enc315114 exam paper - department of education exam... · australia day nationalism walks in the...

Pages: 20 Questions: 7 ©Copyright for part(s) of this examination may be held by individuals and/or organisations other than the Tasmanian Qualifications Authority.

Tasmanian Certificate of Education

ENGLISH COMMUNICATIONS

Senior Secondary

Subject Code: ENC315114

External Assessment

2014

Writing Time: Two and a half hours

On the basis of your performance in this examination, the examiners will provide results on each of the following criteria taken from the course statement: Criterion 2 Demonstrate understanding of ideas and issues. Criterion 3 Demonstrate understanding of the ways language is used to

position audiences. Criterion 9 Clarify and articulate own ideas, attitudes and values in response

to texts.

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English – Communications

CANDIDATE INSTRUCTIONS You MUST make sure that your responses to the questions in this examination paper will show your achievement in the criteria being assessed. There are TWO sections to this paper. Section A – Ideas and Issues Answer ONE question from Section A. You have a choice in each question, and you MUST answer EITHER part (a) OR part (b). Section B – Texts and Contexts Answer ONE question from Section B. Answer each question in a separate answer booklet. Clearly indicate the question answered on the front of the booklet. Candidates are reminded that poor handwriting, spelling and expression may lead to lower ratings. All written responses must be in English.


Answer ONE question from this section. Answer EITHER part (a) OR part (b) of your chosen question, but not both. Use a separate answer booklet for this section. Refer to at least TWO TEXTS from the prescribed list to support your answer. Other texts may be referred to as appropriate. This section assesses Criterion 2 and 9.

SECTION A – IDEAS AND ISSUES


Question 1 – IMAGINING AUSTRALIA Read the following stimulus and then answer EITHER part (a) OR part (b). The stimulus below is an opinion article written by Robin Tennant-Wood which appeared on the website The Conversation on 14 January 2014.

Australia Day nationalism walks in the footsteps of ugly precedents The decision by Aldi and Big W to remove their government-approved Australia Day T-shirts from sale followed a social media-led backlash against the slogan on the shirts: “Australia Est. 1788”. Australia Day has always been problematic as a national day of celebration. The “Est. 1788” line only serves to emphasise this point. Apart from being offensive to indigenous Australians, it is, quite simply, historically incorrect. Although they colonised the land, the British did not discover Australia. That occurred with the arrival of the Aboriginal ancestors. We also know that Dutch and Portuguese navigators were aware of the southern landmass and mapped the western coastline as early as the 1600s. Australia, the country, is the oldest landmass on the planet and has been inhabited for at least 70 000 years. This is where the celebration of Australia Day has always been — and, I would argue, always will be — divisive. The indigenous community regard Australia Day as Invasion Day, and more recently, Survival Day. Celebrating the First Fleet anniversary legitimises the now legally discredited notion of terra nullius. It marks the point at which the British government took possession of a land that was already occupied by a people who could have claimed sovereign rights, had they been consulted. The Aboriginal Tent Embassy was established on January 26, 1972, in protest against the denial of Aboriginal land rights. On January 26, 1988, Australia threw a big party. The Bicentennial celebrations, which focused largely on Sydney Harbour, were an excuse for Australians to do, en masse, what Australians like to do in summer anyway: cook and eat charred meat in outdoor locations, play cricket using upturned beer cartons as stumps, swim and drink alcohol from tins. Except this time doing so while wearing green and gold outfits bedecked with the national flag. On January 27 the nation awoke with a continental hangover and Australia Day had taken on a new, and not altogether positive, meaning. Until 1988, the holiday had been observed as a conveniently placed long weekend to mark the end of the summer school holiday, generally without the jingoistic fanfare. The Bicentenary changed all that.

Question 1 continues.


