As a New Zealander, I’m always gobsmacked by this cute presumption among Australians that my home country is a 1950s throwback…when it is Australia that has been governed for the past decade by an unreconstructed ’50s conservative.
Your television, social attitudes, politics, advertising, movie industry and economic ideas all lag ours. And our wine is better.
I agree, sympathise and apologise. It must be pretty annoying. I think it’s an inferiority complex which Australians are always congratulating themselves they’ve discarded (as sure a sign as any that they haven’t). So feeling inferior to the great world for being small, recent and relatively insubstantial in global political and economic affairs, at least Australians can let their hair down and feel superior to a country that’s smaller, more recent and even more insubstantial in global affairs.
At least you’ll find quite a few posts from me on this site praising NZ to the skies. You’re govt is more interested in decent policy than ours and less supine towards great powers. And your films – well there’s no comparison. We’ve not produced anything of the quality of “In my father’s den” or “Whale rider” for a long while.
From my limited exposure though I reckon your wine isn’t much chop. I’ve had a few bottles of NZ wine and they’ve seemed overpriced to me – but then perhaps I was unlucky.
Let’s not get too politically correct here. We reasonably assume that it’s OK to tell jokes about the English, Irish and Kiwis (and them about us) largely because the reality is that we all know that the differences between our respective cultures are in fact miniscule. It’s a bit like the old Sydney-Melbourne rivalry, or NSW versus Queeensland in rugby league. We’re indulging our innate tribalism but in a quite self-conscious and good-natured way. New Zealanders equally tell Australian jokes, as I’m sure Jim knows very well.
Geoff Honnor
18 years ago
The late and unlamented Sir Robert Muldoon once famously observed that the endless migratory flow of New Zealanders across the Tasman raised the IQ of both countries…………
But I agree with Jim. Having recently spent a week in Dunedin (a beautiful and magnificently preserved testament to the ideals of Victorian colonialism- but with all mod cons), I was bowled over by the sheer number of great restaurants and general energy in a city of 100 odd thousand (25,000 of whom are students at Otago University) located perilously close to the Antarctic blast.
The weather was perfect: sun-filled days, freezing cold nights and air so pure that it was invigorating just to breathe.
Nick: NZ whites are generally better than NZ reds but this may of course change with global warming.
I don’t agree with you. The English attitude to Australians is intensely irritating and that’s putting it mildly. I find England the only place I’ve been in the world and experienced racism. This was in Harrods when I opened my mouth and they could hear my accent. The English also enjoy friendly ribbing – as Australians do to them – but that’s all in fun. However there actually is a pervasive attitude in England which simply assumes that Australians are dopey uncultivated slobs. It’s such a joke when their own culture is in such a sad state. It’s pathetic.
Australians rib New Zealanders, which is fine. But they also feel confidently superior – and the joke is very definitely on us. The fact is that New Zealanders really don’t like it. (Ask them – several have volunteered their resentment to me – not about anything I’d said and I was quite struck by it – and have to admit they’re right). They find our behaviour presumptuous and unpleasant and where it causes offence we ought to cut it out.
It’s quite a subtle thing, because when I saw Colin’s comment I didn’t object to it. I thought it was quite fun. I don’t think of myself as particularly politically correct – I’m not calling for anyone to be censored. I just think that if called on the matter we should behave better. Also if it had been about Tasmania there would have been subtle differences also – people know it’s a joke. But I do think that a New Zealander has every right to tick us off about it.
jim parker
18 years ago
Nick,
Thanks for understanding. I have to stress we can take a joke as much as anyone It’s just that the joke is always the same!
Just as the patience of Australians living in England is inevitably tested by boring references to corked hats and outside dunnies, we get tetchy with recycled jibes about us being cardigan-wearing Morris Minor drivers and sheep botherers.
By the way, on the wine comparisons, I was being facetious. Our wines aren’t better, just different. You do chardonnays, semillon, merlot and shiraz better than us. But you can’t touch our sauvignon blancs and pinot noirs!
Wicking specialises in cartoons that take the piss out of caricatured unflattering characteristics in ourselves. Territorian men are always portrayed as beer-gutted pissheads, and their wives as battleaxes (and so on). It doesn’t mean Wicking really thinks Territorians are all (or mostly) like that, because he IS a Territorian. The vast majority of us share a mutual understanding that he’s just taking existing cultural stereotypes and playing with them in a current affairs context, in an entirely good-natured way. Territorians all know that most of us AREN’T beer-gutted pissheads and our wives aren’t battleaxes (although the stereotypes do exist commonly enough that you can see how they arose).
