<< 'LINERS LAMBERTED ~ MAIN ~ BE NICE TO FIREBRANDS >>
TRIPLE CRINGE
The Sydney Morning Herald is on a cringe binge:
1: David Dale believes “the cultural cringe is making a comeback.”
2: Julietta Jameson laments the return of the cultural cringe.
3: And Andrew West blames “cringe culture” on John Howard. Of course. (By the way, Andrew, while you’re slamming Howard for Big Brother’s excesses, you might be interested to learn that Queensland’s Labor government helps fund the program.)
UPDATE. Margo’s Maid: “I can’t help feeling that foreign commentators do a much better job at writing about their inferiority complexes.”
(Screengrab via Reckers)
I can’t help feeling that foreign commentators do a much better job at writing about their inferiority complexes.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 01 07 at 02:39 AM • permalinkIt’s like the editor gives the topic of the day to his scribes, like school children given their assignment topic from the teacher. Andrew West muddles up the topic from yesterday, Johhny Winston Howard, with cultural cringe and writes about both. Yes, the lunatics are still running the asylum at Fairfax.
Did anyone read that deplorable piece in the sports section of SMH yesterday by Andrew Stevenson? It had nothing to do with cricket (main reason I clicked there), and I think it would’ve been over the top in the opinion section. Of course, it was about Howard. Or John Winston Howard as he is often called the SMH. I tried to find the article today because I had a suspicion it would be moved or removed. Couldn’t find it. Was it deleted?
Combine the above mentioned cringe pieces on that list with Lisa Pryor’s one condemning Aussie patriotism as racist, Kunthea Ker’s (unsolicited?) letter yesterday of her racist New Year’s Eve, along with the SMH’s self-imposed editorial censorship of ethnic crime, and you start to get the odour of an agenda.
Perhaps certain social advocates have become concerned at the widening disillusionment in multiculturalism and its destructive consequences, and have hit the phones to rouse the faithful. You never have to scratch too deep to find leftoid media manipulation is an organised tactic.
#7
In case Adele needs a hand with this article, here is one from 2004 and one from 2006 that are near identical and should be good for another cut and paste.
She may need a first paragraph to make it a bit more topical of course.
My suggestion:
The visit of Paris Hilton to Bondi has raised fears that the cultural cringe is making a comeback. But did it ever go away?
I asked some students and they think the cultural cringe probably is making a comeback because of hostile fathers in the Family Court. John Howard of the Howard Government is also known to be a father, and the students say, they do not want to live with him, but fear they may be forced to by the Family Court.
But what to tell my French friends who visit Australia?...
Just cut and paste away from their, Adele.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 01 07 at 03:27 AM • permalinkChannel Seven gave its main Australian drama, All Saints, the best possible support by putting it on straight after the nation’s favourite program, Dancing With The Stars, but half a million dancing fans switched off immediately to avoid having to sit through a local story. We preferred to receive our medical advice with an American accent, via House and Grey’s Anatomy.
David Dale is a real winner. The ONLY reason I prefer House to All Saints is because of the accent.
Bloody twit.
Maybe time to get the Mythbusters in, an Australian produced TV show for Discovery Channel (a favourite of mine) to see if there really is a cultural cringe. If we’re talking about TV, I think we can give viewers a bit more credit than they receive. They change channnel or turn off if they see crap.
Funny how patriotism is bad when it means standing up for Australian values vis a vis Islamic “firebrands,” but good when it means standing up for Australian production values vis a vis American ones.
Posted by arrowhead ripper on 2007 01 07 at 05:15 AM • permalink#10 Nic, don’t you start in on the presbies again. You know they’ll start writing letters to the editor and whining at their arvo teas.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 01 07 at 05:23 AM • permalink#12. I watch House as opposed to All Sluts because it has a few things I like in a show.
Plot, scripting, acting, that sort of thing.Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 01 07 at 05:24 AM • permalinkCultural cringe is an expression of arrested emotional development. Cringers are like babies who have have finally realised that Mummy’s attentions cannot be commanded, suspect that she might respond to appeasement but, still gripped by infantile egocentric narcissism, have not yet realised that they are not personally responsible for everything that everyone else does.
