Homoeroticism and sexual repression in Wake in… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Homo­eroti­cism and sex­u­al repres­sion in Wake in Fright

12 May 2021

Words by Patrick Sproull

Two shirtless men in an arid, dusty setting, one holding a bottle.
Two shirtless men in an arid, dusty setting, one holding a bottle.
Ted Kotcheff’s vis­cer­al, queer-cod­ed descent into one man’s per­son­al hell refus­es to adhere to expectations.

The indeli­ble first impres­sion Ted Kotcheff’s Wake in Fright made on its audi­ence swift­ly became its great­est asset. After stun­ning the crowd as its Cannes Film Fes­ti­val pre­mière in 1971, the film yield­ed a pal­try box office return and by the 90s its mas­ter neg­a­tive had become warped beyond use. Yet despite being impos­si­ble to view for decades, Wake in Fright endured as a clas­sic of Aus­tralian cin­e­ma, return­ing to Cannes in 2009 upon its restoration.

Fol­low­ing the plight of John Grant (Gary Bond), an Eng­lish school­teacher return­ing home from his post in an Aus­tralian back­wa­ter, Wake in Fright adopts the guise of a rote 70s sur­vival thriller. Yet the open­ing shot, a 360-degree view of the Out­back, makes it clear that Kotch­eff has greater designs for his unique­ly Aus­tralian night­mare. The Cana­di­an-born direc­tor grounds his atmos­pher­ic fever dream in the specifics of the region, util­is­ing its des­o­late beau­ty and the men­tal iso­la­tion its inhab­i­tants endure while smart­ly eschew­ing con­ven­tion­al hor­ror tropes.

From the out­set Kotch­eff leans in on the cul­tur­al dis­place­ment of the strait-laced, queer-cod­ed Grant as he jour­neys to the fic­tion­al town of Bun­danyab­ba – affec­tion­ate­ly known as the Yab­ba – to fly back to Syd­ney. A shy, gen­teel out­lier in a sea of coarse, sweaty men, packed like sar­dines into a vet­er­ans’ club, Grant is repeat­ed­ly assailed by the exces­sive charm and idio­syn­crat­ic ways of the locals. Kotch­eff frames his fish-out-of-water pro­tag­o­nist as being too but­toned-up for this rur­al lifestyle. But the relent­less, con­temp­tu­ous cama­raderie of the local men – a nov­el source of threat for a thriller – sug­gests a polite bare­ly con­cealed intol­er­ance for Grant’s latent queerness.

Gary Bond is impec­ca­bly cast as Grant. A skilled stage actor with few screen cred­its, Bond was an open­ly gay mem­ber of the British the­atre scene in the ear­ly 70s, and he lends Grant an earnest authen­tic­i­ty. Bond’s attrac­tive­ness con­trasts the plain, weath­er-beat­en men of the Yab­ba, and there’s a cau­tious inflec­tion in his speech – a hyper-aware­ness behind his anx­ious, dart­ing eyes that sug­gests a man manoeu­vring a total­ly for­eign space with the threat of expo­sure hang­ing over him.

The greatest terror in Wake in Fright is the realistic depiction of a gay man sacrificing his morality.

At the local tav­ern Grant is forced to accept a drink from a stranger, the gay sub­text bare­ly con­cealed as such. The stranger is Tim (Al Thomas), a skit­tish, bowtie-clad gen­tle­man who becomes the clos­est thing to ally Grant has in the Yab­ba. Lat­er, Kotch­eff inten­si­fies Grant’s night­mare by mir­ing him in the misog­y­nis­tic chum­mi­ness of Tim’s brutish friends.

At Tim’s house they lech after his lone­ly daugh­ter, Janette (Sylvia Kay), and Grant, lithe and jumpy, stands out by not com­ply­ing. Janette enables one of the film’s most effec­tive moments, when Grant fol­lows her into the kitchen as she cleans up after the men and asks her if she needs help, the cau­tious, clos­et­ed school­teacher rebound­ing into the only halfway empa­thet­ic per­son for miles.

Kotch­eff pro­vides Grant with a name­less lover back in Syd­ney, per­func­to­ri­ly shown through brief biki­ni-clad pho­tos and flash­backs – but she’s only a cipher, a pin-up poster in Grant’s mind, serv­ing as the fan­ta­sy of a young man eager to assert his straight­ness. When the affec­tion-starved Janette propo­si­tions Grant he clum­si­ly fol­lows her under the close watch of Tim’s friends, but the sec­ond they are alone he vom­its at the prospect of sex. Kotch­eff allo­cates some sym­pa­thy to Grant as Janette’s imme­di­ate reac­tion, paus­ing before force­ful­ly wip­ing his mouth, is both mater­nal and know­ing. Yet it is acute­ly uncom­fort­able view­ing for the gay view­er, a recog­nis­able phys­i­cal reac­tion to com­pul­so­ry heterosexuality.

Con­se­quent­ly, Grant throws him­self into the ways of the Yab­ba men, cul­mi­nat­ing in the film’s most con­tro­ver­sial sequence – a sav­age, beer-fuelled kan­ga­roo hunt that ends with Grant stab­bing a baby roo to death. Kotch­eff splices in real footage of a hunt, and the scene remains dif­fi­cult to watch to this day. It’s the crux of Wake in Fright’s por­trait of sor­did mas­culin­i­ty, the point at which Grant makes peace with the bar­bar­ic habits of the towns­peo­ple and embraces their rit­u­als. Save for Janette, every­one Grant encoun­ters in the Yab­ba is drunk, Kotch­eff address­ing the tox­ic effects of Australia’s world-famous drink­ing culture.

By the film’s close, Grant’s ever-loos­en­ing grip on his san­i­ty has com­pro­mised both his thor­ough­ly Eng­lish moral integri­ty and his clos­et­ed sex­u­al­i­ty. When he meets Doc Tydon (Don­ald Pleasence), a grub­by, wild-eyed doc­tor, Grant recog­nis­es a fel­low pari­ah; lat­er the pair engage in implied off-screen sex. Kotch­eff leaves the nar­ra­tive vague enough for view­ers to over­look this detail, but it serves as the end­point for Grant’s sex­u­al pur­ga­to­ry, allow­ing him to embrace what he’s been suppressing.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Kotch­eff grants his pro­tag­o­nist clemen­cy with Grant’s cli­mac­tic sui­cide attempt, the result of an inabil­i­ty to phys­i­cal­ly escape the Yab­ba and what it rep­re­sents for him, fail­ing and allows him to hap­pi­ly walk free. Ulti­mate­ly, the great­est ter­ror in Wake in Fright is the real­is­tic depic­tion of a gay man sac­ri­fic­ing his morality.

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