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DickParasite posted:A lot of Australians hate Halloween because it's yet another encroachment of American culture displacing native Australian culture. Of course by "native" I'm not referring to the aboriginals who were themselves displaced in the last two centuries from the land they'd occupied for 40000 years, I mean the Aussies who are mad even their own kids don't watch their lovely tv. White Australians don't see the irony. I am torn on whether or not I dislike adding yet another Americanisation to our thin cultural broth rather than maybe trying to develop some of our own stuff (maybe including an indigenous culture derived celebratory holiday rather than the observance/reconciliation/mourning ones we currently have). On the one hand I definitely do dislike seeing it pushed so heavily by all the supermarket chains, since such a commercial intrusion onto culture and into children's minds is gross. But I also think Halloween is fun and want children to have a good time, and dressing up and eating candy has an inherent appeal that doesn't really stem from US hegemony. So I'm cool with this one. But I did dislike the ironic Americanisation of Australia Day where one year it went from being one of our many 'barely any significance beyond being a day off work' public holidays to there suddenly being a heavy amount of Australian flag merchandise available for people to drape over everything and themselves–something which most of us still consider an embarrassing and weird American thing at any other time of year. The same period also popularised the now cliched southern cross tattoo. The sharp upswing in flag waving and wearing came only a year or so before the Cronulla race riots, in which near every piece of footage available features flag clad white rioters against normally dressed non-whites. Of course it hardly invented racism in Australia, but I do think the new easy availability and identification with Australian iconography did something to further formalise a troublesome racist/patriotic streak or at least give it a uniform. Most importantly, I think without all the more sharpened patriotism that came with the imported flag waving we would have a lot less resistance to moving the date to a less troublesome one. As to our lovely tv: goddamn does it ever suck. TV and movies are probably worth giving up on, but I would like to see some version of China's limited foreign media approach applied to music. I don't mean outright banning American music, but if all radio stations had to play a certain hourly quota of Australian artists. At this point in time we have world-class talent in every genre who are unlikely to get much play outside of Australia and who deserve domestic commercial success beyond what triple j can give them. Moon Atari fucked around with this message at 16:26 on Oct 31, 2020 |
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Oct 31, 2020 16:20
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:43 |
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