tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post2995017783707820637..comments2024-01-19T04:32:25.260+11:00Comments on Ned Kelly : Death of the Legend: The Fabrication of Kelly HistoryDeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14104818673788818740noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-57669452656266717722015-10-27T12:50:51.100+11:002015-10-27T12:50:51.100+11:00Things that might be obvious to some can often not...Things that might be obvious to some can often not be obvious to others (as hard as it is to believe). There are some to whom you must practically literally spell things out, draw diagrams, point and shout to get them to realise what is going on and only then a dim bulb comes on. As you infer, the playing field is not level. Sharon Hollingsworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11500349415203451928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-85181744284751016002015-10-26T21:30:04.774+11:002015-10-26T21:30:04.774+11:00I'm not sure Shaz is being particularly helpfu...I'm not sure Shaz is being particularly helpful by pointing out the obvious.<br /><br />In an ideal commentariat world everyone would be on the same page. They aren'r.<br /><br />In the movies this is called a continuity problem.Rosie Taylornoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-86412744651514593412015-10-26T09:21:42.555+11:002015-10-26T09:21:42.555+11:00No worries as I was once a plebe, too. Yet, I am s...No worries as I was once a plebe, too. Yet, I am still learning new stuff all the time. :) Nothing has ever been definitively found out about George King's disappearance. The same stories just get recycled around again and again. Once in a great while there is a breakthrough in some aspect of the Kelly story when someone turns up a key part of the evidence that has been overlooked, but that is rare.<br />Internet forums are nebulous things. Easier to hold quicksilver in your hand than to have one really last and be viable when you have such a controversial subject. Infighting among the "elect" or jealousies or trolls factor into it as well as the fact that not everyone is cut out to be a forum host or moderator. You have to nurture these things if you want them to blossom. Usually (and separately, of course) "the cools and the fools" who hooked up through a forum just go private with their convos or start their own forums and on it goes. Wash, rinse, repeat.<br />I was thinking that if you do a book of blog posts you would probably need to do some notating after certain ones to show where you had been corrected on some assertion or fact just to keep the record straight for future generations who might not know the difference and not merely doing the fix in the text like that was how it was originally. That is just my way of thinking, the mileage may vary for others. :)Sharon Hollingsworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11500349415203451928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-59451500551074301332015-10-25T21:45:41.419+11:002015-10-25T21:45:41.419+11:00The Myth of Ned Kelly in the 21st Century
Mythic...The Myth of Ned Kelly in the 21st Century<br /><br /><br />Mythical figures are more than fantasy: they have their own politics. They dramatise issues of social importance and they can change to interpret new contexts and concerns. <br /><br />In this extract from his new book The Politics of Myth, Stephen Knight looks at the legend of Ned Kelly in contemporary Australia.<br /><br />The Kelly image was used early and emphatically in the opening ceremony at the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, and he has retained that level of recognition—Ireland put him on a stamp in 2001—but not all has been benign. Ian Macfarlane in The Kelly Gang Unmasked (2012) supported the hostile case in considerable detail, feeling Kelly’s letters include ‘not one word of remorse, shame or sadness at the taking of human life’, and claiming the myth ‘is unlikely to persist’ especially in ‘present-day multicultural Australia’. The last point is of interest. Commentators, both positive and negative, have made little of Kelly’s evident antipathy to Chinese workers and apparent lack of interest in Aborigines—views that were in his time widely shared—but modern tolerances have emerged. Ian Jones suggested there were two Chinese sympathisers at Glenrowan equipped with rockets to announce the Republic, and recent films show Joe Byrne as able to speak Cantonese, which is a possibility, as he was brought up near a local goldfield where numbers of Chinese lived.<br /><br />... Just as in his own time Kelly managed to get his own message out, though not without opposition, so the challenging elements of his myth are strongly alive—between Nolan’s national transcendence and the hostility of the governmental voices can still be strongly heard a sense of the value of resistance, reminiscent of the early socially aggressive Robin Hood myth, before it underwent reconstruction to embrace aristocracy, nationalism, masculinism and individualism. The Kelly story seems too strongly shaped and too well recorded in his original challenging form to develop that kind of multiple volatility. Whatever he may become in time, perhaps an environmental hero or an Asia-integrationist, he will remain powerfully affiliated with family and friends, and, surely the key connection back to Ireland and forward to Australia, always insisting on having his say and on making his case in the face of what his experience, and that of his many admirers, defines as the antagonistic nature of social authority.