Austalia 'a country with no culture " or just a matter of continued cultural cringe. ?

A bit of pre Ashes sledging by a former English cricket captain set  apparently set Twitter ablaze. 

The defense that follows  is what  interests me. As a part of 'Multicultural' Australia I am struck by the fact that all the names of Australian Artists thrown back  by the defense seem to be Anglo and white.  There are no names of even the Aboriginal artists who are the public relation face of Australian Art.  

The accusation thrown  at Gower  of being too Eurocentric in his approach to and understanding of  culture, just falls flat.  

Or does it just show that the old Ozie 'cultural cringe' (as far as the Mother Country is concerned) still lives on ???

David Gower describes Australia as 'a country with no culture'

• Former England captain stokes fires ahead of Ashes summer
• Says players and fans have 'a certain animal mentality'

Former England captain David Gower has stoked the fires ahead of this summer's Ashes by describing Australia as a country with no culture and their cricketers of having an "animal mentality".

Gower's comments come ahead of a busy fixture list between the two old rivals, which begins with a Champions Trophy clash at Edgbaston on Saturday and continues with five Tests, two T20 internationals and five more one-day internationals in the coming months. The two nations then do battle again on Australian soil from November to February.

Asked if England's long-standing rivalry with Australia was a clash of cultures, Gower told the Radio Times: "I'm tempted to say, how can you have a clash of cultures when you're playing against a country with no culture? That would almost be sledging."

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/jun/04/david-gower-england-australia-ashes-culture

David Gower guilty of lazy stereotyping in attack on Australian culture

Former England captain makes the same mistake as Jeremy Clarkson in assuming cliches to be true in his pre-Ashes 'sledge'

• Kevin Mitchell
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 June

David Gower told the Radio Times: 'How can you have a clash of cultures when you're playing against a country with no culture?' Photograph: PA

David Gower, his friends say, is the master of whimsy. Indeed, on a good day, he is as entertaining an English pundit as Australia's Richie Benaud, another comic minimalist, has been for decades. Tuesday may not have been such a day.

"I'm tempted to say," he told the Radio Times in answer to a question about England's upcoming two-leg Ashes marathon against Australia, "how can you have a clash of cultures when you're playing against a country with no culture? That would almost be sledging."

If he had stopped the joke there he might have offended nobody outside patrons of the Sydney Opera House. He was, after all – with a healthy slice of sarcasm, no doubt – indulging himself in a tired stereotype, one that, paradoxically, cements two countries who value irony and self-deprecation.

Yet it was Gower's extension of this argument that seems to have caused the greater offence. Continuing to flash outside the off stump, always his weakness and his strength as a player, he described Australian spectators as "feral" and their baggy-green-capped heroes as having "a certain animal mentality". If he had opened his innings whimsically, he was now pressing the attack with sweet venom. These were beasts of a different kind, it seemed – not just lacking in culture but bearing fangs and looking for blood, certainly a bruised ego or two.

"If they sense weakness, they'll come at you," he said of the lager-fuelled fans who taunt England players from the boundary. "If they sense a bit of weakness, they'll try it on more," he said of the Australian players who do the same on the pitch.

Yet this surely was a stereotype that went close to the truth, one familiar to anyone exposed to the reality of the Aussie sporting mentality. The language was harsh, but the sentiment not entirely ill-judged.

Mike Brearley was similarly struck by the hostility of the locals and went as far as growing a beard on one Ashes tour to dilute the perception that he was a soft, educated English smarty-pants who might be a very good captain but couldn't score a run to save his life. So they called him 'The Ayatollah'. I like to think they meant it affectionately. So does he.

Perhaps they did. But, to borrow from the idiom, they probably did not "give a rat's arse" what he thought.

There is "a bit of mongrel" in the Australian sporting psyche, an over-developed sense of machismo, perhaps, that energises them, drives them to rise up against occasional invaders who delude themselves – because of their own historical failings – that Australians are still the colonials they were so very long ago.

Yet, of the two strands of Gower's attack, it is the first one that should cause most offence. He makes the same mistake Jeremy Clarkson does on a regular basis. He lazily assumes, from a haughty podium, that the cliches are true. He asserts, with no intellectual clarity or rigour, that all Australians – not just the noisy rabble who annoyed him at the pickets – live in a sunburnt wasteland thousands of miles from what he regards as "culture".

The charitable view is that he really does know Australia is the land that has produced artists such as Brett Whiteley, Normand Baker, Sydney Nolan, Russell Drysdale and William Dobell; writers such as Niland, White, Carey, Park, Marcus Clarke, Keneally, Greer, James, Frank Hardy …

Yet if, as he implies, Gower himself is a man of culture, he surely should appreciate difference in others, or does he define culture from a European perspective only? He might have heard of Emily Kame Kngwarreye, for instance, who did not start painting until she was 80, and went on to bring much acclaim to the indigenous people of Australia. As did Gordon Bennett, Queenie McKenzie and a hundred others, painters, singers, poets, politicians, dancers and thinkers, all rising up against home-grown prejudices that owed little to irony or sarcasm.

Without wishing to cause further offence to one of my favourite batsmen, I would venture to say the Barmy Army, who mingle good-naturedly from The Hill to the Waca, know Australians a good deal better than some former players who move away from their microphones and nice hotels only to sample splendid golf courses and the fine wines of the Adelaide Hills.

Gower probably meant to give offence, but in a nice, English way. Or, as a colleague said when this row hit Twitter on Tuesday: "Come on, it was a feeble attempt at a Bothamesque sledge. Unfunny and unoriginal but not supposed to be taken seriously."

Sadly, that's true.

r-australian-culture