Having recently travelled around Europe for
four months I was subject to many different cultures, having in total visited seventeen different
countries, and as you can imagine the vast array of different lifestyles and
cultures I experienced as I travelled from the developing country Albania to
Paris, the fashion capital of the Europe. Obviously there was an undeniable
difference in the way people lived and culture these countries had.
But my biggest
shock came to when I visited the Greek islands- where by I was confronted with
a diaspora of ‘Aussie Bogans’ that ruled these islands, in just under two weeks
I think I only came across a handful of Greek people. Chatting with one of the
locals it became clear that the majority of Greek people evacuated their
homeland for the summer and for want of a better phase…prepare for the invasion
of Aussies bogans. They aren’t hard to miss to with the Southern Cross tattoos,
Aussie flag singlets and loud use of Aussie slang. People like
this unfortunately give Australian's a bad name and links are made with Australia culture with bogan
connotations.
Juxaposed the
well known cultural concept of the ‘aussie bogan’ culture with the Indian
culture- the rise of Bollywood cinema becomes a cultural/leisure activity.
Bollywood began
in 1960s and India is now well recongised around the world for this type of
creative and colorful for of cinema. ‘Contemporary Bollywood films can be seen
as diasporic and global cultural texts that transcend national sensibilities’
[Dudrah 2002] Bollywood is finally gaining positive world wide exposure and in
turn reflecting Indian culture accordingly, as the ‘Indian film industry
continues to churn out higher quality and bigger budget films’. [Carty 2012]
Bollywood film
Source: [http://chandrakantha.com/articles/indian_music/nritya/bollywood.html]
References:
Carty 2012,
‘Impact of bollywood’, http://movies.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Impact_of_Bollywood,
Pg 1
Dudrah, RK 2002, ‘Vilayati
Bollywood: popular Hindi cinema-going and diasporic South Asian identity in
Birmingham (UK)’, Javnost - the public, vol. 9, no. 1, pg. 20.
This was a really enjoyable read, I like that way you’ve spoken about the way our culture is impacting others – with the residents of the Greek Islands holidaying other than the paradise they live in to avoid the outlandish Australian behaviour.
ReplyDeleteThe way you have juxtaposed the two ideas of Aussie Bogans and Bollywood really makes you think about unwelcome / welcome globalisation. Bollywood is seen as a welcome addition to worldwide cinema and we are more than willing to embrace various aspects of the Asian culture for example within Australia. However countries who are experiencing physical flows due to globalisation are more than willing to embrace it, until those who are flowing begin misbehaving. There’s another aspect of globalisation to think of!
A good post and right on the money about Aussies overseas, especially in specific areas. I think you'll find the same sort of behaviour in any of the popular overseas tourist destinations for Australians such as Bali, Thailand or in my own experience, South America. I would have to disagree with you though that these Aussies are diaspora, since the term is applied to those who have been displaced from their homeland and have settled in a new culture, not those who have chosen to relocate temporarily en masse in a place where the local culture caters to the foreign cultural intrusion.
ReplyDelete