Abstract
In his review of My life as a fake, Blake Morrison makes the following observation:
“Carey is fascinated by what the hoax says about Australian culture – both its “terror of being out of date” and its suspicion of European-style bullshit […].” Do you agree with Morrison's point about the tension in Australian culture between, on the one hand, anxiety in the face of European cultural achievement and, on the other hand, suspicion of its elitist pretensions ? Drawing on what we have discussed this semester on the wider issue of “Australian identity”, do you think Australian culture is particularly vulnerable to the impact of Ern Malley-style hoaxes? The Ern Malley affair, in the 1940s, made Australia the laughing stock of the UK and the US. It confirmed the image of Australia as a second-rate culture, both for the outside world and for Australians themselves, who felt ashamed of their own cultural cringe and their lack of national identity and culture. More than sixty years later, can this tendency still be observed in Australia? Is it true, as Blake Morrison wrote, that Australian culture is characterised by a “terror of being out of date” and a suspicion of “European-style bullshit”? Is this tension linked to the difficulty of building an Australian nation and identity? This essay will examine those issues by analyzing to what extent Australia is a fragile culture (I), and by deducting the two consequences of this lack of self-worth: the development of an inferiority complex towards England (II), and the attempts to create a specific Australian identity in order to combat this feeling of inferiority (III).
