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Troy Williams
Australian Lit & Film
Dr. O’Reilly
April 4, 2014
An Eradication of Culture
In the film Rabbit-Proof fence we see the Aboriginal population living under the
autonomous posit of the white settlers that will eventually shatter their once tranquil
environment. The English settlers that laid claim to the land originally inhabited by the
Aborigines, whom grew to realize that the arrival of these settlers would lead to the
desecration of their traditional society and the dispossession of and expulsion from their
lands. It is through Ideological State Apparatuses and the (Repressive) State Apparatuses
that the white settlers become blinded by their own ideologies—a system of their ideas,
beliefs and representations that dominate the mind of the racial group—that allow them to
envision their religious, educational and racial superiority.
The Repressive “suggests that the State Apparatus in question ‘functions by
violence’—at least ultimately (since repression, e.g. administrative repression, may take
non-physical forms)” (Althusser). The (Repressive) State Apparatus and the Ideological
State Apparatus have similar functions but possess one unique difference. The State
Apparatus functions predominantly by repression (both physical and non-physical) and by
ideology secondarily, while on the other hand the Ideological State Apparatus functions
predominantly by ideologies and by repression secondarily. These two act the same way
but inversely. It is necessary to determine “the double ‘functioning’ (predominantly,
secondarily) by repression and ideology so as to make it clear the “very subtle, explicit or
tacit combinations may be woven from the interplay of the (Repressive) State Apparatus
and the Ideological State Apparatus” (Althusser).
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The motives of the white settlers apparent in the film are meant to contribute
toward a single result through exploiting and subjecting Aborigine individuals to their own
ideologies through the Ideological State Apparatuses that are the church and any cultural
venture (among a plurality of other Ideological State Apparatuses). The white settlers’
attempt to “purify” the Aboriginal population by eradicating any traces of their culture and
tradition transforms them into subjects that they can control. Mr. Neville presents a
slideshow to a group of people to explain his case for extirpating the roots of the Aboriginal
population, portraying the “weeding out” process as simply a case of genetic engineering in
which the white settlers have control. One could compare these ideals to Adolf Hitler and
his anti-Semitism and xenophobic reactions, though the white settlers could, assumedly,
never make this connection because the process by which the cultural and racial uniformity
is attained is different, though the end result is identical. By the third generation of mating
white settlers with members of the Aboriginal population, the natives’ skin color will
appear to be the same color as the colonizers, which is the ultimate goal for Mr. Neville.
This presupposition of culture dominance is in its own form an Ideological State Apparatus
because it claims cultural and educational superiority. The white settlers are in fact blinded
by their own belief of progress and lifestyle as they fail to see that the Aboriginal
population neither wants their proposed nor forced changes to their traditions or way of
life. Through repressive action, the girls are (legally) kidnapped from the wrested arms of
their mother and taken to Moore River where their acculturation into the settlement will
be forced. This kidnapping is essentially functions by acts of violence, and the girls’ escape
is an act of defiance against the white settlers’ proposed realities that present themselves
“in the form of distinct and specialized institutions” (Althusser).
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At the Moore River community, Mr. Neville is the man who examines the skin color
to determine whether or not the girls should be at a different settlement and receiving a
different education. We can see that the education system is another apparatus of relative
autonomy through which the white settlers function in order to breed the developing
minds of the girls to force them to believe certain things as well as think and act in a certain
manner. This way, the educational system is repressive in its own way because it is limiting
in its abilities as to what it promises as an educational system. An assertive, forceful hand
over the educational system will ensure a single result and the proper way to achieve that
single result without deviation. This intellectual channeling forces a certain way of thinking
and reacting that one will eventually forget their cultural and/or religious traditions. We
see the girls at Moore River conform to the teachings and rules of the white settlers as they
attempt to genetically manipulate the Aboriginal population until they become extinct.
