AustLit

'What exactly is it that so many different love about Samson and Delilah? For those who haven't heard, it is an unusual love story about two teenagers living in a remote Aboriginal community in Central Australia. Delilah (Marissa Gibson) is a shy but headstrong 14 year old, solely responsible for the care of her elderly grandmother, Nana (Mitjili Napanangka Gibson), while Samson (Rowan McNamara), also 14, is a "petrol sniffer" - a young Aboriginal teenager addicted to petrol as a form of intoxication. In the Australian popular imagination, petrol sniffers are objects of pity or repulsion, shadowy figures seen mainly in the news reports of the so-called "Aboriginal problem" in the Northern Territory. They are what Thornton calls "the untouchables" - young Aboriginal addicts who are socially marginalised within both their Aboriginal communities and the wider Australian society.' (Introduction)