Question 1 (continued) Sometime around the mid-1990s the anniversary started to become infused with nationalism and its accompanying racist undertones. It is no accident that this coincided with the election of Pauline Hanson and her maiden speech in which she stated that Australia “is in danger of being swamped by Asians”. “Hansonism” and the establishment of One Nation, along with the Howard government’s extinguishing of native title, the “Fortress Australia” approach to refugee arrivals and Howard’s 2001 election speech in which he said, “We will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come”, opened the door to tacitly sanctioned racism. This has manifested in Australia Day becoming a nationalist focal point. In 2009, Australia Day celebrations in Manly turned particularly ugly when a large group of young people, many drunk and/or draped in the flag, targeted non-Anglo people in a rampage that included damage to cars and property. Local authorities tried to deny that the riot was racially motivated, but the evidence suggested otherwise. Undoubtedly some of the offending “1788” T-shirts, [which were] sold before they were pulled from sale, will show up at Australia Day celebrations this year. The contemporary design of the slogan indicates a target market of young people. History has taught us that the youth of a nation are all too often used as the vehicle for dangerous nationalism. It is time for Australia, as a mature nation, to acknowledge its past, atone for its mistakes, repudiate jingoistic* nationalism and move towards a national celebration inclusive of all Australians. *jingoistic – fervently and excessively patriotic Question Refer to at least TWO TEXTS from the prescribed list to support your answer. Other texts may be referred to as appropriate. (a) How are the ideas and issues about IMAGINING AUSTRALIA communicated in Tennant-

Wood’s article similar to or different from the ideas and issues represented in texts you have studied this year? Outline your own attitudes and values in response to these texts.

OR (b) Imagine that you have been invited to speak at a meeting where politicians, writers and

celebrities have gathered to consider IMAGINING AUSTRALIA.

Write a speech for this meeting responding to the ideas and issues about IMAGINING AUSTRALIA communicated in Tennant-Wood’s article and those represented in texts you have studied this year. In your speech, outline your own attitudes and values in response to these texts.

Section A continues.


Question 2 – TELLING TRUTHS Read the following stimulus and then answer EITHER part (a) OR part (b). The stimulus below is an open letter in which the founder and publisher of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, attempts to convince the actor Benedict Cumberbatch not to be a part of the film The Fifth Estate. This letter was published by The Guardian newspaper on 10 October 2013. Dear Benedict, Thank you for trying to contact me. It is the first approach by anyone from the Dreamworks production to me or WikiLeaks. My assistants communicated your request to me, and I have given it a lot of thought and examined your previous work, which I am fond of. I think I would enjoy meeting you. The bond that develops between an actor and a living subject is significant. If the film reaches distribution we will forever be correlated in the public imagination. Our paths will be forever entwined. Each of us will be granted standing to comment on the other for many years to come and others will compare our characters and trajectories. But I must speak directly. I hope that you will take such directness as a mark of respect, and not as an unkindness. I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this film is a good film. I do not believe it is going to be positive for me or the people I care about. I believe that it is going to be overwhelmingly negative for me and the people I care about. It is based on a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organisation. In other circumstances this vendetta may have gone away, except for our conflict with the United States Government and established media. There are dozens of positive books about WikiLeaks, but Dreamworks decided to base its script only on the most toxic. Dreamworks has based its entire production on the two most discredited books on the market. I know the film intends to depict me and my work in a negative light. I believe it will distort events and subtract from public understanding. It does not seek to simplify, clarify or distil the truth, but rather it seeks to bury it. It will resurrect and amplify defamatory stories which were long ago shown to be false. Feature films are the most powerful and insidious shapers of public perception, because they fly under the radar of conscious exclusion. This film is going to bury good people doing good work, at exactly the time that the state is coming down on their heads. It is going to smother the truthful version of events, at a time when the truth is most in demand. As justification it will claim to be fiction, but it is not fiction. It is distorted truth about living people doing battle with titanic opponents. It is a work of political opportunism, influence, revenge and, above all, cowardice. It seeks to ride on the back of our work, our reputation and our struggles. It seeks to cut* our strength with weakness. To cut affection with exploitation. To cut diligence with paranoia. To cut loyalty with naivety. To cut principle with hypocrisy. And above all, to cut the truth with lies. I believe that you are a decent person, who would not naturally wish to harm good people in dire situations. You will be used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth in order to assassinate it. To present me as someone morally compromised and to place me in a falsified history. To create a work, not of fiction, but of debased truth.



