Barbara Creed, Cinema Studies, Melbourne University

b.creed@finearts.unimelb.edu.au

This paper argues that the beach has not always been represented as a site of bodily pleasure, sex and egalitarianism. The beach, its sand and seas, also represents a place of bloodshed, anxiety and death. Through a close reading of films ('For the Term of his Natural Life' to Romper Stomper') 19th century photography, painting, myth and politics, this paper examines the beach as an uncanny site, a feminised abject space where white Australia has represented and staged its anxieties about race, sexuality and death.