Maude Nificent#Australia #History #Watching #SBS [edit - sbs on demand]
#WomenOfTheSun is a TV mini series in 4 episodes first released in 1981. It’s currently back on SBS for another 2 months.
I remember seeing this when it first came out, but that was 40 years ago, so not 100% sure what I thought at the time, though i must have thought it a positive series, as i watched it all.
started to re-watch it the other night, and couldn’t finish watching it. sometimes i find myself caring about characters, and if I dread what might happen to them, it’s just too much. Just the same, I do think WomenOfTheSun is well made, and i mention it now cos i had [yet another] eureka moment while watching.
i can’t count the number of times i’ve read white accounts of early contact between Indigenous and white people, and thought “yeah nah, that sounds like utter BS”. just one commonly reported story is that Indigenous people offered their women to white men. watching ep 1 of Women of the Sun I thought yeah, nah, so many men are predatory it’s a bit like when a certain type of bloke convinces themselves a rape was actually consensual sex. never mind the very idea women are property to be given away like so many beads or blankets, there’s an added assumption that Indigenous cultures had no respect for women, or women’s business. we mustn’t be assessing everything through a white filter, or believing half the crap written by white anthropologists
[okay, i’m a plodding thinker and it can be years between moments, so maybe they are smack-myself-in-the-forehead rather than eureka moments, but whatever. at least i finally got there]
I’m not saying to potential viewers that there is a rape in this episode (as if knowing white people will really come and stay isn’t bad enough) — it was just this character with that rapey, all women are a place for me to insert myself attitude.
i’m so glad i’m retired and i don’t have to deal with people very often. 🙄 is there an “over that shit” hashtag?