Question 2 (continued) Not because you want to, of course you don’t, but because, in the end, you are an actor who gets paid to follow the script, no matter how debauched. Your skills play into the hands of people who are out to remove me and WikiLeaks from the world. I believe that you should reconsider your involvement in this enterprise. Consider the consequences of your cooperation with a project that vilifies and marginalises a living political refugee to the benefit of an entrenched, corrupt and dangerous state. Consider the consequences to people who may fall into harm because of this film. Many will fight against history being blackwashed in this way. It is a collective history now, involving millions of people, because millions have opened their eyes as a result of our work and the attempts to destroy us. I believe you are well intentioned but surely you can see why it is a bad idea for me to meet with you. By meeting with you, I would validate this wretched film, and endorse the talented, but debauched, performance that the script will force you to give. I cannot permit this film any claim to authenticity or truthfulness. In its current form it has neither, and doing so would only further aid the campaign against me. It is contrary to my interests, and to those of my organisation, and I thank you for your offer, and what I am sure is your genuine intent, but I must, with inexpressible regret, turn it down. Julian Assange *cut – to dilute/weaken Question Refer to at least TWO TEXTS from the prescribed list to support your answer. Other texts may be referred to as appropriate. (a) How are the ideas and issues about TELLING TRUTHS communicated in Assange’s letter

similar to or different from the ideas and issues represented in texts you have studied this year? Outline your own attitudes and values in response to these texts.


celebrities have gathered to consider TELLING TRUTHS.

Write a speech for this meeting responding to the ideas and issues about TELLING TRUTHS communicated in Assange’s letter and those represented in texts you have studied this year. In your speech, outline your own attitudes and values in response to these texts.

Section A continues.


Question 3 – BELONGING Read the following stimulus and then answer EITHER part (a) OR part (b). The stimulus below is an opinion article by Brigid Delaney, published in The Saturday Paper on 3 May 2014.

Diverse backgrounds make for strong communities Forget big cities and alienation. First day in a new building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and three people knock on the door to introduce themselves. They arrive with pies and cakes, subway maps and spare MetroCards. Their business cards and phone numbers. For my American friends, community is what you’ve got when the government has moved on — when there is nothing between you and the free market. Friends who lived in those close-knit American neighbourhoods point out that the tight communities I envied are often born from disadvantage and a shared vulnerability — residents are low-income, uninsured, away from family, living alone, elderly, freelancers. In short, they needed each other. The social capital built up in the summer days of parties and lobby small talk gets spent on pharmacy runs, assistance to get to the doctor, an hour of child minding here or there. But for the most part there’s a premium on anonymity in the apartment blocks of Melbourne and Sydney. A ‘good building’ is one where you are not bound to others — where you don’t have to say hello in the lobby, when you can avoid the burden of eye contact. Australian author Helen Garner wrote of her apartment building in Sydney’s Bellevue Hill: “I am invisible, in this apartment building. I enter through the front door. Coming out the carpeted panelled lobby are three young women … My neighbours! I want to be greeted and to greet. The first two pass me with heads down, expressionless.” Garner forces a greeting out of the third, who, “replies mechanically, without even glancing up”. I was once like these young women, resentful at having to acknowledge neighbours, performing elaborate pantomimes when another resident approached — rustling through the empty mailbox in the lobby, pretending to take a call outside the security gate, not leaving the apartment until the footsteps had fallen away in the hall. How equipped are we at forming strong communities? Like more and more of my peers I don’t want to live an atomised, ‘bad neighbour’ existence anymore. Maybe it’s getting older. Or maybe in the block parties of Brooklyn and the kindness of neighbours, I’ve seen how fun and fulfilling it can be. I want to belong, to know my neighbours. I want to be greeted and greet. But what happens when you move to a community where you feel — at least initially — the differences more than the similarities, where there is an obvious and unequal distribution of wealth and opportunity? I’ve been in my new neighbourhood three weeks now and am struggling to connect. I have moved to one of the most notorious neighbourhoods in Australia.



