In Tasmania
Nicholas Shakespeare. Random House, 2004. isbn 1 740 51271 5, rrp $39.95
In Tasmania is a passionate exposé of one man’s desire to embrace the Apple Isle and explore his genealogical link in its historical context.
This quest for English author and biographer Nicholas Shakespeare contributed to the unearthing of a fortuitous link to his ancestor and ‘father of Tasmania’, Anthony Fenn Kemp. Readers soon discover the irony of such a title—Kemp was a tyrant and loathed for his cruelty both in Tasmania and in his country of birth, England.
One question arises in the attempt to document Kemp’s journey: does Shakespeare use conjecture loosely to surmise the sequence of events around his distant relative? If so, he can be excused for the narrative sounding more like folklore than transcribed fact. It’s an intriguing historical account.
The debates about Aboriginal identity, Truganini as the last Aborigine and the documented genocide of the late 1800s were topical while Shakespeare was writing In Tasmania, and he juxtaposed the debate with his research on Kemp.
Finally, the charm of Shakespeare’s anecdotes encompasses a sincere desire to elevate the heritage of the people of Tasmania and to re-create a bona fide sense of pride for their links to the earlier penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land.
Lee Beasley
Women and media: International perspectives
Karen Ross & Carolyn M. Byerly (eds). Blackwell Publishing, 2004. isbn 1 405 11609 9, rrp $59.95
To any woman who has ever felt oppressed, repressed or suppressed, Women and the Media: International Perspectives is a must read. This insightful text explores women’s relationship with the media—in particular, the media’s stereotypical and negative representations of women who work in the media industry or as citizens ignored in some societies.
Written by six international female scholars including the text’s editors, the topics cover women’s place in politics, movies and online. Karen Ross describes how female parliamentarians are judged by their appearance rather than their policies while Ellen Riordan confronts the reality that perceptions of women are masculinised when cast in roles with male-like qualities (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).
The international perspectives studied by Dafna Lemish and Ammu Joseph are eye-opening. And all of the authors resist the temptation to adopt a feminist tone. Lemish reveals that because of the participation by men in the continuing conflict in Israel, the media focuses on the activities of men, ignoring the stories of women. Consequently, this has sustained the perception