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I'm personally very sorry that he's dead, and that his wife and child(ren?) will have to go on without him, but I also think that the caricature of an Australian he presented to the world was complete bollocks and frankly not helpful to us, as a country, trying to look like (because we're not) modern, cosmopolitan citizens of the world.
If he's an accurate iconographic representation of anyone, it'd be compassionate conservative conservationists, sucker-punching animals, because they love them. It's for their own good.
I don't like his methods. I appreciate that he donated a large amount of his own time and money to saving Australian environments which would, perhaps, have disappeared without him, but I'd rather he took a little more... Attenborough-ian approach to those he worked with.
Anyway, that's to provide background, of a sort. The accent and dress style he had are very uncommon (may, in fact, have just become extinct). But it does hark back to a mythical time, when men were men, and women were camera crew, or drivers, or whatever, which I think is a damaging model of manhood for society at large. The fact that Steve and Mick "crocodile" Dundee are the two most famous examples, internationally (ok, in the US, I'm not sure about elsewhere - maybe Toadfish is more popular in the UK), of what an Australian man is like seems like a bad idea.
I can't really grapple this question, to be honest. It seems obvious to me that he's a ridiculous stereotype, and that that alone qualifies him to be rejected. I mean, most Australian men are pretty much like most other western men. Our media diets and expectations are very little informed by a particularly Australian sensibility. There really isn't an "Australian Man". There's some kind of vague, unformed digger pride, etc, but there's also (from my personal point of view/experience) a very clear understanding that we, as a culture, can't continue to exclude non-white people.
All our grand old archetypes are white (maybe there's one Indigenous Australian GOA, but they figure very little in our self-image, unfortunately), but it's becoming harder to ignore the fact that an enormous percentage of our population isn't, in fact, white.
Irwin on Howard: "In front of us right now is the greatest leader Australia has ever had and the greatest leader in the world," (quote because I'm not sure the link'll work)
I suppose it's fitting, because they're both caricatures of various historical periods (Howard from the 50's, Irwin from a semi-mythological pioneer/bushwhacker past which spans decades, if not more than a century).
I really have no idea where I'm going with this, so I'll leave it here. Hopefully there's something useful there. Maybe. |
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