'Women in industry are not meant to be weightlifters': Gender and the Australian industrial workplace safety film. Issue 3 (2nd September 2022)
- Record Type:
- Journal Article
- Title:
- 'Women in industry are not meant to be weightlifters': Gender and the Australian industrial workplace safety film. Issue 3 (2nd September 2022)
- Main Title:
- 'Women in industry are not meant to be weightlifters': Gender and the Australian industrial workplace safety film
- Authors:
- Russell, Grace C.
- Abstract:
- ABSTRACT: 'Utilitarian' films - those not for the purposes of art or entertainment - include instructional films addressing workplace safety. Large quantities of these were made in Australia between WW2 and the advent of video and were viewed by many workers in different industries. Their content, social significance and relationship to a wider dispositif of media and labour is therefore a fertile source of information about how work was performed and how it was discursively conceptualised. We can glean information from these films about the presumed class, proclivities, and attitudes that Australian workers were assumed to have. Their address is also gendered, almost exclusively targeting men. In analysing one unusual workplace safety film targeted at women workers, Don't Be Scalped (R.D. Hansen, 1960 Fortune films and the NSW Department of Labour and Industry), aspects of working-class male subjectivity commonly spoken to in workplace safety films are thrown into relief. This article examines how gendered address in industrial safety films constructs and perpetuates gendered inequalities in broader discourses about health, danger and industrial labour. Don't Be Scalped illustrates how gender difference is one way this form of utilitarian text polices and normalises attitudes to safety through targeted and specific forms of subjectification.
- Is Part Of:
- Studies in documentary film. Volume 16:Issue 3(2022)
- Journal:
- Studies in documentary film
- Issue:
- Volume 16:Issue 3(2022)
- Issue Display:
- Volume 16, Issue 3 (2022)
- Year:
- 2022
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 3
- Issue Sort Value:
- 2022-0016-0003-0000
- Page Start:
- 245
- Page End:
- 257
- Publication Date:
- 2022-09-02
- Subjects:
- Utilitarian film -- workplace safety -- instructional -- gender -- accidents
Documentary films -- Periodicals
Motion pictures -- Periodicals
Films documentaires -- Périodiques
Films documentaires -- Production et réalisation -- Périodiques
Cinéma -- Périodiques
Documentary films
Motion pictures
Periodicals
070.18 - Journal URLs:
- http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsdf ↗
http://openurl.ingenta.com/content?genre=journal&issn=1750-3280 ↗
http://www.atypon-link.com/INT/loi/sdf ↗
http://www.tandfonline.com/ ↗
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals.php?issn=17503280 ↗ - DOI:
- 10.1080/17503280.2022.2066330 ↗
- Languages:
- English
- ISSNs:
- 1750-3280
- Deposit Type:
- Legaldeposit
- View Content:
- Available online (eLD content is only available in our Reading Rooms) ↗
- Physical Locations:
- British Library DSC - BLDSS-3PM
British Library HMNTS - ELD Digital store - Ingest File:
- 24499.xml