I think this is the moot point, and shows clearly how one ‘stereotype’ cannot necessarily be transplanted to another culture without LOTS of explanation!
The cardboard wine cask (invented by an Aussie btw) provides a cheap and ample supply of alcohol, and is renowned for being the tipple of choice for people who are poor and in need of the most bang for their buck. Known colloquially as ‘goonie juice’, or goon for short, it now has become a shorthand reference to stereotype Aborigines as all being no-hoper drunks.
IOW, handing out a box of goon, especially if you remove the bladder from the cask first, not-so-subtly implies that because the Windies are black, they must be just like the ‘Abos’ and it would be immediately recognised as a profoundly racist slur by pretty much everyone in the country.
Don’t tell me, I live in Ireland… we don’t have that many none whites here… yet alcohol abuse is still a problem… I was only trying to point out the perception of the public Down Under.
For what it’s worth I’d like to apologize for being more difficult and snarky than I should have been and I’ll leave it at that, I don’t much feel like posting in this further.
Sorry - I haven’t scrolled through all eight pages of this thread, but has anybody pointed out yet that these spots were so opportunistic because KFC is the major sponsor of the West Indian team, not the Australian one?
FS, you keep insisting that Australia should conform to American racial stereotypes. Because of the Internet.
So I ask you again - if I were to appear on TV, declaring to the world that the American government is racist because not only is there a place called Abo, but it is considered a historic landmark, would you take me seriously?
FI, you want to call the ad racist despite there being not a single racist theme in it. Even your perceived racist themes have been shown to be your own ignorance. That is not an “opinion” - that is saying that fire is wet.
Also, lest anyone think that “Aborigines and Cask Wine” is a baseless or outdated stereotype, there are actually restrictions in parts of the country on when Cask Wine (colloquially known as “Goon”, especially if it’s less than about $20/cask) can be sold (not before 2pm or 4pm in some places in Far North Queensland, for example). Also, many of the Aboriginal areas are completely “Dry”(no alcohol allowed at all, not even for personal use by non-Aboriginals), or have serious limits on how much people can have.
So yeah, having an Australian cricket supporter hand around a cask of wine to West Indian supporters would be astonishingly racist and be decried as such by pretty much everyone in the country.
Also, we don’t have Malt Liquor here in Australia- people on low incomes who want to get drunk tend to go either for Cask Wine or cheap spirits.
Well just to again highlight cultural differences, to me the first thing I think of when “malt liqour” is mentioned would be a very good single malt whisky…Ie…McClellans or similiar…
I also know that its a demonstrable proven, verifiable and objective fact that the rates of alcoholism and serious alcohol abuse are way way higher in the Aboriginal community than the rest of Australia.
It took me quite a bit of Wiki-searching and googling to work out what “Malt Liquor” actually was. Like you, my first thought was something like Glenfiddich or another single-malt Scotch.
I have sorta seen it maybe two or three times in american movies, but that is all…as mentioned it is only when it is mentioned in the same sentence as “cheap wine” that I grok the meaning…but even then it takes a few minutes of thought.
if only certain of the posters here could understand that America is not the centre of the universe and that certian of us do actually have a culture that is not a direct reflection of their own experience we would be good to go. (even if I can’t spell or type)
naturally my being a kiwi and you being a sorta kangaroo I won’t talk about how yoghurt acutally has more culture than Australia because that would be needlessly taking the piss out of Australians
I’ve had several Americans admit to me in person that they just don’t know where Australia is, or even if they’re vaguely aware it’s in the Southern Hemisphere somewhere, they just don’t know anything about it beyond perhaps something about Kangaroos and there being a city called Sydney there. When my wife and I visited San Francisco on our honeymoon, the tour guide for our day tour knew something about all these obscure little towns in the US Mid-West and Deep South, but couldn’t come up with anything for Australia. It was quite depressing, really.
Perhaps we need to make a new Crocodile Dundee movie or something?
I’d also agree with you there but I can’t say that too loudly
Really, in an age of multinationals, where the Head Office is really becomes irrelevant, and your point just reveals your own ignorance of how multinationals operate.
I don’t know if this will make people feel better or worse: Years ago when I was in Boston and told people I was from Ohio, a young woman asked if that was one of the Hawaiian islands.
