tag:theconversation.com,2011:/au/topics/cultural-cringe-8193/articlesCultural cringe – The Conversation2023-11-12T19:15:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2139042023-11-12T19:15:32Z2023-11-12T19:15:32ZChristos Tsiolkas’s new novel celebrates a quiet ethics of care in a culturally noisy world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556473/original/file-20231030-21-lggqyi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C2537%2C1709&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Christos Tsiolkas</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sarah Enticknap/Allen & Unwin</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Christos Tsiolkas’s eighth novel, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Christos-Tsiolkas-In-Between-9781761470011/">The In-Between</a>, is a work of social realism set in the immediate present – a return to the form and style of some of his most popular novels. </p>
<p>This follows his experiment with cinematic techniques and authorial presence in <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Christos-Tsiolkas-Seven-and-a-Half-9781761470288/">7 ½</a> (2021), and the significant historical shift of <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Christos-Tsiolkas-Damascus-9781760879143/">Damascus</a> (2019), which was based around the gospels and letters of St Paul, and focused on characters one or two generations from the death of Christ. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556543/original/file-20231030-27-9qhojf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556543/original/file-20231030-27-9qhojf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556543/original/file-20231030-27-9qhojf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556543/original/file-20231030-27-9qhojf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556543/original/file-20231030-27-9qhojf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556543/original/file-20231030-27-9qhojf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556543/original/file-20231030-27-9qhojf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556543/original/file-20231030-27-9qhojf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But The In-Between’s scope is smaller, more intimate than Tsiolkas’s earlier social-realist works, like <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Christos-Tsiolkas-Slap-9781741758207/">The Slap</a> (2010) and <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Christos-Tsiolkas-Barracuda-9781760291358/">Barracuda</a> (2015), which were concerned with big themes about national and global identities. </p>
<p>Tsiolkas described both of those as “social problem” or “condition of Australia” novels. By contrast, The In-Between is more interested in the individual experience, individual relationships, and our individual influences on one another.</p>
<p>Perhaps for this reason, The In-Between is structured as a series of vignettes, or crucial scenes in the lives of its protagonists – a kind of spotlighting of moments, each set on an intimate stage.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: The In-Between – Christos Tsiolkas (Allen & Unwin)</em></p>
<hr>
<p>The primary focus throughout is on Perry and Ivan, men in their mid-fifties who embark upon a new relationship, each harbouring and attempting to overcome the hurts and resentments of the past. </p>
<p>But these dominant scenes are intercut – via Tsiolkas’s enduring interest in cinematic style – by glimpses into the lives of other characters, seen and understood only for a moment before they are gone from the narrative. </p>
<p>The effect is to show webs of interconnection between everyone in our ordinary lives, attending to the ways we cross paths, and the impacts of one person on another, whether big or small. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/christos-tsiolkas-the-blasphemous-artist-and-barracuda-61434">Christos Tsiolkas, the 'blasphemous' artist and Barracuda</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Betrayal, hurt and the news media</h2>
<p>Ultimately, these interactions or encounters emphasise the importance of kindness and tolerance. We each occupy our own world, which is naturally all-important and all-encompassing to its protagonist: the self. But those worlds do bump into one another. We must try our best, the novel suggests, to make those bumps gentle, or bear the repercussions.</p>
<p>These consequences of our own weaknesses, and those of others, resonate years after the fact, for both perpetrator and victim. Ivan recalls how his 19-year-old daughter had determined to retain her strength and composure after a sexual assault. Ivan himself must endure self-loathing at his own uncontrolled violence, towards a lover who betrayed him. </p>
<p>Both Perry and the wife of his married former lover, Gerard, must live with the memory of Gerard’s cruel and selfish taunts, which intrude on the present. </p>
<p>And a middle-aged man must suffer the guilty knowledge his brattish tantrum likely caused the heart attack that killed his doting mother. The simple lament, “But I love you”, is repeated, as if to emphasise the horror of realising the hurt a trusted other can inflict.</p>
<p>An evolution of this interest in betrayal and hurt lies in the novel’s meditations on the value of the news media, especially post-COVID. Ivan, in particular, detests the news, because “none of it was trustworthy […] every network and media service was compromised by venality and ideology”.</p>
<p>If you can’t trust a source that frames itself as objective to refrain from petty hurt and injustice, then why engage with it, he insists: “It doesn’t make me happy.” But Evelyn, a friend of a friend, argues with him: “I read to know where injustices are occurring in my world.” But there is a flaw in her logic, Perry observes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>And what knowledge of the world does The New York Times give you? […] I’m not going to hear anything about Australia in The New York Times, am I?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>His point is that large global news corporations may report on major national or international events, but they don’t tell us the news that is, arguably, most important: what’s happening in those webs of interconnection closest to us. His argument implies: how big can a community of care and of knowledge truly be?</p>
<h2>Class and the cultural cringe</h2>
<p>Such an interest in the world at large appears to be an extension of the Australian “cultural cringe”, now manifested as an insistence by some characters on Australia’s racism and conservatism. </p>
<p>For them, Australia is written off – “a racist shithole”. These are characters “in-between” class, “middle-class Australians” with a “tendency […] to endlessly deride their own country”, demonstrating a “habit” shared by “the bourgeoisie the world over”, as Perry observes. “Cosmopolitan Europeans are just as annoying in their shallow, condescending generalisations,” he continues.</p>
<p>Such generalisations pepper the narrative, and are even shared by Perry himself, who thinks, for instance, “<em>Touts les australiens sont comme des enfants</em>”. (All Australians are like children.) Meanwhile, a Greek taxi driver criticises Australians’ insularity and their reluctance to learn even a few words of his language. A guest in a restaurant (misidentifying the men’s nationality) mocks Ivan for making a loud expression of approval: “It’s morning and the Englishman is already drunk.”</p>
<p>These kinds of derision represent criticism without an ethic of care, or tolerance for the other. Instead, Tsiolkas celebrates – as he does in all of his work – those who create, tend, or share. Especially when this is constituted by manual labour: the work of the hands. </p>
<p>Stu, Ivan’s workmate, a gardener and landscaper, possesses an “odour” that “is harsh, defiant, that compound of sweat and tobacco and earth, the masculine scents simultaneously sour and stirring”. For Tsiolkas, this is always the mark of authenticity and honesty. </p>
<p>Anna, an elderly client of Ivan’s, is similarly valued: appreciated for her uncritical generosity and hospitality, for the coffee and cakes she serves, for her devotion to her family and her extension of this to all in her immediate community. </p>
<p>Anna’s difficult decision to renovate the “fertile wonder” of her garden, replacing it with landscaping that will be easier for her to tend, is an example of the broader way her ethic of care seems to be dwindling in the contemporary world. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556545/original/file-20231030-19-k525e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556545/original/file-20231030-19-k525e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556545/original/file-20231030-19-k525e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556545/original/file-20231030-19-k525e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556545/original/file-20231030-19-k525e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556545/original/file-20231030-19-k525e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556545/original/file-20231030-19-k525e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556545/original/file-20231030-19-k525e8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For Tsiolkas, the work of the hands is ‘always the mark of authenticity and honesty’.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lisa Fotios/Pexels</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another young couple for whom Ivan works represent selfishness at worst, individualism at best. The young woman never invites the landscapers inside (as Anna had done), never offers them a drink or use of the bathroom. Similarly, Ivan is forced out of his own carefully renovated home after his former lover demands his financial share in the property after their split. </p>
