Hacker Cinema
Crocodile Dundee
1986 · Film · 97 min
Directed by Peter Faiman
When a New York reporter plucks crocodile hunter Mick Dundee from the Australian Outback for a visit to the Big Apple, it's a clash of cultures and a recipe for good-natured comedy as naïve Dundee negotiates the concrete jungle. He proves that his instincts are quite useful in the city and adeptly handles everything from wily muggers to high-society snoots without breaking a sweat.
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13 comments on Hacker News
That's like that scene from Crocodile Dundee - for those that don't know the movie, the guy is from some tiny town way out in the sticks in Australia, and visits NY. In the scene I'm thinking of, Dundee walks down a street in NY following his usual habit of greeting everyone, which is difficult as they don't expect it and there are too many anyway.
As a native-born US sorta person, I agree about Outback. It's a weird environment, sold weirdly: The tables are too high. The bench seating is hard, and somehow also too high. Everything seems big, like some forms of Alice might observe, even if it is just regular-sized.
It can be an OK place to get a decent-ish steak served at an OK price, and onions are my favorite food so things like their Bloomin' Onion "appetizer" can be God-tier for me. Overall, I like Outback -- but only just barely. I give it 6/10, will probably return... eventually, some day, maybe; I can get a massive amount of onion served almost anywhere if I ask nicely.
But it doesn't seem very Australian to me, unless of course I'm approaching things as if I am living in a Crocodile Dundee film from several decades ago. (And these films are comedies, not documentaries!)
Foster's is worse. It's shit beer. As far as I know, it's always been shit beer. And there's definitely a place in the world for shit beers to exist, as long as they're cheap enough, but it's never met the snide, bold, and somewhat-reprehensible tagline of "Foster's. It's Australian for beer."
But Koala Kare? That name doesn't make me think of Australia at all. It makes me think of koala bears. And koala bears definitely seem to be cute and cuddly in photos...and their native environment is definitely highly regionalized. But they are also rapey animals that trend toward being full of chlamydia, and they feed their young with literal shit. (Straight up ass-to-mouth shit.)
And I've got a pretty positive image of every person from Australia whom I've ever interacted with, so I myself don't associate a product named after a dirty rapey diseased shit-eating bear with Australian nationality, culture, or provenance.
YMMV, of course. (And also: You're welcome!)
> Maybe Australians cofounded these places in America? Or just Americans who had life-defining experiences in Australian locations and came back to start restaurants in honor of those places? I have not dug too deep into their origins.
As far as I am aware, Australians had nothing to do with the founding of Outback Steakhouse, and its founders had nothing to with Australia. A group of Americans in Florida in 1988 wanted to open a restaurant, and were looking for a distinctive theme or branding. And the Crocodile Dundee film had been a big hit in the US a couple of years earlier, and so they decided to appropriate the stereotypes of Australia it represents as the basis of their branding. I’m not aware any of them had any personal connection to Australia at all. If it wasn’t for the popularity of that film, they probably would have picked a different theme for their restaurant instead
> dealing with people having strange misconceptions of Australian culture
Misconceptions of Australian culture are rather widespread in the US. Some Americans seem to think films like Crocodile Dundee are representative of mainstream Australian culture, when they aren’t. Films like that are taking stereotypes about the small minority of Australians who live in remote rural areas, and then exaggerating them for comic effect. The vast majority of Australians live in big metro areas, and have a rather different culture. It would be a bit like if someone saw a film about rednecks in the Ozarks and thought it was representative of the average denizen of New York or San Francisco.
Of course, in part it is just as much Australians’ fault for selling that kind of cringey stuff to Americans as it is Americans for lapping it up. The late Steve Irwin (of “Crocodile Hunter” fame), was likewise playing up those stereotypes in his on-screen persona. Some more recent cultural exports (for example Bluey) have done much better in this area
And rather obviously Outback Steakhouse is exploiting this ignorance as part of its marketing rather than challenging it
The first Ghostbusters is hilarious, and one of many exemplar 80s movies - back to the future (as mentioned), crocodile Dundee, short circuit, die hard, ferris bueller (just off the top of my head) that embodied that decade and often saw stodgy corporate types as the enemy of fun. I've never even thought about it as a libertarian parable, and I believe doing so is a revisionist strawman coming from opponents and reading too much into it coming from supporters. The movie was good clean fun of the kind that existed fleetingly around that time.
