Australia a country with no culture: David Gower

[Daemon]

Kabaddi?

 

[uvelocity]

just pointing out ftr that cricket participation on the goldie is up across the board. not just bogans either, plenty of jonos playing too.

 

[BoyBrumby]

I think, as an outsider looking in, association football seems to be a lot of Aussies' second or third favourite sport, so almost benefits from the visceral footy-code pride that makes Aussie Rules fans loathe league and vice versa.

The round ball game by comparison is almost treated with benign condescension.

Plus, of course, it's the preferred football code in the majority of the native countries of a lot of the more recent (post WW2) immigrants, a fact the GWS Giants coach got himself in some hot water over when he made the point in a somewhat ham-fisted way.

 

[uvelocity]

eh, round ball compared to association?

 

[Maximas]

I think, as an outsider looking in, association football seems to be a lot of Aussies' second or third favourite sport, so almost benefits from the visceral footy-code pride that makes Aussie Rules fans loathe league and vice versa.

The round ball game by comparison is almost treated with benign condescension.

Plus, of course, it's the preferred football code in the majority of the native countries of a lot of the more recent (post WW2) immigrants, a fact the GWS Giants coach got himself in some hot water over when he made the point in a somewhat ham-fisted way.

Every player of every code will claim other codes are 'gay', I don't think soccer is exempt. The recent success of the socceroos has promoted it above the two national rugby teams however, and more people are following it. The recent A-league season has also proved that Soccer (calling our national team the "socceroos" probably suggests our attitude towards the name soccer doesn't it?) is on the rise.

 

[BoyBrumby]

eh, round ball compared to association?

"The round ball game" is association football.

Unless I've misunderstood your post.

 

[Spark]

just pointing out ftr that cricket participation on the goldie is up across the board. not just bogans either, plenty of jonos playing too.

Well vic is the authority on this, but AFL has been scooping up a hell of a lot of the young sporting talent pool. Granted, the reasons for that are beyond cricket's control - there's a hell of a lot more places in top-flight AFL teams than there are CA contracts, and as such there's a lot more money to be made on average - but that's been the general wisdom. I have heard that there's been a pushback recently, but that's still the main competition.

(Worth noting, though, that the only real way to combat that is *drumroll* more money. So it's worth thinking twice before lambasting money-chasing and 'failing to invest in the game', because last I heard you required moolahs if you want to invest and cricket's "competitors" from a talent POV are loaded)

Cricket itself doesn't have any real competition as a summer sport, though, and that's where the best direct comparisons can be made. The next level down is tennis, ffs, and look how they're going.

Every player of every code will claim other codes are 'gay', I don't think soccer is exempt. The recent success of the socceroos has promoted it above the two national rugby teams however, and more people are following it. The recent A-league season has also proved that Soccer (calling our national team the "socceroos" probably suggests our attitude towards the name soccer doesn't it?) is on the rise.

I wouldn't say so much "on the rise" and more "claiming its allotted place in Australian sport". Throughout my lifetime soccer has always been strong at the amateur/junior levels, it was only a matter of time before that long-standing latent interest showed up at the professional level.

 

[uvelocity]

"The round ball game" is association football.

Unless I've misunderstood your post.

thats what im saying. maybe im misreading your post, but your first para says association football is our 2nd or 3rd sport and next you say in comparison to roundball which is treated with condescension? also check your vm's i need your dreamteam tears pls,

Well vic is the authority on this, but AFL has been scooping up a hell of a lot of the young sporting talent pool. Granted, the reasons for that are beyond cricket's control - there's a hell of a lot more places in top-flight AFL teams than there are CA contracts, and as such there's a lot more money to be made on average - but that's been the general wisdom. I have heard that there's been a pushback recently, but that's still the main competition.

oh yeah, definitely the good cricket/afl kids are choosing afl when they get to that point, we had kids pulling out of senior finals to play trial intra-club trial games ffs. even at club level afl has cricket in a choke hold. but cricket is definitely growing here all the same

 

[Burgey]

Governing body begs to differ.

