Lesley Speed
Biographic Data
| ID | 5870275 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lesley Speed |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lesley |
| FAMILY NAME | Speed |
| SIGNATURE | SPEED L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Federation University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6908-7293 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 12 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Adventures in fantasy Australia
Australian settings in video games form an international dialogue. In a global medium where a game's content does not necessarily reflect its place of production, games with Australian settings have often originated from other countries. This article examines ways that video games have used Australian signifiers, particularly native animals, in settings that can be read as fantasy versions of Australia. The article expands discourse about represe…
Transnational suburbia
Video games with suburban settings offer distinctive experiences of quotidian environments. This article examines how Australian games set in homes or verdant residential neighbourhoods contribute to a global circulation of ideas about suburban life. It contributes to understanding the relationship between Australian games and Australian society by showing how gameworlds that represent everyday spatial environments exist at intersections of the g…
Comic investigation and genre-mixing
In an era in which comedians have been positioned as public commentators, a cycle of Australian television documentaries centres on the premise of a comedian’s investigation of a theme of existential significance. Produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, these series are Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure (2009), Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey (2011), Judith Lucy is All Woman (2015) and Luke Warm Sex (2016). This article exa…
Renditions from the inside
Produced for SBS Television, Kelrick Martin’s Prison Songs is unusual as a documentary in which the participants convey their stories through songs that were written for the film. Centring on inmates of Darwin Correctional Centre, known as Berrimah Prison, and described in its press kit as ‘Australia’s first ever documentary musical’, Prison Songs involved a collaborative production process in which inmates contributed to writing the musical numb…
Fishing the waters of life
Edwin G. Bowen’s White Death (1936) is an Australian–American film about shark fishing that stars the American novelist and fisherman Zane Grey as himself. Set mainly at the Great Barrier Reef, it has a semi-fictional plot about Grey’s quest to kill a shark in the face of opposition from an anti-fishing activist, Newton Smith (Alfred Frith). Although White Death was financially unsuccessful and has received little attention in histories of Austra…
Loose Cannons
Although infamous for its focus on adolescent sexual strivings, the vulgar teen comedy film has been the subject of little sustained analysis. Yet there are numerous reasons to examine more closely this teen subgenre, of which the most prominent examples are Porky's and American Pie. The vulgar teen films of the early 1980s and late 1990s exemplify contemporary Hollywood production strategies and reflect changes in youth's social and economic sta…
The Possibilities of Roads Not Taken
This article examines the relationship between the films of Richard Linklater and Hollywood. These films expand Hollywood's capacity for producing mentally stimulating alternatives to formulaic entertainment. Linklater's independent and studio films reflect the changed relationship between these spheres, while pursuing a utopian quest for alternatives to purely physical consumer gratification
When the Sun Sets over Suburbia
Bruce Beresford’s film Puberty Blues (1981) focuses on Australian surf culture of the 1970s and the Sydney beach-side suburb of Cronulla Beach, presenting the Cronulla surf subculture as a prism through which Australian society is viewed. The film, which centres on the quest of the characters of Debbie and Sue to join the elite Greenhills surfing gang, signifies a turning point in Australian screen depictions of class, prefiguring an increased em…
Reading, writing and unruliness
This article examines how the St Trinian's films (1954—1980) engage with shifts in the social organization of gender and class, while celebrating the defiance of social constraints on women. Focusing on the films' depiction of unruly female behaviour, the article addresses the historical and social dimensions of the films in relation to carnival, adolescence and education. The films express public responses to the increasing public significance o…
Moving On Up
In contemporary black films the pleasures and benefits of college education are modified by the power structures of the larger society. The depiction of the experiences of black students in films such as School Daze (Spike Lee, 1988), House Party 2 (Doug McHenry and George Jackson, 1991), and Higher Learning (John Singleton, 1995) reveals aspects of college life that American youth films commonly overlook, including law enforcement and poverty. T…
Together in Electric Dreams
Nostalgic depictions of youth are commonplace in Hollywood cinema, but films that retrospectively examine growing up in the 1980s are a recent phenomenon. This focus on 1980s suburban youth is evident in films such as Grosse Pointe Black (George Armitage, 1997), and Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (David Mirkin, 1997), and the Wedding Singer (Frank Coraci, 1998). In Contrast to earlier films and television series that reflect the preoccupa…
Tuesday's Gone
Teen movies are fundamentally concerned with reversing age-defined privileges. The nostalgic teen film is distinctive in the genre because it augments the ostensible themes of rebellion and anti-authoritarianism with an adult perspective. Whereas most teen films emphasize an adolescent point of view, the nostalgic teen movie reveals tensions between youth and adulthood at the level of narration, which can be seen as the site of a quest to contain…
When the Sun Sets over Suburbia
Bruce Beresford’s film Puberty Blues (1981) focuses on Australian surf culture of the 1970s and the Sydney beach-side suburb of Cronulla Beach, presenting the Cronulla surf subculture as a prism through which Australian society is viewed. The film, which centres on the quest of the characters of Debbie and Sue to join the elite Greenhills surfing gang, signifies a turning point in Australian screen depictions of class, prefiguring an increased em…
Tuesday's Gone