<p>But Ivan’s daughter’s decision to purchase a small house in a once-industrial suburb suggests the counter to this loss. Kat will invest in the home, and by extension, in the suburb – as will other young families like her own. The gardens and houses will be tended. The suburb and its community will be revived. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-concept-of-class-is-often-avoided-in-public-debate-but-its-essential-for-understanding-inequality-187777">The concept of class is often avoided in public debate, but it's essential for understanding inequality</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Choosing imperfect love</h2>
<p>Like Tsiolkas’s most recent novel, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Christos-Tsiolkas-Seven-and-a-Half-9781761065330/">7 ½</a>, The In-Between insists on the simple power of choosing love: of accepting flaws, mistakes, imperfections, and choosing love anyway. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556546/original/file-20231030-27-sbrgp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556546/original/file-20231030-27-sbrgp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/556546/original/file-20231030-27-sbrgp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556546/original/file-20231030-27-sbrgp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556546/original/file-20231030-27-sbrgp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556546/original/file-20231030-27-sbrgp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556546/original/file-20231030-27-sbrgp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/556546/original/file-20231030-27-sbrgp2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This morality was gestured towards at the end of <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Christos-Tsiolkas-Slap-9781741758207/">The Slap</a>, and perhaps too in <a href="https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-jesus-man-9780091839420">The Jesus Man</a> and <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Christos-Tsiolkas-Barracuda-9781760291358/">Barracuda</a>, all of which emphasise some kind of friendship, community or connection as antidotes to the weaknesses of fear and hostility. </p>
<p>The happiness Perry and Ivan seek throughout the novel can ultimately, it seems, only be found when we truly accept the other as they are and accept the past as it occurred – instead of living with bitterness, petty aggression, old hurts and quarrels, or masking and lying out of malice. </p>
<p>Yet, at the same time, the novel presents a sense of the arbitrariness and pointlessness of such connections. Anna’s abrupt death is one such instance - her “joyous laughter”, so “solid”, such a “guide” for Ivan, is snuffed out in a moment. </p>
<p>Another comes in the final paragraphs of the novel, as an apparently loving couple move into and then out of the narrative’s spotlight: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They are there, a faint silhouette in the black of the night, impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. There is that faint impression. Then there is the merging, the disappearing, and the belonging to the night. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is an echo of <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-a-room-of-ones-own-virginia-woolfs-feminist-call-to-arms-145398">Virginia Woolf’s</a> concept of “moments of being” here. In a sense, the reader is encouraged to recognise those intimate webs of interconnection – even as they also bear witness to life’s inevitable chaos. </p>
<p>Life is fleeting, love is fleeting, the scene suggests. But it still matters, even if life is simply a series of moments “in-between”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/213904/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Gildersleeve does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Christos Tsiolkas’s new novel is more interested in individuals and our influences on one another than on Australia’s social problems.Jessica Gildersleeve, Professor of English Literature, University of Southern QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165302023-11-06T00:08:04Z2023-11-06T00:08:04ZHow Phar Lap’s skin, bones and heart became ‘holy relics’ in colonial Australia and New Zealand<p>When the legendary <a href="https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/video/phar-lap-wins-1930-melbourne-cup">Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup in 1930</a>, the big chestnut horse didn’t just live up to his Thai name, which means “lightning”. He also brought together strands of colonial history and mythology that are only now properly visible.</p>
<p>Much worshipped in life and in death, Phar Lap has occupied a unique place in the story of Australia’s and New Zealand’s evolving national identities. The posthumous division and distribution of his corpse into “relics” – mounted hide, skeleton and heart – represented a form of what I call “<a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248984602_Colonial_Sainthood_in_Australasia">new world worship</a>”. </p>
<p>Old world religions were an important part of colonisation. But the early settler experience also saw the appearance of quasi-religious icons and symbols, one of which was the horse. Vital for settling, farming and policing the new land, they became more than mere beasts of burden.</p>
<p>Successful colonisation involved the breeding of introduced species – plants and animals, but also people. Physical strength, egalitarianism, battling against the odds and “mateship” were characteristics of the new colonial societies on both sides of the Tasman. For a while, Phar Lap embodied them all.</p>
<h2>Breeding good colonial stock</h2>
<p>The other thing Australia and New Zealand shared was a “cultural cringe” that expressed itself in a need to prove the new colonies could take on the world and win. National myths based on climate, soil, good pastures and practical skill took shape.</p>
<p>Whether it was soldiers, race horses or rugby players, the goal was to produce the best winning stock in the world. Breeding <a href="https://teara.govt.nz/en/1966/racehorses-famous-new-zealand-thoroughbreds">champion race horses</a> from overseas bloodlines fitted the narrative perfectly.</p>
<p>By the time Phar Lap was born in Timaru in New Zealand’s South Island in 1926, horse racing was well established as an important industry throughout Australia and New Zealand. Uniquely, it brought together the business of breeding and training with socialising, entertainment and gambling.</p>
<p>Antipodean racing culture mimicked British rituals and traditions, but involved a wider cross-section of society. Many factors made following the horses so appealing: genetics, condition and training, track conditions, riders and of course the field, all contributed to the interest and the odds. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/was-phar-lap-killed-by-gangsters-new-research-shows-which-conspiracies-people-believe-in-and-why-158610">Was Phar Lap killed by gangsters? New research shows which conspiracies people believe in and why</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>A big race meeting became a kind of “holy day”. The fun, excitement, dressing up and partying while trying one’s luck on the horses lives on today, nowhere more so than at the Melbourne Cup.</p>
<p>Phar Lap’s famous win by three lengths in 1930 – having survived an assassination attempt shortly beforehand – became part of the legend. Against the grim backdrop of the Great Depression, he offered escapism and even a sense of confidence that things could be better.</p>
<p>When he won the <a href="https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/phar-laps-last-race-agua-caliente">Agua Caliente Handicap in Mexico</a> it thrilled Australians and New Zealanders alike. And his death two weeks later saw shock and public mourning. The attendant <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/how-did-australasias-first-champion-racehorse-phar-lap-really-die/CXJZJIQZPEZZPQY2J3X52FSJP4/">conspiracy theories</a> – killed by gangsters, toxic feed, too much arsenic in his tonic – are seemingly as immortal as Phar Lap’s memory.</p>
<h2>Horse with a big heart</h2>
<p>Like holy relics, the horse’s hide, bones and heart were brought back from the United States and then shared between Australia and New Zealand for the faithful to witness.</p>
<p>Renowned New York taxidermists the Jonas brothers <a href="https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/14229">created the life-like mount</a> that went to the National Museum of Victoria (later the Melbourne Museum). Phar Lap’s skeleton went to Wellington’s Dominion Museum (now Te Papa).</p>
<p>But it’s <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/mystery-over-phar-lap-s-heart-only-strengthens-the-legend-20211218-p59io4.html">Phar Lap’s heart that has seen the most myth-making</a> and mystery. Preserved and displayed at the National Institute of Anatomy in Canberra (later the Australian National Museum), it is extremely large, leading to various claims that it enabled Phar Lap’s success and that it can’t be authentic. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-greatest-ever-or-will-ascot-be-a-lap-too-phar-for-black-caviar-7803">The greatest ever, or will Ascot be a Lap too Phar for Black Caviar?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Nonetheless, the symbolism of a big heart can’t be denied. And while it evokes the preserved and sacred hearts of old-world saints, it suggests forms of new-world worship are evolving too. All three museums claim their Phar Lap relics are perennially popular.</p>
<p>Phar Lap’s skeleton and hide were temporarily reunited for a special exhibition at the Melbourne Museum to celebrate the <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/audio/heart-of-australian-racing-the-melbourne-cup">150th anniversary of the Melbourne Cup in 2011</a>. But it’s ironic the remains of a horse that once united Australia and New Zealand should be so separated.</p>
