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"Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Edgy MD Jul 23 2019 10:50 AM

Johnny Dickshot in a Cover Derby Thread wrote: As I recall ROOS they followed closely on the whole Australian-culture-is-hot thing that happened in the 1980s. (I think it started with Men at Work and progressed from there to Crocodile Dundee, ROOS, and Outback steak house. It was a bizarre thing, perhaps underscoring white insecurity in a way that gritty Boston films would later: It told young white males that there was a still a place in the world that they were the badasses. In the 1970s, with The BeeGees, AC/DC, and Olivia Newton-John, being Australian was just a thing they happened to be, but in the 80s, being Australian was the hook to many a marketing campaign. It became such an eye-rolling cliche so fast but the phenomenon refused to go quietly. 1979 [list] [*]KangaROOS footwear launched. [/list] 1981 [list] The release of Men at Work's debut album Business as Usual coincides with the launch of MTV, propelling the album's lead single, "Who Can it Be Now?" to number one in the US. [*]Men at Work's second single, "Down Under," despite being set against a reggae arrangement, self-consciously touted the band's Australian-ness in the lyrics and promotional video (even stealing the flute hook from "The Kookaburra Song") and was even a bigger hit than the first. [*]Mel Gibson first appears as "Mad Max" in The Road Warrior. The underground runaway global hit would launch Gibson into international sex symbol status. (Well, The Bounty would, but this came first, and was an Australian thing.) [/list] 1982 [list] [*]INXS' third album Shabooh Shoobah gets a big American push, with singles "The One Thing" and "Don't Change" (still their best track) getting airplay and heavy rotation on MTV. While the band would peak stateside in the latter half of the decade, the bronze skin tone of several of the band members would become a defining part of Australian-ness to Americans. [/list] 1983 [list] [*]Men at Work's second album, Cargo, launches three more hits. Colin Hay's distinctive voice and accent become universally recognizable. [/list] 1984 [list] [*]Australian Tourism Bureau launches wildly successful "Come and say G'Day" campaign. The ruddy voice of actor Paul Hogan, though not yet a famous figure in the US, presents a comic, fun contrast from the only previous travel advertisements Americans had seen from Qantas Airlines, whose hook was pretty much, "Our koalas are cute and so are our stewardesses." Australia is no longer being sold as a place of exotic fauna, but a place with a bizarro version of American white guy culture where the men are defined by their casual toughness and grinning randiness. [/list] 1985 [list] [*]KangaROOS peak as a minor cultural phenomenon. KangaROOS Laboratory & Gymnasium at the University of Illinois launched. [*]A weary American record-buying marketplace generally rejects the third Men at Work release, Two Hearts. The band would never chart again. [/list] 1986 [list] [*]Crocodile Dundee released in America and becomes major hit. Paul Hogan, previously known to a niche US audience (late night viewers of WOR, for example) for his Australian Benny Hill-like ribald, comic Paul Hogan Show, briefly becomes a muscular action star, embodying white men re-projecting their toughness in a world where their declining physical hegemony represents a constant cultural anxiety stateside. [*]Fosters Lager, brewed since 1888, but only widely available in the United States since 1981, launch their "Australian for beer, Mate" campaign, featuring the celebrity spokesmanship of (naturally) Paul Fucking Hogan. The 20 ounce "oil can" starkly contrasts with the standard US beer sizes of 12 or even eight ounces, and turn US beer marketing on it's ear, leading the Stateside beer giants to embrace size mattering to appeal to the machismo of drinking, and Miller and Bud are suddenly being gobbled down in 24- and 40-ounce sizes on college campi everywhere. [*]Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner, released. It is the first of the Mad Max films produced for a big splash on the American market, with a far more extravagant budget than its two predecessors. While the film modestly succeeds in the US, it lacks the global long tail that the earlier entries found. But it strongly reinforces the broad the cultural notion that the inland Australian landscape looks a lot like what many imagine the post-Apocalyptic world is going too look like. [/list] 1987 [list] [*]Mark Alexander "Jacko" Jackson, a sometimes good player in The Australian League Football Association, who has gained national celebrity more for his masochistic personality than the consistency of his play, becomes the nutty, body-suited spokesman for Energizer Batteries. OY! [/list] 1988 [list] [*]Outback Steakhouse launches their first location, in Tampa Florida. [*]Kellog's adds lime green to their Fruity Pebbles palette in a commercial featuring that shameless grifter Barney Rubble conning Fred Flintstone out of his delicious breakfast by dressing as a Crocodile Dundee-like rugged man of the Outback. Nobody explains how this sort of contemporary extra-continental exotic novelty could be an appealing (or even possible) thing in The Stone Age, but pedants everywhere point out that Barney's household had long included a monstrously large kangaroo. [*]After a limp 1987 pilot, the Glen Larson action TV show The Highwayman tries to relaunch in 1988 by building on the limited public profile of Flash Gordon's Sam J. Jones' by adding Jacko to the cast as Flash's costar. After nine episodes, the plug is pulled. Among Larson's successes and failures, only Manimal would earn more derision. [*]Unable to parlay his stardom into any other successful vehicles (outside of a lucrative career as a pitch man), Paul Hogan returns in Crocodile Dundee II, while the film is another smash, audiences silently and tacitly agree during the closing credits that every last one of them has seen just about enough of Dundee. [/list] 1989 [list] [*]A freaking mechanical pink bunny displaces Jacko as the face of the Energizer brand. Jacko becomes the brand's last-ever human to hold the job. [*]CBS launches sitcom Live-In, featuring an American family that takes in a cutie-pie Australian nanny, while the hormone-crazed teenage son ogles and hits on her. Scheduled against the cultural juggernaut that is ALF, the ambitious series goes down in flames in two months. [/list] 1990 [list] [*]Unable to get any traction in his post Magnum, P.I. film career, Tom Selleck stars in Quigley Down Under, a film about an American cowboy's adventures in the Outback. Confused by the title sounding like a sequel to a Meet Quigley! film that they never saw (because it didn't exist), audiences stay away in droves. [*]In an epic misfire, MGM releases romantic comedy Don't Tell Her It's Me, in which depressed shlub Steve Gutenberg recovers from Hodgikins Disease (funny!) and tries to woo a girl who ignored him before his illness by reintroducing himself as "Lobo Marunga" a mulleted biker that is equal parts Mel Gibson, Paul Hogan, and depressed shlub. So ignorable that critic David Nusair refers to it as "the cinematic equivalent of background music," the film grosses $1.2 million against it's $6.7 million production cost. Australia Fever is dead. [/list] 1994 [list] [*]With Australia Fever being so out that it's almost in, Subaru launches their Outback line. [/list] 1996 [list] [*]Steve Irwin is introduced to American audiences as The Crocodile Hunter. Australian-ness returns in the American psyche to the vaguely odd, somewhat eccentric niche that it ultimately began as back when Barney first adopted his kangaroo. [/list] Considering the failures of the later years of the decade, it's clear that Hollywood and Madison Avenue went way overboard in thinking that America would buy anything with an Australian angle, but, hey, it was a time of New Coke. Adjusting mindsets was hard. What am I missing?

