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September 09, 2006
I'm amazed at the media reaction to Steve Irwin's death. He sure has media pulling power given the outpouring of grief from an adoring public. The media, it appears, just keeps on feeding on itself even though Irwin's TV series never attracted big ratings in Australia.
Paul Zanetti
The man, whose star power was based on the Animal Planet pay TV channel, is being turned into a secular saint in Australia---the only one saving endangered species. Is it just a media beatup? I'm turning off the media commentary. It's become obsessive way over and above the spin by Animal Planet.
The media commentary is not really about Irwin though is it? Irwin is a placeholder for another conversation about national identity that has been linked to wildlife conservation. This article in The Age says that a lot of the media commentary is about perpetuating the conservative mythology built around the resolute outdoor type.
Irwin did seem to personify much of the spirit that is usually thought to have its antecedents in the travails of the early explorers, the men and women on the goldfields, the testing of mettle at Gallipoli, the Country Women's Association --- perhaps even Bodyline. Historian Geoffrey Blainey says modern Australia has not entirely dismissed its outback heritage as no longer relevant, even though a character like Steve Irwin seems increasingly remote from the cosmopolitan nature of city life."When we talk about the quintessential Australian, we still largely think outside the cities, to our history on the land----we retain that memory of adventure," he says.
Not all Australian's understand their identity in terms of being a crocodile hunter, do they? This kind of cultural criticism misses the business angle of turning the Australia Zoo (a multimillion wildlife tourist attraction) that is becoming Australia's answer to Disneyland; and the conservation angle of Wildlife Warriors, which buys land to counter the way that farmers and developers knock down trees, flatten the landscape and kill lots of wildlife in the process.
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how can you bear animal planet at the best of times?