10 Film Genres You Never Knew Existed

5. Meat Pie & Bushranger Western

Examples include: The Kangaroo Kid (1950), Raw Deal (1977), Quigley Down Under (1990), The Proposition (2005), Red Hill (2010) From Paella to Spaghetti, the Western genre has a glut of food prefixes and Australia€™s ranch cuisine gave rise to the genre of the Meat Pie Western. It€™s easy to see why Australian filmmakers would gravitate towards the Western. With the colonial invasion, suppression of the indigenous civilisation and pioneering nature on the inhospitable plains, the images reflect Australian history as well as they depict the United States. Where the U.S. had their beloved anti-hero Jesse James, the Australians had the gun-toting bushranger Ned Kelly. As with the US Western, there€™s a good deal of boring escapist Meat Pie Westerns that were simply maximising on a closed audience under the novelty of them being home grown. It is more modernly that the genre has become exciting again, with The Proposition, a revisionist film from John Hillcoat (The Road, Lawless) and written by Nick Cave. The film demonstrates the ugly treatment of the indigenous Australian and the ambivalence towards colonisation. Another recent pick is Red Hill which challenges contemporary Australian history to bear witness to the racism buried in the nation€™s history.