EXPOSED – The Luna Park Ghost Train Fire Documentary
9th of June 1979, the night where six children and one adult passed away tragically in a fire. The night where
the deaths of these innocent people were dismissed as an “electrical fault”. However, the initial
investigation of the fire arose various perspectives on the ‘culprit’. Some were accepting the idea that the
fire was an accident, yet others were very opposed to this. The Documentary of The Luna Park Ghost Train
Fire attempts to reinforce an idea of a guilty, helpless perspective in the victims’ parents and close friends,
what some would call the “survivor’s guilt”. The aforementioned perspective is reinforced through the
documentary conventions of re-enactments, body language, and interviews.
Emotional responses are a given when it comes to traumatic experiences people have faced. Nonetheless,
some are better at hiding their pain than others, meaning one’s body language is a definite presentation
of their feelings, which contributes to the dissection of their perspective as an individual. This is expanded
upon in the Luna Park Documentary, where a nervous, somewhat jittery body language is employed to
reveal an accountable, slightly blameworthy perspective on the fire and the initially assumed electrical fault
that ‘caused’ it. Tony Jacob, a man that worked on the ride and claimed that he “Took Pride” in working on
the Ghost Train (Episode 1, 40:02), allows the reader to assume that the events of the fire have taken a
tremendous toll on Tony himself. However, this is not apparent immediately, as his voice shows no signs
of trembling, but when examining his body language, he seems to be tense, hunched over slightly, and
even shaking at times, along with his arms together infront of him, adding to the look of a ‘closed’ body
language. The closed-in, and, at times, lethargic body language suggests that people’s, specifically Tony’s
perspective is represented as fearful, and slightly depressed, in great contrast with the description of the
Ghost Train; how it was wonderful and fun. This variation in Tony’s speech compared to his body language
could also represent how some people may have a lack of acceptance that the fire occurred, as if some are
still ‘living in the past’ when it comes to their perspective.
Sometimes, it can be hard to visualise certain events, and this can cause issues like misinterpretation or
misunderstandings on specific pieces of information or evidence. Re-enactments succeed in addressing
these problems, by allowing the viewer to envision the incident in more significant detail, or to give a
perspective on the fire directly from one individual’s point of view. In the context of this documentary, reenactments are employed to represent a culpible, ‘in the wrong’ perspective, specifically felt by the
operator of the ride on the night of the fire. In a reenactment of the events that unfolded on the night of
the Ghost Train fire, the viewers see a ride operator