Bewitched by America: How ’70s Pop Culture Became Part of an Australian Christmas Memory

"America can do anything."

It might be hard for an American to imagine what it was like to be an Australian growing up over the last half of the last century. As a young, unsophisticated country, we slowed down on importing our culture from the UK and began watching, listening to, reading and enjoying predominantly American films, music, art and literature.

​As a kid, there was nothing I liked more than the crazy cartoons we were allowed to watch after school. The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Rocky and Bulwinkle, and The Roadrunner were my favourites. I loved how wacky and out there the American sense of humour was. It was different to the reserved English style of comedy we were used to.

​But some kids preferred superhero shows after school, like Superman and Batman. These programs blended moral lessons with comedy in what seemed to us a revolutionary fashion. The message was always the same: goodwill will overcome evil, and we will all have a laugh at the end about how close we came to total destruction.

​But nothing compared to those crazy shows like Mr Ed, My Favourite Martian, Lost in Space, The Munsters, The Addams Family and Bewitched.

When I look back at these shows on YouTube, the characters seem like long-lost relatives, people I grew up around. The writers of these shows were so good and created such fantastic characters that many of these actors could never be seen as anything other than the roles they played. Think of Dr Smith, Eddie Munster, Gomez Addams and Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens.

​The completely unexpected storylines and off-the-wall cameos only made these afternoon delights even more addictive, and we kids would laugh our heads off, sharing the next day at school the antics of our crazed American friends. All of us mimicked Maxwell Smart. “Sorry about that, Chief,” and “Missed it by that much” are still staple apologies.

​On a more serious note, were the movies.

We sat as a family and watched, riveted, classics like Shane and The Magnificent Seven, which were played annually, and we saw them many, many times. One of the things I most enjoyed about all these shows was how recognisable each character was. Something I understand now as archetypes.

AMERICANS CAN DO ANYTHING

​But nothing compares in any of our lives to the day we watched the Americans walk on the moon. On 20 July 1969, when I was eight years old, we sat in class at Rose Bay Public School, jaws agape, incredulous at the impossibility of what we were witnessing on the little black and white television set. Out in the playground, my best friend and I agreed: “Americans can do anything.”

​When the Headmaster explained the next morning at assembly the role our own Parkes Observatory had played in transmitting the images we had seen the previous day, as portrayed in the classic Australian film The Dish, some of the more emotional kids and teachers actually cried. To think that we, in some small way, contributed to the most incredible human endeavour in the history of mankind was almost too much for us.

​Then there was the music of the times. This is when The Doors and Jimi Hendrix were first being played on the radio. Light My Fire and All Along the Watchtower, as well as the perennials, American Pie, Wichita Lineman, Alice’s Restaurant, and the insanely hip Sex Machine by James Brown.

​When we went to the cinema to see Woodstock and Easy Rider, some of the bikers even had American flags sewn onto the backs of their black leather jackets. Parking their Harley-Davidsons in a row, down the side alley of the cinema.

​Back then, every good story started with the same intro: “In America.” These were usually horror stories, like about the parents who came home to find the babysitter had put a raw chicken in the cot and the baby in the oven. Or the police telling the girl over the phone, “Get out of the house, he’s upstairs on the extension!” Or the axe murderer banging the head of the terrified girl’s boyfriend on the top of the car. They always ended with us impersonating the American accent, in this case, the police saying: “Get out of the car and walk toward us, and whatever you do, don’t look back!” Whenever a story started with the intro “In America,” I always thought, fantastic, what in the hell are they up to now?

​In the early 70s American cinema became quite nihilistic. The backlash to the Vietnam War and hippy renunciation of capitalism manifested in some of the most extraordinary movies I have ever seen. Films that starred anti-establishment anti-heroes, something so at odds with what we were used to. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Five Easy Pieces and All the President’s Men, exposing to us a self-reflective side to the American psyche and political system we had not hitherto witnessed.

​But my all-time fav from this period was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. In fact, my mother gave my brother Greg and me money and a note for our teachers the night after she and Dad saw it, and we caught the bus into town. This was the most talked about film of the times. We still use the phrase “One flew over,” when describing escaping from a mad situation. Most recently, only a few days ago, I explained just getting out of Grafton Shopping Centre’s pre-Christmas shopping hell as “One flew over Grafton Food Hall.”

​The first surfing film we ever saw was almost 60 years ago, during Christmas of 1967. We were having our first family holiday away. We stayed in a little rental across the road from Elephant Rock, at Currumbin, where we watched the last of the longboarders riding the Alley, before the shortboard revolution. Dad and Mum took us to Tweed Drive, where John, Greg and my life were changed forever. From the moment the film started, with its beautiful photography, sublime music, magnificent surfing, two enigmatic stars, and hilarious narration, we were sure our lives would be just like those of the characters. Our lives would be an Endless Summer.

​We weren’t such big fans of Hollywood surfing productions like the beach party films starring Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello, or Gidget, or Blue Hawaii, starring Elvis Presley. But we caught the bus home from the beach to watch Ride the Wild Surf every time it was on TV, during the summer holidays, often quoting the classic scene: “My Mom told me I should never marry a surfer!”

Then there were the fabulous American surfing movies we caught a bus and a ferry to see at the Sydney Opera House or the Manly Silver Screen. Going Surfin’, Five Summer Stories, Salt Water Wine, Many Classic Moments, and many, many more. I took my friends to see Sunshine Sea for my 10^th birthday at The Bondi Junction Star. Idolising Gerry Lopez, as all of us did, when it finally came time to pull into a tube, we did so, appropriating the same casual, soul arch stance as the Zen master himself. I felt like Grasshopper, Cain to his Blind Master Po, in Kung Fu.

​I was taught by my surfing tribal elders that the influence of American surfers on how we Australians surf and shape surfboards was enormous. The arrival of Elvis and the Melbourne Olympians, simultaneously, in 1956, we were informed changed the way our surfing predecessors lived, danced, surfed, shaped surfboards, made surfing films and wrote. 

​There were two American surfing magazines we got in Australia when I was a teenager: Surfer and Surfing. But we always thought Surfer was for real surfers, while Surfing was for what we called “Surfies.”

​It was around this time that we, as Australians, really started to find our way as surfers, shapers, surf filmmakers, and in publishing. In our minds, Nat Young was God, Bob McTavish invented the shortboard, Albe Falzon’s Morning of the Earth was the best surfing film of all time, and Tracks and Surfing World were the two preeminent surfing magazines of the time. Tracks being what we called our Bible.

​But we never forgot the influence American culture had on us as surfers and have always loved the fact that Americans consider us worthy adversaries, let alone allies.

Most of us “Ossies” think of England and America as our parents. Or at least crazy uncles or aunts. And at his time of year, Christmas, we wonder what shenanigans we might be treated to by our much-loved and eternally interesting extended family.

Merry Christmas.