Yeah they do. I also regard myself as the finest opening batsman to ever hail from the western suburbs of Sydney, but it's not so.

 

[CWB304]

Gower was clearly trolling, and his misuse of the word "culture" is problematic. But there's more than a grain of truth to his comments. Which is why so many Australians have responded, rather than simply ignoring him as they would have had he not touched a nerve. The truth is that the majority of persons capable of making 'cultural' contributions - I'm talking about the major contributors, whose books are read, paintings admired, plays watched etc, by people from all cultures long after they're dead - tend to find Australia highly uncongenial, and leave. Which is why the country has made no major or even memorable contribution in the arts apart from the plastic art of the marginalized Aboriginal minority. Being an excrescence of European culture, and a peripheral and contingent one at that, I imagine it must be difficult for Australians to come to terms with the fact that Europeans are looking for something more than just 'their stuff' done badly, from such a potentially interesting continent.

Someone earlier posted a list of no-names and no-hopers (including Germain Greer :-)) and the poverty of the list kind of illustrates the problem. When you are forced to scrape the barrel in this way you really have a problem. Were my eyes deceiving me or was the lightweight TV pundit who reckons himself as a major thinker Clive James not mentioned rather optimistically by someone here also? Poor Australia, it really is the land of the living dead, "culturally" speaking (I'm following Gower's use of the term, even though I disagree with it). I have a few Australian friends and acquaintances here in London and most never return to the land of their birth which they find shallow and culturally uninteresting. They mostly left because they weren't particularly interested in sport, barbies, the beach, and other staples of the Australian way of life - in fact they mostly considered such as the Australian way of death.

I suppose the main problem is that this outdoorsy, unreflective lifestyle is not particularly conducive to the heroic internal struggles - alone but emboldened by a sense of being in some sort of cosmic competition with other creators for a share of immortality - without which cultural progressions are all but impossible. And, being distant from the cultural hubs of former times - it could be argued that there are no culture bearing areas today, as we've all been bludgeoned into submission by an American cultural totalitarianism of awful music, movies ,fashions etc, that, for all their aesthetic shortcomings, are made all the more disgusting for being economically driven. So in one respect it could be said that even a desert like Oz is no worse off than somewhere which once had a thriving culture - Paris say, or Vienna, or even London. All these places are now just dumping grounds for American trash posing as pop-culture, and the greatest extant culture, in China, has of course long-since been completely obliterated by the communists-turned-hereditary-capitalist-extractive elite who have enslaved a fifth of humanity.

I was actually intending to make a few short witty points but it seems I've rambled way off topic. Apologies ;-) Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that the number of outraged posts by Australians on this thread and elsewhere - I read some particularly cringeworthy comments in the Guardian the other day - suggests they would be better of in future NOT attempting to measure their society against some putative "world class" cultural standard, and not reacting defensively to such banter. There's absolutely no point. What we used to think of as "culture" is not part of life anywhere these days as it is no longer being produced, merely reproduced.

What Australians should do is to concentrate on eradicating the last vestiges of the ocker element which can defnitely still be seen - for instance in the last year or two I can recall reading about instances of harrassment of and violence against students from India, a rather shameful incident involving some female French tourists on a bus, and of course about the radio "prank" - the kind of prank, soliciting private medical information about a woman experiencing her first pregnancy, which probably only Australians would 'get' - call which led to the suicide of a nurse. This would help to ensure that anyone capable of writing say a worthwhile novel or play won't automatically head for the exit as soon as he or she is able to do so, as they tend to do now. When Aussies have finally tossed out the ocker element as a stereotype to be lived up to and even to be boasted of in the public square, then the "lucky country" might become, if not exactly cultured, at least a more congenial place to live in.

 

[NUFAN]

Cricket is your No 1 "National" sport mate. AFL is still very state oriented.....walk into a pub in North Queensland and start talking about AFL and see how far you get.

