Self-righteous criticism of Mick Dundee a crock
IF you don’t like films like Crocodile Dundee, don’t watch them, and spare us the pious tirades. Comedy is escapism, not a thesis on the human condition, writes Louise Roberts.
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IN our era of take offence first and conduct reasonable analysis only as an afterthought, even news of a potential hoax movie on the legend of fictional Crocodile Dundee has delivered a hair trigger response of disgust.
The eponymous Mick Dundee with his mahogany man cleavage and Akubra decorated with trophy reptile teeth never set out to be an agent of cultural commentary.
But inadvertently, he was. Actor Paul Hogan, starring as the wry outback hero navigating big city culture shock, put front and centre issues like homosexuality and cross dressing before an international audience of millions.
Hoges sent us up and we loved it, so refreshing it was in the 1980s era of conspicuous consumption and Scott and Charlene’s Neighbours wedding.
But Mick is now at the morality stake with the flames licking his cowboy boots, less than 24 hours from Australia Day.
His crime?
Starring in our most successful movie franchise of all time which — and it’s still only January people — has been banished as a “sexist, racist and homophobic” cinematic embarrassment.
This week’s self-righteous panic was ignited by a couple of trailers for a film that will possibly never see the light of day: Dundee: The Son of Legend Returns Home.
Movie four in the franchise, the unconfirmed story reportedly follows Mick’s American son Brian, played by US comedian Danny McBride, as he swaps a comfortable life in the US for the blistering Aussie outback.
Or it may be that the trailers are a Super Bowl ad for Tourism Australia.
That said, the hoax element hasn’t stopped the hand-wringing from the intelligentsia. Thank goodness for them, hey?
It’s the relentless crusade for ever perfecting public morality for our own good, of course, because as ordinary Australians we are too dumb to recognise our DNA as sexist bigots.
The charm of Mick, out of his comfort zone in Manhattan but revealing grit and warmth in a crisis, should be filed under National Shame, according to a Guardian film critic.
Or as one of my colleagues noted, everything that came before yesterday must be denounced and disappeared
“For starters, in addition to being vulgar and witless, the new film would need to be sexist, racist, homophobic and transphobic,” the critic thundered.
“It would need to have awkward jokes unfunny at the time of release and even less amusing when revisited years later.”
This assessment is based on one of the pivotal scenes in the original, apart from the “That’s not a knife, that’s a knife” dialogue which has followed Hoges around the world ever since.
I’ll remind you but please, snowflakes, look away now.
In a bar, Mick unwittingly chats up a man dressed up as a woman until his friend tips him off. In a brusque response, Mick clumsily verifies the gender with a quick squeeze of the groin area revealing “a guy dressed up as a sheila”.
In the second film, Mick is shocked when, out on a window ledge to save a jumper, the said jumper reveals his spurned lover is a man.
Naive and unsophisticated, yes. But vicious, transphobic and sexist? No.
Any criticism merely masquerades as social responsibility by viewing a tongue in cheek film through the prism of 2018 pontification.
And Mick? Well, it’s without question he would, with a croc in a headlock and a schooner of lager (not craft beer) on the bar, be utterly contemptuous of the fragile types now plaguing our lives by tiresomely and constantly taking umbrage.
When did a bit of self-deprecating, crass or even downright rude comedy become public enemy number one?
Have we become such prudes with double standards that we can’t find humour in taking the mickey out of ourselves? If we are to take such a narrow high ground, where will it end?
Should The Castle be condemned because it paints ordinary families as simple bogans with small dreams? Or is Muriel’s Wedding disgraceful because it portrays all young women as man-hungry predators who will do anything to get a ring on their finger?
Suddenly some of the world’s most treasured comedies become unpacked and displayed on a shelf of shame. The gals from Ab Fab — hung out to dry for their abuse of alcohol and drugs.
What about the racial slurs cast on the hapless Spanish waiter Manuel in one of the most iconic British sitcoms of all time, Fawlty Towers?
So, in 2018 we are left with Crocodile Dundee as a xenophobic, gay hater. The truth, rather, is that being offended so readily and routinely is really a sign of emotional immaturity and minimal resilience.
And Mick as a racist? A huge chunk of the film focuses on his embryonic connection with our indigenous culture.
It’s important to remember that movies — the good, the bad and the ugly — were a nod to their era.
In the 1990s violent kill-fests like Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and True Romance created scandal and sent teenagers scurrying for their fake IDs so they could get past the R-rating at the cinemas.
Violence became more violent and when the new millennium came around, suddenly our acceptance of the graphic and nudity was becoming more relaxed.
Fast forward to this decade, and we have Fifty Shades of Grey, Game of Thrones and any number of films and television series that have pushed the boundaries way beyond what would be acceptable — or perhaps even legal — in the 1980s.
In 2014, the same writer also had a crack at the franchise, accusing it of portraying “rural Australia as a place populated by flaky people who have little understanding of the world around them. It condescends to these people, just as the film condescends to its audience.” How patronising.
But for now, the potential new Dundee adventure has been sanctimoniously written off like the other “cynical, opportunistic films, dripping with contempt for their audience”, we’re informed.
“From this point of view, there is one thing the new “trailer” gets absolutely right: it encapsulates the franchise’s shameless stereotype-mongering and disdainful attitude towards viewers. All in an ultra-efficient two words, when Danny McBride stares into the camera and says: “G’day, losers.”
Hoges, now 78, said the films were a “defining moment” in his life, one of his “proudest accomplishments” . They earned him a Golden Globe.
Two years before Dundee, he conquered the US as the loveable ocker who said: “I’ll slip an extra shrimp on the barbie for you.”
As a friend who moved here from the States told me: “(Hogan) created this image in American minds of Australia as this fun, outdoorsy, none-too-serious, thumb-your-nose-at-authority kind of place and that’s what I imagined when I wound up here.”
We should pride ourselves on our larrikin, adaptable streak and down to earth positive attitude. It is at risk of extinction.
So are films like Crocodile Dundee real time oppression or entertainment? You know the answer.
If you don’t like it, don’t watch it. Don’t loop us into your purantical crusade.
Comedy equals escapism. It’s not a thesis on the human condition.
The only loser is us if we judge yesterday and things we were perfectly happy with by today’s pious, self-serving standards.
@whatlouthinks