<p>Then again, perhaps it’s a fitting metaphor after all, as the two former colonies find their separate way in the modern world, nearly a century on from Phar Lap’s brief but glorious reign.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216530/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Pickles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Phar Lap’s famous 1930 Melbourne Cup victory united Australia and New Zealand in celebration. Almost a century on, people still flock to visit his remains, on display at three different museums.Katie Pickles, Professor of History, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2047202023-05-09T12:23:17Z2023-05-09T12:23:17ZThe unbearable allure of cringe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524928/original/file-20230508-170642-f3uhnn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=429%2C23%2C4125%2C2914&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">When someone humiliates themselves on TV, you want to look away, but you can't.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/hard-to-look-royalty-free-image/80467171?phrase=cringing+watching+TV&adppopup=true">Designpics/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Why can’t you stop watching TV shows, movies or viral videos that make you cringe?</p>
<p>Cringe is the feeling you get when your boss cracks a joke in a meeting and no one laughs. It’s when your kid shoots a soccer ball and it misses the net by … a lot. It’s when you watch Kendall Roy from “Succession” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Z4jteTnPqI">awkwardly rap on stage</a> at a celebration honoring his dad’s 50 years at the helm of the family company.</p>
<p>This secondhand embarrassment you feel for other people, real or fictional, is physical and emotional. It’s the gut punch of a gasped “oh no!” paired with a side of “I’m glad that wasn’t me” relief.</p>
<p>Research usually sees cringe in a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476418777838">negative light</a> – as a voyeuristic emotion that allows people to gawk at the misfortune of others.</p>
<p>However, in <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/14705931231154944">a recent study</a>, we show that cringe-filled entertainment can actually help people better understand themselves and one another. This may be a big reason why people are so drawn to cringeworthy content in the first place.</p>
<h2>Studying cringe</h2>
<p>Cringe is everywhere, but it’s especially ubiquitous in movies and on TV, where it elicits winces, laughs and embarrassment in viewers.</p>
<p>Scripted cringe comedy shows such as “The Office” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” have been widely successful. These shows often feature characters encountering uncomfortable social situations and handling them with little or no grace – like when Toby, in “The Office,” awkwardly touches the knee of his crush, Pam.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s_EHezMKD7Q?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Much of the humor in ‘The Office’ is tied to cringe-inducing situations.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cringe is also a notable hallmark of reality TV, where cast members or contestants expose themselves to <a href="https://www.refinery29.com/en-au/2023/01/11251738/the-bachelors-cringe">public heartbreak</a>, <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/could-fastest-fail-ninja-warrior-045517308.html">fail spectacularly at physical challenges</a> or <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/katy-perry-traumatized-american-idol-contestant-harsh-critique-nightmares">endure humiliating critiques from judges</a>.</p>
<p>In our study, we examined the first season of Netflix’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12580168/">Indian Matchmaking</a>,” a show that follows matchmaker Sima Taparia as she guides her clients in India and the U.S. through the arranged marriage process.</p>
<p>Now in its third season, the show has received an <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/indian-matchmaking-netflix-emmy-arranged-marriage-b1884482.html">Emmy nomination</a> and inspired a spinoff called “<a href="https://www.insider.com/jewish-matchmaking-netflix-aleeza-ben-shalom-orthodox-intentional-dating-2023-5">Jewish Matchmaking</a>.”</p>
<p>In our research, we used our own experiences as data through a process called <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08989575.2017.1288892">collaborative autoethnography</a>. Specifically, we wrote and analyzed our reactions to each episode in the first season of “Indian Matchmaking.” </p>
<p>Our diary entries were full of moments of secondhand embarrassment – whether it was witnessing a first date filled with uncomfortable silences, or watching a participant show us his closet with doorknobs that have his face on them. </p>
<p>By analyzing these entries, we generated in-depth insights into what it means to cringe.</p>
<h2>Everyone bumbles through life</h2>
<p>What was surprising was that the cringeworthy scenes weren’t always accompanied by a sense of voyeurism or feelings of <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-does-it-feel-good-to-see-someone-fail-107349">schadenfreude</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, we found that binge-watching a show with a lot of cringeworthy moments can be, dare we say, therapeutic.</p>
<p>Cringe made us recognize the parts of ourselves that we saw as undesirable.</p>
<p>Watching “Indian Matchmaking,” we were reminded that, like the people on the show, we haven’t always performed well in the dating market. One participant who brought this form of cringe to life for us was Aparna. A successful lawyer living in Houston, she could come off <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31pGZerv6UE&t=70s&pp=ygUZaW5kaWFuIG1hdGNobWFraW5nIGFwYXJuYQ%3D%3D">as abrupt or rude</a> – “Oh, do we have to see our husbands all the time?”</p>
<p>Throughout the show, Taparia tries to make Aparna “compromise” – in other words, settle for men she doesn’t see as worthy of her. Taparia, as well as fans of the show, have called Aparna an <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/7/27/21340225/aparna-indian-matchmaking-villain-antihero.">unrealistic perfectionist</a>.</p>
<p>Aparna’s interactions with Taparia are fraught, and various tensions play out – modern values versus traditional ones, and what makes a woman desirable versus undesirable. There’s a sheen of sexism to this dynamic: Aparna is chastised for behavior that men on the show are excused for.</p>
<p>Having navigated similarly perfectionist tendencies in our dating lives, we saw ourselves represented in Aparna’s journey. We even would often refer to each other as “Aparna” while emailing about this study. </p>
<p>Our affinity for Aparna reminded us of watching Michael Scott from “The Office.” </p>
<p>We’ve seen him make a grand gesture to declare his love for someone too early in a relationship – and not get an “I love you” back – or argue with his partner in front of friends at a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ap0ae1Z8qGg&ab_channel=TheOffice">dinner party</a> and thought, “I’ve been there” or “I’ve seen that.”</p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Reacting-to-Reality-Television-Performance-Audience-and-Value/Skeggs-Wood/p/book/9780415693714">previous research</a> shows that audiences distance themselves from television personalities like Aparna or Michael Scott, we couldn’t help but embrace cringeworthy representations of the less-than-desirable aspects of our personalities.</p>
<p>It was, in a strange way, freeing to see other people bumble through life, and made us think about being less hard on ourselves.</p>
<h2>A way to confront our biases</h2>
<p>When we watched “Indian Matchmaking” and cringed, we sometimes wondered why, exactly, we were cringing in the first place.</p>
<p>In “Indian Matchmaking,” first dates often include discussions about personal finances and the number of kids each person wants to have. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Smiling woman sitting at a restaurant with a date." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524958/original/file-20230508-30782-8d4pq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/524958/original/file-20230508-30782-8d4pq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524958/original/file-20230508-30782-8d4pq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524958/original/file-20230508-30782-8d4pq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=342&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524958/original/file-20230508-30782-8d4pq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524958/original/file-20230508-30782-8d4pq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/524958/original/file-20230508-30782-8d4pq4.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=430&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">On ‘Indian Matchmaking,’ first dates often include topics of conversation that Westerners would avoid.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/74c/dc6/8bbc68d5aaca62cbbd96795f323fe35b60-indian-matchmaking.jpg">Netflix</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you grew up in a Western country, you might feel your stomach clench while watching these conversations. </p>
<p>But in other parts of the world, this is actually perfectly normal and expected. In India, <a href="https://eprints.ncl.ac.uk/file_store/production/215652/83FC1820-3CC7-49AD-B712-CD866A5713EC.pdf">marriage is often about more than just romantic love</a>; it is a union between two families, and this entails hashing out logistics early on. There is no playing it cool. </p>
<p>So in this way, cringe can alert viewers to their values and judgments and lead to reflections about cultural differences.</p>
