Blood is thicker than water: stains on the land in Bra Boys

Abstract

This chapter is a critique of the way in which the documentary Bra Boys constructs history, memory and identity. The Bra in Bra Boys is short for MarouBRA beach in Sydney. Bra Boys was released in 2007, and is the most commercially successful Australian documentary ever released. it tells the story of the Abberton brothers (Sunny, Koby and jay) and their extended Bra Boys surfer gang or 'tribe': a band of multi-ethnic males form the suburb of Maroubra. The film's director, Sunny Abberton, is a Bra Boy himself, and, along with his brothers, offers an overview of Maroubra's surfing history and culture - which includes claims to place, issues of class and race and violent interactions with authority. The localism of the film is well-defined and constructed by boundaries of colonialism, racism and the physical landscape (the differentiated beaches). The signification of 'Boy' in the title immediately establishes the film's hyper-masculine purpose and approach. In this chapter, we consider how the film attempts to re-narrative colonialism using an ethnocentrically specified perspective and location.