"Strong Women Became Weak Under Its Influence": The Uses of Pituri in Charles Chauvel’s Film, Uncivilised

Abstract

The 1936 movie, Uncivilised by Charles Chauvel is a fantasy film of a lost paradise. The unfamiliar indigenous drug Pituri is used as a vehicle for demonising Aborigines and endorsing the so-called superior values of the white settlers’ culture in Australia.