The Americanization Of Australia - Business Ideas and Media by Geoff Dodd

The Americanization of Australia began in earnest in the 1940s when the American naval fleet arrived in Sydney harbor to prepare to defeat the Japanese navy in The Pacific. Sailors mixed with the Australian people and the locals were impressed by their relaxed attitude and deep pockets. After Darwin in the northern territory was bombed, the U.S. forces were seen as our savior.

Then in the 1950s the onrush of American business and commercial culture hit Australia like a tidal wave. There were drive-in movies, supermarkets and fast food takeaways appearing in the 1960s on every prime corner block. The lulling tones of Elvis Presley, the blond shamelessness of Marilyn Monroe and Hollywood blockbusters, all swamped the Australian culture leaving it in a spin of identity crisis. What then, was distinctly Australian? It took four more decades to resolve this crucial question.

The American entertainment industry, powered by a monetary elite such as MGM, Warner Brothers and Twentieth Century Fox, fed its products carefully through the fast evolving electronic media. Cinema, radio, television, VHS video, cassettes and DVD, computers and finally The Internet and cell phones. These media carried not only free or low cost fun and entertainment but carefully crafted commercial messages to imprint the very brains of the Aussies, the Australian people with branding logos and buy messages -- deep into their suggestible sub-conscious minds and collective unconscious. The Australian identity was being forged by materialism rather than by mateship and the ghostly memories of Lone Pine, Gallipoli and fighting alongside the New Zealanders for the freedom of The British Commonwealth.

Perhaps The United States gave Australia lofty ideas and a strong 'big brother' example to live up to. Australians have performed well in science and medical research, in both sports and acting and in music. Aussies are well respected in Hollywood. Many business models are initiated in the USA and copied in Australia and throughout the world.

The U.S. has a firm, trustworthy ally in Australia and The Internet is merging activities so tightly now that the two countries have almost become one. The writer, for example, sits at a computer in Western Australia and targets his customers in the USA and gets paid greenbacks by direct deposit into a Perth savings account. That degree of integration of business activities was unimaginable before digital convergence started in earnest in the 1990s.