<h2>Cringing at exploitation and mockery</h2>
<p>Then there’s the sort of cringe that arose when, midseason, we started to question why a show like “Indian Matchmaking” was made in the first place. </p>
<p>It’s like when you see videos of white people volunteering in low-income countries with their <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/">white savior complex</a> on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haFdtgUr52s&ab_channel=TEDxTalks">full display</a>.</p>
<p>Our reaction diary entries are riddled with questions about the way the showrunners edited – or even manipulated – the characters’ stories. </p>
<p>Some diary entries talk about cringing when a scene appears clearly staged, or when the showrunners appear to be mocking the characters, like when the show plays silly music when showing first dates.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9RrLQUN8UJg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘American Idol’ has showcased its fair share of cringe over the years – but William Hung’s performance in 2004 might win the honor of most cringeworthy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What sort of responsibility do the showrunners have toward the audience, Indian and otherwise? While the show highlights social issues such as sexism, does it ever really challenge or confront them? </p>
<p>The show has also been criticized for <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/08/netflix-indian-matchmaking-and-the-shadow-of-caste/614863/">propagating casteism</a> and portraying India as a <a href="https://www.vogue.in/content/indian-matchmakings-third-world-montages-highlight-whats-wrong-with-representation-today">backward country</a>.</p>
<p>We cringed when we realized we were complicit in these undercurrents of discrimination because we watched, laughed and professionally benefited from this show.</p>
<p>However, we ultimately felt that our allegiance is not with the showrunners, or with those in the arranged marriage process <a href="https://feminisminindia.com/2021/03/29/patriarch-arranged-marriage-india/">who perpetuate the patriarchy</a>. It was with the people in the show who remind us of ourselves.</p>
<p>Cringe is more than a fleeting feeling or fodder for yet another reality TV franchise, and maybe it’s a good thing that so many people are drawn to this sort of content. In our case, pushing past secondhand embarrassment and reflecting a bit helped us better understand ourselves and each other.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/204720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What does secondhand embarrassment say about your own anxieties and biases?Carly Drake, Assistant Professor of Marketing, North Central CollegeAnuja Anil Pradhan, Assistant Professor of Consumption, Culture and Commerce, University of Southern DenmarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1279922019-11-28T02:05:23Z2019-11-28T02:05:23ZVale Clive James – a marvellous low voice whose gracious good humour let others shine<p>Australian writer and broadcaster Clive James has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2019/nov/27/clive-james-wisecracking-literary-phenomenon-robert-mccrum">died</a> at 80 years of age after a long illness. </p>
<p>Along with Germaine Greer, Barry Humphries and Robert Hughes, he was known as part of an elite group of “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/tv/programs/brilliant-creatures-germaine-clive-barry-and-bob/">brilliant creatures</a>” that emerged out of Australia at a cultural moment of change in the mid 20th century.</p>
<p>He will be remembered for his dry wit, distinctive voice and his unlikely yet hugely appealing screen presence. </p>
<h2>Kogarah kid</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=907&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304169/original/file-20191128-176602-zhvggp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1140&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/clive-james/unreliable-memoirs/9781447275480">Pan Macmillan</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was much to admire about the proud kid from Kogarah in Sydney’s south, not least the breadth and energy of his writing. His collections about growing up, <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/clive-james/unreliable-memoirs/9781447275480">Unreliable Memoirs</a>, began in that small and apparently unremarkable spot of suburbia, continuing on into future volumes to cover young adulthood, university, the big trip to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blighty">Blighty</a>, and beyond.</p>
<p>There was always something so distinct about James’ Australianness. Although he’d been away much longer than he’d been at home, his connection to the culture of his birthplace remained. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/51184704">interview</a> with the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1980, James explained the appeal: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Australians have made me laugh all my life. I don’t mean the crude jokes. It’s a blend of two things, that marvellous low voice you keep hearing and the language. It’s a combination of strength and sexiness. It’s a good combination.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The marvellous low voice of Australia serves as an excellent euphemism for defiance and dignity. James embodied it when as young Vivian James, as he was born in 1939, renamed himself Clive and began to question, observe and ultimately argue for a different way to see the world. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/hBLKchukaL8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The difficulty of leaving Australia was more the fear of returning and finding the country you left had left you behind, said James in 1983.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A hugely prolific writer who continued to publish books, essays, columns, <a href="https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-204/feature-peter-kirkpatrick-2/">poems</a> and opinions until the end (including a forthcoming anthology The Fire of Joy to be released next year), one of his greatest strengths was finding the beauty in television.</p>
<h2>Watching with love and nuance</h2>
<p>As the television critic for The Observer from 1972 to 1982, he took what many then (and still now) consider to be the lowest form of public entertainment and gave it a good seeing to. </p>
<p>Following the academic and commentator Raymond Williams, who James <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Clive-James-Television-ebook/dp/B06WW83B54">called</a> “the most responsible of television critics”, he reviewed everything from drama to talent and talk shows, always with his steady “low voice” that never quite let on what he loved and loathed. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304175/original/file-20191128-176593-vrrlch.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=602&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Margarita Pracatan tweeted a heartfelt tribute to James, with whom she shared the screen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Margarita Pracatan/Twitter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In his 1972 review of the BBC’s broadcast of Miss World called Liberating Miss World, James noted that the pageant participants “find host [Michael Aspel] wonderful because they’ve been told to” – leaving just enough ambiguity to make us wonder who the real butt of the competition was. He continued to play with the concept of power and influence as part of his television work throughout his life.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m2H5sZlSkbI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Clive James on Television vowed not to do too much deep cultural analysis - but sometimes French adverts with topless women demanded wry interrogation.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Soon James left the page to take on the screen directly, and his own show <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0224848/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Clive James on Television</a> set a stage for critic-turned-presenter that produced a wonderful legacy. As Black Mirror and Screen Wipe writer Charlie Brooker <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jun/24/thank-god-for-clive-james">wrote</a> “Thank God for Clive James”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>He has a way of gliding through sentences, effortlessly ironing a series of complex points into a single easily-navigable line, illuminating here and cogitating there, before leading you face-first into an unexpected punchline that makes your brain yelp with delight.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The power of a commentator like James putting his money where his mouth (or pen) was inspired many. It’s a style that has also given us wonders like <a href="https://sarahmillican.co.uk/">Sarah Millican</a> and Working Dog’s <a href="https://10play.com.au/have-you-been-paying-attention">Have You Been Paying Attention</a>. </p>
<h2>No showpony</h2>
<p>James’ ease with superstar guests allowed them room to shine, while also asking questions just far enough off the press release to resonate with the viewer at home.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TkxC2bGNlzI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">When Clive sat down with Billy Connolly and David Attenborough hilarity ensued as the comedian confessed his love of the hairy-nosed wombat.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What made James appealing on screen was his apparent unsuitedness to it. He didn’t have the devastating visual appeal of some of the greats – in fact he was perhaps as far away as possible from the Arnold Schwarzenegger style “condom full of walnuts” that screen seems to adore. Of course though, words were all he needed.</p>