Despite the introduction of new teams AFL would be a distant 3rd in terms of interest behind Cricket and Rugby League in the Northern half of the country.

Factual but irrelevant. It goes by numbers mates. That's all that matters. Even under your "national" definition, which you use as a convenience to base a dodgy point, I think soccer is our no.1 sport.

AFL is without doubt more popular compared to Rugby League in Northern Territory and the northern part of WA, so its only Queensland (from the northern half of the country) where League is more popular. So overall its not even factual.

 

[the big bambino]

Governing body begs to differ.

We the people don't recognise the name change.

 

[the big bambino]

Which it's quite clearly not doing anymore. Like I said, if it is the national sport then it won't be within a generation.

With the way it is run, I sometimes wonder just how relevant Cricket will be at the end of my lifetime.

I agree with you that the administration of cricket over the last 5 or so years has been dire. Sutherland will be remembered as the man who banned beer snakes. He is a total ****.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Its been like that ever since the English arrived.

Pretty much spot on! I'm sure our Aboriginal population will be enthralled with what David Gower has to say about culture. It's just another example of someone from the UK assuming nobody has ever visited their bunch of ****ries really. If getting legless by 6pm, wearing miniskirts and short tops when you weigh 100kg, and generally being unattractive constitute a 'culture' then we're better off without one in my opinion

Having lived in both places I'd say there are some fairly striking similarities - our bogans are your chavs/neds/whatever else you call them; we have now caught up to the attitude to drunken violence you see in the streets on a given weekend that was so prevalent when I was in the UK in 2002/03/04 (and was, quite frankly, shocking to me then); we both whinge quite well...to be honest, I think the cultural argument is a little outdated from an English point of view. Culture and history get mixed up. If we're talking modern times then there's not a great culture to speak of in the UK either.

Funnily enough, when I went to the UK in 2002 I was also under the impression I was going to a place full of well-cultured, funny, upper-class folk - like I'd seen on TV before going there. The reality was, that's the 5% of the population whose circles you never mix in (and I'm not saying that's a bad thing). The other 95% are very similar to people you meet in other Western countries, with a different accent.
'

 

[the big bambino]

When Aussies have finally tossed out the ocker element as a stereotype to be lived up to and even to be boasted of in the public square, then the "lucky country" might become, if not exactly cultured, at least a more congenial place to live in.

Of course. Until darky starts putting on clothes and takes the bones out of their noses they will never be civilised. Chinky can't think for himself right? For some English, it seems, racial and cultural stereotyping is a substitute for travel. That you believed a caricature of a country or a race in the 1st place makes you a bigot. That you still believe it decades after the term has fallen into disuse makes your prejudice as dated as white dog ****e.

 

[Son Of Coco]

Of course. Until darky starts putting on clothes and takes the bones out of their noses they will never be civilised. Chinky can't think for himself right? For the English, it seems, racial and cultural stereotyping is a substitute for travel. That you believed a caricature of a country or a race in the 1st place makes you a bigot. That you still believe it decades after the term has fallen into disuse makes your prejudice as dated as white dog ****e.

I wanted to reply to CWB's post too, but it was too long and contained too much to reply to. Did want to comment about the 'ocker' thing. Ockers (or bogans) are no different to chavs. How successful has England been in tossing out the 'chav element'? Not very in my experience over there. Pretending something doesn't exist in your home country so you can make a negative point about another is a little disingenuous in my opinion. As is dining out on what your country used to be when it's clearly not like that any more.

Instead of believing the negative stuff CWB try visiting a place and seeing how 'congenial' or otherwise it is to live there. I don't believe everyone in England is a member of the EDL just because I see them on TV, but nor do I believe everyone is sitting around drinking Pimms and discussing the latest cultural event they went to. Mainly because I've been there and I know it's not true.

