[csaa-forum] Fat Pizza

[Jonathan Bollen]

In a review of the film Fat Pizza, Michael Kitson asks 'So why do all 
the girls regard Fat Pizza with such horror?' and he offers the 
following answer:

'Apart from the calories, I reckon it's because although patriarchal 
Australia got a kick in the 1970s with both Germaine Greer and the 
influx of matriarchal cultures, the irony is that a matriarchy still 
lets its eldest son run wild and the daughters of these cultures have 
had enough of their pampered brothers. Spit on me if I'm wrong.' (25)

Without wanting to spit on Kitson, I'm intrigued by this idea of 
immigration to Australia as an 'the influx of matriarchal cultures' 
though I'm unsure how to follow it up?

I know that in Donald Horne's The Lucky Country there's reference to 
'An American West Coast American Professor of Psychology' who 
characterised Australia as a 'matriduxy' because 'more often than not, 
Mother is the decision maker in the Australian home' (86) but then that 
hardly helps. And I don't see anything about matriarchal or patriarchal 
cultures in Ronald Taft's essay on 'The Myth and Migrants' in Peter 
Coleman's Australian Civilization which was the one place I thought 
such ideas might have played out.

I'd be grateful for any ideas or suggestions for sources for what 
Kitson is on about? Perhaps I should be reading social theory from the 
1970s or 1980s - but which?

Best wishes

Jonathan


Horne, Donald (1964) The Lucky Country: Austrtalia in the sixties, 
Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Kitson, Michael (2003) 'Surprisingly tasty  Fat Pizza', Metro, 137: 
22-27
Taft, Ronald (1962) 'The Myth and the Migrants' in Australian 
Civilization: A Symposium, edited by Peter Coleman, Melbourne: F.W. 
Cheshire.


Dr Jonathan Bollen
School of English, Communication & Theatre
University of New England
Armidale NSW, Australia

Postal: 413 / 6 Belvoir St, Surry Hills NSW 2010, Australia
Telephone: +61 2 9690 2846
Mobile: +61 4 2237 6346
Email: jbollen at pobox.une.edu.au