ABSTRACT
Building on the author’s previous work on Australian national cinema and schooling, this chapter explores the representation of the female primary school teacher in the television mini-series entitled Marion (Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1974). Using narrative analysis, it argues that this representation is disruptive of patriarchal gender relations, demonstrating ‘hyper-linear history’ where an exemplary relationship is created between the disrupted gender relations in school leadership in Australia caused by World War Two and the ongoing disruption of gender relations occasioned by the second wave women’s movement in the 1970s. This mini-series shows how history, gender and representation are mobilised to create a unique cinematic historical argument about the gendered nature of Australian primary school teaching. Finally, the chapter reflects briefly on the situatedness of this reading out of the Global South.
