The Rock and the Void: Pastoral and Loss in Joan Lindsay's Picnic at Hanging Rock and Peter Weir's Film Adaptation

This is a very academic article meaning it's fairly complicated and hard to understand at times. The main points that I was able to make out include:

1. She defines 'pastoral' as '...a group of interrelated ideas that together express a liminal space of mystery, one situqated on the porous boundaries between civilization and nature, society and solitude, within which figures aticulate the human condition as subject to natural processes of beaut and loss and creatively respond to those forces.'

2. She then goes into the history of the 'pastoral mode.'

3. She refers to the Australian landscape, 'its age, mystery, hostility, unaccomodating quality and alien strangeness.'

4. The characters respond to nature in a 'curious mix of rationalism and myth.'

5. To me, what you have is civilization as shown by the girls and their teachers from the college vs. the wild nature of the area of the rock. In this case nature wins.

6. This is shown by the ants taking over the cake, the girls removing their gloves, stockings and shoes and the teacher appearing in her underwear.

7. She compares the story to Alice in Wonderland.

8. She talks a lot about 'pastoral shepherds'.

9. The movie avoids the Christian outlook and centers on the metaphysical and Aboriginal dreamtime.

10. The final, separately printed final chapter, centers on the paranormal.

11. Miranda represents Venus, the goddess of love.

12. The music is a significant dimension of the film.

13. The characters of Miranda, Marion and Miss McCraw represent knowledge, beauty and grace. Edit represents a more earthly approach to things and thus does not disappear with the others.

14. There's a lot in the article that deals with the concept of loss.

15. Time and nature's relationship to it is also discussed.

16. '...immersion in Nature leads to absence and loss.' This is related to the concept of the empire.

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