"The more she rejected us the more convinced I was that she was another version of the real Molly, her disdain for authority, her scepticism that she had to do what the white man told her because it was good for her... She is Molly"
About this Quote
Rejection becomes proof. That reversal is the engine of Phillip Noyce's line: the girl's resistance is not a barrier to identification but the very thing that authenticates it. In a colonial system built on paperwork, naming, and forced compliance, the most reliable marker of self is refusal. Noyce frames scepticism and contempt for authority as inheritance, a throughline that survives attempted erasure. "She is Molly" lands less as a tidy conclusion than as an insistence: identity here isn't granted by institutions; it's recognized in behavior that institutions label deviant.
The phrase "another version of the real Molly" is doing quiet, loaded work. It suggests that "realness" is not biological purity or bureaucratic verification but a moral and cultural posture. By tying Molly-ness to "disdain for authority", Noyce flips a colonial stereotype on its head. What the state calls stubbornness becomes a sign of clarity. What assimilationists frame as "good for her" is exposed as paternalism wearing a smile.
Context matters: Noyce, as a non-Indigenous director best known for Rabbit-Proof Fence, is operating inside the thorny politics of representation. The quote reads like a self-justifying manifesto for his narrative choices: if the subject resists you, you may be closer to the truth. There's empathy in that, but also a risk - turning Indigenous defiance into a cinematic cipher that validates the storyteller. The line's power is its compact exposure of how domination demands gratitude, and how survival often looks like saying no.
The phrase "another version of the real Molly" is doing quiet, loaded work. It suggests that "realness" is not biological purity or bureaucratic verification but a moral and cultural posture. By tying Molly-ness to "disdain for authority", Noyce flips a colonial stereotype on its head. What the state calls stubbornness becomes a sign of clarity. What assimilationists frame as "good for her" is exposed as paternalism wearing a smile.
Context matters: Noyce, as a non-Indigenous director best known for Rabbit-Proof Fence, is operating inside the thorny politics of representation. The quote reads like a self-justifying manifesto for his narrative choices: if the subject resists you, you may be closer to the truth. There's empathy in that, but also a risk - turning Indigenous defiance into a cinematic cipher that validates the storyteller. The line's power is its compact exposure of how domination demands gratitude, and how survival often looks like saying no.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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