{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020249221183800622, 'fraction_numerical': 0.004672897196261682, 'mean_word_length': 5.002336448598131, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Through Australian Eyes: Colonial Perceptions of Imperial Britain (review)

VICTORIAN STUDIES In the new industrial age transparencies could be wondered at as symbols of modernity and progress. Reaching a wider public than could be experienced in a theatre, these nighttime events might be seen as public performance art. The static fine art image of Victorian society as seen in W. P. Frith’s Derby Day (1856) could come to life on a stage in play production, but it also became a living thing when it moved into the central square of a city. As the boundaries changed the spectator became a participant in the civic event. The curious vogue of presenting a figurative tableau before paying spectators flourished in the second half of the century. The tableau vivant revealed performers clad in white body unitards and theatrically lit to represent marble statuary. These motionless performers portrayed high art images of famous paintings, historical events, and allegorical statuary. The success of a tableau lay in the audience’s ability to recognize the subject matter. It could be instructional, inspiring, and was often titillating. Accounts of performers and touring troupes suggest an audience appetite for tableau. Who wouldn’t want to see The Battle Of The Amazons (1858) presented by Herr Cushla’s troupe of male and female actors in Melbourne? Or have a career as a statue? Pansy Montague, a Melbourne chorus girl, perfected a pose as expressionless as a stone when she appeared as the “Modern Milo” in 1898. Her matchless figure with arms intact conveyed the highest ideal of classical beauty and inspired less lofty thoughts as well. The novelty of dressing up allowed a tableau vivant to come to life in one’s own parlor. The popularity of fancy dress and masquerade pastimes increased with the rise of the bourgeois class. A carnival atmosphere was limited only by the hostess’s imagination. It could be subversive. The masked ball transformed the shy wallflower into a rowdy Garibaldi or cunning Cleopatra. Callaway uncovers multiple written and pictorial examples of public entertainments enjoyed by Australia’s colonial society. Because so little of the actual experience of theatre, public illuminations, and posed tableau vivant exist, they have hitherto been viewed as irrelevant in defining artistic expression. Callaway makes a persuasive argument that the cultural heritage of white Australia does not totally exist in high art images but rather in the regional visual ephemera detailed in this book. Virgil C. Johnson Northwestern University