Great example of the Australian cringe, is the ‘compulsory Australian content’ we have foisted on us with regards to TV viewing. But New Zealand TV shows are counted in the compulsory content. Let the market decide, instead of this pseudo protectionism. Maybe we will see better acting, scripts and subjects. Note, that the Aussie movies that have made it big lately, overseas, have not received any government, state or federal funding.
Australians all you better cringe,
For we are all to blame;
with stolen soil and iraqi oil,
Oh feel the guilt and shame;
Our land abounds in bad teevee
And bogans rich and white;
In history’s page, on every stage
Condemn this Aussie blight!
With tilted heads now let us sing,
“Condemn this Aussie blight!”Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 07 at 08:12 AM • permalinkIn case anyone is interested in a nerdy rejoinder to the people who whine about the cultural cringe, the late Len Hume wrote a scholarly and well researched paper that totally demolished the alleged examples of cringing all the way from literature through economic policy to the attitudes of most people towards foreign goods and cultural products of all kinds.
#31 fidens, the new second verse ( formerly third )beloved by refugee activists or the old politically incorrect version?
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 07 at 10:20 AM • permalinkThe people who wail loudest about “cultural cringe” are the same people who tell you enthusiastically and nonstop how awful is the society in which you live (Americans and Canadians and the British have their own cringers). In other words, they create the problem and then cry about it.
Maybe your cringers would be more receptive to American TV if they knew how many of the actors are British, Australian, and Canadian (accents notwithstanding).
“Cultural cringing” must be a strictly leftist affliction. Of all that Australians (and British, Canadians, and New Zealanders, for that matter) I’ve known, “cringing” is the last thing I would expect. Of course, they all have right-of-center political views to one degree or another, so it must be just a “lefty” thing.
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 01 07 at 12:38 PM • permalink*the* not *that*
Hmm, have no idea how I did that.
::cringe::
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 01 07 at 12:40 PM • permalinkWe preferred to receive our medical advice with an American accent, via House and Grey’s Anatomy.
Does House really count as a completely American show? The lead is British, after all.
(And whenever I watch House, I can’t help but think of Blackadder.)
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 01 07 at 01:48 PM • permalinkIf the Herald‘s writers are gonna bitch about a cultural cringe, it might help to refrain from plastering Oprah’s face on their front page, a woman who capitalizes on society’s obsession with celebrities by airing the minutiae of their personal lives in worthless publicity-seeking interviews (Tom Cruise, Madonna, etc.) for the sake of ratings.
it might help to refrain from plastering Oprah’s face on their front page
Sorry Mark, we’re trying our best in the States to export Oprah in the hope that more abroad means less here.
Our women are fixated on her and we cannot get a beer from 3-4 pm.
Posted by CrankyNeocon on 2007 01 07 at 04:20 PM • permalinkStevo—I gave up on Mythbusters when they spent an episode ‘debunking’ ancient Greek ‘steam cannnon’ while somehow overlooking the fact that British armed their merchant ships with them for low level air defence in WWII.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 01 07 at 05:53 PM • permalinkthis growing cultural cringe could mean the new australian edition monopoly board game is as big a flop as the old australian edition.
nevertheless you can cast your vote for australian locations to be included here
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 07 at 06:16 PM • permalinkPeople of the “YARTS” overlook simple things: Of the 3 commentators none could agree on a standard version of “cultural cringe”. None could agree that audiences might just be able to judge for themselves what was crap and what was not and that accents might be irrelevant. How John Howard is censoring media by making his comment on Big Brother is hard to make out and then to go on and say that he is censoring because he “might” make a negative statement about a dope on national tv during a family oriented broadcast simulating oral sex is again hard to fathom.
I think that the SMH needs Tim as its OpEd editor.
Our women are fixated on her and we cannot get a beer from 3-4 pm.
Well, this woman can’t stand Oprah. But she does wonder if you have some sort of ailment that prevents you from getting up and getting your own goddamn beer.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2007 01 07 at 06:58 PM • permalink#37 Indeed, the lead in House is a Brit adopting an American accent. And of course there is something else in that show you don’t find in too many US medical dramas: an Australian actor playing an Australian: Quelle cringe! (Unfortunately, he just confirms that most Aussie actors get lousy voice training. His strangled, nasal delivery and flat vowels are the one drawback for me in an otherwise fine show.)