<br /><br />The Politics of Myth is out now. Kev Davisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-20513925114674912042015-10-24T14:36:20.891+11:002015-10-24T14:36:20.891+11:00Yes I was annoyed at the squatters wife too - she ...Yes I was annoyed at the squatters wife too - she could have changed the course of History and had a whole lot more fun and excitement in her life if she had listened to her heart and dumped her prick of a husband for Ned!<br /><br />Regarding these topics that you have already become bored with, this highlights a problem for the “newby” in the Kelly world like myself . These things are new to me, but the discussions you mention are no longer available - or if they are theyre impossible to find. Is this because Forums are being destroyed all the time whenever these nasty disputes arise - as they are at the moment between factions associated with the NKW? Someone keeps suggesting this Blog gets made into a Book - maybe thats why.<br /><br />So what was concluded about George King ? Or did the subject just get kicked around and then forgotten about? Did anyone conclude that Ian Jones use of George King was beyond the bounds of artistic license, or is Jones' word Gospel?Deehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14104818673788818740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-18919223326575761272015-10-24T11:30:57.718+11:002015-10-24T11:30:57.718+11:00Heath Ledger did a very good job of portraying Ned...Heath Ledger did a very good job of portraying Ned, and I was a huge Ledger fan, but the whole time I kept thinking to myself "I am watching Heath Ledger playing a part" whereas with John Jarrratt he was a total unknown to me when I finally got to see "The Last Outlaw" within the last decade and I could "buy" Jarrratt in the role more easily, if you get my meaning. I just wish that Heath had been given the script that John got, I would have loved to have seen him play that rather than what he was given to work with.What would be optimum would be to have a mashup and have scenes and actors from one film to be dropped in on the other (or dropped from) ! I am still aggravated beyond reason with that squatter's wife and how she would not give him an alibi. Could she not have said she was looking for something she dropped in the barn (no, not her drawers!) and that she saw Ned there for the briefest moment in time? Other things bugged me too (like that awful scene with the horse's neck), but that squatter's wife character (or charade?) is the main reason why I will probably never watch it again in this lifetime. I will watch TLO again, though.<br /><br />One reason why I have been so quiet is that ground that has been covered many years ago was being re-plowed by those who were new to it all, and I was just bored with it. Been there, done that. Didn't get a t-shirt. Those scrimshaws were discussed and dismissed eons ago in other places as was the "wherefore art thou, George King?" topic among others. Factor in the same old playground name calling and finger pointing and things get a little old a little fast. I do have to pop in to correct anything that I find to be glaringly wrong, though. :)Sharon Hollingsworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11500349415203451928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-42262355128349274632015-10-23T20:01:28.436+11:002015-10-23T20:01:28.436+11:00They were camp.They were camp.Blushnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-20236566469714526292015-10-23T13:57:43.866+11:002015-10-23T13:57:43.866+11:00Yes Sharon you’re absolutely correct it was the sq...Yes Sharon you’re absolutely correct it was the squatters wife that Ned had a fling with, and Joe Byrne got it off with Mrs Scott. Sorry folks. I don’t know why it is that I keep getting Aaron and Joe mixed up in my head! But I am glad my mistakes provoked you to Post again Sharon, I was starting to worry about what had happened to you! Do you think the Ledger Ned was more believable than the Jarratt Ned?Deehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14104818673788818740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-25289006748365805762015-10-23T12:39:40.069+11:002015-10-23T12:39:40.069+11:00Dee, it has been a while since I have seen the fil...Dee, it has been a while since I have seen the film, but I believe that it was the squatter's wife in the barn with Ned. Also, it was Joe Byrne and Mrs. Scott at Euroa that were having it off and/or getting it on, not Aaron and the pregnant Mrs. Devine at Jerilderie. Just a gentle correction to keep things