41Forever Jul 23 2019 11:10 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Good list! Don't forget Rick Springfield among the Aussie performers, though he certainly became Americanized pretty quickly, as opposed to Colin Hay and friends. Carol Burnett's show from the Sydney Opera House in 1973 was a big deal and maybe was a stage-setter for things to come!

Lefty Specialist Jul 23 2019 11:12 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

In 1983, my future wife was glued to this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3a/The_Thorn_Birds_%28miniseries%29.jpg/250px-The_Thorn_Birds_%28miniseries%29.jpg>

Edgy MD Jul 23 2019 11:14 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Oh, Jesus. The Thorn Birds.

Willets Point Jul 23 2019 11:20 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

I can't believe that Edgy of all people left out The Facts of Life Down Under (1987) from this otherwise comprehensive list. Actually, I think there was another sitcom that had an Australian adventure around the same time.

HahnSolo Jul 23 2019 11:55 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Lefty Specialist wrote: In 1983, my future wife was glued to this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3a/The_Thorn_Birds_%28miniseries%29.jpg/250px-The_Thorn_Birds_%28miniseries%29.jpg> OMG my wife cries just thinking about this. My daughter may or may not be named after a character who slept with a priest, has his child, and denounces God.

HahnSolo Jul 23 2019 11:59 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

https://www.sbs.com.au/movies/sites/sbs.com.au.film/files/styles/single/public/Young-E_704_1.jpg?itok=xhYyKetw&mtime=1408594447> No love for this guy?