 

[social]

Gower was clearly trolling, and his misuse of the word "culture" is problematic. But there's more than a grain of truth to his comments. Which is why so many Australians have responded, rather than simply ignoring him as they would have had he not touched a nerve. The truth is that the majority of persons capable of making 'cultural' contributions - I'm talking about the major contributors, whose books are read, paintings admired, plays watched etc, by people from all cultures long after they're dead - tend to find Australia highly uncongenial, and leave. Which is why the country has made no major or even memorable contribution in the arts apart from the plastic art of the marginalized Aboriginal minority. Being an excrescence of European culture, and a peripheral and contingent one at that, I imagine it must be difficult for Australians to come to terms with the fact that Europeans are looking for something more than just 'their stuff' done badly, from such a potentially interesting continent.

Someone earlier posted a list of no-names and no-hopers (including Germain Greer :-)) and the poverty of the list kind of illustrates the problem. When you are forced to scrape the barrel in this way you really have a problem. Were my eyes deceiving me or was the lightweight TV pundit who reckons himself as a major thinker Clive James not mentioned rather optimistically by someone here also? Poor Australia, it really is the land of the living dead, "culturally" speaking (I'm following Gower's use of the term, even though I disagree with it). I have a few Australian friends and acquaintances here in London and most never return to the land of their birth which they find shallow and culturally uninteresting. They mostly left because they weren't particularly interested in sport, barbies, the beach, and other staples of the Australian way of life - in fact they mostly considered such as the Australian way of death.

I suppose the main problem is that this outdoorsy, unreflective lifestyle is not particularly conducive to the heroic internal struggles - alone but emboldened by a sense of being in some sort of cosmic competition with other creators for a share of immortality - without which cultural progressions are all but impossible. And, being distant from the cultural hubs of former times - it could be argued that there are no culture bearing areas today, as we've all been bludgeoned into submission by an American cultural totalitarianism of awful music, movies ,fashions etc, that, for all their aesthetic shortcomings, are made all the more disgusting for being economically driven. So in one respect it could be said that even a desert like Oz is no worse off than somewhere which once had a thriving culture - Paris say, or Vienna, or even London. All these places are now just dumping grounds for American trash posing as pop-culture, and the greatest extant culture, in China, has of course long-since been completely obliterated by the communists-turned-hereditary-capitalist-extractive elite who have enslaved a fifth of humanity.

I was actually intending to make a few short witty points but it seems I've rambled way off topic. Apologies ;-) Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that the number of outraged posts by Australians on this thread and elsewhere - I read some particularly cringeworthy comments in the Guardian the other day - suggests they would be better of in future NOT attempting to measure their society against some putative "world class" cultural standard, and not reacting defensively to such banter. There's absolutely no point. What we used to think of as "culture" is not part of life anywhere these days as it is no longer being produced, merely reproduced.

What Australians should do is to concentrate on eradicating the last vestiges of the ocker element which can defnitely still be seen - for instance in the last year or two I can recall reading about instances of harrassment of and violence against students from India, a rather shameful incident involving some female French tourists on a bus, and of course about the radio "prank" - the kind of prank, soliciting private medical information about a woman experiencing her first pregnancy, which probably only Australians would 'get' - call which led to the suicide of a nurse. This would help to ensure that anyone capable of writing say a worthwhile novel or play won't automatically head for the exit as soon as he or she is able to do so, as they tend to do now. When Aussies have finally tossed out the ocker element as a stereotype to be lived up to and even to be boasted of in the public square, then the "lucky country" might become, if not exactly cultured, at least a more congenial place to live in.

Please specify which of our 15 Nobel Laureates, numerous Academy Award winners, multiple 100 million selling recording artists, etc etc etc have left Australia because it is a cultural wasteland

 

[Furball]

It there is a perception that cricket isn't a "working man's" sport in England (and I don't know if that's right) then the closest sport here to that would probably be Rah Rah.

Depends whether you're in the North or South of the country. Flintoff was as working class as you could get.

