Imagining the Secondary School: The 'Pictorial Turn' and Representations of Secondary Schools in Two Australian Feature Films of the 1970S‪.‬

Abstract Derrick Armstrong (2003) recently wrote that: 'History lives through the forms of its representations.' (1) Increasingly the most common representation of historical knowledge is derived from the visual media. This trend has been called the 'pictorial turn'. Rosenstone has argued that historians need to consider historical film as another way of 'doing history' with its own conventions, styles and 'language'. (2) This article engages with the cinematic history of Australian education by examining the historical representation of secondary schools in a number of Australian feature films of the 1970s. By what narrative strategies, metaphors and understandings were Australian high schools encoded into images and how might these interpretations differ from written accounts of the secondary schools? Specifically the analysis centres on two seminal films: Picnic at Hanging Rock (Weir, 1975) and The Getting of Wisdom (Beresford, 1977). These films of the 'New Wave' cinema revival have usually been interpreted as discussions about Australian national identity, and the historical settings of secondary schools have not been foregrounded. This article however focuses on the social and material worlds of the schools. It reflects on the types of education depicted and the characterisations of teachers and students. The analysis includes consideration of gender, class, and sexualities. Finally, the article asks: what was the historical understanding of secondary schools that made them so attractive for cinematic explorations of Australian national identity in the 1970s?