Cultural cringe

As soon as the Southern writer goes "home" and gets some recognition in England, he is "So-and-So, the well-known Australian author whose work has attracted so much attention in London lately"; and we first hear of him by cable, even though he might have been writing at his best for ten years in Australia.

In essence, Phillips pointed out that the public widely assumed that anything produced by local dramatists, actors, musicians, artists and writers was necessarily deficient when compared to the works of their European and American counterparts.

The only ways local arts professionals could build themselves up in public esteem was either to follow overseas fashions, or, more often, to spend a period of time working in Britain.

[4][5] As Lawson continued in his 1894 preface: "The same paltry spirit tried to dispose of the greatest of modern short-story writers as 'The Californian Dickens', but America wasn't built that way – neither was Bret Harte!"

Indeed, while they prided themselves on the qualities of locally produced athletes and sportsmen, whom they invariably considered first rate, Australians behaved as if in more intellectual pursuits the nation generated only second-rate talent.

[10] Some commentators claim the cultural cringe particularly affects local television programming in Australia,[11] which is heavily influenced by imported shows, mainly of American and British origin.

In recent decades community attitudes have changed, and many Australians with convict ancestors are now more comfortable investigating and discussing their past, wearing their forebears' status almost as a badge of pride.

The term originates from Guacanagaríx, a cazique (tribal chieftain) of the Taíno people who was regarded as overly welcoming towards Christopher Columbus and European explorers.

The TV show Flight of the Conchords, which screened on HBO in the United States from 2007 to 2009, furthered American and international awareness of New Zealand (while ironically using cultural cringe as a frequent plot device), as have motion pictures such as The World's Fastest Indian.

[27][28] The post-colonial theorists Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin link alienation with a sense of dislocation or displacement some peoples (especially those from immigrant cultures) will feel when they look to a distant nation for their values.

It has been argued that the most common manifestation of this alienation among peoples from post-colonial nations at present is an appetite for all things American, from television and music, to clothing, slang, even names.

A more sophisticated approach to the issues raised by the cultural cringe, as felt by artistic practitioners in former colonies around the world, was developed and advanced by the Australian art historian Terry Smith in his essay "The Provincialism Problem".