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?

Australia was and still is a country with very little influence on the world either in politics or pop culture

I was not aware of the dislike towards the British until I lived there for 18 months I went in 1999, there was a referendum while I was there to become a republic. I once said at work I can understand why they didn’t want to queen to be head of state I was told to keep quite so I didn’t voice my opinion again 😆

Assuming you were around in the 90s OP, what were your thoughts on Australia’s opinion of British culture at the time? Was it something you gave a lot of consideration to?

Why would anyone in Britain or Australia care?

I don’t think the spice girls were considered cool at the time, if you were over 16. I was a young teen in the 90s and very into indie music. Maybe I was too young to care or understand, but the whole Cool Britannia thing didn’t even register as a patriotic or political thing for me, i just associated it with certain bands. My only knowledge of Australia was through neighbours and home and away…and the amazing but long forgotten about heartbreak high!

As an Australian we gave less thought about you as you did us. We're more likely to visit and be influenced by our closest neighbours such as Indonesia, South Korea, China, etc. Just like you're more likely to be influenced by your European neighbours than you will be influenced by us.

If you add Fosters and prisoner cell block H we have it all covered haha, I think there was another one about Vets or Doctors I watched in the 80s with my Mum in the school holidays as well.

People forget there was little to no accessible/affordable Internet in the early to mid 90s, we only had 4 TV channels until channel 5 came along in 1997. I turned 21 in 1990 and was too busy surviving in a flat and partying when I wasn't at work, for half of the 90s I didnt even have a TV as couldn't afford one on one wage whilst renting 😅 so I had no idea what was happening outside of my local bubble at all

"cool Brittania" was fantastic. As for the Australians not liking the Brits i am not sure about that as bloody tens of thousands of them were over here backpacking. They were working bars, fruit picking etc.

I lived in Australia in the early 90’s. All my workmates were interested in was the poll tax riots and how on earth we managed with a monthly salary (got paid every 2 weeks in Oz).

I live in New Zealand and we probably were very Americanised as young people. Mainly because the programmes that appealed to our age group were American and we didn't have much choice of TV channels.
Neighbours, Home and Away and other Australian programmes were popular too.
Barbie was always more popular than Sindy or Daisy dolls because of the marketing.
Music wise though Oasis, Blur etc were really popular and the Spice Girls were very much the big thing for young girls.
One thing being a small country is we didn't get a lot of big name concerts. That has changed for the better now as we have more stadiums and since streaming artists tour more to make money.
Australia has had a strong republican movement for some time. New Zealand not so much as we are quite small and our founding document is a treaty with the crown

The most teens ever considered Australia was when watching H&A or neighbours after school in UK. Kylie and Jason were a thing. Other than that the flag was finally able to be used again after winning the Olympics, from what I remember. Now, not so much due to the racist implications.

I was in Aus in 2004-6 so a bit later, but I wanted to go there because it was the other side of the world to my parents and was hot, had job opportunities and looked fun. I remember being told by one boss I "work pretty hard for a Pom". So I assume that was their opinion of us at the time.

ETA: I did do a project On Australia in junior school (appx 1990) and my grandparents had to search high and low for an Australian recipe. We had plenty of books but all we could find was Lamingtons, which we dutifully made, but I do remember them rolling their eyes a bit. They were probably more the generation you are thinking of re opinions of the Commonwealth connection? My dad was not impressed I went as he didn't think it held more opportunities than UK, but actually I found working there far less stuffy and progression for young people very rapid in comparison to UK.

@Femusia "The question is in terms of the emotional identification of Australians and Brits as fellow British people as they used to and whether that still existed by the 1990s."

I hate to say this but I think you'd probably need to go back to maybe the 1950's to find anyone who still thought about Australia in terms of strong links. Most British people don't think about Australia much at all, unless they've got relatives there. And I can't imagine any young people in the 90's, or now, giving any head space about Australians listening to the Spice Girls! Cool Britannia definitely brought a feel good factor to the UK but it was largely seen as an internal thing. We didn't think it did (or should) apply to Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Cyprus, Fiji or any other Commonwealth countries. I don't think anyone under the age of about 80 cares whether Australia becomes a republic or not really. In fact, I'd say at least 60% (of those that actually care either way) probably hope you achieve it. But I suspect a lot of younger Brits don't even know that King Charles is your Head of State. I mean, most of us think of Australia in friendly terms and a lot of us would like to visit, but that's as far as it goes.

Irony is no one in Australia drinks Fosters!