The same goes for caricatures of Tasmanians as inbred, Sydneysiders as shallow and materalistic, New Zealanders as old-fashioned with a predilection for sheep, Poms as not fond of soap etc etc. They’re all (usually) examples of good-natured piss-taking grounded in a common understanding that we share most aspects of culture and aren’t actually very different at all. It’s an aspect of our culture that helps to puncture pomposity, hubris and so on. The problem arises when some who tell such jokes actually believe the stereotypes (as with the arrogant, thick-headed Poms you mention, or the moron minority of Australians who feel “confidently superior” to Kiwis), or when audience members from the playfully denigrated group misunderstand the intent and the playfully piss-taking culture of which it is part, and wrongly assume that the joke-teller (and the rest of the audience) subscribes to the stereotype in a serious and nasty/dismissive way.
All humour is difficult because it’s inherently edgy. That’s why it doesn’t always travel well. Even on home soil it isn’t always universally appreciated. I think The Chaser mob are hilarious, for example, while some dont. Conversely I find Australia’s Funniest Home Videos utterly unfunny, while many love it.
What response should we give when our humour falls flat because of audience cultural misunderstandings or the arrogant assumptions of the humourist? Well, at least where the humourist ISN’T afflicted with an arrogant assumption of superiority (and Wicking certainly isn’t, nor are most of the rest of us who found the joke funny), then the appropriate response is not to withdraw and apologise but somehow to make the benign intent clear. You might do that by a turgid explanation like this one, but preferably by some more light-hearted means. I’ll leave the latter for Colin, because he’s been here before (more than once), pilloried for bad taste by earnest readers who just didn’t get it.
Yes, entirely fair point Ken. I see that the point of your defending the space for humour. I wasn’t really trying to take Colin to task. I appreciate that Colin’s cartoon and the comment below it is light hearted.
Even so, I still have a good deal of sympathy with our New Zealand friend who dropped in (and seems to have buggered off – sadly because I would have been interested in his further contribution). I guess there’s a contradiction in there, but I’m not too fussed about it. You say it’s a moron minority who feel superior to NZ. I don’t think it is. I think there really is a feeling amongst many Australians of superiority (Most would immediately deny it is serious but I’ve seen it too often and New Zealanders report with too much venom – they’re surprised too that it goes beyond light heartedness).
As just one example, I saw it in Parliament House. New Zealand was not taken seriously in just the way that Australians suspect we’re not taken seriously on the world stage.
No doubt it will be all baaaaad news.
Does Australia have a 24 hour news channel?
That is just aaaawful.
He he.
As a New Zealander, I’m always gobsmacked by this cute presumption among Australians that my home country is a 1950s throwback…when it is Australia that has been governed for the past decade by an unreconstructed ’50s conservative.
Your television, social attitudes, politics, advertising, movie industry and economic ideas all lag ours. And our wine is better.
If anyone is stuck in the ’50s, it’s you lot.
Heh heh. Good point. Especially about the wine.
Jim,
I agree, sympathise and apologise. It must be pretty annoying. I think it’s an inferiority complex which Australians are always congratulating themselves they’ve discarded (as sure a sign as any that they haven’t). So feeling inferior to the great world for being small, recent and relatively insubstantial in global political and economic affairs, at least Australians can let their hair down and feel superior to a country that’s smaller, more recent and even more insubstantial in global affairs.
At least you’ll find quite a few posts from me on this site praising NZ to the skies. You’re govt is more interested in decent policy than ours and less supine towards great powers. And your films – well there’s no comparison. We’ve not produced anything of the quality of “In my father’s den” or “Whale rider” for a long while.
From my limited exposure though I reckon your wine isn’t much chop. I’ve had a few bottles of NZ wine and they’ve seemed overpriced to me – but then perhaps I was unlucky.
Let’s not get too politically correct here. We reasonably assume that it’s OK to tell jokes about the English, Irish and Kiwis (and them about us) largely because the reality is that we all know that the differences between our respective cultures are in fact miniscule. It’s a bit like the old Sydney-Melbourne rivalry, or NSW versus Queeensland in rugby league. We’re indulging our innate tribalism but in a quite self-conscious and good-natured way. New Zealanders equally tell Australian jokes, as I’m sure Jim knows very well.
The late and unlamented Sir Robert Muldoon once famously observed that the endless migratory flow of New Zealanders across the Tasman raised the IQ of both countries…………
But I agree with Jim. Having recently spent a week in Dunedin (a beautiful and magnificently preserved testament to the ideals of Victorian colonialism- but with all mod cons), I was bowled over by the sheer number of great restaurants and general energy in a city of 100 odd thousand (25,000 of whom are students at Otago University) located perilously close to the Antarctic blast.
The weather was perfect: sun-filled days, freezing cold nights and air so pure that it was invigorating just to breathe.
Nick: NZ whites are generally better than NZ reds but this may of course change with global warming.
