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Discussion Panel on the Hit TV Show American Gods with Brendon Stewart, Jacinta Frawley and Louise Fanning

  • Mitchell Theatre, SMSA 280 Pitt Street Sydney, NSW, 2000 Australia (map)
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The story line for American Gods starts with the release from prison of the main character Shadow Moon who discovers that his wife has died. He finds himself being courted for a job by a man named Mr. Wednesday. While traveling cross-country with this mysterious stranger, he discovers a world populated by ancient gods and other mythological beings that our immigrant ancestors believed in when they first came to America. Not only are the Old Gods fading from the collective consciousness, but they’re also being targeted by the personifications of America’s New Gods, who get their power from technology and mass media. Wednesday wants to rally the Old Gods for a battle, and needs Shadow’s help to convince them to fight.

American Gods is story about belief and sacrifice, both of which the deities of American Gods need to survive. It’s also about the staying power of mythology and legends, and how they are warped and shaped over time by the people who learn them and pass them along, clearly a rich hunting ground for the finely-honed analytical minds of out expert panel.

For more background on the characters in the American Gods TV Show visit this excellent reference site

Join us as our three panelists present their take on this captivating spectacle.

Brendon Stewart is an artist. He spends much of his time painting and gardening. He loves things, especially his Citroen DS 23 Injection Electronique, designed just after the second world war by Italian sculptor Flaminio Bertoni. Cars have been throughout the 20th century almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as purely magical objects. The Citroen Deesse (the Goddess) fell from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object. An object is the best messenger of a world beyond that of nature: one can easily see in an object at once a perfection and an absence of origin, a closure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter (matter is much more magical than life), and something that belongs to the realm of fairy-tales. The Goddess has all the features of an object from another universe or at least from our own science-fiction.

Jacinta Frawley is a Jungian Analyst and Training Analyst (ANZSJA) in private practice in southern Sydney and is especially interested in the application of Jungian thought in the everyday.

Louise Fanning is a doctoral candidate at Western Sydney University in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. Louise’s area of inquiry is film costume, and asks how ancient, traditional and contemporary masks and their myths inform the representation, and our apprehension of the costumed cinematic body. Louise’s particular focus is the representation of artificially intelligent humanoid robots in film. Louise draws on her experience as a costume designer for film and television, and deploys a Jungian method of interpretation which views myth and its visual manifestations as a fantastical creation of our inner lives connected to aesthetic display. Louise completed a Master of Arts, Cultural Psychology(s) (Jungian Studies) at UWS in 2005, and a Master of Design (Research) at UTS in 2012. The title of that thesis is: Suffering Flesh, Spectacular Bodies: Connecting Costume and Cinema Through an Analysis of Symbolism, Myth and Ritual. The thesis can be viewed on the UTS Digital Thesis Collection site: http://hdl.handle.net/10453/20363.

Preferred payment by Cash or Cheque. No need to book.
Just pay at the door. Everybody welcome.

Date: 9th March 2018
Time: 7:00pm to 8:30pm
Venue: Mitchell Theatre Level 1 Sydney Mechanics' School
of Arts, 280 Pitt St, Sydney
Cost: Members $15 Non-Members $25 Non-Member
Concession $20

*Psychotherapists and other practitioners can obtain credit for Professional Development hours recognised by PACFA and ACA for this presentation.