It is jarring and since you brought it up there are very few good analogies in other cultures.

e.g. I know a few people go off about lions in European heraldry but lions were at one point spread across Eurasia-Africa. It’s just not a good analogy for how quintessentially Australian some things are.

It goes both ways. Businesses do it all the time. I could name many Australian examples going the other way.

So, my guess is that it says more about us than it does about other peoples and just how we get worked up about it.

My favorites are

- Paris Baguette: a Korean bakery chain, selling 50-50 asian and western confections but no baguettes, pretending to be French, most popular in America.

- Bondi Sushi: a New York chain, named for a beach in Australia, for a Japanese specialty.

- Outback steakhouse: American chain named for a Australian region, and depending where you are, full of Canadian imagery including mooses and snow and sleds (I went in Boston).

Paris Baguette makes sense to me, it draws a lot of people who think they're getting a French bakery, but discover and enjoy the (novel-to-them) asian pastries in the process. As a non-white American, I have always been confused why Americans love appropriating Australian branding for restaurants? Who exactly does that appeal to, and to discover what? Evidently it offends Australians. It means nothing to me who doesn't really know what aspect of Australia I would seek from such places (sushi? steak?), so it doesn't seem meant to draw people who not affiliated with Australia somehow.

Maybe Australians cofounded these places in America? Or just Americans who had life-defining experiences in Australian locations and came back to start restaurants in honor of those places? I have not dug too deep into their origins.

> Maybe Australians cofounded these places in America? Or just Americans who had life-defining experiences in Australian locations and came back to start restaurants in honor of those places? I have not dug too deep into their origins.

As far as I am aware, Australians had nothing to do with the founding of Outback Steakhouse, and its founders had nothing to with Australia. A group of Americans in Florida in 1988 wanted to open a restaurant, and were looking for a distinctive theme or branding. And the Crocodile Dundee film had been a big hit in the US a couple of years earlier, and so they decided to appropriate the stereotypes of Australia it represents as the basis of their branding. I’m not aware any of them had any personal connection to Australia at all. If it wasn’t for the popularity of that film, they probably would have picked a different theme for their restaurant instead

We have Paris Baguette in Singapore as well. They aren't the only faux European chain / brand here, that combination seems quite popular.

> full of Canadian imagery including mooses and snow and sleds (I went in Boston).

That just sounds like northeast, Appalachian USA things.

Paris Baguette was contextualized to me by friends as a sort of Korean parody of a french patisserie. It seems there's a lot of this throughout east Asia, e.g. burgers / American style southern restaurants in Japan, although some of these seem more authentic than Paris Baguette.

As a native-born US sorta person, I agree about Outback. It's a weird environment, sold weirdly: The tables are too high. The bench seating is hard, and somehow also too high. Everything seems big, like some forms of Alice might observe, even if it is just regular-sized.

It can be an OK place to get a decent-ish steak served at an OK price, and onions are my favorite food so things like their Bloomin' Onion "appetizer" can be God-tier for me. Overall, I like Outback -- but only just barely. I give it 6/10, will probably return... eventually, some day, maybe; I can get a massive amount of onion served almost anywhere if I ask nicely.

But it doesn't seem very Australian to me, unless of course I'm approaching things as if I am living in a Crocodile Dundee film from several decades ago. (And these films are comedies, not documentaries!)

Foster's is worse. It's shit beer. As far as I know, it's always been shit beer. And there's definitely a place in the world for shit beers to exist, as long as they're cheap enough, but it's never met the snide, bold, and somewhat-reprehensible tagline of "Foster's. It's Australian for beer."

But Koala Kare? That name doesn't make me think of Australia at all. It makes me think of koala bears. And koala bears definitely seem to be cute and cuddly in photos...and their native environment is definitely highly regionalized. But they are also rapey animals that trend toward being full of chlamydia, and they feed their young with literal shit. (Straight up ass-to-mouth shit.)

And I've got a pretty positive image of every person from Australia whom I've ever interacted with, so I myself don't associate a product named after a dirty rapey diseased shit-eating bear with Australian nationality, culture, or provenance.

YMMV, of course. (And also: You're welcome!)

Koalas are not bears. In Australia we do not call them 'koala bears' — only foreigners do that. They are just 'koalas'.

Good point. I am remiss for forgetting this fact that I once knew. Koalas are definitely not bears in Australia, and they're the ones who are most qualified to make this determination. (The rest of us are literally outsiders.)

(Now that we're discussing regional dialects as they relate to furry animals: Can we talk about possums, next?)

My surname is Foster, and on Australia Day 2000 my collegues and I had a comfortable afternoon at The Australian Hotel on Coronado Bay. My mischevious friend, when ordering drinks said "... and Mr Foster will have Jack Daniels on the rocks. His entire family is sick of beer."

All evening I was being feted by blue collar Americans believing that as an Australian named Foster I _must_ have something to do with the beer.

You forgot to mention that koalas' fear response is to climb the fool cuddling them with their 5cm claws while urinating clamydia infested urine into the wounds.

I would not cuddle one, but if you do for God's sake make sure it's in a proper zoo, there they sedate the ones for cuddling. Do not shout, or move suddenly anyway.

I await your Subaru Outback rant.

But really, imagine how made-in-Mexico Mexicans feel about Taco Bell. It's just marketing.

> I await your Subaru Outback rant.

Yes, it is a bit of a silly name, because if you actually go to the Outback, you won't find many Subaru Outbacks there, because they aren't actually designed for those conditions. What you will find, is heaps of Toyota Landcruisers and Nissan Patrols, which are.

> But really, imagine how made-in-Mexico Mexicans feel about Taco Bell

No doubt. But I wonder how many of the many people who condemn Taco Bell as "cultural appropriation", would even think to make the same criticism of Outback Steakhouse?

