Socceroos exorcising our Cultural Cringe

Roar Pro

By Con Stamocostas, 15 Jul 2009 Con Stamocostas is a Roar Pro

Tagged:: A-League, football, Gold Coast United, Socceroos, Tim Cahill

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Australia is a land and a people unto itself. At the same time, our geographic isolation lends to our sense of wanderlust as we peer over the horizon imagining about the different people and places that exist.

Any cultural expression that we catch ourselves doing causes our bodies to elicit a reflex gag in the form of a cringe. More specifically, a Cultural Cringe.

An Australian coined the term, a chap by the name of A. A. Phillips wrote an essay in 1950 under the same heading.

Does the Cultural Cringe still exist? Is it relevant today? And does it exist in football at all?

Some AFL types think calling Soccer by Football is a form of it. Here is a letter I found by an irate ex player who refuses to join the football bandwagon:

“Let’s not revive the Cultural Cringe on the football field,” he protested. “Many millions of Australians ‘going to the footy’ most decidedly does not mean attending a soccer match. Australian journalists, sports writers and commentators should be mindful how we Australians think of and talk about our games, and resist inducements to jump on yet another trendoid bandwagon.”

The A.A. Phillips essay explored ingrained feelings of inferiority that local intellectuals in Australia struggled against. The essay spoke of an internalised inferiority complex.

One article on the essay said that ”in the back of the Australian mind, there sits a minatory of Englishman. His ghost sits in on the tête-à-tête between Australian reader and writer, interrupted in the wrong accent.”

It seems Australia has taken self-deprecation that the English made into an art form and taken it to a new level.

Whereas the English like to sing, “we’re shit and we know we are,” Australian’s like to sing “we’re awesome ,but we’d rather be shit,” as to avoid at all costs the Cultural Cringe’s closest relative: the Tall Poppy Syndrome.

The Socceroos recent success and some of the media reaction to that success could be a case of the Cultural Cringe and Tall Poppy syndrome, particularly with the Tim Cahill and E-E-mail-gate stories.

Perhaps certain sections of the media who have the job of peddling League, Union and AFL are now suffering from Football Cringe. That is, every time the Socceroos are successful, they can’t help but cringe.

The success of the Socceroos and the rise of football in Australia may not sit well with all the locals, but with A-League season closing in and the World Cup on the horizon, rather than cringe or wrangle with a syndrome or feelings of inferiority, I think the year ahead will see me cheering for my football.

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The Crowd Says (214) | Page 1 of Comments

Kurt said | July 15th 2009 @ 1:33am | Report comment

Con – calling soccer football isn’t a form of cultural cringe. Insisting that others call it football because ‘that’s what the rest of the world calls it’ (putting aside for the moment that patently untrue nature of this claim) IS most definitely a form of cultural cringe. It puts the opinions of those outside Australia above our own traditions and seeks the approval of those perceived to be our cultural superiors.

If you genuinely support soccer and enjoy following your club side and the socceroos then that’s great, good luck to you. If however like many of the soccer contributors to the roar you are consumed by fear and hatred of sports such as Australian football and rugby league, and desperately try to denigrate them on the basis that ‘they’re only played in one or two countries’ then the term ‘cultural cringe’ is most definitely appropriate.

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collin said | July 15th 2009 @ 2:02am | Report comment

kurt thats funny considering how many anti football entries you make. nobody here dislikes afl or rugby league, in fact afl is really fun to goto. the difference is afl and rugby league dont make people like me feel national pride, that in fact only happens when our socceroo’s don the field. i dont care if you dont like the sport which you clearly do, but what confuses me the most is how a minority of people can cringe at the achievement of one of our nations most popular teams. not only are our socceroo’s Australia’s best known sporting brand, but they are a perfect reflection of our sporting culture. their never say die attitude and fierce pride in the shirt is simply inspiring. i couldnt care less what the daily telegraph says, when you disrespect what makes many australians such as myself patriotic, you piss on the entire system.

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Kurt said | July 15th 2009 @ 2:40am | Report comment

Collin – so by disliking soccer I’m ‘pissing on the entire system’? How so exactly, and which system are we talking about? For the record my attitude towards the socceroos is exactly the same as my attitude towards the majority of Australian Olympic athletes & teams – complete and utter indifference for 3 years and 50 weeks followed by a fortnight or so of mild enthusiasm. If that constitutes disrespect well then so be it.

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Steffy said | July 15th 2009 @ 4:15am | Report comment

The whole article can be summarised as: “if you don’t like what I like and don’t do as I do then you have a problem”.

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Michael C said | July 15th 2009 @ 6:22am | Report comment

colllin -

cultural cringe and national pride -

evidently you don’t have a broad enough understanding and have well and truely donned the soccer blinkers (I’ll take it gently with you lad!!).

National Pride – AFL provides national pride in DIFFERENT ways.

When Tom Cruise attends the MCG ON his birthday to watch Collingwood and Essendon (because over the years he’s fallen for the game of Aust Footy) – - – it shows he’s absorbing something of Australian culture that CAN NOT be sampled elsewhere (i.e. the difference between eating at an ‘Aust Cuisine’ restaurant in Melbourne vs an Italian restaurant in Lygon St). Do you get that??

When 16 teams of rank amateurs have self funded to come to Australia for a fortnight to play the Aust Footy international cup around Melbourne and regional Victoria – - people who have taken up our game with no promise of riches, and yet have become amongst the most passionate participants in the world to trek half way around the globe. There IS no need for Australia to play or Australia to win or the green and gold track suits etc. It’s a different sort of ‘national pride’ that swells. Not necessarily better – - but different. Because, soccer is us playing the ‘world game’, where as small pockets of the world playing ‘OUR GAME’ is effectively a constant recognition of Australia – and not just whenever 1 other country happens to be playing the Socceroos. Do you get that??

