‘A wonderful read: I feel like I've been excavated and carbon dated.’
Graeme Blundell
One of the seminal films of the 1970s,
Alvin Purple depicts Alvin’s struggles with his irresistibility to women—from his school days and time as a waterbed salesman to his short-lived career as a sex therapist. The ‘definitive ocker comedy’,
Alvin Purple survived a critical mauling and went on to become the most commercially successful Australian film of the 1970s.
Catharine Lumby takes a fresh look at the film, the social and political era in which it was made and the forces that fuelled its success. She revisits claims that the movie is little more than an exercise in sexploitation and argues that the film is far more complex than its detractors have allowed.
See other titles in Currency's
Australian Screen Classics Series.
Interviews and reviews:
To read our author interview with Catharine Lumby,
click here.
Read an extract of
Alvin Purple (pdf)
An extract of Catharine Lumby's critique has also been published in the
Australian. To read,
click here.
To read Philip O'Brien's article for the
Canberra Times,
click here.
'this admirably lucid and wide-ranging study ... is another feather in the cap of a generally provocative series.' Brian McFarlane, Senses of Cinema. To read the article,
click here.
Author
Catharine Lumby is a widely published print journalist. She has worked as a news reporter, feature writer and opinion columnist for
The Sydney Morning Herald,
The Age and
The Bulletin. She has also worked as a news reporter for ABC television. She is the author and editor of four books and co-author of
The Porn Report (published by MUP in 2008). She is the Director of the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of NSW. Catharine has been awarded three Australian Research Council Grants and is currently a member of the ARC-funded Australian Cultural Research Network. She is a member of the Advertising Standards Board, the national body which hears complaints against advertisers, and a member of the National Rugby League’s Education and Welfare Committee. She is on the editorial advisory boards of
Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies (Carfax) and
M/C: Journal of Media and Culture (University of Queensland). In 2006, Catharine Lumby received a five year ARC Discovery Grant jointly held with Kath Albury, Dr Jenny O'Dea and Professor Elspeth Probyn to research the role of sport in the emotional and social development of young Australians.