Question 3 (continued)

How tempting it is to move to a quieter place, the housing equivalent of a golf club or book group. Somewhere self-selecting where not a lot of heavy lifting has to be done when it comes to the business of fitting in. But that would be a mistake. London School of Economics professor Richard Sennett says in his book Together that he considers “co-operation between people from differing backgrounds to be key to a thriving community and social life”. Sennett identified an us-against-them ethos in communities where there wasn’t a mix of backgrounds. He writes of his fear of “losing the skills of co-operation needed to make a complex society work”. A friend who works in public housing speaks with pride about how the communities in Melbourne with skyrocketing land value — such as Kensington and Fitzroy — also have a high percentage of social and public housing tenants. “In a knowledge economy like ours, the thing that makes us most successful is openness. The challenge for people coming into these communities is to connect.” Question Refer to at least TWO TEXTS from the prescribed list to support your answer. Other texts may be referred to as appropriate. (a) How are the ideas and issues about BELONGING communicated in Delany’s article similar

to or different from the ideas and issues represented in texts you have studied this year? Outline your own attitudes and values in response to these texts.


celebrities have gathered to consider BELONGING.

Write a speech for this meeting responding to the ideas and issues about BELONGING communicated in Delany’s article and those represented in texts you have studied this year. In your speech, outline your own attitudes and values in response to these texts.


BLANK PAGE


Answer ONE question from this section. Use a separate answer booklet for this section. Refer to at least TWO TEXTS from the module(s) you have studied this year to support your answer. This section assesses Criteria 3.

SECTION B – TEXTS AND CONTEXTS


Question 4 – SPORTS REPORTING Read the report below by Matt Moffett, published in The Wall Street Journal on 3 February 2013, and then answer the question that follows.

As the World Turns, So Do the Wheels of Roller Derby MADRID—When Clara Colome’s small business failed in Spain’s grinding recession, she picked up the pieces with a little help from her friends “Pandemonium” and “Hell on Wheels.” Those are the nicknames of her teammates on the Black Thunders Derby Dames, a local roller derby team that is part of a global boom in the full-contact skating sport. Ms Colome, who skates as “Heidi Maiden,” says that roller derby lifted her out of the doldrums by giving her renewed self-confidence as well as a sense of camaraderie. But what Ms Colome really needed in a recent exhibition bout against the camouflage-wearing Murcia City Bombers was some extra body armour. On a curve on the oval track, Ms Colome got sandwiched between two Bombers, who dug in their shoulders and sent Ms Colome’s helmet swiveling sideways on her head. Ms Colome took it in her stride. “You learn to keep skating even when you’ve been knocked around,” she says. Roller derby, the tough-as-nails sport that emerged in the USA during the Depression of the 1930s and ultimately faded, is in the midst of an unlikely global resurgence that has seen it catch on everywhere from Dubai to Tasmania. Now female-dominated, roller derby is played by five-member teams. One skater on each team, known as the jammer and sporting a star on her helmet, tries to lap the other team’s skaters. Starting with the jammer’s second pass through the opposition, her team gets a point for each opponent she laps. The other skaters wield their hips, rear ends and shoulders to block the opposing jammer, while trying to propel their own jammer onward. The sun never sets on roller derby. In Belem, Brazil, on the edge of the Amazon jungle, a team called the Vixens From Jungle Hell is encamped. In the Netherlands, the Hague is the seat of the Parliament of Pain. Japanese derby fans are feasting on the Yokosuka Sushi Rollers. Roller derby’s rise is a small fable of globalization that demonstrates the speed with which pop culture is now transported by highly mobile expatriates and social media, while also highlighting the changing role of women in many societies.


Madrid’s Black Thunders Derby Dames takes to the blacktop, and The Wall Street Journal’s Matt Moffett tries not to get run over.


