Six Feet Down Under: Class and confinement in the Australian horror film

This thesis investigates the developing role of Australian horror cinema in commenting on national class relations, and it examines the aesthetics used to frame these thematic arguments. Using materialist analysis, it considers Australian horror cinema within the broader socioeconomic history of Australia and its film industry, and it grounds its reading of key texts within their material context. Through this, the thesis ultimately constructs the first full history of the Australian horror film that connects the tradition to its socioeconomic foundations whilst investigating its core themes and aesthetics.

The history of all hitherto existing Australian horror cinema is the history of class struggles. Emerging during a time of peak trade union membership and post-war economic growth, the Australian horror film tradition initially featured working-class protagonists directly confronting organised wealth. As the nation’s working class suffered a series of setbacks through the onset of neoliberalism, the national horror film – financed by dual public and private interests – has reflected the institutional shift towards ‘middle-classness’. Only since the 2007–08 financial crisis has there been a renewed centralisation of working-class characters, yet there are now numerous caveats that separate the protagonists of modern Australian horror films with those of the 1970s. Through these developments, the tradition has adopted different perspectives at different stages. But despite this variety, these perspectives are essentially variations on the singular theme of Australian class relations. This consistency exists in spite of the national film industry’s diverse and unstable funding environment. Furthermore, a series of aesthetics have emerged alongside this core theme, most notably the confinement motif which has uninterruptedly framed the Australian horror film for five decades.