Well one thing I notice, if it cheers you up, Alison, is that Aus still has
a certain no-bullshit strand to its culture, which I presume derives from
its Brit working-class roots, things might be wrong there, but they are in
other ways elsewhere too, Britland has much sophistication, and oodles of
hypocrisy simultaneously, as well as poodles of political behaviour (
British foreign policy now equals 'yip yip' to whatever the US says) I think
the last time we did anything independently ( apart from the Cod Wars -
sorry Arni - and the Falklands) was when the Wilson Govt. in the 60's
refused to send troops to Vietnam.
So then the IMF stepped in during the 70's and we too became a colony - a
useful place for actors and special effects for Hollywood and rather good at
pop songs and posh accents: Role Britannia!
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2002 10:45 PM
Subject: Re: Apologia
At 10:33 AM +0100 14/8/02, Douglas Barbour wrote:
>So, yes, of course, it can be another kind of colonisation, or it could be
>a postcolonial collaging, an ability to begin the bricolage of various
>poetics, & thus 'becoming modernist' while also becoming Australian, New
>Zealandish, or Canadian...?
Well, in fact I think I agree with you on that. But... Laced with
that comment in my mind is another tangential question about the
growing colonisation of Australian culture by American, considerably
advanced on a decade ago: American ads on tv without even a local
voice over (there used to regulations which didn't permit foriegn
ads), many many fewer Australian films although a boom in the
"industry", Australian actors learning American accents as a matter
of course in order to get work. I see in the local paper this week
that Monsanto is sacking 50 workers in Altona, closing down a factory
which the have presumably bought recently (because most of the people
there have worked there for 30 years). Even the trusty Salada
biscuit has changed and is now like American crackers, oh woe,
because the biscuit co is owned by an American company. Not to
mention our status as Bush yes-man, going beyond anything even the UK
is doing, not that anyone except Iraq has noticed. That has very
little to do with the influences of the early 70s, it's a kind of
bloated edge of something else; and the inward nationalism I
mentioned is in fact one current response to it; for here
"globalisation" is very much in an American guise. But it's not a
very interesting reaction.
>And then we're left with the fact that it's not the kinds, but the poem
>themselves that count -- differently for each of us...
Yes.
Best
A
--
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead Online
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