Underexposed.
I regularly read a couple of British expat message boards, keeping tabs on what other people in my situation are doing with themselves, how they’re feeling about being away from home, how they find their new situation and, in some cases, what their plans are for going home.
One thing I was reading earlier on one of these forums which interested me is that apparently younger people are finding it harder to fit in in Australia these days, moreso than older people of my generation. I think I know why this is.
Back when I was a teenager, there was loads of Australian stuff on TV - Sons And Daughters, The Flying Doctors, Prisoner Cell Block H, The Paul Hogan Show, Blue Heelers, and, of course, Neighbours and Home And Away. Not to mention the surfeit of Australians on mainstream British TV at the time, such as Rolf Harris, Dame Edna, and even the execrable likes of the Neighbours alumni who turned their hands to pop music like Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and Natalie Imbruglia. In other aspects of popular culture, there was also more Australian stuff to be seen back then - in music there was AC/DC, Midnight Oil, Men At Work and the aforementioned abominations that were Kylie and Jason, Castlemaine XXXX, silly ads for Foster’s lager, Muriel’s Wedding, the Sydney Olympics and so on.
Apart from Neighbours and Home And Away, which have been demoted to the televisual dusty broom cupboard that is Channel Five, they’ve all gone and haven’t been replaced by anything else. I was at least hoping that the Australian version of Top Gear might get an airing - it’s quite good, if not quite as good as the original. But alas not.
What it boils down to is that, basically, most younger people just aren’t being exposed to anything Australian any more. There’s plenty of Australians working in films these days, but, with the exception of Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, none of them ever get to use their real accents or to bring anything “Australian” to the mix.
And this is in the UK - Australia’s parent country. You never see anything Australian in the US, apart from Outback Steakhouse, and other than boomerangs and pictures of kangaroos and koalas on the walls, there’s nothing Australian about that. I’m not sure you can even get a Bloomin’ Onion in Australia. Most Americans aren’t even aware that the likes of Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Chris Hemsworth, Guy Pearce and Karl Urban are Australian, and have never heard of any Australian TV shows. They know about kangaroos, “those cuddly bears with the big noses”, spiders and not a lot else. And yet, Australians are surrounded by British and American culture. All the big British and US TV shows are shown there, they listen to all the same music, read about all the same celebrities, watch all the same films…
Not sure who to blame, but Australia should definitely work harder to export their culture - for most people these days, it’s a big, hot and almost empty country on the other side of the world that they don’t know much about, and I think it’s Australia’s responsibility to correct this. Australia deserves better. It’s a great, vibrant place with a strong cultural identity and more people need to know about it outside the confines of the goings-on in Ramsay Street or Summer Bay.
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unfeasibility posted this