Yes!! I was going to put the Littlest Hobo as well but that turns out to the Canadian! (Sings theme tune to self)

This whole thread proves that none of us young adults in the 90s folk have ever thought about the uk being a mother country, all we know is the tv shows, and possibly INXS and Men Without Hats, you can dance being an awesome Australian song. I just thought the Australians seemed really cool!

Do our views on this matter for your research OP? Because if they do you should probably go about it a bit more formally really.

I was 18 in 1995 and fully bought into the Cool Britannia thing along with a buoyant feeling about the Labour Government and things 'only getting better'. Not really just the Spice Girls which was a manufactured pop group which didn't create that feeling but rode the tide of it. Does anyone else remember that cheesy video that all young voters got of Tony Blair? For me it is all tied up with London Museums going free and the successful Olympic bid. I think those were probably a bit later but it feels connected in my mind.

Anyway WRT to Australia, Home & Away and Neighbours were very popular and of course lots and lots of us still had quite close relatives who had emigrated there in the 1950s. So the connection was there. But the point of Cool Britannia was that it was about Britain, not Australia, and that it was less about the dead or dying empire and commonwealth and more about a new European future, so it was focused on our identity as the UK. Was it about then that Wales got its own parliament? That sort of thing. We wouldn't know how Australia was experiencing that culture except through our own culture and that was young Australians wanting to live in Shepherds Bush and drink the city dry. Less about TV etc.

Haha, I've seen a few skits about that by these Australian guys I follow in Facebook 😅

Contraversial now

Well known personality in UK on TV & singer

Rolf Harris

I don't think anyone in the UK really cared about Australia to a significant degree at that time. There was cultural stuff coming over from Australia that people liked, but they liked it because they thought it was good, not because it was Australian.

Cool Britainnia was probably more about the music than anything else. Australian music has never really been that big in the UK. The odd band here and there, but never really a movement. INXS and Kylie were the ones I remember. People liked Kylie, but there was nothing unique about her genre.

Jason and Kylie were pretty big but IIRC that was more the mid 80s. Some Aussie telly has made it big in the UK and others like Cell Block H made it to cult status. People liked them though because they were good telly, not because they were Australian.

Beer. Foster and XXXX got pretty popular in the UK at one time. That was probably around the 90s.

Now they have been pretty much kicked out by Carlsberg and Carling in the mid-weak alcohol beer market.

Haven't seen XXXX on sale for ages. Or that stuff Victoria Bitter. Which isn't actually bitter.

@Femusia
What you have got to realise is that most people are not remotely interested in things like political history or international cultural relations between Britain and the commonwealth countries.
Even among those people that are aware, the key point is that Australia is just one ex-colony amongst many.

We are no more concerned with Australia than we are with Jamaica, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Africa, or India.
The only one we concern ourselves with is the USA, for obvious reasons.

Why would the fact that Australians had a different cultural attitude have bothered us? Yes there was cultural interchange between UK and Australia (Australian soap operas were popular in the UK) but we were perfectly ok with the idea that different nations on opposite sides of the globe could have different cultures without one being "right" and the other "wrong". A concept can be popular and cool in one country without being invalidated by another country having a different attitude.

As an individual, only those who have very low self-esteem require validation of their opinions before they are confident what is cool.

Terry Pratchett Quote: "The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select."
Same goes for a country's national sense of what is cool. We don't need external approval.

I do actually remember being very worried about HK, for obvious reasons too.

I think we just were happy for the countries to do their own thing if they wanted, but HK didn't want and I still feel bad about that today.

I am half Australian half British, my Australian mother's heritage is Irish so I have never really thought about this British motherland thing.

I lived in Oz for a while in the mid 80s and have never been back since as I didn't find the culture appealing or interesting. I found Cool Britannia to be an exercise in branding more than anything and a bit like the Swinging Sixties didn't really happen in the way it is portrayed. The rave culture that came before it was much more real, not manufactured by politicians. That was an exciting time and had the added benefit of not having jingoistic undertones.

I don't recall feeling pride in the UK at the time but then I'm not really the sort of person who would, all countries have good parts and bad parts and some things to be proud of and others to be ashamed of. I think the only time I ever felt proud to be British was during London 2012 and that was a sort of collective madness!

I don't ever recall having an opinion on what Australians would think of the UK or it having any bearing on anyone.

Skippy, Flying Doctors, and what was that weird one about the kid who, when he threw his boomerang, time stood still?

May as well derail this daft thread onto "Little remembered Aussie TV series" as OP has blown a fuse.

Is this actually PR for the new biography of Kylie Minogue? (out now, all good bookshops).

A few sausages short of a barbie, too.