Anzac, The Unauthorised Biography by Carolyn Holbrook

Author:Carolyn Holbrook
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: NewSouth

The years from 1965 to 1985 cover the most dramatic fluctuation in Great War memory in Australian history. If memory of the war had proved unable to regenerate itself in a form that provided nationalist sustenance to post-1945 generations of Australians, then it would almost certainly have expired with the last of the old diggers. Bill Gammage’s The Broken Years and Peter Weir’s Gallipoli succeeded so profoundly in influencing public memory of the Great War because they caught the New Nationalist mood. This was not the state-driven search for ‘homo Australicus’ pilloried by Barry Humphries and illustrated so well in the fiasco over a new national anthem, but a more cautious nationalism, wary of its ‘chest-thumping’ variant. Given the stench that had surrounded nationalism since Hitler and the revulsion that the Vietnam generation felt towards war in general, it is extraordinary that the Anzac story re-emerged as strongly as it did. Only hindsight has revealed that predictions of the demise of Anzac Day under-estimated both the appetite of Australians for tales of their communal provenance, and their willingness to satisfy that hunger with what is served up to them as history. Themes of tragedy and sacrifice proved to be as effective in the service of Australian nationalism in the 1980s as the theme of martial baptism had been fifty years earlier.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.