I’ve been a little impressed lately at the degree to which English language TV and movies are converging into one Anglospheric market. The US has always been a major exporter of course, but the productions themselves seem to be less and less bounded by borders and oceans. Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Lost, House, etc. are more well-known examples. A less noted factor are basic cable shows which are very often co-productions between several English-speaking nations.
I never fail to be shocked when I find out that an actor with a flawless American accent turns out not to be, like Toni Collette in Sixth Sense or Jamie Bamber in BSG.
Posted by Brian O'Connell on 2007 01 07 at 07:46 PM • permalinkCultural cringe is alive and well in the suburbs. Just yesterday I sniffed a tub of yoghurt which had expired, and, well cringe is putting it mildly. And don’t get me started on the advertisements for thrush medication that seem to be infecting the airwaves at dinner time.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 01 07 at 08:08 PM • permalink#48- i love BSG- it’s the best thing on telly in years- just wish there was an aussie alongside the english, canadian, american and kiwi accents (Xena!)
Jamie Bamber’s real life voice is an unexpectedly fruity english accent- he should stick with the yank one
can’t wait till the new episodes start at the end of next week so i can start dling them
sorry for the gush- i’m a bit of a fanboy
Posted by eeniemeenie on 2007 01 07 at 09:15 PM • permalinkWell, this woman can’t stand Oprah. But she does wonder if you have some sort of ailment that prevents you from getting up and getting your own goddamn beer.
Well, that would be the fact that Ellen is on the other station.
Sorry Mark, you knew there was a downside to globalization.
Posted by CrankyNeocon on 2007 01 07 at 09:35 PM • permalink#47 The aussie doesn’t have an accent. It’s just that everyone around him does.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 01 07 at 10:18 PM • permalink#47. Many scenes over many years have featured men talking in strange accents which British and American women find hopelessly erotic.
Maybe this brave new world of globalised Anglospheric TV and movie production will, in future, feature scenes like the following:
SUAVE AUSTRALIAN HERO (as smitten heroine swoons on bed): Crikey! What a beauty!
HEROINE: Oh….Oh….Uhhhhhh!
SUAVE AUSTRALIAN HERO: Fark me sideways! This is tops! I’m just about creamin’ in me flamin’ jocks!
HEROINE: Yes! Mmm! Ohhhh!(Etc)
SUAVE AUSTRALIAN HERO: Jeez, I tell you what! This is better than the cricket! I wouldn’t be dead for quids!
#53
I thnk a scene like that, with a character speaking Strine, will need English subtitles for North American and Pommy viewing.Posted by Michael Lonie on 2007 01 07 at 11:22 PM • permalinkI lost my cultural cringe in the back seat of a 1960 Volkswagen.
But seriously, the poor, dear old Herald has given so many millions of column inches over the years to celebrated cringers such as Manning Clark, Thomas Kennealy, David Williamson, Mike Carlton, Hugh White, Richard Ackland, the entire Labor Party, the entire Greens Party, Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes and basicaly, anybody with a good solid cringe that needs airing, I’m not surprised in the least at the triple cringe on today’s website.
In fact, it’s enough to make any self respecting journo, well, cringe.
The constant stream of ads for nasal stiffy quack remedies which bombard listeners to commercial radio make me cringe, if only from the mental images of hordes on bonk-on bogans jumping their morbidly obese, dentally challenged and dermally dfecorated other half, resulting in funding for yet another 42” plasma in 9 months.
Also what really makes me cringe is that we have real world leaders in moonbattery, such as Pilger, Caldicott, Geoffrey Robertson and his idiot wife, Germie et al.
considering what passes for culture in australia, we ought to cringe. i mean, the bloody melbourne arts festival - what a crock of shite. everything ever written by david williamson, each stilted & lacklustre play acclaimed as a new masterpiece by the leftoid critics. most modern australian poetry. relentlessly unwatchable australian films. awful television. bad music. embarassing dance. thank the good lord for imported telly like absolute power, 7 periods with mr gormsby, black books etc, otherwise we’d be forced to talk to each other in the evenings
Page 1 of 1 pages
Members:
Login | Register
| Member List
Julietta Jameson should know. She constantly makes me cringe.