What did people in the UK think of this during the 1990s?

[Femusia]

If you were a young person during the 1990s when "Cool Britannia" was all the range as Britain's cultural rejuvenation with things like the Union Jack being fashionable again and Spice Girls and Oasis being cool; or even if you weren't young but remember it, how did you and other Brits at the time feel about Australia?

I have been doing some research into Australian attitudes at the time of the 1990s and I learnt how at the time they were at the tail end of their own cultural rejuvenation which began in the 1970s as they started asserting their nationhood and culture against Britain and stopped feeling British. They were rebelling against British symbols like the very Union Jack that Geri Halliwell had so famously made fashionable again with her Union Jack dress and were trying to abolish the monarchy and acting indifferent to British culture.

A quote from a sociological journal investigating Australian attitudes to Britain in the 1990s, "But Cool Britannia was too late to matter Australians. By then, Britain was a foreign country and not the best known one. The Spice Girls did not displace Seinfeld and the Simpsons and that was in place by the 1980. The 1970s was the last decade that British culture could have such an impact."

How did you as British people, especially British youth have such self-confidence, pride and enjoyment at the time if Australians were actively behaving as such, which surely delegitimised Cool Britannia because if they didn't care why did you? Or, were you just not thinking about them to start off with and Cool Britannia was an internal thing not concerned with the world and by the 1990s, Britain didn't care what the likes of Australia thought?

I just watched a 1997 clip of Coronation Street in which an 18-year old Leanne Battersby has a Geri Halliwell poster on her bedroom wall and is listening to Spice Girl songs, symbolic of youth at the time. This would likely not have been something an Australian teenager or young adult would've done because according to that article, "As late as 1990, Kylie Minogue found that Australians were not impressed or bothered about the fact that she had departed for London or adopted a British accent".

So, what do you think of this?

The only time I thought of Australia at all was when I watched Neighbours.
I never gave any thought to Cool Britannia either.

it wasn’t cool for me. I was overweight the waify models, the focus on ‘looks’ was awful. There was no diversity in magazines and media.

I didn’t think it Australia and still don’t. I can’t remember Britain being that cool either.

What I felt about Australia was mostly about sport and how much self-belief Australian teams had. Especially cricket but also rugby.

As an aside, I think for all the cultural rebellion the roots go very deep. Australia remains a monarchy and the Union Jack is in still on the flag.

Haha I thought the same!

never thought about Australia unless Inxs or other band were playing.

Without a Time Machine and a significant sample of answers from a cross section both British and Australian society it’s impossible to say.

In the 90s I was a kid who liked Neighbours and thought it was weird it was hot for Christmas there! That was the extent of my thoughts on Australia!

The Spice Girls were horribly naff. It seems their history and musical pedigree has been rewritten over the years.

I associate the Cool Britannia thing as some sort of PR campaign arising from Tony Blair/media latching onto the music scene, Madchester, blur v oasis, and young British artists (Emin etc).

Australia was the land that produced teatime soaps.

No one in the UK is wondering what Australia is up to unless they have relatives or friends there.

I was 18 in 1995, just off to university, it was an exciting upbeat time , great music, britpop, Oasis, Blur etc. Everyone thought the country was on the up and the pubs, bars and nightclubs were booming.

Exactly the opposite of now in fact

Agree with @spritelover above re:uk

On the austrailians front...I didn't really think of them...

If i did it it was due to the handful I met in stupid walkabout bars.
They were invariably massive fucking racists who had appalling things to say about aboriginals and so i generally avoided them.

🤷🏻‍♀️

It's all the rage, not all the range.

The spice girls were the epitome of feminism and female empowerment that was an essential part of 90s UK culture. We’ve gone backwards now IMO, it’s a worse time than the 90s to be a woman now.

I note that you didn't answer the question by @OllysArmyRidesAgain in the first response to your OP.

Or anyone else's questions. Is this for an article, a book or your EPQ?

Britain has no such anxieties. Or, at least England doesn’t… I can’t speak for our other member nations.

