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 MORE THAN VEGEMITE

 I am sick of the stereotypical idiosyncrasies the world has on my country.

 Australians are seen as lower class, brainless idiots who live in dire conditions in scorching weather with Kangaroos jumping around everywhere.

We speak with longated accents and add "g'day" and "mate", in every second word. We eat Vegemite everyday and we drive around in pick up trucks with our shirts untucked, shorts soiled and aukbra hats, with cork tops dangling from the brim.

I hate even more how we're portrayed in American movies and shows. The Simpsons, Just Shoot Me, Crocodile Dundee all do this.

 In an episode of the Simpsons, Bart makes a long distance phone call to Australia, asking which way their toilet swirls. Inevitably, he racks up the Australian's phone bill after making him stay online for hours. The Australian sues and demands an apology, taking the Simpson family half way across the globe.

The thing that annoys me most is not the bad, American imitated accents with "mate" in the middle of every sentence. It's the fact that the Australian politicians resorted to violent tactics (kicking Bart in the butt with an enormous novelty boot) to solve this problem.

Australian politicians do NOT do this. We are not like that. And I feel sorry for the naive people who believe we are like that.

In an old episode of Just Shoot Me, Jack hires an Australian journalist to do interview him for his biography. Not only is the accent poorly executed (it sounded halfway British crossed with elongated "y' and exaggerated 'a's), but yet again he was an idiot with no morales.

Sarah O' Hare, gorgeous Australian model married to Newscorp/Foxtel heir, Lachlan Murdoch (Son of business mogul, Rupert Murdoch) was cast as one of the models in movie Head Over Heels with Freddie Prinze Jr. She won the part of (again) brainless Australian supermodel, however when she was asked to shoot her scenes, the director actually asked for a more obvious Australian accent.

Crocodile Dundee probably is the most famous American known Australian oriented movie. It broke box office records across America with it's typical "Aussie bloke" Paul Hogan and smart, sassy and gorgeous American Linda Kowalski.

Hogan as the crocodile hunter was untrained and uneducated in etiquette, brandishing an honest, down-to earth personality making him a loveable dumb ass.

In real life, Hogan lives in LA and has a son, Chance with now wife Linda Kowazalski. Although is probably the only one with the procured and pronounced Australian accent in the industry, he is no less any of his co-stars. C'mon, he is the main subject of the story after all.  

We are one, but we are many and from all the lands of earth we come

  Surprise, surprise, Australians are not all white who live in the Gibson desert. We are a montage of all the different faces of the world. Not only are our neighbours the Smiths, Jones and Martins, but we're also the Wongs, Habibs, Gonzaleses, Donnelly's, and Nguyens. We don't all speak with pronounced y's and a's and we certainly don't have Kangaroos jumping around everywhere and Koalas climbing our local trees. We don't eat vegemite every day (nor do we all eat it) and we don't all eat meat pies.

Australia is more than the Opera House, Harbour Bridge, Uluru (Ayres Rock) and The Great Barrier Reef. We are the land, we are the air we are the sea. Bondi Beach are our golden shores and Melbourne is our shopping mecca. We play football without a helmet.

  I love my sunburnt country. And it's more than a "land of sweeping plains/ of rugged mountain rages/ of droughts and flooding rains"

 

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