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'This is the story of teenage girl Steph, who is brought up by her fiery aunt Jude after her pregnant mother Jass and Vietnamese father are killed in a car crash. The arrival of her late mother's diary reveals the colorful, sexy secrets of Jude and the foreman Alan that allow Steph to reinvent her vision of the world. ' (Production summary IMDB)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Miracle Baby : A Reparative Reading of Mixed Race Identity and Nation in Peaches
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 31 no. 2 2017; (p. 230-241)'The mixed race subject is increasingly emerging in popular Australian media as a poster child of multiculturalism, entangled with post-racial discourses. This dominant representation perpetuates reductive understandings of mixed race experience rooted in compulsory optimism and the erasure of history, which in turn bolster exclusionary imaginings of Australian national identity. I seek alternatives to these constructions through an analysis of the 2004 Australian film Peaches, a markedly understudied text, which centres the coming of age of mixed race protagonist Steph. I adopt Eve Sedgwick’s ‘reparative reading’ approach, which enables generative modes of analysis that seek to imagine new alternatives through textual critique. I focus on two key filmic sites – the ambivalent affects circulated by Steph, and the haunting queer temporality pervading the narrative. I argue that these two sites hold the potential for complex, open-ended understandings of mixed race identity, and in turn, modes of national identity that can re-centre unresolved histories and contested dynamics of race in Australia.' (Production abstract)
-
Miracle Baby : A Reparative Reading of Mixed Race Identity and Nation in Peaches
2017
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Continuum : Journal of Media & Cultural Studies , vol. 31 no. 2 2017; (p. 230-241)'The mixed race subject is increasingly emerging in popular Australian media as a poster child of multiculturalism, entangled with post-racial discourses. This dominant representation perpetuates reductive understandings of mixed race experience rooted in compulsory optimism and the erasure of history, which in turn bolster exclusionary imaginings of Australian national identity. I seek alternatives to these constructions through an analysis of the 2004 Australian film Peaches, a markedly understudied text, which centres the coming of age of mixed race protagonist Steph. I adopt Eve Sedgwick’s ‘reparative reading’ approach, which enables generative modes of analysis that seek to imagine new alternatives through textual critique. I focus on two key filmic sites – the ambivalent affects circulated by Steph, and the haunting queer temporality pervading the narrative. I argue that these two sites hold the potential for complex, open-ended understandings of mixed race identity, and in turn, modes of national identity that can re-centre unresolved histories and contested dynamics of race in Australia.' (Production abstract)