Teen movies are fundamentally concerned with reversing age-defined privileges. The nostalgic teen film is distinctive in the genre because it augments the ostensible themes of rebellion and anti-authoritarianism with an adult perspective. Whereas most teen films emphasize an adolescent point of view, the nostalgic teen movie reveals tensions between youth and adulthood at the level of narration, which can be seen as the site of a quest to contain…
Loose Cannons
Although infamous for its focus on adolescent sexual strivings, the vulgar teen comedy film has been the subject of little sustained analysis. Yet there are numerous reasons to examine more closely this teen subgenre, of which the most prominent examples are Porky's and American Pie. The vulgar teen films of the early 1980s and late 1990s exemplify contemporary Hollywood production strategies and reflect changes in youth's social and economic sta…
Tuesday's Gone
Teen movies are fundamentally concerned with reversing age-defined privileges. The nostalgic teen film is distinctive in the genre because it augments the ostensible themes of rebellion and anti-authoritarianism with an adult perspective. Whereas most teen films emphasize an adolescent point of view, the nostalgic teen movie reveals tensions between youth and adulthood at the level of narration, which can be seen as the site of a quest to contain…
Together in Electric Dreams
Nostalgic depictions of youth are commonplace in Hollywood cinema, but films that retrospectively examine growing up in the 1980s are a recent phenomenon. This focus on 1980s suburban youth is evident in films such as Grosse Pointe Black (George Armitage, 1997), and Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (David Mirkin, 1997), and the Wedding Singer (Frank Coraci, 1998). In Contrast to earlier films and television series that reflect the preoccupa…
Moving On Up
In contemporary black films the pleasures and benefits of college education are modified by the power structures of the larger society. The depiction of the experiences of black students in films such as School Daze (Spike Lee, 1988), House Party 2 (Doug McHenry and George Jackson, 1991), and Higher Learning (John Singleton, 1995) reveals aspects of college life that American youth films commonly overlook, including law enforcement and poverty. T…
Reading, writing and unruliness
This article examines how the St Trinian's films (1954—1980) engage with shifts in the social organization of gender and class, while celebrating the defiance of social constraints on women. Focusing on the films' depiction of unruly female behaviour, the article addresses the historical and social dimensions of the films in relation to carnival, adolescence and education. The films express public responses to the increasing public significance o…
When the Sun Sets over Suburbia
Bruce Beresford’s film Puberty Blues (1981) focuses on Australian surf culture of the 1970s and the Sydney beach-side suburb of Cronulla Beach, presenting the Cronulla surf subculture as a prism through which Australian society is viewed. The film, which centres on the quest of the characters of Debbie and Sue to join the elite Greenhills surfing gang, signifies a turning point in Australian screen depictions of class, prefiguring an increased em…
The Possibilities of Roads Not Taken
This article examines the relationship between the films of Richard Linklater and Hollywood. These films expand Hollywood's capacity for producing mentally stimulating alternatives to formulaic entertainment. Linklater's independent and studio films reflect the changed relationship between these spheres, while pursuing a utopian quest for alternatives to purely physical consumer gratification
Loose Cannons
Although infamous for its focus on adolescent sexual strivings, the vulgar teen comedy film has been the subject of little sustained analysis. Yet there are numerous reasons to examine more closely this teen subgenre, of which the most prominent examples are Porky's and American Pie. The vulgar teen films of the early 1980s and late 1990s exemplify contemporary Hollywood production strategies and reflect changes in youth's social and economic sta…
Fishing the waters of life
Edwin G. Bowen’s White Death (1936) is an Australian–American film about shark fishing that stars the American novelist and fisherman Zane Grey as himself. Set mainly at the Great Barrier Reef, it has a semi-fictional plot about Grey’s quest to kill a shark in the face of opposition from an anti-fishing activist, Newton Smith (Alfred Frith). Although White Death was financially unsuccessful and has received little attention in histories of Austra…
Renditions from the inside
Produced for SBS Television, Kelrick Martin’s Prison Songs is unusual as a documentary in which the participants convey their stories through songs that were written for the film. Centring on inmates of Darwin Correctional Centre, known as Berrimah Prison, and described in its press kit as ‘Australia’s first ever documentary musical’, Prison Songs involved a collaborative production process in which inmates contributed to writing the musical numb…
Comic investigation and genre-mixing
In an era in which comedians have been positioned as public commentators, a cycle of Australian television documentaries centres on the premise of a comedian’s investigation of a theme of existential significance. Produced for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, these series are Lawrence Leung’s Choose Your Own Adventure (2009), Judith Lucy’s Spiritual Journey (2011), Judith Lucy is All Woman (2015) and Luke Warm Sex (2016). This article exa…
Transnational suburbia
Video games with suburban settings offer distinctive experiences of quotidian environments. This article examines how Australian games set in homes or verdant residential neighbourhoods contribute to a global circulation of ideas about suburban life. It contributes to understanding the relationship between Australian games and Australian society by showing how gameworlds that represent everyday spatial environments exist at intersections of the g…
Adventures in fantasy Australia
Australian settings in video games form an international dialogue. In a global medium where a game's content does not necessarily reflect its place of production, games with Australian settings have often originated from other countries. This article examines ways that video games have used Australian signifiers, particularly native animals, in settings that can be read as fantasy versions of Australia. The article expands discourse about represe…
Art (10 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Visual arts (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Art history (6 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (6 works) · Media studies (6 works) · History (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Political science (5 works)