That’s like asking one of the oldest trees in the centre of the forest how it defines itself in relation to its distant saplings.

Also when I worked in Japan, with a lot of young Aussies and Brits, the two groups came together immediately like long lost cousins. Immediate hugs and friendships and bonds. Far more easy in each others company than with the Americans, Danes or Japanese.

I was a child in the 90s who was spice girls obsessed and I actually moved to Australia for a few years during the 90s too! I still loved spice girls over there and so did all my Aussie school mates!

^^Exactly this.
I’m assuming you’re quite a young person, OP, because you don’t seem to have registered that in the 1990s there just wasn’t the means of getting information quickly about anything, certainly not on the matter of how a cultural ‘moment’ in the UK might be perceived by another country.

All we had was printed newspapers and magazines and programmes like Panorama. 🤷🏼‍♀️

When I went to uni in 1995, we were the first year to be issued with an email address. The internet was virtually non-existent and took ages to load.

Loved Neighbours and Home & Away and admired Aussies for being generally friendly and fun and laidback but beyond that, Australia never even crossed my mind.

And I wasn’t some kind of vapid, airheaded ignoramus - I studied hard and I was reading Naomi Wolf and Germaine Greer as well as devouring Cosmopolitan magazine and Minx (which sadly folded but had the wonderful vibe of Caitlin Moran in every issue as though she were editor. She wasn’t.)

I’m so curious at the premises you’re basing your thinking on, OP. Most people weren’t thinking about any other country’s perceptions of our culture. That’s such a recent thing.

We didn’t have internet or mobile phones, I barely knew what was happening down the other end of town let alone the world.

Hard to believe but we were not all quite as instantly connected back then, a letter to Australia would have taken days if not weeks and a phone call would have been a weeks wage!

At the time, I saw Tori Amos, riot grrrl culture (mostly American), and ladette culture as representing female empowerment.

For me the Spice Girls were manufactured crap.

I agree we’ve gone backwards.

I was young in the 90s and also spent a fair bit of time in Australia. I remember being struck by how heavily it was influenced by the USA rather than the UK, but there was also an obsession with the Royal Family in parts of the Aussie media. I learnt things (allegations) about Prince Philip that I would never have read about in the British press 😮 But overall I don’t think anyone in the UK would really care what the Aussies thought of us (and you were quite happy to have us lap up Neighbours and H&A)

I would say Cool Britannia was a thing as we had so many groups producing records that were a hit all over the world - our fashion designers were still at the top. Princess Diana on world wide papers. Still had some industry and great universities.
My Dsis lives in Australia and apparently they moved away from UK towards USA - so tv was American series not UK - they seem more american now - drive everywhere like in the US. Young people who took a year out often went to Australia - safe place, great weather

I thought Cool Britannia was a load of nonsense conjured up by politicians to make themselves appealing to a young demographic, and that as my mother has recently emigrated to Australia it was a bloody long way to travel to visit her.

Australia is round the other side of the world.
It doesn't have much impact on Britain.
Apart from the occasional royal tour / republican arguments and cricket I don't give it much if any headspace.
The most headspace I do give it is watching Outback Truckers, Aussie Gold Hunters etc on the TV.

I arrived in london 1994.

I don’t think we ever thought about Cool Brittania much at the time.

It was all about Brit Pop, the vibrant art scene - Hurst, Emin, Ofili, - Glastonbury when you could still buy tickets or go over the (ever increasing) fence. lads mags were massive, Big Breakfast, Jungle, drum & bass in clubs. The IRA were still bombing the uk & there were no bins. Only one night bus an hour. Everyone smoked. It was hard to find a good coffee though that was changing. Brits I knew drank tea and rarely coffee.

the Brits did adore Neighbours which I was amused by. The most anyone thought about Australia was re The Ashes, Kylie, and Rolf Harris who was big tv star. Ie Aussies were having a cultural impact here, but I don’t think people thought about Australia or nz much at all.

it was a time of British cultural revolution & pride. It was an amazing vibrant time to be here.