian?

Who might feel excluded from this text?

Finally, what questions about Australia’s national identity are raised in Leunig’s cartoon, Ramming the Shears (courtesy of the National Gallery of Victoria)?

 

 

Michael Leunig
born Australia 1945
Ramming the shears c.1985
aniline dyes and black felt tip pen on white card
22.8 x 30.3 cm
La Trobe Picture Collection, State Library of Victoria
Purchased, 1987 (H87.181)
© Michael Leunig

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Extension work: The Sydney Morning Herald’s piece White art enhanced by some colour (Nov, 13 2008) discusses Dianne Jones’ version of Roberts’ Shearing of the Rams as well as a number of her other appropriations of iconic Australian artworks. Read the interview with the indigenous Australian artist and examine some of her other works to develop your understanding of how people might feel excluded from a text or even a national identity.

Dianne Jones
Shearing the rams, 2001
Inkjet on canvas, edition of 10
121.9 x 182.6cm
Copyright courtesy of the artist

The Catcher in the Rye November 9, 2009

The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is of the bildungsroman genre; a coming-of-age story. It is told from Holder Caulfield’s perspective and is written as an internal monologue revealing his cynicism about society and those who he considers “phony”. Holden’s meandering, pesimistic decrptions reveal his dislike of everyone except his younger sister who he feels is the only one who understands him and who is a symbol of youth, innocence and purity.

The Catcher in the Rye is ideal for the study of belonging because Holden’s story explores themes of isolation and alienation. Holden is an individual who is terrified of change and intimidated by those around him. He is unsure of his purpose and lies about his identity. He is socially awkward and unsure how to behave around women. One gets the sense that he is searching for something while simultaneously running away. He longs to escape and live in the country which can be interpreted as a desire to belong somewhere, to something, to an ideal or a lifestyle.