Inventions of gender and place in films: Tales of urban reality

Places and identities are increasingly seen by cultural geographers as socially constructed. In other words, for many people the reality of places is derived from images and the discourses that surround them. In Australia, Dunn et al. (1995) have demonstrated how the industrial landscape and narratives of a 'dirty old town' and of a 'city in crisis' have coloured outsiders' views of the city of Newcastle. Similarly, place narratives of the Sydney suburb of Redfern as a 'war zone' and 'no-go area' have produced a dominant but contested reading of this place as a demonised Aboriginal 'ghetto' (Anderson 1993). In contemporary times, audio-visual cultural products such as film and music video are increasingly instrumental in structuring such place concepts. The images produced by these media are central to the formation of ideas about human and physical landscapes (Zonn 1984, p. 44).