Alison
when you worry 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.
I can only sadly agree, & tell you that sitting right next door makes it
even more manifest (so to speak). And we're pretty much on-side too. There
was a moment when our government was holding back a bit on Iraq, but now
'we' seem to be buying the US line that we have to attack in order to
defend. (I'm reminded of the ending, written in the late 50s, to A Canticle
for Liebowitz; & Niedecker's little poem, below, also from that period: at
least some noticed that somethig was a bit 'off').
Doug
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
I fear this war
will be long and painful
and who
pursue
it
Lorine Niedecker
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