Influence of the Convict Creations Site

Convicted criminal Chopper Reid is without doubt Australia's number one icon of the new millennium. No other Australian has sold 500,000 books, had a movie made about their lives, appeared in TV commercials for social campaigns, had their name put on a beer, and inspired a character in a TV comedy series.

I think the reason why Chopper Reid became Australia's number one icon is the same reason why this site has been influential; there have been few alternatives. In any other country, Chopper would have had little exposure. The cultural industries would have been too focussed on promoting artists, actors, writers etc and these alternative icons would have swamped him. In Australia; however, the cultural industries have used the funding given to them, and the stages given to them, to criticise long-dead bureaucrats, modern day politicians and people who watch sport. The consequence of their deconstructive approach is that they don't build any icons and the likes of Chopper Reid attain their number one mantle by default.

The cultural industry's focus of deconstruction has also resulted in this web site having few competitors. Consequently, for the last five years, it has been ranked in the top three for a google search of "Australian culture " and number one for a host of other search terms. I don't think there is anything great about the site. I just think it is different because it is mostly constructive. This site basically considers attributes of Australia that are unique and are useful to know. For a variety of reasons; however, few academics are prepared to acknowledge that Australian culture exists, let alone study it. Instead, they focus on criticising anyone who holds up an example of Australian culture. Their approach gets them nowwhere. A critical frame of mind will never have as much influence as a constructive frame of mind because it can never amount to being anything more than a speed bump.

Even though a google ranking can be revealing, the true test is whether people use the content once they arrive. In the case of this site, they do. I personally found this out when I set Chinese students a task to research the difference between China and a British English speaking nation, and soon read my own words in their assignments. (I had never told them about the site, or had my name on it.) Like the Chinese, most English language learners study the cultural backgrounds of the main English speaking countries. While the focus is generally on America and England, there are a few that give Australia a passing glance.

In addition to helping English language students, the site also seems to be helpful for the Australian government website www.cultureandrecreation.gov.au, which is ranked number one by google. Just as I recognised my words in the work of the Chinese students, I've recognised them on the government site.

I don't actually care if people copy. To the contrary, I hope that this site will be completely drowned out and immersed by competitors. If my ideas need to be copied to achieve that outcome then I am happy with that. With luck, when copying the ideas, others will improve upon them and produce something superior. I know I copy ideas of others, or at the very least, are influenced by them.

While this site has influence, I do recognise that like Chopper Reid, it has far more critics than supporters. The left-wing hate this site because not only does it persevere with recognising that an Australian culture exists, it also defines the left-wing as having a culture themselves. Left-wingers are not very comfortable with this. They prefer to criticise from the shadows rather than be put in the spotlight. Furthermore, by their frequent use of the word 'we', they obviously don't like to be put into a distinct category. Nevertheless, they have a series of shared ideologies and attributes that are not found in other countries around the world, and are opposed by many of their compatriots in Australia. Therefore, they need to be defined as a culture. At a basic level, this means correcting their sentences. For example, it is oxymoronic when they say "we have no culture in Australia." It is correct for them to say, "we(left-wingers) have a culture of saying that we have no culture."

I sometimes see links posted to this site on forums, particularly footbal forums, and not surprisingly, the opinions vary. In regards to the football forums, fans of rival clubs never agree on anything, and they definately don't agree on this site. That is not a problem though. Disagreement is actually the main attraction of football, and to feed the attraction I deliberately took an insulting and misdirecting line to the respective football clubs that I mostly refrained from in other areas of the site. Furthermore, I usually considered the stereotypical myths of the clubs rather than the realities of them. In a way, the myths were more useful than the reality because it is the conflict over the accuracy of myths that makes football so enjoyable.

Whereas I apply my skills at ridicule and misdirection to the arena of sport, I think much of the intellectual world applies it to general Australian life. They deliberately insult, deceive, foster conflict and then use statistics to justify their actions. Furthermore, they often focus on myths rather than the reality. While myths are an important part of cultural study, they take an approach that a myth is based in reality when it's something negative, such as racism or anti-intellectualism, but not based in reality when the myth is positive, such as mateship. For example, Richard Waterhouse, from Sydney University took aim at the myth that pioneer farmers helped each other out of mateship. According to Waterhourse, the hospitality was nothing but a defence mechanism to stop transients burning down their fences. In another example, in 2002, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article by two historians, Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson, in which they offered a "corrective to 10 myths about the ANZAC campaign." After deconstructing the myth that Australians admired their Turkish enemy, the article also moralised that the Gallipoli myth:

"excludes more than half the population: women, indigenous people and most ethnic groups."

I could go on and on with examples of academics deconstructing positive myths and affirming negative myths. They obviously see benefit in what they are doing, but I don't. I see benefit of conflict and ridicule in football because that is what makes football enjoyable, but it is counter productive in the study of social life.

Although it is my hope that this site will eventually be immersed by competitors, such is the lack of interest in Australia, I can't see that happening soon. Despite the high search engine rankings, this site only gets around 1,500,000 page loads a year from around 500,000 unique visitors. Considering the amount of English language students in the world, and students in Australia, that really is quite low. I think the problem is that Australian culture currently has a similar reputation to the Australian movie industry; neither Australia nor the world gives a stuff about it. To put the figure in perspective, a simple web blog by columnist Andrew Bolt drew over 6,000,000 page impressions in 2007. From the statistics, it seems that more Australians are interested in discussing cultural issues the way they would discuss sport, and few people want a general discussion.

Considering that critical rather than constructive thinking has dominated the social sciences for decades, it is understandable that interest is low. Critical thinking leads to a body of knowledge that has no practical application other than attaining the emotional gratification that comes from insulting people. For example, in China, a textbook I was given to work from had a section on Australia that was very negative and really quite useless. It had a few pages about whites killing Aborigines, a bit about sheep farming and a veiled criticism of Australia being too sports focussed. Since the same content dominates Australian textbooks, I guessed that the section was written by a left-wing Australian. While the authors obviously had their own motivations for writing the way they did, their words were not very useful for students planning a visit to Australia, or teachers wanting to inspire Asian students to want to learn about Australia. Instead of using the textbook, I had to criticise it. I told my students they were free to read it if they wanted, and that they were free to use the contents, but I personally found it inaccurate, boring and generally quite useless. I then created something different.

I would have preferred that I was never put in a position that I had to criticise the academics from my homeland, because that just makes me look bad as well. In most Asian's eyes, to criticise your country is like criticising your family. Rightly or wrongly, it just makes the critic look bad as well. Sadly however, the fact is that the quality of academic thought on the issue of Australian culture is lacking, and I can't in good conscious use it. While I wouldn't say this site is great, it is more useful. When more constructive thinking prevails, it will disappear, and Australia will be better off.

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