But what does the man in the cowboy hat think? : intercultural dialogue : silence, taboo and masquerade

This paper takes as its point of departure models for an ethical, post-colonial critique produced by non-indigenous Australians, as proposed by Marcia Langton in her 1993 discussion of Australian film and television. The paper discusses questions of intercultural dialogue through an examination of concepts of history that underpin contemporary historical documentary, their political ramifications and the assumptions they make about spectatorship. Within the framework of the political context emerging around the Wik Native Title legislation in 1997, the paper discusses the ABC documentary, Frontier, the historiographical method which legitimises its claims to credibility, and the documentary techniques which the program deploys to maintain this credibility. The paper argues that, despite the commitment to an 'ethical, postcolonial critique', the imbrication of the political pressures and an orthodox approach to historiography works to limit the production strategies of Frontier within universalist models of white culture and thus to render any sense of intercultural dialogue in the final program impossible. Despite these limitations, it argues the need to recognise and value the considerable achievements of Frontier in bringing to the surface, in a public forum, challenges to the silence and denial which shadow triumphal versions of white history. The essay argues further that, in the context of Frontier, the combination of political pressures and traditional concepts of credibility in history constrain the series within a rigid approach to documentary form, which to some extent renders it inaccessible to a large part of its target audience. The paper argues that, while addressing the traditional criteria for credibility may grant a program legitimacy or authenticity in relation to the historical sources, this deferral to a regime of authority may militate against addressing the dynamics of contemporary spectatorship. It discusses the transitional status of documentary, of spectatorship and of concepts of history, and the need for a melding of each of these in new ways to ensure the ongoing viability of historical documentary in a contemporary context, and its potential to contribute to postcolonial accounts of history.