The church at Moore River can be seen as the most dominant Ideological State
Apparatus, as it is used by the white settlers who want to control and change the Aboriginal
children. Not only in this film but also in the history of many, if not all religions, at one point
in time or another the church has concentrated on the functions of religion as well as the
functions of education, communication and culture (Althusser). The forced ideologies upon
the Aborigine children, through the presence of the church, are an assertion of power by
the ruling class (or in this instance, race), as it ultimately serves to force the conformation
of the children into the white society. Upon the children’s arrival at Moore’s Creek, they are
forced to bow their heads in prayer before their first meal, which is a custom that is
completely foreign to them. One of the guards demands that they stand and say their
prayers before they eat, forcing them to conform like the rest of the girls already brought
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into the community. The church’s ideologies also appear to be forced upon the girls in the
scene where Mr. Neville is checking the skin color of the girls to decide whether or not the
girls should be moved to a different settlement. Mr. Neville stands on a higher ground
between the girls and the church in the background, as if to portray the white settlers as
the means for carrying out the means of this Ideological State Apparatus.
Though the two functions of the Ideological State Apparatus (predominantly
ideology, secondarily repression) seem disparate, their function is always unified “despite
its diversity and its contradictions, beneath the ruling ideology, which is the ideology of ‘the
ruling class’” (Althusser). By brutal, physical force, the white settlers’ “contribution” to the
securing of their own ideologies at the expense of exploiting another culture. The atrocities
committed by the white settlers are essentially shielded by the (Repressive) State
Apparatus, as if to appear that it is not their will being forced upon the Aboriginal
population, and it is their duty to carry out these actions that are convenient and beneficial
to their way of life but repressive to others. The church in this film is one of the more
notable Apparatuses for transforming the Aboriginal population into controllable subjects
by the legalization of kidnapping. The ideologies endorsed by the white settlers are purely
illusory because all of its reality remains external to it, and so it can be seen as an
imaginary assemblage that lacks any particular context and can be determined as ‘separate’
from reality. Overall, we can see that it is a “different thing to act by laws and decrees in the
(Repressive) State Apparatus and to ‘act’ through the intermediary of the ruling ideology in
the Ideological State Apparatuses” (Althusser).
When the girls run away from the Moore River settlement, they understand that
their lives are at stake because of the long journey, but they also realize that if the tracker
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captures them, they will be taken back to the settlement and whipped and punished. This
physical, violent form of punishment is always a threat to the misbehavior of the girls,
which the white settlers possess through certain ideologies. If the girls do not obey their
every command and law, they may be subject to reactionary violence and punishment.
Psychologically, this omnipresent threat breaks down the mental capacity of the girls at
Moore River so that they may be molded into the “correct society” established by the white
settlers. The threat of surveillance “must be understood as a generalizable model of
functioning; a way of defining power relations in terms of the every day life of man”
(Foucault 205). The major effect of any surveillance system is:
To induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that
assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the
surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its
action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise
unnecessary…in short, that the inmates should be caught up in a power
situation of which they are themselves the bearers. (Foucault 201)
In the white settlers attempt to acculturate the Aboriginal population, specifically by
targeting the younger generation for selective breeding to “purify” their race by making
them whiter, an eventually eliminating any traces of their ancestry. This repressive
principle has a goal not of sovereignty but of discipline. This particular discipline may be
adopted and taken over by specialized institutions to reinforce their mechanism(s) of
power to assure that discipline reigns over society as a whole (Foucault 216). The problem
with this situation is that a separate entity, one that may be smaller than the Aboriginal
population, has “procured the instantaneous view of a great multitude” (Foucault 216).
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This haste act of judgment is an attempt to promote the normalcy of a particular culture
through discipline and (sometimes) violence.
Throughout the movie, themes of repression, racism as well as forced acculturation
through religion and education are apparent via the inferiority complex of the Aboriginal
population. The girls’ rebellious escape from the Moore River settlement is a testament to
the repressive state they were forced to endure. Through their enforced ideologies and
their repressive actions, the white settlers were essentially blinded by the power of their
own beliefs, and it was the Aboriginal population that was forced to suffer.
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Works Cited
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses(Notes towards an
Investigation)." Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses 1969-70. N.p., n.d. Web.
04 Apr. 2014.
<https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/althusser/1970/ideology.htm>.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon, 1977.
Print.