A Body Of Work: Australian Workplace Safety Films (1955-1980)

This thesis analyses the workplace safety films produced in Australia between 1955 and 1980 in order to discover how they function discursively to facilitate particular understandings of workers, safety and Australian industrial working culture. It involves a content analysis of a sample of thirty workplace safety films, using Foucauldian discourse analysis as an interpretive framework. A further eight case studies provide a more in-depth textual analysis, focusing on how the discourses about worker responsibility for accident prevention are articulated in these films. The thesis is part of the ‘Utilitarian Filmmaking in Australia (1945-1980)’ ARC research project.