<p>Behind a desk, championing the otherwise overlooked or unchallenged, he drew our attention to the absurdity of apparently small scale story telling with a genuine energy and charm. It was just enough to make your ears prick up, but subtle enough to let the viewer also come to their own conclusions. </p>
<p>Before today’s internet age, when culture from almost every corner of the globe is available to us for us to consume and critique, he championed the Japanese game show Endurance. In doing so, he taught us about the comic tension between content as guilty pleasure or the beginning of the end. He seemed to say: You, dear remote control holder, can decide. More “low voice” to draw us in.</p>
<p>The wonderful performer who closed the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144708/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">The Clive James Show</a> each week, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarita_Pracatan">Margarita Pracatan</a>, left a final note for James on <a href="https://twitter.com/PracatanBaby/status/1199728323179495425">Twitter today</a>, “Thank you, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/CliveJames?src=hashtag_click">#CliveJames</a> from the bottom of my heart. You live forever with us”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8hpkP2mb4SA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Start spreading the news, I’m leaving today.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127992/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Giuffre does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Clive James will be remembered for his dry wit, distinctive voice and his unlikely yet hugely appealing screen presence.Liz Giuffre, Senior Lecturer in Communication, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1271102019-11-19T19:20:46Z2019-11-19T19:20:46ZOld white men dominate school English booklists. It’s time more Australian schools taught Australian books<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302338/original/file-20191119-169386-18vw476.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shakespeare's plays are still some of the most studied texts in school English.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">from shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent weeks, Australian universities’ commitment to teaching Australian literature has come under scrutiny. This came amid revelations Sydney University has withdrawn funding from its Chair of Australian Literature – the nation’s first. </p>
<p>Later news of the <a href="https://www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2019/11/08/142160/the-university-of-western-australia-to-close-uwa-publishing/">possible closure of UWA Publishing</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/31/australian-literature-in-universities-is-under-threat-but-cultural-cringe-isnt-the-reason-why">compounded anxiety</a> about the future of Australian literary studies. An <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/cultural-cringe-is-creeping-back/news-story/bf0bfbf9c8edd0e4b1c6ac75008865b7">article in The Australian newspaper</a> noted there is no local university in which an undergraduate student can specialise in Australian literature.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-open-access-shift-at-uwa-publishing-is-an-experiment-doomed-to-fail-126684">The open access shift at UWA Publishing is an experiment doomed to fail</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The concern goes beyond tertiary studies. We <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=324169191985626;res=IELAPA">conducted a project</a> exploring secondary school teachers’ engagement with Australian texts. We found Australian books are not consistently taught in classrooms and, when they are, they more often than not marginalise female, refugee and Indigenous authors. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=859&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302339/original/file-20191119-169352-17829c6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1080&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A professor famously said he would teach the novel Kangaroo, in the absence of appropriate texts by Australian authors.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kangaroo_(novel)">Wikimedia commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The demographic of Australian classrooms has changed significantly in the past fifty years. But the texts studied in English have <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/books/rr-9781925495577.html">remained remarkably stable</a>. </p>
<p>In our multi-cultural society, where compulsory schooling is intended to help develop critically informed and empathetic citizens, this situation requires serious attention.</p>
<h2>Why teachers don’t teach Aussie books</h2>
<p>Studying English and literature in settler societies was <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1358684X.2017.1351228">historically intended</a> to support students to value <a href="https://eprints.qut.edu.au/55220/">“Englishness”</a>. As a result, Australian literature, if it was acknowledged at all, was <a href="https://publishing.monash.edu/books/rr-9781925495577.html">systematically marginalised</a> and maligned in the 19th and early 20th centuries. </p>
<p>In the 1940s – in a precursor to what we now call the “<a href="https://meanjin.com.au/essays/a-a-phillips-and-the-icultural-cringei-creating-an-iaustralian-traditioni/">cultural cringe</a>” – an English professor <a href="https://www.textpublishing.com.au/blog/a-classic-is-a-terrible-thing-to-waste">famously renounced</a> Australian literature. He said that, in the absence of appropriate books by Australians, he would lecture on DH Lawrence’s novel, <em>Kangaroo</em>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-has-no-culture-changing-the-mindset-of-the-cringe-85995">'Australia has no culture': changing the mindset of the cringe</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Australia’s first national curriculum, in 2008, attempted to respond to this enduring imperial literary legacy. It <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/cross-curriculum-priorities/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-histories-and-cultures/">mandated teaching Australian literature</a>, placing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literature at the heart of this commitment. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=742&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302340/original/file-20191119-169340-13owohq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=932&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harper Lee is one of two female authors on the list of the top 15 books taught by English teachers we compiled from our national survey.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird">Wikimedia commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Most states and territories have mandated text lists for school senior years, which generally include titles by Indigenous authors. But <a href="https://www.vate.org.au/news/report-trends-senior-english-text-lists">recent research</a> in Victoria has shown school uptake of these texts is limited.</p>
<p>Our <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=324169191985626;res=IELAPA">research shows</a> teachers are often reluctant to select books by Australian authors. Reasons for this include a limited knowledge of diverse Australian texts, often due to a lack of exposure to Australian literature at school and university.</p>
<p>There are fewer teaching resources for Australian literature too and teachers are concerned about inaccurately representing the stories of Indigenous Australians. </p>
<p>Some teachers we spoke to also raised questions about the quality of Australian literature, as compared with more established canonical texts. One teacher said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While I appreciate that it is important to have Australian literature in the curriculum […] I find that Australian texts are often very similar and this limits the number of themes and ideas the students are exposed to over the course of their education.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We also conducted a national survey of more than 700 English teachers, asking them what books they taught in class. The following top 15 texts were most referenced:</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=671&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/302351/original/file-20191119-12514-1i70zxr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=844&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>This should not be seen as a definitive list of texts most used in Australian classrooms. But it does offer insight into the relative status of Australian literature in the curriculum. </p>
<p>Most works on this list are written in the past, by male British or American writers. Most of these have formed part of the school literary canon for generations. There are only two texts by women, Hinton and Lee, and no texts by Australian women, migrant Australians or Aboriginal writers.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/diversity-the-stella-count-and-the-whiteness-of-australian-publishing-69976">Diversity, the Stella Count and the whiteness of Australian publishing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The only texts by Australians cited here are Marsden’s 1990s dystopian invasion series and Silvey’s 2009 coming of age novel. </p>
<h2>How do we change it?</h2>