Question 4 (continued) In Egypt’s patriarchal society, the CaiRollers, composed of a mix of expatriates and Egyptians, initially attracted incredulous stares from men who saw them practising at a park. But now men are coming by and trying to get their sisters spots on the team, Ms Nour who skates for Egypt’s CaiRollers says. Harder to deal with are sandstorms that play havoc with skate bearings. The derby renaissance started about a decade ago in the Lone Star State, led by a “hilarious mix of misfits and weirdos” who formed the Texas Rollergirls, according to Christina Pocaressi, or “Voodoo Doll,” an early skater. “Women are innately competitive,” says Ms Pocaressi, who says she is about 40 years old. “It’s changing now, but my generation was taught to ‘play nice’ when we really wanted to play hard.” Courtney Welch, a digital project manager who skated in Los Angeles as “Bette Noir”, spearheaded the trans-Atlantic expansion of the sport in 2006 by helping found the London Rollergirls. “No one had ever heard of this sport, and there are maybe only three skating rinks in the UK,” says Ms Welch. But the British quickly embraced derby and about 90 women’s leagues have sprung up on the islands. Even Ms Welch’s future British husband, whom she describes as “somewhat conservative and a bit posh,” came around. After one of Ms Welch’s bouts, he dropped to one knee on the track and used the public-address microphone to propose to her. South America’s avid Hollywood fans were introduced to the sport through the 2009 derby comedy-drama, “Whip It,” starring Ellen Page and Drew Barrymore. The movie fired the imagination of Fefi Barth, who helped organize one of Argentina’s first teams, the Buenos Aires Cougars. When her disapproving boyfriend told her she had to choose between derby and their relationship, she didn’t hesitate. “I kept my skates on and said goodbye,” says Ms. Barth, whose alter ego is “Hell-of-a-Kitty.” Ines Ojeda, a Black Thunders Derby Dame known as “Rolling Storm 4U,” says bruises only make skaters stronger. She says derby gave her the confidence to surmount recession-related stresses in her administrative job. “The office can be a pretty rough place, too,” she says.

Question Compare and contrast how language features position audiences to endorse or challenge social and cultural values privileged in Sports Reporting texts. Refer to the stimulus and at least TWO TEXTS from the module you have studied this year to support your answer.

Section B continues.


Question 5 – DOCUMENTARY FILM Read the interview transcript between filmmaker Tracy Droz Tragos and Paula Bernstein from ‘Indiewire’ and answer the question that follows.

Director Tracy Droz Tragos Compares Sundance-Winning ‘Rich Hill’ with ‘Boyhood’ At first glance, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, the narrative film which follows a boy (Ellar Coltrane) as he comes of age over a period of twelve years, and the new documentary ‘Rich Hill,’ about poverty in rural Missouri, have little in common, but director Tracy Droz Tragos can see the parallels. During a recent chat with Indiewire, Droz Tragos acknowledged the similarities, saying that ‘Boyhood,’ one of her favourite films of the year, “is such a deep examination of family and family dynamics.” But, of course, while ‘Boyhood’ relies on some documentary-style storytelling techniques, it is a fiction film, whereas ‘Rich Hill, which also chronicles boyhood, is pure documentary. But both films move at a contemplative pace, allowing viewers to see the world through their young protagonists’ eyes. Shot in vérité style ‘Rich Hill’ follows three teenage boys as they struggle through the daily life of deep poverty in Rich Hill, Missouri, the directors’ ancestral home. In his review of the film at Sundance, Eric Kohn wrote: ‘Rich Hill’ instantly conveys the rush of existence that bears down on the despondent lives at its center.’ Below are highlights from our interview with Droz Tragos: What drove you and your cousin/co-director Andrew Droz Palmero to make a film about the town of Rich Hill? Rich Hill is our family hometown. It’s where my father grew up and it’s where the mother of my first cousin, Andrew, grew up. Because my father was killed in Vietnam when I was a baby, I spent every summer and winter break in Rich Hill and my grandparents were like surrogate parents to me and so it was a very important place. Whereas I didn’t grow up there myself, I had a really strong connection and love for the community and ultimately the desire to go back came from a very personal place and just wanting to reconnect and understand what it was like for the families that were struggling there. Did you go into the project with a conception of what the film would be like or was it more of an open-ended process? Kind of both. I mean, Andrew and I talked a lot about wanting to shed light on poverty because we knew that the town was pretty impoverished, but to not shed light in a kind of way we’d seen before. Because we still felt that there was so much beauty there and there was still a lot of resources within the families that we felt we wanted to bring to light as much as we wanted to bring to light some of the struggles and the really hard circumstances that these families were facing. That was one of the things that I love about the movie — that you manage to find beauty in this world even though it’s a difficult and sometimes unrelenting place. I think there was so much that we took away from being with these families and being with these kids — Andrew’s sense of optimism and his faith and love for his family, and Harley’s sense of humor and charm despite his anger and, in large part, grief, and Appachey’s capacity for forgiveness despite the fact that so much crap has been heaped on his shoulders. So there was a lot from those three kids and their families that I think we hoped audiences would take away, not just a pity party but something more than that.