The irony is – ‘cultural cringe’ often sees people completely undersell and undervalue our local game…..

….even to the extent that many Soccer supporters want us to ignore that “Australian Football” (the official and legal name of the game) is actually played with a sherrin.

btw – Australians have long since the A.A.Phillips letter – have long since learned to become world champions, on and off the sports field. And along with that, comes a happy knowledge that not everything sporting caravan has to go off shore all the time and keep ‘proving’ it.
Heck, if the history and state of Australian Soccer (same can be said about basketball) can put the Socceroos in the Top 20 against all these countries for whom soccer is their religion – - heck, that prooves that our major domestic codes NRL and AFL must actually be fair dinkum world class sports….but played on a domestic stage. (we already know that about the Sheffield Shield, although, no one goes to watch it – but many Shield matches are better quality/standard than many international test matches.).

This brings us back to the whole inferiority aspect of cultural cringe – - some people always assert that Australian movies are crap and that you should only wear Italian leather and suits.
Whilst, others are willing to at least sample the local alternatives,
and others will steadfastly champion the cause of the local alternatives.

Which one are you?? I bet it varies across the various aspects of your life.

Me – I’m pretty consistant other than the car I drive – although, no, actually, that WAS made in Adelaide – so, yep, I’m pretty consistant.

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Midfielder said | July 15th 2009 @ 7:24am | Report comment

Kurt two points 1) most Football folk I know don’t care two hoots about AFL .. but never say anything about it … my life experience is AFL media and more outspoken types have attacked Football … then been surprised by replies …

2) The two weeks every four years HMMMMmmmmmmm Socceroos to quality for the WC about 16 matches to quality for the Asian Cup about 14 matches plus 3 WC matches and 3 AC matches… plus about 3 friendlies per year … say 12 … meaning 42 Soccero matches over 4 years… The Olyroos i.e. the Olympic squad to make the Olympics and Asian U 23 about 30 matches..Double this for the women’s team.

So Socceroo 42 matches Olyroo 30 ie. 70 then double for the girls or 144 games over four years … a tad more than 2 weeks every four years … maybe you don’t count Asia or Women … now that is a CC.

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Redb said | July 15th 2009 @ 8:21am | Report comment

Midfielder,

Interesting you talk about life experience. My life experience at mid 40′s is that soccer has been called soccer for 40 years of the 45 years. Football has been called football for 45 years.

What Con considers cultural ‘cringe’ I consider cultural ‘habit’.

Get over yourselves.

Redb

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Andrew said | July 15th 2009 @ 9:19am | Report comment

Football (Soccer) fan here.

Despite not being a big fan of Kurt, I think what he says in his first post strikes me as spot on.

Look at where Football (Soccer) was before Lowy came in….. when Labozetta was in charge football had a real feeling of morbidity and they were our darkest days….which is saying something.

Now we have a decent league (let’s not get ahead of ourselves but it’s going in the right direction) a NYL, a great national team, a good coach and there well resourced. And because where in Asia we have plenty of competitive games too see them in (remember when we went a hole year and our only internationals were exhibitions).

Where not Europe, Football isn’t the dominant football code in any city but who cares. If some AFL fans or archaic media organizations (which I stopped using years ago for my football news) want to still call it soccer then so be it, I couldn’t give a rats arse.

As an aside I love the name “Socceroos”, that’s what our national team was called when I was a kid and there the only national team where I support Australia rather than New Zealand (watching Yankos goal against Argentine as an 8 year old had me hooked). It’s a little bit of tradition which is not something you can generate overnight with a bit of fancy marketing glitz (someone should tell the ARU that). There’s not a lot left so I for one want to keep it.

The cultural cringe is alive in well but I always assumed a cringe was when we were afraid of our own culture. It’s the people calling for the end of the salary cap, promotion relegation, and to totally remove finals (I do hate that too many teams get into the finals though) and adding a cup competition (you cant replicate the FA cups 100 plus years of tradition overnight). These I feel are people trying to impose European Square pegs into our round Australian system.

We don’t have 80 million people living in a small island and where not a population steeped in 80 years of football as culture with it being our number one sport. That said we have the number one national team in Asia and a very bright future

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Albal said | July 15th 2009 @ 9:21am | Report comment

Nice article. It is about time someone raised the issue of News Corps. treatment of the Socceroos and especially Tim Cahill. The Australian media have always treated football quite badly (that’s the name, if the AFL and Rugby league codes wish to take the name away, they should raise it with FIFA. I am sure FIFA would be more than happy to listen to their complaints – once these codes explain what these games are). But due to the Socceroos success, it has been agressive attacks.

A Rugby league player defacating on the floor of a hotel lobby got much less coverage in the media than a news corp. fabricated story about Tim Cahill refusing to leave a bar. I will never support either AFL or NRL because of their treatment of our code (for instance, NRL/AFL reporters putting the boot in every time one of our teams lose).

If you are insecure about our sport and consider it girly or whatever, leave us alone. Football is not hear to take away your mickey mouse sports.

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Tom said | July 15th 2009 @ 9:26am | Report comment

The pre-eminence of AFL in Australia’s sporting culture seems like a strong argument against cultural cringe. The logic of the cringe was that everything had to be validated internationally, which is impossible for AFL.

I’ve never thought that cultural cringe was as pervasive or as damaging as some others do. Maybe there are a handful of people who turn up their nose at anything Australian, but most of them have followed Germaine Greer to London by now.

Its good to have international sports that encompass a range of styles and nationalities. Its also good to have local sports that represent our own distinct national identity.

AFL and soccer complement one another. Why the hell do so many of you mindlessly rip into one another over trivialities?

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