There's a reason all of England's bowlers come from the North, if cricket was just a posh boy sport in this country then our bowling stocks would be on a par with India's.

 

[Uppercut]

That CWB post was probably the least cultural thing that has ever existed.

 

[TNT]

Gower was clearly trolling, and his misuse of the word "culture" is problematic. But there's more than a grain of truth to his comments. Which is why so many Australians have responded, rather than simply ignoring him as they would have had he not touched a nerve. The truth is that the majority of persons capable of making 'cultural' contributions - I'm talking about the major contributors, whose books are read, paintings admired, plays watched etc, by people from all cultures long after they're dead - tend to find Australia highly uncongenial, and leave. Which is why the country has made no major or even memorable contribution in the arts apart from the plastic art of the marginalized Aboriginal minority. Being an excrescence of European culture, and a peripheral and contingent one at that, I imagine it must be difficult for Australians to come to terms with the fact that Europeans are looking for something more than just 'their stuff' done badly, from such a potentially interesting continent.

Someone earlier posted a list of no-names and no-hopers (including Germain Greer :-)) and the poverty of the list kind of illustrates the problem. When you are forced to scrape the barrel in this way you really have a problem. Were my eyes deceiving me or was the lightweight TV pundit who reckons himself as a major thinker Clive James not mentioned rather optimistically by someone here also? Poor Australia, it really is the land of the living dead, "culturally" speaking (I'm following Gower's use of the term, even though I disagree with it). I have a few Australian friends and acquaintances here in London and most never return to the land of their birth which they find shallow and culturally uninteresting. They mostly left because they weren't particularly interested in sport, barbies, the beach, and other staples of the Australian way of life - in fact they mostly considered such as the Australian way of death.

I suppose the main problem is that this outdoorsy, unreflective lifestyle is not particularly conducive to the heroic internal struggles - alone but emboldened by a sense of being in some sort of cosmic competition with other creators for a share of immortality - without which cultural progressions are all but impossible. And, being distant from the cultural hubs of former times - it could be argued that there are no culture bearing areas today, as we've all been bludgeoned into submission by an American cultural totalitarianism of awful music, movies ,fashions etc, that, for all their aesthetic shortcomings, are made all the more disgusting for being economically driven. So in one respect it could be said that even a desert like Oz is no worse off than somewhere which once had a thriving culture - Paris say, or Vienna, or even London. All these places are now just dumping grounds for American trash posing as pop-culture, and the greatest extant culture, in China, has of course long-since been completely obliterated by the communists-turned-hereditary-capitalist-extractive elite who have enslaved a fifth of humanity.

I was actually intending to make a few short witty points but it seems I've rambled way off topic. Apologies ;-) Anyway, what I really wanted to say is that the number of outraged posts by Australians on this thread and elsewhere - I read some particularly cringeworthy comments in the Guardian the other day - suggests they would be better of in future NOT attempting to measure their society against some putative "world class" cultural standard, and not reacting defensively to such banter. There's absolutely no point. What we used to think of as "culture" is not part of life anywhere these days as it is no longer being produced, merely reproduced.

What Australians should do is to concentrate on eradicating the last vestiges of the ocker element which can defnitely still be seen - for instance in the last year or two I can recall reading about instances of harrassment of and violence against students from India, a rather shameful incident involving some female French tourists on a bus, and of course about the radio "prank" - the kind of prank, soliciting private medical information about a woman experiencing her first pregnancy, which probably only Australians would 'get' - call which led to the suicide of a nurse. This would help to ensure that anyone capable of writing say a worthwhile novel or play won't automatically head for the exit as soon as he or she is able to do so, as they tend to do now. When Aussies have finally tossed out the ocker element as a stereotype to be lived up to and even to be boasted of in the public square, then the "lucky country" might become, if not exactly cultured, at least a more congenial place to live in.

See that light at the end of the tunnel, its your anus.