2 min 58 sec ( skip to teachers’ notes)

Taken from the feature The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

Original title classification M – this clip chosen to be PG

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Please be aware that this clip may contain the names, images and voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may now be deceased.

Curator’s clip description

Priscilla, the bus, has broken down in the desert. An Aboriginal man (Alan Dargin) invites the three drag artists to his nearby camp, where they put on an impromptu show. Everyone joins in, including a didgeridoo player.

Curator’s notes

There’s an obvious attempt at suggesting a ‘solidarity of the oppressed’ in this scene, but perhaps something else is at work too. The definition of ‘natural’ and ‘unnatural’ is constantly under review in the film, and this scene is a kind of subversion of that idea. The Aborigines, as ‘naturals’, might be expected to reject the ‘unnaturals’, but it doesn’t go that way. The terms become meaningless: everyone likes to dance and sing. The desert also has an impact on the drag act – by the time they get to Alice Springs, the show incorporates costumes representing various desert animals, such as the frill-necked lizard.

Paul Byrnes, curator

Teachers’ notes

provided by The Le@rning Federation

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This clip shows an Aboriginal man (Alan Dargin) inviting two drag artists – Anthony ‘Tick’ Belrose/Mitzi (Hugo Weaving) and Adam/Felicia (Guy Pearce) – and a transsexual, Ralph/Bernadette (Terence Stamp), to join a party of Indigenous people around a campfire in the desert. The performers put on stage costumes to sing and dance, and the audience, after initial reservations, responds enthusiastically. The performers rope Dargin’s character into their version of ‘I will survive’, and are also joined by a didgeridoo player.

Educational value points

  • The humour and joy of this clip are achieved through the contrast between the initial meeting with the Aboriginal people, when Anthony, Adam and Ralph are dressed in ordinary clothes, and their later transformation into drag artists. Their dramatic, stylised performance in outlandish costumes at first stuns and bemuses the audience, before they join in with a spontaneous expression of the mutual love of dance and music shared by both cultures.
  • The campfire performances illustrate how music underscores the film’s themes. The bright disco pop, from the decade when HIV–AIDS became an escalating tragedy, belongs to the drag artists, while the Indigenous people are portrayed playing both Indigenous and Western acoustic instruments: guitar, didgeridoo and clap sticks. The two groups, both of whom have experienced marginalisation, collaborate in a joyful, poignant anthem to survival.
  • The exuberant performance suggests why The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert contributed to the revival of Australian film in the 1990s, sharing many of the features of other international hits of the period such as Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Muriel’s Wedding (1994). These films use humour, saturated colour, larger-than-life characters and lively music, often from the 1980s, to convey a sense of energy and optimism.
  • Costume designers Lizzy Gardner and Tim Chappell won an Academy Award for Best Costume Design in 1995 for their outrageous and vibrant designs, which reflect the film’s sense of fun. The costumes, including the drag artists’ outfits shown in this clip, are frequently seen as stars of the film, along with the actors.
  • This clip showcases the talents of three actors. Terence Stamp (1939–) is a major British film actor and has appeared in over 70 productions. Australians Guy Pearce (1967–) and Hugo Weaving (1960–) have both succeeded in Hollywood roles – Weaving in the Matrix films and Pearce in LA Confidential (1997) and Memento (2000).
  • Writer and director Stephan Elliot (1963–) also directed Welcome to Woop Woop (1997). The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was nominated for nine and won two Australian Film Institute Awards in 1994 and was nominated for seven and won two British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards in 1995.
australian screen