True Blue On Being Australian Analysis

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True Blue? On Being Australian "Australia needs sudden shocks of reorientation within its society that will divorce it from the largely irrelevant problems of the British, make it possible to speed necessary changes and to develop some new sense of identity, some public feeling of being a people who can be described - even if incorrectly - as such-and-such a kind of nation, and act at times as if it were so. Australians are anonymous, featureless, nothing-men. This modest anonymity reveals itself in the argument that Australia does not run to the kind of person we could turn into a president."Donald Horne - 1964 Australia is a country filled with so much multiculturalism that it is often hard to distinguish what qualities and values…show more content…
It is based on the stereotypes that the media has produced, that has pretty much remained unchanged since the early 20th century. We are settlers and tamers of the land, ex-convicts who were thrust into the wilderness. We are larrikins and laid-back. We do not care. These identities, although commonly portrayed, are for the majority of the population, incorrect. Goldsworthy has really let us all see into the international view of Australia, with a particularly strong and memorable quote from Crocodile Dundee “That’s not a knife. THIS is a knife.” being one of the most memorable ‘Aussie’ quotes around and one which many different foreign cultures affiliate us with as True Blue? On being Australian lets us see. But what percentage of Australian citizens do you know that carry a knife? Surely we are a more civilised race than…show more content…
For example, even though individuals may want to be defined by their own individual actions, they tend to be defined by the actions of those who conform to group identities. Internationally, Australians tend to be defined by Boganism because Bogan’s are among the few people who want to define themselves as Australian. Just as a molehill is a king on a flat landscape, in the absence of alternative Australian identities, the Bogan’s have a monopoly on what it means to be an Australian. In short, social policy has been written on the basis that the Australian identity exists and Bogan’s simply filled the empty void. They might only comprise 10% of the population, but they perhaps comprise 90% of the imagery used to describe the Australian stereotype. True Blue? On being Australians shows that the larrikin image that Australia has been stuck with since the days of the convicts is still alive and well with not only men but women as well proudly calling themselves Bogan. There are definitely some positive attributes in the Bogan identity, but there are also some limitations. These limitations affect how other Australians are viewed when they try to engage with the international community. They also affect the motivations of migrants to engage with their new homeland. The challenge for Australia is to create a national identity that is adaptable to change, inclusive of new

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