The Frill-Necked Lizard (Chlamydosaurus Kingii)
Ever since I first saw Jurassic Park, I wanted a Chlamydosaurus Kingii to call my own. Though mostly arboreal, these frilled lizards of the dragon clan would descend to the Northern Australian forest floors and savannas to feed on ants, termites and smaller lizards.
The frilled lizard is known for its thin fold of pleated skin surrounding the throat that it would unfurl when it feels threatened. The frilled lizard would rise on its hind legs, spread its frills over its shoulders until erect, and then open its mouth and hiss in order to intimidate its foes. If that tactic didn’t work, the lizard would run on its hind legs until it reached the nearest tree.
Below are three visual examples of the frill-necked lizard, serving three different purposes within popular culture.
Cultural Identity
The Chlamydosaurus Kingii was once displayed on the Australian 2-Cent Coin. Stuart Devlin’s design rendered the lizard beautifully, curving its tail with the contours of the disc and encompassing 3/4ths of the surface with its frills.
By portraying the lizard on its currency, Australia admitted the frill-necked lizard’s significance in its national identity. But, as it was on the second-least valued coin, the nation also hinted that this animal is considered less important or less regal than others. When the coin was first introduced 1966, some critics even questioned why this animal was chosen over the more iconic and favored koala, the kangaroo or the emu. The coins were withdrawn from circulation in 1992, and many of them were melted down in order to make the bronze medals for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
Cultural Authentication
In 1990, Disney released The Rescuers Down Under, a sequel to the animated classic The Rescuers. The film takes place in the Australian outback and involves a young boy named Cody who gets abducted by a murderous poacher. The film features several animal characters including Frank, an anxious and wiry frill-necked lizard who serves largely as secondary comic relief and not integral to the main plot.
Frank is only found during supplementary events, caged alongside Cody and other animals representative of the Australian fauna, such as a Kangaroo, a koala and a duck-billed platypus. Since The Rescuers Down Under was an American production and largely meant to serve an American audience, secondary characters like Frank serve mostly as cultural authenticators, part of the diegetics of the animated film that tell the audience the setting is indeed in Australia. The frilled lizard is not technically an endangered species, but the animators chose to add him to the poacher’s collection regardless in order to further authenticate the setting.
Although Frank nearly breaks from this secondary role to a more prominent one by stealing the keys to open the cages, his cowardice and stupidity annuls his efforts, and the poacher scares Frank to lock himself back up in his own cage.
Cultural Appropriation/Reclamation
The frilled lizard image also appears in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, an Australian film about three drag queens traveling across the outback to perform a show at a remote hotel resort. The drag number at the hotel, performed to Ce Ce Peniston’s Finally, involves several costume changes depicting Australian icons including the elaborate and colorful frill-necked lizard costumes shown below.
This film became an instant camp classic, portraying the plight of a group of oppressed outcasts who reclaim the land as their own. The filmmakers employed the frill-necked lizard as symbol of Australian identity, one which the drag queens claim as their own through their Walkabout in high heels. The clip below depicts the costumes starting at 2:15.
This cultural reclamation would later gift the costume designers Lizzy Gardner and Tim Chappell the 1995 Oscar for best costume design. A 2007 re-release of the DVD in the US was called the “Extra Frills Edition.”