Ken,
I don’t agree with you. The English attitude to Australians is intensely irritating and that’s putting it mildly. I find England the only place I’ve been in the world and experienced racism. This was in Harrods when I opened my mouth and they could hear my accent. The English also enjoy friendly ribbing – as Australians do to them – but that’s all in fun. However there actually is a pervasive attitude in England which simply assumes that Australians are dopey uncultivated slobs. It’s such a joke when their own culture is in such a sad state. It’s pathetic.
Australians rib New Zealanders, which is fine. But they also feel confidently superior – and the joke is very definitely on us. The fact is that New Zealanders really don’t like it. (Ask them – several have volunteered their resentment to me – not about anything I’d said and I was quite struck by it – and have to admit they’re right). They find our behaviour presumptuous and unpleasant and where it causes offence we ought to cut it out.
It’s quite a subtle thing, because when I saw Colin’s comment I didn’t object to it. I thought it was quite fun. I don’t think of myself as particularly politically correct – I’m not calling for anyone to be censored. I just think that if called on the matter we should behave better. Also if it had been about Tasmania there would have been subtle differences also – people know it’s a joke. But I do think that a New Zealander has every right to tick us off about it.
Nick,
Thanks for understanding. I have to stress we can take a joke as much as anyone It’s just that the joke is always the same!
Just as the patience of Australians living in England is inevitably tested by boring references to corked hats and outside dunnies, we get tetchy with recycled jibes about us being cardigan-wearing Morris Minor drivers and sheep botherers.
By the way, on the wine comparisons, I was being facetious. Our wines aren’t better, just different. You do chardonnays, semillon, merlot and shiraz better than us. But you can’t touch our sauvignon blancs and pinot noirs!
Nicholas
Wicking specialises in cartoons that take the piss out of caricatured unflattering characteristics in ourselves. Territorian men are always portrayed as beer-gutted pissheads, and their wives as battleaxes (and so on). It doesn’t mean Wicking really thinks Territorians are all (or mostly) like that, because he IS a Territorian. The vast majority of us share a mutual understanding that he’s just taking existing cultural stereotypes and playing with them in a current affairs context, in an entirely good-natured way. Territorians all know that most of us AREN’T beer-gutted pissheads and our wives aren’t battleaxes (although the stereotypes do exist commonly enough that you can see how they arose).
The same goes for caricatures of Tasmanians as inbred, Sydneysiders as shallow and materalistic, New Zealanders as old-fashioned with a predilection for sheep, Poms as not fond of soap etc etc. They’re all (usually) examples of good-natured piss-taking grounded in a common understanding that we share most aspects of culture and aren’t actually very different at all. It’s an aspect of our culture that helps to puncture pomposity, hubris and so on. The problem arises when some who tell such jokes actually believe the stereotypes (as with the arrogant, thick-headed Poms you mention, or the moron minority of Australians who feel “confidently superior” to Kiwis), or when audience members from the playfully denigrated group misunderstand the intent and the playfully piss-taking culture of which it is part, and wrongly assume that the joke-teller (and the rest of the audience) subscribes to the stereotype in a serious and nasty/dismissive way.
All humour is difficult because it’s inherently edgy. That’s why it doesn’t always travel well. Even on home soil it isn’t always universally appreciated. I think The Chaser mob are hilarious, for example, while some dont. Conversely I find Australia’s Funniest Home Videos utterly unfunny, while many love it.
What response should we give when our humour falls flat because of audience cultural misunderstandings or the arrogant assumptions of the humourist? Well, at least where the humourist ISN’T afflicted with an arrogant assumption of superiority (and Wicking certainly isn’t, nor are most of the rest of us who found the joke funny), then the appropriate response is not to withdraw and apologise but somehow to make the benign intent clear. You might do that by a turgid explanation like this one, but preferably by some more light-hearted means. I’ll leave the latter for Colin, because he’s been here before (more than once), pilloried for bad taste by earnest readers who just didn’t get it.
Yes, entirely fair point Ken. I see that the point of your defending the space for humour. I wasn’t really trying to take Colin to task. I appreciate that Colin’s cartoon and the comment below it is light hearted.
Even so, I still have a good deal of sympathy with our New Zealand friend who dropped in (and seems to have buggered off – sadly because I would have been interested in his further contribution). I guess there’s a contradiction in there, but I’m not too fussed about it. You say it’s a moron minority who feel superior to NZ. I don’t think it is. I think there really is a feeling amongst many Australians of superiority (Most would immediately deny it is serious but I’ve seen it too often and New Zealanders report with too much venom – they’re surprised too that it goes beyond light heartedness).
As just one example, I saw it in Parliament House. New Zealand was not taken seriously in just the way that Australians suspect we’re not taken seriously on the world stage.