Question 5 (continued) And yet it’s not an issue film per se. Was it important for you not to hammer an issue into the viewers’ heads? Issues of world poverty are also so complex and these were cycles and it’s really reductive to say ‘this is the one policy’ or ‘this is the one.’ And yes, we felt that we wanted to do something different. We wanted to really have an intimate, close look at the experience and give these kids a voice that was their authorship and not have some outside expert commenting on it or ourselves commenting too much by being in it and being about the fact we, even though we were insiders, were also outsiders coming in and having it be about us. How long did the production process take? There were months of pre-production because we knew we wanted to give it a cinematic treatment that was different from what we’d seen so we had to figure out what camera we wanted to shoot on. There were a few months before we started shooting and then we started shooting in December of 2011 and then our last shoot was July of 2013. So it was about 18 months of shooting and we had hundreds of hours of footage in that time. Who edited the film? Jim Hession, who is an amazing editor. I love him. Andrew and I started editing ourselves. We both have some editing in us. So from the very beginning when we started shooting we started cutting and we started cutting scenes. So we brought Jim on in May of 2013 when we had an assembly at that point. About a three-hour assembly at that point and then we brought him on. It seems like with so much footage the editing would really be crucial for how the film would ultimately come together. Yeah, I think in all documentaries the editor is just pretty much king. How closely did you work with Jim on the editing process or did you give him free rein at that point? Andrew and I had done a lot of editing so we were very familiar with the footage. We cut scenes. We gave him delivered scenes and some of those scenes are in the movie. So because we had spent so much time with the footage ourselves we felt a little freer to say, “Ok. Now you take a pass and we don’t need to be hovering right over you, watching you.” So we worked remotely. What was the goal when you set out to make the film? We knew that we wanted to tell an intimate story of the families in the town, what was the experience of living in this town for particularly the families that were struggling. These were the families that had the tarps on the roofs and the trash piles in the front and what was going on in those homes. We didn’t know the voice and how we would necessarily get inside those homes. We didn’t know they would be so wonderful and courageous to let us in but they did. Question Compare and contrast how language features position audiences to endorse or challenge social and cultural values privileged in Documentary Film texts. Refer to the language features discussed in the stimulus and at least TWO TEXTS from the module you have studied this year to support your answer.



Question 6 – CRIME FICTION Read the extract below from The Midnight Promise: A detective’s story in ten cases (2012) by Zane Lovitt and then answer the question that follows. He’s got a drinker’s nose, swollen and textured like the moon through a telescope. Under his ragged Kmart jacket is a shiny red shirt and his left hand is missing half its pinkie — I would guess a factory accident. Once he’s inside and seated, after I’ve apologised for the condition of the office and after he’s politely edged the chair closer to the window and the merciful fresh air, Phil tells me that his daughter married a spoilt little rich kid from a family of German immigrants. ‘There’s this superiority about him,’ Phil says in his kookaburra twang. ‘You know what krauts

are like.’ My father was born in Stuttgart. I don’t mention that. ‘So the two of you don’t get along.’ ‘Well, what I come for is I want to find out if he’s seeing other birds. And I want proof.