<p>Our research showed teachers need more time, knowledge, resources and confidence to include more Australian literature in the classroom. This is not surprising given teachers we <a href="https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=324169191985626;res=IELAPA">surveyed and interviewed</a> often completed both secondary and tertiary studies in English without significant experiences of Australian literature. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242853/original/file-20181030-76411-5towti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1153&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Coleman’s speculative fiction novel has been studied by our teacher researchers.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In response, colleagues and I have partnered with the <a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/">Stella Prize</a> (a literary award for Australian women writers) to develop the <a href="http://teacher-researchers.org/">teacher-researchers project</a>. </p>
<p>Teachers select a text from the Stella long-list. They then work intensively with the project team – which includes teacher-educators and Australian literary studies experts – and university archives or other cultural collections, to develop resources to teach their chosen texts that can be shared. </p>
<p>Texts in this pilot project have included <em><a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/prize/2015-prize/heat-and-light/">Heat and Light</a></em> by Ellen Van Neervan, <em><a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/prize/2018-prize/terra-nullius/">Terra Nullius</a></em> by Claire G. Coleman and <a href="https://thestellaprize.com.au/readup/books/the-hate-race/"><em>The Hate Race</em></a> by Maxine Beneba Clarke.</p>
<p>This project will expand the literary knowledge and experiences of teachers, students and school communities involved. But a concerted, bipartisan and enduring commitment to resourcing scholarship and teaching of Australian writing across universities and schools is imperative. </p>
<p>If we are to ensure all students experience Australian stories from the past and the present, Australian writing, in all its rich diversity, must be a central part of a literary education.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127110/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Larissa McLean Davies receives funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Program) for Investigating Literary Knowledge in the Making of English Teachers. The Teaching Australia project was funded by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund. Teacher-Researchers is funded by the Melbourne Graduate School of Education - University of Melbourne. </span></em></p>We compiled a list of the 15 most commonly cited books taught by English teachers we surveyed. It contains only two Australian writers, neither of which are Indigenous.Larissa McLean Davies, Associate Professor Language and Literacy Education, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/330692014-10-16T01:06:15Z2014-10-16T01:06:15ZThe Book Club, Flanagan and our endemic cultural cringe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/61904/original/3sg832ff-1413417982.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We don't seem to be able to shake our cultural status anxiety.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Facundo Arrizabalaga</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Writing in the Bulletin in January 1899, Henry Lawson complained about the difficulties of making a living as a writer. In this article he offered the emerging author a piece of unvarnished advice:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[S]tudy elementary anatomy, especially as it applies to the cranium, and then shoot himself carefully with the aid of a looking-glass.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Lawson was indigent in London at the time. He would return to remain indigent in Sydney, ending up frail, haunted, mentally and physically ill until his death in 1922. He is buried in Sydney’s Waverley Cemetery in a grave that remains modest to this day, its location indicated by a rusty hand-painted sign.</p>
<p>It could be said that many of Lawson’s troubles were of his own making, and that individuals in Australia – commencing with his poet, activist and editor mother Louisa Lawson, who published his first book – found ways to support his career.</p>
<p>But one of Lawson’s enemies (and to him there were many) was Australian culture itself, unwilling to accept that the local product could be of any value. </p>
<p>In this Lawson was not alone and many authors suffered neglect or disdain simply because they were Australians writing about Australian themes. This was despite the efforts of critics and authors such as Nettie and Vance Palmer, who devoted themselves to nurturing Australian books and authors. Another was critic <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._A._Phillips">A.A. Phillips</a> who, back in 1950 in an essay in Meanjin, invented the term “cultural cringe”.</p>
<p>In the six decades since, debate about the cultural cringe has raged intermittently but has never been extinguished. It’s one of those issues critics and commentators know will never go away, like whooping cough or chicken pox: despite society’s best efforts, it remains endemic with fiery outbreaks from time to time.</p>
<p>In part this cultural cringe as far as literature is concerned is the result of long years of overseas publishers owning the territory, to the extent that in the 1950s authors such as <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cusack-ellen-dymphna-nell-12385">Dymphna Cusack </a> fought for their right to earn more than the “colonial” royalty rate (which was then half of the normal one) for the privilege of having their books sold in their own country.</p>
<p>Apart from the significant presence of Angus and Robertson, a local literary publishing industry did not begin to develop until well after the second world war. And even then the London-New York publishing cartel decided that Australia as a former colony would not get to control any of the global territory.</p>
<p>Australian literature has thus often been handicapped. That is some of the context for why we still feel the need to debate its value. And why Australian books are so often dismissed or overlooked.</p>
<p>Were Henry Lawson writing today it is unlikely his books would ever feature on the ABC television program <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/">The Book Club</a>. Possibly someone would wave a copy of While the Billy Boils dismissively and wonder if he was ever going to transcend the limitations of his subject matter and write about something other than the bush.</p>
<p>In 2014, when yet another Australian author – Richard Flanagan – has <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-booker-prize-record-suggests-others-will-come-in-flanagans-wake-33025">won the Man Booker Prize</a>, it seems almost ridiculous to be arguing, yet again, for the place of our own literature in our own culture. But here is another another flare-up of the cultural cringe virus.</p>
<p>It is understandable that Martin Shaw, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-books-blog/2014/oct/13/the-abcs-the-book-club-a-case-of-cultural-cringe-writ-large">writing in the Guardian about The Book Club</a>, should ask the questions he did of this show. Why does the country’s only free-to-air book program, run by the national broadcaster, essentially ignore the local product? </p>
<p>This year one Australian book has been featured, Paddy Reilly’s The Wonders, dismissed by one panellist as “terrible” (elsewhere, it has received positive reviews).</p>
<p>While it’s not the brief of the book review to promote a particular book or author, surely it’s in the interests of everyone involved in the literary business to engage deeply and broadly with the books it produces. In Paris or New York do academics, literary journalists and critics ignore their own literature, or worse: debate its merits as opposed to overseas literature?</p>
<p>It is unimaginable that Manhattan’s version of The Book Club features a title by Christina Stead as its weekly classic, then Georgia Blain and Steven Carroll as its recent authors, to end up with someone waving a copy of local author Lorrie Moore’s latest collection and saying it’s terrible, maybe complaining about her overuse of exclamation marks.</p>
<p>I ask all my new creative writing students this: what Australian title are you reading or have recently read? If their answer is none, I point out the symbiosis of the relationship, and what to me is very obvious: if they as Australians want to be authors – published and read and even taken seriously – they need to do the same to existing authors.</p>
