Tuesday 22 April 2008

The Vegemite Culture

Watched Good News Week on Monday night and episode 9 just killed me. If you watch that, scroll forward to the last fifth of the show, the segment where the Vegemite Buttocks Japanese (this makes heaps more sense if you just look at the video, trust me) is happening.

In particular watch the two American guests' faces as the entire audience puts up a pretty much perfect rendition of the Vegemite jingle. It's not what their faces are showing but what they're struggling to conceal that makes this probably one of the most significant indications of our culture having come of age.

I doubt there is one other country in the world where you can sit a random audience down, prime them with the first line of a jingle that was first coined, what? - 40 or more years ago? - and have them ALL remember the words.

More than kangaroos, more than Uluru, more than opera houses and famous musicians, that moment showed that we do have a culture, and that culture thrives best in yeast...

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