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Where The Bloody Hell Are We?
Problematic Diversity In Australian Tourism Ads
Whether you think we throw our shrimps on barbie just like the Aussies’ very own Paul Hogan did in the tourism Australia TV commercial, the fact is Aussies mostly boil their ‘shrimps’ instead of BBQ them, and no! We don’t call them shrimps but prawns.
It was 1984 when ‘the shrimps on barbie’ tourism campaign first broadcasted for the American target audience, and it was a huge success though — despite the cultural and linguistic inaccuracies. Of course, it all made a sense back then. The year was 1984, and it was only seventeen years after our first nation people included in the Commonwealth Census — and what a relief that in fact, more than 90% voted YES in favour (Source: AEC). Hence, the all-white heroes in the TV commercial.
In 2018, Thirty-four years after the commercial, Australia tourism can’t get over Paul Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee. In Dundee Superbowl ad, Chris Hemsworth played the Aussie outback mate. The American funny man, Danny Mcbride, played Crocodile Dundee wannabe. The commercial still didn’t go far from white masculinity and the white version of outback culture. Though in fact, the oldest living outback culture in the world belongs to the Aboriginal.