<p>I suspect if Henry Lawson was watching The Book Club he’d be reaching out for that looking glass and a gun.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33069/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>In the 1990s Debra Adelaide received funding from the Literature Board of the Australia Council, and recently from Copyright Agency.</span></em></p>Writing in the Bulletin in January 1899, Henry Lawson complained about the difficulties of making a living as a writer. In this article he offered the emerging author a piece of unvarnished advice: [S]tudy…Debra Adelaide, Associate Professor, Creative Practices Group, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209242013-12-04T19:43:12Z2013-12-04T19:43:12ZOnly snobs would call Australia a ‘country with no culture’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36850/original/k29q8xnq-1386115831.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C161%2C3480%2C2229&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A long line of people, especially from England, have run down Australian culture.</span> </figcaption></figure><p>“A country with no culture”. That <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/australia-has-no-culture-gower-hits-out-at-feral-cricket-fans-20130605-2noyq.html">sledge</a> against Australia at the start of June won headlines for former England cricket captain <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gower">David Gower</a>. Gower decried the amount of verbal abuse from Australian cricket crowds: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The trouble is, if they’ve had ten cans of lager, their ability to come up with something akin to Oscar Wilde diminishes. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Australia is far from alone in having some boorish sports fans. And you can well ask whether crowds in other countries would meet the Oscar Wilde test. Indeed, the prodigious drinker Wilde himself was not always on song (and probably not an Earnest cricket fan either).</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36847/original/5nq3dv73-1386115450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36847/original/5nq3dv73-1386115450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36847/original/5nq3dv73-1386115450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36847/original/5nq3dv73-1386115450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36847/original/5nq3dv73-1386115450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=803&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36847/original/5nq3dv73-1386115450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36847/original/5nq3dv73-1386115450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36847/original/5nq3dv73-1386115450.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1009&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Yabba Statue at the SCG.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Any Wildean cricket quips could well pale compared with Sydney’s <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gascoigne-stephen-harold-6286">Yabba</a> (Stephen Gascoigne), the redoubtable Sydney Cricket Ground fan in the 1920s and 1930s. Slow batting one day was met with, “I wish you were a statue and I were a pigeon”. </p>
<p>Another English star, <a href="http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/14225.html">Jack Hobbs</a>, who died in 1963, took a rather different tack from Gower. On his last appearance in Sydney, Hobbs walked around the ground to find and shake hands with Yabba.</p>
<p>Does any other country claim “the world’s greatest barracker”? Or have <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gascoigne-stephen-harold-6286">an entry</a> in its national Dictionary of Biography for a witty heckler? </p>
<p>Gower joins a long line, especially from England, who have run down Australian culture. </p>
<p>As my <a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-getting-culture-continued-19604">previous article</a> argued, those critics have very little evidence to back them up. On most measures of cultural attendance and involvement, Australia has similar, if not slightly better, stats than the UK, or other countries.</p>
<p>So why have so many persisted with myths such as “country with no culture”?</p>
<p>The agendas of the commentators are the key. Gower admitted that his comments “would almost be sledging” – part of the normal scene-setting for a sporting tussle. The aim is to unsettle opponents. Like a lot of messages, the key thing is impact, and the quality of the evidence is almost irrelevant. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36846/original/7t98zzzc-1386115443.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36846/original/7t98zzzc-1386115443.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36846/original/7t98zzzc-1386115443.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36846/original/7t98zzzc-1386115443.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36846/original/7t98zzzc-1386115443.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36846/original/7t98zzzc-1386115443.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36846/original/7t98zzzc-1386115443.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36846/original/7t98zzzc-1386115443.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=552&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.ignaciofoto.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Given England’s success in the mid-year Ashes Tests, Gower might think he had an effective impact.</p>
<p>Going back in time, other commentators had similarly clear agendas. In 1893, British critic John Fortescue wrote an influential article on The Influence of Climate on Race. He <a href="http://www.penguin.com.au/products/9780143002666/black-kettle-full-moon-daily-life-vanished-australia">included gems</a> such as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>in summer even Sydney people showed the “limp parboiled appearance” sometimes visible in “degenerate whites” in the West Indies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fortescue and his ilk needed little evidence to justify their imperial snobbishness. It was “obvious” that the colonials would never amount to much. And when Australians turned out to be rather good at sport and social democracy, there had to be other measures that showed us clearly inferior. </p>
<p>Especially for conservative groups in England that opposed radical nonsense such as votes for women and reasonable wage levels.</p>
<h2>Dear mother</h2>
<p>For much of the 20th century, some Australians kept strong hankerings for the “mother country”. Many accompanied that with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/cultural-cringe-and-jamie-private-school-girl-20796">“cultural cringe”</a>, seeing Australian culture as always second-rate. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36916/original/bdmqx9yt-1386136511.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36916/original/bdmqx9yt-1386136511.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36916/original/bdmqx9yt-1386136511.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36916/original/bdmqx9yt-1386136511.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36916/original/bdmqx9yt-1386136511.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36916/original/bdmqx9yt-1386136511.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36916/original/bdmqx9yt-1386136511.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36916/original/bdmqx9yt-1386136511.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">supercake</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But it’s a mistake to see this as a universal attitude. There is never just one monolithic national culture. And the diversity gives a range of evidence for commentators to pick and choose. </p>
<p>Take Australia in the early years of last century. There was plenty for critics to lambast. Australia had a flourishing prohibition movement, with wowsers sceptical of most artistic efforts, especially if they took place on sacrosanct Sundays. </p>
<p>The country also had some of the most active censors around, banning some 5,000 books that might “offend morality or good order”. </p>
<p>A Bulletin journalist in the 1930s found that access to the list of books banned was itself restricted! </p>
<p>But, at the same time, we had a rebellious larrikin culture. It supported a remarkable piss-taking cartoon milieu which nurtured some of the world’s most prominent cartoonists. </p>
<p>Sydney’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bulletin">Bulletin</a> hosted cartoonist <a href="http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/artists/davidlow/biography">David Low</a> before he headed to the UK in 1919. Pat Oliphant [sharpened his pen](http://www.universaluclick.com/editorial/cartoons/patoliphant](http://www.universaluclick.com/editorial/cartoons/patoliphant ) at the Adelaide Advertiser before moving to the United States in 1964. </p>
<p>Views and agendas similarly differed in the Australian <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article302001?opendocument&tabname=Summary&prodno=1301.0&issue=2001&num=&view=">arts renaissance</a> in the 1970s and 1980s. Faced with <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068173/">The Adventures of Barry MacKenzie</a> (1972), starring Barry Crocker as an Australian yobbo who travels to the UK, “sophisticated” critics decried the uncouth and brash. Others celebrated breaths of fresh air disrupting stuffy conservatism.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36849/original/x6xxsmb7-1386115573.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36849/original/x6xxsmb7-1386115573.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36849/original/x6xxsmb7-1386115573.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36849/original/x6xxsmb7-1386115573.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36849/original/x6xxsmb7-1386115573.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36849/original/x6xxsmb7-1386115573.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36849/original/x6xxsmb7-1386115573.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36849/original/x6xxsmb7-1386115573.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Gerry Balding</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Various agendas still run today. Gower’s sledge found some ready listeners in the UK, especially those who still like to look down imperial stiff upper lips, bemoaning Australian (and any other) culture. </p>
<p>Indeed, over the years that audience has provided a lucrative market in London for some prominent Australian expats. </p>
<p>Other markets also give strong agendas. Arts and culture – and especially major cultural institutions – can be expensive. In recent years, all Australian governments have allocated significant funds for arts and culture – and also for sport. The sports connection gives an analogy.</p>
<h2>Shortfalls and windfalls</h2>
<p>Sports bodies lobbying for government funds have been most successful when they can <a href="http://www.canberratimes.com.au/sport/olympic-boss-reveals-top-five-ambition-for-rio-20131023-2w0v8.html">emphasise shortfalls</a> in international competition. </p>
