Crocodile Hunter or, seemingly to every Aussie's chagrin, Crocodile Dundee (although don't let 'em fool ya - there must be some level of appreciation -- maybe just amusement- for the film because I totally found it on TV the other night...along with a promo for one of the sequels, which was to play the following weekend - caught'ya, mates!) Anyway, it's usually a good laugh to compare the hyperbolical characters that embody these stereotypes in the media. Even the Australian accent is narrowly |
represented in the U.S. I was chatting with our real estate agent (who couldn't have been more than 19 years old, I swear) and she asked me to do an Australian accent - after warning her that it would be ridiculously overdone and potentially offensive (we were both poking fun of our country's respective caricatures, so I wasn't actually concerned), I did my best Steve Irwin impression, and she noted that I was doing a bogan (i.e., Australian hick) accent. I told her (semi-jokingly) that this is the one I'd like to develop - the majority of Aussies that I encounter have a more subtle accent that (to me, though they always disagree) sounds slightly more British - at least more...refined somehow. My favorite is the very heavy (bogan) accent we hear most often when Aussies are portrayed in American media. Incidentally, my real estate agent did a fairly spot-on American accent! |
(...I demonstrated this version, after which she responded "Ooooh - Like Mean Girls?!").
Luckily, both America and Australia and far more diverse in every way that what's been distilled down into pop culture stereotypes, but it's amusing to reflect and commiserate with people here over the gross generalizations in and about our countries. For example, Americans might warn that if you're going to Australia, you're liable to get attacked/bitten/ eaten by some lethal insect or animal (I can't tell you how many warnings and accounts of shark attacks, top 10 countdowns of deadly organisms, spider and snake identification guides, etc. I've received from American friends |
Pickle and I stumbled across a little piece of Americana last evening as we were on the hunt for dessert. We'd just finished riding a sushi train in Brighton-Le-Sands and had planned to spend the evening at some night markets in Redfern. The markets ended up being five tables and three food trucks, so we defaulted to our standard American plan: Eat (...see what I did there?). The place was called the Doughbox Diner, and it was swell! |