In a technical sense, I think Outback steakhouse is a classic example of cultural appropriation. However in practice, I think the "cultural differential" (difference between the cultures) and "market differential" (which one gets patronized more, a place authentic to the culture, or an appropriator?) are important details for identifying an instance of such appropriation as problematic.

If there are authentic Australian steakhouses in America or globally that are struggling or dealing with people having strange misconceptions of Australian culture, while Outback is thriving and eating into their market while perpetuating said misconceptions of Australian culture (I have no idea! It's possible...), it would be a smaller-scale but similar case to Taco Bell and the variety of struggling family-run mexican restaurants, or non-mexicans being confused/surprised/ignorant about authentic mexican food.

> dealing with people having strange misconceptions of Australian culture

Misconceptions of Australian culture are rather widespread in the US. Some Americans seem to think films like Crocodile Dundee are representative of mainstream Australian culture, when they aren’t. Films like that are taking stereotypes about the small minority of Australians who live in remote rural areas, and then exaggerating them for comic effect. The vast majority of Australians live in big metro areas, and have a rather different culture. It would be a bit like if someone saw a film about rednecks in the Ozarks and thought it was representative of the average denizen of New York or San Francisco.

Of course, in part it is just as much Australians’ fault for selling that kind of cringey stuff to Americans as it is Americans for lapping it up. The late Steve Irwin (of “Crocodile Hunter” fame), was likewise playing up those stereotypes in his on-screen persona. Some more recent cultural exports (for example Bluey) have done much better in this area

And rather obviously Outback Steakhouse is exploiting this ignorance as part of its marketing rather than challenging it

It's pretty common for people to watch movies like Deliverance and then think that wide swaths of America are like that.

Wait before a mexican enter a "Taco" place in France. They somehow managed to make it far far worse than Taco Bell.

Isn't using the phrase "cultural appropriation" without being American a cultural appropriation? This idea and terminology was originally invented and developed in the US, so being Australian, please stop culturally appropriating our cultural appropriation. However, if you still feel you have the right to use it publicly, then you've started to understand why the Koala Kare exists. The creators of the brand felt the same way as you.

Fun!

Here in Sweden, it's a bit difficult with the Häagen-Dazs premium ice cream brand, since they have some kind of phony-Scandinavian spelling that doesn't actually match any proper word (the vowel sequence Ä-A is really really weird) so we end up saying it strangely (in my case, i drop the A).

I wonder what the official pronunciation in Sweden is, unfortunately they don't say on their web.

I went to the Outback Steakhouse in San Diego in 2000. The menu was very American. When I asked the waiter if they actually had Australian food he apologised for the lack of kangaroo.

I'm not entirely convinced he was joking.

He probably got asked by customers if they served kangaroo. It isn’t an unreasonable expectation for an Australian-themed restaurant to offer it, given it is sold in many supermarkets in Australia, and it isn’t hard to find restaurants in Australia with it on their menu, even though the majority don’t-because it isn’t hugely popular. I like it, but I rarely eat it, largely because my wife and kids don’t like it, and we aim to cook things the whole family will eat. If they did like it, I likely would eat it a lot more.

I am Australian too, and share your discombobulation.

That said, I lived in Toronto for a while, many years ago, and enjoyed the “Aussie Chips” they served at some pubs - despite never having had chips with cheese on them in Australia.

Okay I have a related inverse rant. I love Australia but good lord are you guys getting carried away with your semi fictional origin stories to Australianize products, food especially.

For example, the cheesecake box says "Sara Lee, est. 1971 Lisarow NSW", except it was already a 50 year old American company when they expanded to Australia in 1971.

Or the "made in Australia from at least 12% Australian ingredients" labels on ALL the food. Like https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/5b8b48cb5d8051c3c6734...

Yesterday I picked up a bottle of mustard that said American Mustard, proudly made in Australia. It's surreal!

Let's not even mention the pavlova.

One thing the U.S. and Australia have in common... Giving the finger to the brits a while back.

> One thing the U.S. and Australia have in common... Giving the finger to the brits a while back.

If you are talking about independence, no. The US won independence through a violent rebellion. Australia became independent through a very gradual and consensual process, so gradual it is hard to pinpoint the exact moment at which Australia became independent.

A major step was the Statute of Westminster in 1931, by which the British Empire extended full legal sovereignty to its "Dominions". The Canadian, Irish and South African governments were keen on this law, so it applied to them immediately. However, the Australians, New Zealanders and Newfoundlanders (at the time not yet part of Canada) were hesitant, so the UK agreed the law granting them sovereignty would not apply until their own national parliaments consented to it. Australia didn't agree to accept it until 1942, New Zealand didn't until 1947, and Newfoundland never did (which helped pave the way for its annexation by Canada).

So Americans fight a bloody war for their independence, Australians are offered (a big chunk of it) by the UK and drag their feet for over a decade before accepting the offer, and New Zealanders for even longer.

Well the Country of Origin labels are a requirement. I'd also argue that providing more information about the origin of food to consumers is always a good thing. Do I care that there's a little kangaroo on the label? No not really, but at least I know that my orange juice is juiced in Australia from foreign oranges.

I'm Canadian and growing up, I remember many shampoo commercials having some connection to Australia (ex brands named Aussie Naturals). You must have really great hair!

The most uncanny thing about Australia is that a kangaroo looks exactly like a buff, roid-raging human male chest and arms, but with a kangaroo head.

> in which something which comes across as rather American (because it is) but has a superficial layer of Australianness layered atop. Cultural appropriation, perhaps?

As an American, I totally get this because the exact same thing happens when encountering "American" things in other countries.