ENGSEMIO-220 Semiotics of Culture I

MOVIE REPORT
THE CHANT OF JIMMIE BLACKSMITH

Introduction

The movie was produced in 1981, based on a story of the same name published in 1972. It
was about the Australian main character Jimmy Blacksmith, a young half-caste Aboriginal
man, who is convicted of murdering loads of white people, mostly women and children.
Accompanying with him, there is his black brother Mort, his uncle Tabidgi on the
manslaughter journey, and his white wife and son during the half course of fleeing for
escape. They are massively hunted on a national scale, with the wife and the son being
abandoned behind by Jimmy, while his two male companions are either shot to death, or
given the death penalty by the court. Jimmy himself also receives the death penalty after
days of lonesome running through woods and forests.

The movie shares a huge similarity with the book, with the most distinction being the
emotional tendency of Jimmy. To clarify, the book digs quite deep verbally into the
illustration of Jimmy’s feelings and thoughts, while the movie can only visually depict these
traits through Jimmy’s silent acts. Ironically, both the book, and the movie from the
perspective of the half-breed black man are written and directed by white men (Byrnes),
thus insight into characters' mindset might be distorted, or might carry untruthfulness.

Reflection

Violence representation

The movie, from the beginning to end, has significantly shouted out the sauvage of both
the white and Aboriginal people, through different acts of violence, regardless of social
status.

The movie begins with the scenario of the black people being drunk, sitting around the fire
like a troop. The flame highlights the sorrow and grief on their face, which are lost in
mundane pleasure of alcohol and sexual intercourse, thus blurring their immediate misery
but failing to change their incessant existence of being treated and grouped like animals, by
the white people. In this scenario, the protagonist, Jimmy, is harassed by his own people,
because of his different half breed, thus indicating his state of being alienated by people of
his own social class.

The violence to the black people is continually shown when Jimmy works as the police
officer’s assistance, when the policeman tortures a mass of Jimmy’s hometown citizens so
as to investigate the death of a white slave. During this course of torment, it is painstaking
to observe Jimmy’s hand in aiding this brutal man against his own black community, just to

2
be recognized by the white. It can be said that the hunger for self representation as a part
of the white community in Jimmy is so vast that he can shred his people’s blood, or to say,
in order to be minorly recognized by the white, the protagonist must have his hand stained
with blood of his own family.

Further violence belongs, again, to the white people, this time against Jimmy himself during
his service towards them, as they clearly cut off his salary for the hard work he
accomplishes, thus leading him to great frustration when lacking finance to support his
own family. And on this occasion, as a result of accumulating violence and hatred, Jimmy
himself decides to take violence towards the white as a return, aiming at mainly women
and children.

“ Jimmie walked on in his circle behind the first veil of forest. He could not have explained
what he was waiting for. It was some sort of mandate to remove every unjust man, every
miser. He was a tender-hearted murderer who needed to feel that he was priest and
judge.” (Keneally)

It seems that his drive for massacre of defenseless people is generated by his deep desire
to remain just for himself, as families of those people have treated him unfairly, and if he is
not the one to regain his own just, then no system is to be trusted on earning that for him.
This burning motivation causes death for many people, and lights hatred in the white for
hunting him down, hence lengthening the series of sauvage from both parties. In detail,
while fleeing from his crime, Jimmy “declares war” - a discourse that could be understood
by him in the movie as “the right to kill recklessly”, murders and steals from families their
food. Meanwhile, the white people add blood to this stain by killing Jimmy’s brother, taking
pictures with the corpse as if they have successfully hunted down no more than a wildlife
creature. Incessant violence occurs in the movie leaving viewers no minute of relief from
accusation and anger towards these crimes.
Here, I want to mention a quite intriguing hint that I recognized in class discussion. To be
specific, as most stakeholders are peace-lovers, and white, the anger towards Jimmy’s acts
of disorder killing is fairly vivid, in the context of them accusing the white characters’
unfairness and sauvage behavior. Still, the tendency of heavily crying out against Jimmy’s
outrageous behaviors towards the white community cannot be submerged, as declared

3
“violence cannot be answered by violence, because of moral conduct”. Though his
carelessness and lack of vision in assassinating recklessly that causes irritation to me
throughout the movie, personally, from the perspective of a Vietnamese person, whose
country has survived colonization and slavery for thousands of years, I indifferently see
Jimmy’s action of violence as an answer towards violence inevitable and quite obvious, in
the sense of his justice and morality.
To conclude, this movie meticulously crafts the bloody consequences of accumulating
hatred, race discrimination and revenge, hence alarming the fatal ramification of these
attitudes of humankind themselves towards each other. Setting in the scenario of the
Australian, this movie also provides further view on the alarming situation of racism of the
time.

Reference

Byrnes, P. The Chant of Jimmy Blacksmith: Curator’s notes. Australian Screen: An NFSA
Website. Retrieved from: https://aso.gov.au/titles/features/chant-jimmie-blacksmith/notes/
Keneally, T.(1973). The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith. London: Penguin Books.