The remake was based on only one premise- it will be women instead. It wasn't funny and had none of the cultural centering (especially the whole vibe of 80s New York) that the original had. It was a shitty movie. So it failed.
There is not some broader political message. A good movie that hit the mark for its era was successful, a lazy remake was not
This reminds me of Hannah Arendt's criticism of the Boers - which was sometimes taken out of context. She was just pointing out they had become a tribe of bush-wandering savages living off, but not improving the land, themselves. They had no incentive to improve the land; labor was cheap and their own lives were cheap, and they still have made nothing of the country.
When I lived in Australia I was really surprised, because I expected to find a country much more individualistic and hardy than the soft United States. All those Crocodile Dundee movies, I guess. I had the luck of moving there with a partner who was half-Filipina, and wow was there a lot of anti-Asian racism right off the bat. But that wouldn't have been such a big deal. What really struck me were the micro-restrictions on everything.
I think local councils have a lot to do with this; in the Commonwealth model they seem to have totally arbitrary and uncontrolled power. If you squeal your wheels, they'll take your car and crush it. At least that's what I heard. If you work on roofs you have to spend an hour gearing up to have harnesses. I mean. I thought this was a frontier society, but it's not. Cameras everywhere and ...well, I lived in King's Cross, Sydney for a bit, but I heard they basically shut that down by fiat from end to end.
And the NT. Just a word about that. We pulled up to a shop in the bush outside Tenant Creek and there were approximately 40 aboriginal ladies standing outside a closed window at 9am. We walked past this line, straight inside, and bought a couple cases of beer. Asked why they were all waiting there. "Waitin for the welfare window," said the store owner. Never been to the white side of a segregation window before, but that was something to see in a first world country.
> I studied French from 7th-12th grade
As a French, I’ve lived a few years in Australia. A lot of people there can only say “Bonjour” and keep a bitter memory of their lessons. It feels like learning German for the French people, also a difficult (albeit more regular) language. It is merely necessary for political cohesion but not at an individual level; As such German lessons are... not designed for the students. If I had to believe the lessons, there are only two topics that Germans talk about: The Wiedervereinigung (reunification) and the war. All their movies are black and white with yellow subtitles. That’s how I imagine the French language in the Australian culture ;) Something you gotta learn at school, like se hazing or something.
It really feels like we haven’t mastered teaching, as a civilization. Our teaching works for pupils who have an interest; but for the others, it’s like signing for a mortgage and hating the house from the day you move in.
In fact, a lot of Ozzies I’ve met told me they went to Paris and felt hated by parisians. This testimonial was so frequent (dozens of times) that I led my little survey. On Twitter and among friends, all French people love Australians, between surfing and Crocodile Dundee, we have good conversation starters ;) Some may dislike some British but I don’t think there are many, let alone many who would act it out on the street. I just think parisians behave like stressed people behave in very stressful cities. So, no, we don’t hate English-speaking people, and I’m sorry that my language is so hard and so required in your curriculum ;)
Good day everyone!
I call them "wikiwalks".