A Boy Named Seo Jul 23 2019 12:57 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

BMX Bandits put Nicole Kidman on the map, and put Aussie accents an beaches on my TV in 1983. [YOUTUBE]ZX0qF1YHQ4U[/YOUTUBE]

Johnny Lunchbucket Jul 23 2019 01:02 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

1987 A band that embryonic INXS used to open for, Midnight Oil, breaks through big-time in the US with their sixth album, Diesel & Dust, mixing Aussie surf guitars, digiridoos and a gigantic Jacko-esque Antipodean Bono singer whose social-justice anthems would one day carry him to represent the darker side of the country.

Willets Point Jul 23 2019 01:13 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

https://www.sbs.com.au/movies/sites/sbs.com.au.film/files/styles/single/public/Young-E_704_1.jpg?itok=xhYyKetw&mtime=1408594447> No love for this guy? Young Einstein was so bad that I actually walked out of the theater.

Lefty Specialist Jul 23 2019 02:16 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

There's also this: Magnum goes to Oz. https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61rLQdg7feL._SY445_.jpg>

dinosaur jesus Jul 23 2019 03:13 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

1979: The Aussie brand of hair products, created by American businessman Tom Redmond, is introduced. Products include Mega Shampoo, Sprunch Spray, and 3 Minute Miracle Reconstructor. Australians were unimpressed, and the products haven't been sold there since the 1990s. As I remember it, the Australian thing was going out just as Clear came in--Zima, Crystal Pepsi, clear deodorant, etc. And then there was the year or two when everything had baking soda in it. And that's about when I lost track of the Zeitgeist.

Edgy MD Jul 23 2019 03:19 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Had I more time to goof off from finding the gainful employment that is going to save me from the street, I'd maybe have come up with The Facts of Life Down Under. BMX Bandits and Midnight Oil were on my mental list, but I failed to get to them by the time I hit submit. Quigley Down Under was included, damn it, and Lefty Specialist would have known that had he not confirmed my deepest suspicions that he's a post-skimmer. A POST-SKIMMER!! Yahoo Serious and Young Einstein did not occur to me, nor did Aussie-Brand Hair Goop. Good job.

Edgy MD Jul 23 2019 03:25 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Props to the copywriter here, who, knowing Jacko had a recognizeable face from the Energizer commercials, but was mostly unknown by name in the US, works both "Energize" and "battery" into his copy when this promo re-introduces the show with Jones' new co-star. [YOUTUBE]6djQ86stNFg[/YOUTUBE] In this resolution, Jacko looks like a hard-living 75-year-old Sting.

Lefty Specialist Jul 25 2019 06:20 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Edgy MD wrote: Quigley Down Under was included, damn it, and Lefty Specialist would have known that had he not confirmed my deepest suspicions that he's a post-skimmer. A POST-SKIMMER!! Gah! Guilty as charged.

Edgy MD Jul 25 2019 09:42 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

So, I was mostly joking, but do you think it was the rise of Fosters in the US market had anything to do with the upsizing of beer containers across the marketplace?

Willets Point Jul 25 2019 11:20 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

The 40 oz. was already established in the US before Fosters, I think.

Johnny Lunchbucket Jul 25 2019 11:46 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

I dunno if I can even think of a less-hot brand than Fosters beer today. The kind you buy today isn't even brewed in Australia, it's just an Austalian brand name, that's been bought and sold now twice in the last few years (just this week Anhueser Busch said it would sell it to a Japanese brewer; it acquired it as part of its South African beverage merger a few years earlier. The "Oil can" was introduced to the US in 1972 and is 24.5 oz, not 20.

dgwphotography Jul 25 2019 07:44 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Be still, my 15-year old heart... [YOUTUBE]sl5bqHP0-KA[/YOUTUBE]

Frayed Knot Jul 25 2019 08:08 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

Yeah, a lot of teenage boys wanted to get physical with ONJ back in the day. Today, a lot of SportsCenter anchors seem to feel the same way about OBJ, which is a bit disturbing if you ask me.

dgwphotography Jul 25 2019 08:21 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

SportsCenter is still a thing?

MFS62 Jul 26 2019 05:30 AM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jul 30 2019 07:27 AM

Not hot but cute: Nov. 24th, 2015 Bindi Irwin (Steve Irwin's daughter) wins Dancing with the Stars. Later

RealityChuck Jul 27 2019 04:03 PM Re: "Austrailian Is HOT" Cultural Milestones

If you want to talk hot and Australia, you can't leave out Sirens. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/ee/Sirensposter.jpg> Elle Macpherson, Tara Fitzgerald, Portia de Rossi, and Kate Fischer. Sam Neill and Hugh Grant. Nudity and sensuality galore.