straight. :)Sharon Hollingsworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11500349415203451928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-11806716663925524352015-10-22T18:58:00.268+11:002015-10-22T18:58:00.268+11:00The raunchy scenes of Ned and the squatters daught...The raunchy scenes of Ned and the squatters daughter in the stables, and Aaron seducing Mrs Devine added a bit of spice to it that made it more like what you would expect of hot blooded young men. Its funny how Ian Jones and all the other Kelly biographers steered clear of any suggestions in regard to Ned Kellys sex life. Why wouldn’t he have used his charm to have his way with all the ones suggested as his Lovers, from Kate to Ettie Hart, and others as well perhaps ? The idea that he was some sort of saintly celibate doesn’t fit with the passionate way he lived every other part of his life.Deehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14104818673788818740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-68985261827986443842015-10-22T12:43:33.229+11:002015-10-22T12:43:33.229+11:00I reckon I am one of the few Kelly buffs who has g...I reckon I am one of the few Kelly buffs who has grown to like the Ledger film. The grey, bleached cinematography was well done and Gregor Jordan seemed to bring out the best in the cast. I thought the Robert Drewe book (Our Sunshine) that it was based on was a quick, quirky, lyrical read and I realized that the movie was a good interpretation of his work. ( after my initial indignation at the 2003 premiere. .) i was annoyed it didn't do better business. Mark Perryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05162533821220639075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-63276332160117915192015-10-21T22:35:52.922+11:002015-10-21T22:35:52.922+11:00I take your points, but find it crazy to name a mo...I take your points, but find it crazy to name a movie and model it after a real life character, include episodes from his life, add a host of other named people and police, embellish the story and then pose it as historical fiction. It reminds me more of the Indonesian puppet plays whose shadows are seen as silhouettes projected on a screen. There are thus several levels of deception to the play. Holly Wisenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-56692258849186228402015-10-21T22:03:03.851+11:002015-10-21T22:03:03.851+11:00Funny you should mention that movie as Ive been wa...Funny you should mention that movie as Ive been watching it on You Tube. ( TLO is also available on You Tube). Its based on a book called Our Sunshine - which I haven’t read - and doesnt pretend to be telling the historical truth, so can be enjoyed as a sort of historical fiction loosely based on the kelly story. I thought Heath Ledger was a much more believable Ned than John Jarratt and Orlando Bloom makes it a very watchable film, with Naomi Watts , Geoffrey Rush and Rachel Griffiths making up a big contingent of Aussie actors. The Gang are much more lusty and larrikin like, and their accents are miles better than TLO ones. Kelly buffs mostly deplore this film because of the liberties it takes with the story - what they don’t realise is their beloved TLO takes at least as many, but theyre so ignorant of the facts they don’t notice. Deehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14104818673788818740noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-1899786125491006962015-10-21T19:45:57.532+11:002015-10-21T19:45:57.532+11:00That hodge-podge of fact and fiction, Heath Ledger...That hodge-podge of fact and fiction, Heath Ledger's Ned Kelly film continued the trend of Ned films to mislead and deceive. The screenplay was not the work of Ian Jones but of John Michael McDonagh.<br /><br />Wiki says "The film started out with a young Ned Kelly rescuing a young boy from drowning. It then pans to the Australian bush with Ned talking about his father. He then awakens in the Australian outback and sees a white mare. He rides it into town, only to be arrested and subsequently imprisoned in 1871, for supposedly stealing the horse, even though it had actually been stolen by Wild Wright, Ned's friend.<br /><br />"Two years later he is released and comes home to a warm welcome from his Catholic Irish family. The Kelly family are seemingly working to get ahead in life, by owning horses and farming. One night at a bar, a local Victoria Police Officer named Fitzpatrick, offers to buy Ned's sister a drink...".<br /><br />Still, better than the Mick Jagger effort, I think.Holly Wisenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2798312463652733622.post-63316159550793491962015-10-20T20:31:44.762+11:002015-10-20T20:31:44.762+11:00You are right that Ian Jones has dominated the Kel...You are right that Ian Jones has dominated the Kelly Legend for 40 years. The Gang was loathed at the time of the police murders but Kenneally and others began the task of attempting to revive Ned's repute. Jones did much sterling research of his own, and brough formidable skills to advance his lifetime's work.Sue and Barry Morgannoreply@blogger.com