Something I can show to Jessie.’ “She doesn’t know you’re here?’ ‘Nah, mate.’ ‘You think they’re having problems?’ ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I just reckon if she’s married to a jerk she’s got the right to know.

Is this the sort of thing you do?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘What’s it going to set me back?’ ‘I’m two-fifty a day.’ ‘How many days you reckon?’ ‘Until he fools around again.’ Phil nods, keeps thinking. ‘How do you … I mean … ’ ‘I’ll follow him around, see where he goes, try to get photographs.’ ‘He won’t catch on?’ ‘I hope not. If he does, there’s no way for him to link me to you.’ ‘Right then,’ he says decisively, pressing his fists into his knees. ‘So what do we do now?’ I pick up a pen, search my desk for a blank briefing sheet. I have to sift through clothes and takeaway containers, used plastic cutlery as well as puddles of dried paint. Phil takes now as an opportunity to stop churning through his dislike for his son-in-law and have a good look at this office, at the person he is retaining. ‘How come you call yourself a private inquiry agent?’ he says, his voice more relaxed and noticeably higher pitched. Perhaps the deep voice is just how he establishes credibility. ‘It’s the same as a private detective.’ I unearth a briefing sheet from beneath a pair of boxer shorts. ‘So why don’t you call yourself that?’ ‘My father was a Private Inquiry Agent.’ ‘Fair dinkum? I supposed he’s retired.’ ‘No. He’s dead.’ With my pen poised, I ask, ‘How do you spell your son-in-law’s name?’ ‘W-A-L-T-R-A-U-B. Benjamin Waltraub.’



Question 6 (continued) ‘What does he do?’ ‘He does, like … art stuff for the Port Phillip Council.’ His big cratered nose flares like it smells

something foul. ‘Buys painting for the mayor. You know … organises art prizes. He rakes it in. You wouldn’t believe what he gets paid.’

‘Has he been unfaithful to Jessica before?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘How do you know he is now?’ ‘It’s sort of a … instinct.’ ‘Jessica never mentioned anything to you?’ Phil shakes his head, smiling softly. ‘Mate, Jessica’s mad for him. He’s got charm, you know?

He’s handsome, got money. I guess that’s part of why I wonder about him … I mean… the thing about Jessie is...’.

He waits, adjusts himself in the chair. Continues, but slower. ‘I’m telling you this because I don’t want you thinking I’m one of them fathers reckons no one’s good enough for his little girl. She’s … ’ His head bobs side to side, dodging invisible bullets. ‘She’s not what you’d call a looker.’

‘And she’s never complained to you? Never mentioned a problem with Ben before?’ ‘Nah … ’ Phil stops, again searching for the words. ‘Some people only see what they want to

see.’ And I hardly hear him when he says it.

Question Compare and contrast how language features position audiences to endorse or challenge social and cultural values privileged in Crime Fiction texts. Refer to the stimulus and at least TWO TEXTS from the module you have studied this year to support your answer.



Question 7 – GENERIC QUESTION Read the opinion article written by Michelle Smith, published on the website The Conversation on 4 April 2014, and then answer the question that follows.

