Radio Interview (You Tube)

This starts out referring to it's being the 50th anniversary of the publishing of the novel making this 2017. Some points from the interview:

The story is fictional
Clocks stop working around Hanging Rock.
Indigenous visitors won't climb the rock since 'it feels evil.'
Helen Morse, who played the French teacher, is interviewed.
The author of Beyond the Rock, a biography of Joan Lindsay, is also interviewed.
Another person interviewed is someone who adapted the novel for a stage play.
There are tensions and conflicts from Europeans being in a landscape like in the novel
It's a 'proto-feminist' text.
The Rock is a transitional space.
It's a poem to Australia about Australia.
Joan Lindsay was a mystic.
They talk about Joan Lindsay's life.
Joan Lindsay was very shy.
For a play keeping the same costumes would be a cliche.
White people coming into contact with the ancient atmosphere of Australia caused a crisis in time.
Joan Lindsay had either gone back in time or saw a past event.
She was obsessed with Hanging Rock since she was very young.
She literally dreamed the plot sequentially.
Joan Lindsay loved the Sara character in the book.
There's a discussion about chapter 18 and how it was so different from the rest of the book.
All of them agree it was the right idea to drop chapter 18 from the regular book.
Some of the paragraphs from chapter 18 were inserted into chapter 3 which is why that chapter may not seem to make much sense.
People still want to believe the story is based on a real event.
The original manuscript has a forward that says the story is 'entirely true.'
As to the film, Americans didn't understand that it was an open-ended story.
In a later scene of a dinner with Mrs. Appleyard and the French teacher there was a vase of pansies which were Sara's favorite flower and also Joan Lindsay's favorite flower.
Pansies also stand for memories.
One group of aboriginal people visited the Rock one time, got half way up and then turned around and ran back down to the bus. A second group climbing the Rock stopped and did some kind of (probably protective) chant, both of these things tying in to their idea that the Rock is evil or 'unfinished.'
There is evidence that, at some time, some girl or girls did disappear, I presume in that general area.
It's both a feminist text and one that deals with class politics.
Edith and Irma both lacked a spiritual dimension and thus were rejected by the Rock.

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