Walkabout - Film Review

This review will showcase the relationship between the Australian girl and the Aboriginal
boy in the film Walkabout (1971) by Nicolas Roeg, with a focus on the male and female
gaze which was first introduced by Laura Mulvey in her book Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema (1975) . Key source will be Norman N. Holland`s essay Walkabout and
Gregory Stephens` article Confining Nature: Rites of Passage, Eco-Indigenes and the
Uses of Meat in Walkabout.

Walkabout tells the story of two Australian siblings stranded in the Australian outback.
They struggle for survival against heat, hunger and thirst until they come across an
Aboriginal boy on a walkabout. He shows them how to survive and helps them to find
their way back to civilization.

When the two siblings meet the Aboriginal boy for the first time there is a lack in
communication in form of language and culture. (Fig. 1) “Blinkered by cultural insularity,
the girl insists on her Englishness. Treating an aborigine as if he were an alien, she
condescends to him, lectures him on the proper name for the land he stands on, berates
him for not understanding English … “ (Stephens, 2009). In the time they spend together,
the attempts to cross from one culture to another fails since the siblings continue to wear
their school uniform such as their hats and coats, while the Aborigine wears only a
loincloth. But when the boy takes off his shirt, to be more like the Aboriginal boy, he gets
sunburned, suggesting that he doesn’t fit into the Aboriginal culture. (Holland, n.a.)

Fig. 1 - The Aboriginal boy and the siblings meet for the first

Furthermore the tension between the Australian girl and Aboriginal boy can be seen within
the environment. The heat and desire of the Australian outback "demonstrates that sexual
desire continues to flourish even in desperate circumstances, and perhaps especially in
intercultural contexts“ (Stephens, 2009). Not only does the camera takes constant shots
at and up Mary’s miniskirt but also there is a shot of the Aboriginal boy`s buttocks and his
loincloth that barely covers his genitals. (Holland, n.a.)

Soon visual narrative about the sexual desire for flesh is introduced when the girl is
checking out the human flesh of the Aboriginal boy as they walk, while the boy is attuned
to the camels nearby. (Fig. 2) “Then the camera takes a position showing the Aborigine’s
face, but the girl behind him, looking down at his flesh. This is another of the film’s
inversions: what we have here is the female gaze.“ (Stephens, 2009)

Mulvey`s theory of the male gaze suggests that “in a world ordered by sexual imbalance,
pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. In their
traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their
appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact ... “ (Mulvey, 1975). But in the case
of Walkabout the theory is turn around since the man is an object of desire for the female
character in the film, as well as the female audience.

Fig. 2 - The girl is checking out the the Aboriginal boy as they walk

The Aboriginal boy gets even further objectified when another close-up of his buttocks is
shown with his boomerang in his hand. Therefore he is represented as both, a hunter and
a sexual object. (Stephens, 2009) The connection between hunting and sexual desire can
especially be seen in the scene when the girl is swimming nude ( Fig 3.) while the
Aboriginal boy is hunting for food. “The scene is mesmerizing in its mixture of Edenic
innocence and subdued eroticism.“ (Mayer, 2014)

Fig. 3 - The girl is swimming nude

“The relationship between the two activities (swimming and hunting) is made explicit by a
series of match cuts or visual parallels. When the aborigine pulls a three-foot fish by the
gills out of the shallow water, it is as if he were `fishing the girl`.“ (Stephens, 2009)

Furthermore it links it back to the male gaze since the scene infers the correlations
between the ways in which man look at women and the way man treat animals – as
“pieces of meat”. (Stephens, 2009)

However in Aboriginal culture "there is a progression towards achieving the status

necessary to choose a mate. The aborigine in the midst of his walkabout would not
conceive of trying to take a sexual partner. That would be to violate the norms of his
culture, the very laws of nature, as it were, which dictate that the young man only moves
to take a woman after returning from his successful rite of passage, upon the
achievement of manhood.“ (Stephens, 2009)

But since the Aboriginal boy finished his walkabout, he is now free to approach her as a
man. He immerses himself in a field of bones, paints himself with a skull and bones, and
does a naked dance before the girl, uncovering his erect penis. (Fig. 4) (Holland, n.a.)

But the Australian girl claims not to understand what he wants. Even when he is trying to
show his desire in her cultural way, when he learned the one word: “water” which he
offers to her to win her favors, but she still ignores the gesture. In any case, frightened by
what she takes to be his sexual advances, she rejects him, keeping her little brother by
her as a chaperone.“ (Holland, n.a.)