And I call an excessively tangential session a "wikiwalkabout", after the Australian walkabout tradition introduced to Americans by "Crocodile Dundee", or, more recently--the Locke character from "Lost". And boy, did that show have a letdown denoument. But I did like the colossus foot in the later episodes, because it reminded me of "Ozymandias", by P.B. Shelley. And did you know that he wrote that as his shot in a poetry duel with another poet--Horace Smith? (I guess he won, right?) Anyway, they picked that as a topic to honor a new museum exhibit of the Younger Memnon statue of Rameses II. Those British museum-goers were just mad for importing cultural artifacts from distant lands and never sending them back. Like the Elgin Marbles, from Greece. And when I think about Britain and Greece, I can't help thinking about their palace guards--Greece with their poofy-footed Evzones and Britain with their Beefeaters. And one of those Beefeaters is the Ravenmaster of the Tower of London--literally in charge of the welfare of the tower ravens. One of whom is apparently named Merlina, and is allowed additional latitude in how far she may fly, because she always comes back. And speaking of ravens and 19th-century poets, boy was Edgar Allen Poe a gothy li'l guy. He had a lot of inspirational company, though. Including Mary Shelley, wife of the aforementioned P.B., who won a 3-way ghost story duel between herself, her husband, and Lord Byron, who only managed to invent the vampire romance genre. So between the two of them and ol' Rameses II, we're almost all primed to scare the crap out of Laurel and Hardy with Universal Pictures monster movie staples: Frankenstein's monster, Dracula, and the Mummy. But we still need the Wolfman....
And hopefully you see how it works now. Before wikis existed, there was "Connections", by James Burke.
>Why is the arse the only place that, if covered in fecal matter, doesn't get the benefit of water?
Have you ever used a public toilet in the US? Put a bidet in a public toilet, someone will have gum and/or feces on the dispenser before the day is over purely out of malice.
As far as in the homes, it's a plumbing issue. You're either going to have to have to monkey with toilet feed lines yourself, which are often cheap fittings that seize and break, or call a plumber to come out or buy some tank system that requires a powered pump which has to be plugged in. Then of course learn how to use the thing. Or, you could pick up some charmin every time you go to the grocery and bathe regularly.
Americans are catching on to wet wipes, give it a few more decades and squirt-gun-butt-cleaning will catch on.
I've never seen a bidet in person. Not once in my entire life. In fact, the only time I've ever seen a bidet is in Crocodile Dundee and another film.
As interesting as it is to see some rough areas, most of the areas have not changed much. I looked at the streets where I used to live / currently live - they largely look the same. Some of the shops are still there.
Since someone mentioned popular culture references, one movie that I thought "got" the hyper nature of 80s NYC was "Crocodile Dundee". It is of course exaggerated, being a romantic comedy, but it got some parts of it very well.
They don't have rights to stream any decent movies
That seems hyperbolic. Just browsing around (I decided to cap this at 5 minutes):
The Interview
Forrest Gump
Major League
Pirates of Carribean
Hot Fuzz
Armageddon
Kingpin
A League of Their Own
Inglorious Basterds
Scarface
Django Unchained
Legally Blonde
E.T.
Days of Thunder
The Princess Bride
Crocodile Dundee
Clear and Present Danger
V for Vendetta
Galaxy Quest
Running Man
Big Trouble in Little China
Talladega Nights
Kill Bill (1 and 2)
Star Trek Movies (including The Wrath of Kahn)
Tommy Boy
Team America World Police
Lilo & Stitch
Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back
Wayne's World
Clerks
Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure
In my backpacking days in the eighties, I was at one point offered a bartending job at a local cinema premiere.
It sort of didn't really fit my plans for that particular evening, so I turned it down. What I did instead, I don' remember.
A report did reach me later. It had been a great event. The star of the movie didn't care that much for red carpet, and had been hanging out in the bar, downing a few beers, and having a chat with the guys behind the counter.
Superb move. I had turned down the world premiere of Crocodile Dundee, Sydney 1986.
It isn't just "a bit Crocodile Dundee" - it is a genuine and persisting phenomenon (which happened to be mentioned in Crocodile Dundee).
Indigenous Australians to this day have very different beliefs about photography and filmography than most hn users would. Even though many of them live fairly modern lifestyles, it is considered fairly offensive in their culture to show images of people who have since passed away. Television broadcasts which include film of aboriginal people who have passed away are usually accompanied by a disclaimer that viewers may not want to watch.