<p>Is there a similar incentive to downplay our achievements in the arts as well? Perhaps funding applications will be more successful if we can point to problems? Or more generally convince people that Australian cultural achievements lag behind others? And build on media interest which seems to focus more on problems rather than successes?</p>
<p>When Julian Meyrick <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-australia-get-culture-18327">questioned</a> Australians “getting” culture on The Conversation, he noted some Australian successes in developing arts policies. Rather than dwelling on supposed shortcomings, maybe it’s the goals of those policies we should focus on.</p>
<p>More artistic and cultural achievement can indeed be encouraged. Whether or not we’re currently all in the gutter, some of us can look at the stars.</p>
<p>Hmm. Reminds me of something someone once said.</p>
<p><br>
<strong>Further reading:</strong><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/does-australia-get-culture-18327">Does Australia ‘get’ culture?</a><br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australians-getting-culture-continued-19604">Australians ‘getting’ culture – continued</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/20924/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Ward has completed several consulting projects for arts organisations. None would benefit financially from the material in this article.</span></em></p>“A country with no culture”. That sledge against Australia at the start of June won headlines for former England cricket captain David Gower. Gower decried the amount of verbal abuse from Australian cricket…Tony Ward, Fellow in Historical Studies, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210102013-12-03T19:34:24Z2013-12-03T19:34:24ZHow to read Australia’s literary obsession with the North Atlantic<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36593/original/f7xh49kh-1385947545.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What time is it in Europe? Why are we still looking to the north Atlantic for cultural role models?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">leoplus</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last weekend columnist and broadcaster Phillip Adams published <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/cocacolonial-cringe/story-e6frg7fx-1226771372196?sv=b837ceaccb42b70d50a873e06f678838">a piece</a> in The Australian lamenting what he called the “coca-colonial cringe”: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Like you I measure my life with American movies, music and literature. But it’s a pity about ours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, not least because of my recent involvement in a literary world that seems obsessed with North Atlantic figures, often to the detriment of the local. When the very successful Sydney Opera House <a href="http://ideas.sydneyoperahouse.com/festival-of-dangerous-ideas/">Festival of Dangerous Ideas</a> presented a <a href="http://wheelercentre.com/events/program/the-pop-up-festival-of-dangerous-ideas/">pop-up version</a> of itself in Melbourne it featured five speakers – all from the United States.</p>
<p>In this they were following the lead of Q&A’s <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3868791.htm">broadcast</a> from the Festival, which at least included one Australian — Germaine Greer.</p>
<p>Equally the <a href="http://www.mwf.com.au/2013/?name=Home-content">Melbourne Writers Festival</a> has for the past two years centred the spotlight on overseas, but specifically North-Atlantic, writers. </p>
<p>Thus their most recent post-festival blurb proclaims: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have captured some of our favourite Festival events on film! Watch our popular keynote addresses delivered by <a href="http://melbournewritersfestival.cmail1.com/t/r-l-ndijhkl-trpijhrb-a/">Boris Johnson</a>, <a href="http://melbournewritersfestival.cmail1.com/t/r-l-ndijhkl-trpijhrb-f/">Tavi Gevinson</a>, and <a href="http://melbournewritersfestival.cmail1.com/t/r-l-ndijhkl-trpijhrb-z/">Anne Summers</a>. See international guests <a href="http://melbournewritersfestival.cmail1.com/t/r-l-ndijhkl-trpijhrb-v/">Ophira Eisenberg</a>, <a href="http://melbournewritersfestival.cmail1.com/t/r-l-ndijhkl-trpijhrb-e/">Doug Johnstone</a> and <a href="http://melbournewritersfestival.cmail1.com/t/r-l-ndijhkl-trpijhrb-s/">Laurent Binet</a> as well as the esteemed literary team from the London review of Books including <a href="http://melbournewritersfestival.cmail1.com/t/r-l-ndijhkl-trpijhrb-g/">Colm Tóibín</a> and <a href="http://melbournewritersfestival.cmail1.com/t/r-l-ndijhkl-trpijhrb-w/">Andrew O'Hagan</a>. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Other than Anne Summers everyone named lives and works in the US and the UK.</p>
<p>I should note that I appeared at both of these festivals and was treated with great courtesy; if this article sounds like sour grapes it is not written out of a sense of exclusion.</p>
<h2>A literary cultural cringe?</h2>
<p>Several generations ago, Australians felt we had to go overseas to “make it”, and it appears this attitude is back – though our cultural festivals are now far more adventurous in seeking performers from across the world. But in the literary world there remains an ongoing cultural cringe, combined with a remarkable disinterest in what ideas and writings might be happening outside the Anglosphere, a term popular with the current prime minister.</p>
<p>Of course we should encourage and welcome the interchange of ideas with overseas writers. But the key here is “interchange”, not celebrity worship. </p>
<p>Australia remains the place where established celebrities from the northern hemisphere migrate to luxuriate in refound fame, unless, like Frank Sinatra, they offend the local press. (<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/04/21/1019233294418.html">When Sinatra visited Australia in 1974</a> he attacked local journalists, which led to a union ban on his tour.)</p>
<p>This assumption is widely shared in our universities, where graduate students in humanities and social sciences are often far more versed in the latest North Atlantic fashion — sometimes shaped by the Iron Triangle of New York, Paris and London — than in local theorists. </p>
<p>Even graduate students writing about specifically Australian topics feel the need to frame their analyses in terms almost entirely derived from overseas – without considering the extent to which theory is always a product of particular times and places, and that there may be far more relevant local sources.</p>
<h2>The local and the global</h2>
<p>How we balance the local as against the international is always a hard choice for a small English-speaking country. But when our weekend newspapers republish overseas reviews of books published in London and New York they are implicitly cutting out both Australian books and Australian critics.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36594/original/p6r3ss3x-1385948304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/36594/original/p6r3ss3x-1385948304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36594/original/p6r3ss3x-1385948304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36594/original/p6r3ss3x-1385948304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36594/original/p6r3ss3x-1385948304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36594/original/p6r3ss3x-1385948304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/36594/original/p6r3ss3x-1385948304.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">agnesgtr</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is an ongoing dilemma for a relatively small nation that shares a language and therefore a culture with the most powerful nation on Earth, and where its citizens grow up on a diet as much made up of American, and to some extent British, cultural produce as their own. </p>
<p>This makes us in some ways more cosmopolitan, but it can reinforce our feeling that we are second-rate, unable to recognise our own achievements because we measure them against the imagined glories of a North-Atlantic paradise.</p>
<p>This is not an argument for a chauvinistic nationalism, but rather for a recognition that what is written and published and discussed in Australia demands intelligent discussion that the constant focus on overseas celebrities overshadows. </p>
<p>Why can our festivals and book reviewers not think more imaginatively of dialogue, of encouraging established overseas writers to read and comment upon our books, rather than assuming it is our role to act as the grateful recipients of overseas wisdom?</p>
<h2>Beyond New York and London</h2>
<p>And when we look overseas why is it always to New York and London?</p>
<p>There is a flourishing literary and intellectual culture in many parts of the world that remains uncharted territory here in Australia. I once had the privilege of taking part in an extraordinary discussion of sex and globalisation with some leading Mexican intellectuals, at a level that frankly made the recent discussions at both Sydney and Melbourne festival seem puerile. </p>
<p>Sociologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/raewyn-connell-18926/profile_bio">Raewyn Connell</a> is one of the few Australians who has tried to reorient our attention to southern thinkers; perhaps her book, <a href="http://www.allenandunwin.com/default.aspx?page=305&book=9781741753578">Southern Theory</a>, could be compulsory holiday reading for 2014 festival directors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21010/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dennis Altman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Last weekend columnist and broadcaster Phillip Adams published a piece in The Australian lamenting what he called the “coca-colonial cringe”: Like you I measure my life with American movies, music and…Dennis Altman, Professorial Fellow in Human Security, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.