Fig. 4 - Aboriginal boy courtship dancing

Holland connects the seeking of the Aboriginal boy to Freud’s libido: “It is what drives us
through our evolutionary destiny. We expect to find something good for our survival and
reproduction in the world around us (although, of course, we don’t always find
it).“ (Holland, n.a.)

The seeking between the two teenagers can especially seen within the tree climbing
scene (Fig. 5). “For the moment, the teenage girl seems to have forgotten about what she
is exposing and gives herself fully to play. The camera cuts from her gleeful face to the
ample breasts of the aboriginal women, as the boy yells, “Swing me!” Swing takes on
double-voiced meaning here, as the girl is letting go of her inhibitions in a way that has
sexual connotations.“ (Stephens, 2009)

Fig. 5 - The kids playing in the tree

The tree acts as the representation of the sexual desire since the camera shows two limbs
of the gum joined in a slit, which ends in a knob, looking like a vulva. (Fig. 6)

Stephens says “as the girl begins stroking her legs, rubbed raw by the earlier rumpus on
the tree limbs, a close-up shows the Aboriginal opening his eyes to observe her“ he adds
“as he speaks, the girl brings her legs together, as if to avoid the potential for a
misunderstanding.“ (Stephens, 2009)

Fig. 6 - Tree knob looking like a vulva

In this scene, both characters feel the sexual desire for one another because “at this
point, she looks up towards the tree; the camera zooms up on the leg-like tree limbs and
then shows the “vulva-like” slit at the intersection of the limbs. There is a cut to the
Aboriginals`s chest rising and falling as he breaths deeply, and then to the girl’s face, who
suddenly seems to have `put two and two together`. She intuitively leaps beyond
innocence, and into the `knowledge of good and evil` that the tree and the boy, in
combination, seem to have provided, both as forms of `forbidden fruit`.“ (Stephens, 2009)

Summing up it can be said that nothing ever happens between the teenage girl and the
Aboriginal boy, but in many scenes they are shown looking hungrily at one another that
indicates their sexual desire for each other. Their coy courtship breaks racial taboos even
while it serves as a metaphor for relations between immigrants and natives. (Stephens,
2009) So Walkabout (1971) showcases, despite the barriers of human communication, a
sexual desire between two young humans and the challenge of the life as a natural vs.
civilized human.

 Bibliography

Buckmaster, L. (2014). Walkabout rewatched – a wilderness of the mind as much as of the

land. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/australia-
culture-blog/2014/jul/11/walkabout-rewatched-a-wilderness-of-the-mind-as-much-as-of-
the-land [Accessed 17 Mar. 2019].

Holland, N. (n.d.). Norman Holland on Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout. [online]

Asharperfocus.com. Available at: http://www.asharperfocus.com/Walkabout.html
[Accessed 17 Mar. 2019].

Mayer, J. (2014). Down-Underground: WALKABOUT, or Thirteen Ways of Making a

National Epic. [online] IndieWire. Available at: https://www.indiewire.com/2014/05/down-
underground-walkabout-or-thirteen-ways-of-making-a-national-epic-133475/ [Accessed
17 Mar. 2019].

Mulvey, L. (1975). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema.

Stephens, G. (2009). Confining Nature: Rites of Passage, Eco-Indigenes and the Uses of
Meat in Walkabout. [online] Senses of Cinema. Available at: http://sensesofcinema.com/
2009/towards-an-ecology-of-cinema/walkabout/ [Accessed 17 Mar. 2019].

Illustration List

Fig. 1 - The Aboriginal boy and the siblings meet for the first - https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=zk3s-vom2bY

Fig. 2 - The girl is checking out the the Aboriginal boy as they walk - https://
www.sbs.com.au/movies/article/2016/08/11/walkabout-cheat-sheet

Fig. 3 - https://reelclub.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/not-just-for-the-boys-the-female-
journey-in-walkabout/

Fig. 4- Aboriginal boy courtship dancing - http://staging.streamline.filmstruck.com/the-

first-aborigine-movie-star-the-cinema-down-under-part-2/

Fig. 5 - The kids playing in the tree - http://www.asharperfocus.com/Walkabout.html

Fig. 6 - Tree knob looking like a vulva - http://sensesofcinema.com/2009/towards-an-

ecology-of-cinema/walkabout/