Our fascination with ‘bogans’ will be televised Television has seen its fair share of characters on welfare with a preference for flannelette shirts and tinnies of VB in recent years. We’ve seen an obese mother and daughter in Bogan Pride, Sunnydale’s housing commission residents in Housos, and a drag-racing family at the heart of Upper Middle Bogan. The TV bogan has certainly developed from Full Frontal’s loveable mullet-sporting ‘Poida’. Housos’ Paul Fenech has created a new series scheduled to begin on 7mate in the next month called The Bogan Hunters. A promotional poster for the initial call for ‘real life bogans’ lists desirable bogan attributes: “mullets, tatts, jeans, dirty trackies, uggs, thongs, AVOs, de factos. Must be able to swear frequently”. It’s not only a lack of fashion sense and inattention to personal grooming that define the bogan who we’re encouraged to laugh at, but dysfunctional, violent relationships. The series trailer plays on the style of a David Attenborough wildlife documentary, as it promises to uncover bogans in their ‘habitations’. Many people who have clearly suffered as a result of Australia’s lack of funding for dental care are featured. Upper Middle Bogan portrayed the Wheeler family in a sympathetic way that exposed the pretensions of middle-class people who look down on those who live in outer suburbia. Bogan Pride was also less about laughs at the expense of bogans, and more about viewing life through the eyes of a social outcast. While some people have described Kath and Kim as bogans, the series features characters who own their own homes and late-model cars, run a small business, and who care about their health and image, even if their tastes are gaudy and tacky. I come from a lower middle-class background, in which I was the first in my family to complete high school. For me, Kath & Kim’s jokes, especially about social and educational aspirations, rang true, rather than seeming to denigrate the characters as ‘lesser’ than the ‘average’ Australian. Housos and The Bogan Hunters, though they display some affection for the bogan, are firmly about laughing at the exploits of an Australian underclass that is meant to be unlike the TV viewer. Sunnydale residents don’t work, don’t own homes, depend on welfare, and are often criminal. The female characters are crude, vulgar and are terrible mothers. While Housos is set in a fictional Housing Commission estate, The Bogan Hunters now promises to locate “Australia’s biggest bogan”. But is the bogan even real?



Question 7 (continued) Academics Mel Campbell and David Nichols, who have written about the bogan, have suggested that the bogan is an invention. Campbell writes:

A bogan does not really exist as a person, but as a concept produced by a matrix of class, socioeconomics, consumption, intelligence and morality. A combination of ‘traits’ that are devalued by middle Australia not only identifies someone as bogan, but highlights their outsider status, denoting them as distastefully unlike the person doing the name calling.

In his book The Bogan Delusion, Nichols accurately sums up the views about bogans that are evident in the preview of The Bogan Hunters, and the very concept of ‘hunting’ for bogans: Talk about ‘bogans’ is a way for the elite to talk about working class (usually but not always white) people as though they were an inferior species, a kind of monkey; it’s racist language tweaked to ridicule a class or a culture.

If clean-cut, middle-class hosts travelled Australia seeking to laugh at the residents of our poorest suburbs, the joke would probably fall flat. (Although The AFL Footy Show’s ‘Street Talk’ segment often visits disadvantaged areas to find comedic fodder for Sam Newman.) But The Bogan Hunters uses the screen of popular Housos’ characters ‘Shazza’ and ‘Kev the Kiwi’, alongside ‘boganologist’ Fenech, to create the premise that bogans are authorised to mock other bogans. In publicity surrounding the series, alcoholism, drug use and violence are described as characteristic of bogan culture. We know that these issues are present in Australian households of all social classes. Yet, as Campbell alludes to, it is more convenient for us to understand such frowned-upon behaviours as the preserve of an underclass of people ‘distastefully unlike’ us. Housos initially caused concern among residents of public housing in western Sydney, who worried about how the show would affect community perceptions of people who live in government housing. A petition of more than 5000 signatures, which called on SBS not to broadcast the series, was presented in Parliament by Mount Druitt MP Richard Amery. Though Housos is obviously fictional and satirical, The Bogan Hunters, which seeks to find ‘actual bogans, muddies the line between parody and reality. The question is how much we’re willing to laugh at an attempt? Question Compare and contrast how language features position audiences to endorse or challenge social and cultural values privileged in texts. Refer to the stimulus and at least TWO TEXTS (in the Texts and Contexts, Applications or Communications Project modules) you have studied this year. Texts from the Ideas and Issues module MAY NOT BE USED in this question.


This question paper and any materials associated with this examination (including answer booklets, cover sheets, rough note paper, or information sheets) remain the property of the Tasmanian Qualifications Authority.

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