‘Steve is twice the Aussie icon you will ever be’: Germaine Greer, the Crocodile Hunter’s death, and nationalistic misogyny

Abstract

In September 2006, Australia’s most iconic feminist, Germaine Greer, wrote a controversial article in response to the death of celebrity wildlife presenter Steve Irwin. In the Guardian piece, entitled ‘That sort of self-delusion is what it takes to be a real Aussie larrikin’, Greer concluded, ‘The animal world has finally taken its revenge on Irwin’. For hundreds of Australian readers, Greer’s public response to the untimely demise of a purported national ‘hero’ represented a symbolic assault not just on the ’Crocodile Hunter’s’ grieving family but on the nation itself. Following the article’s appearance, Greer’s agents – Gillon Aitken Associates, based in the United Kingdom – received copious amounts of hate mail directed towards the controversial celebrity feminist; these emails are contained in the recently acquired Greer archive at the University of Melbourne and provide important insights into affective responses to this polarising figure. Tightly policing the boundaries of what constitutes ‘Australian-ness’ as well as mobilising problematic assumptions about the correct way of publicly doing femininity, these emails call into question Greer’s authority to speak publicly not just about this matter but about any issue at all. In so doing, these emails – which include threats of violence – work to contest the ‘newness’ of the vitriolic, misogynistic hate speech commonly directed towards vocal women in the contemporary mediasphere (especially via platforms such as Twitter). Against the representation of Irwin as model Australian, Greer is dismissed not just as a ‘bad’ woman but as a ‘bad’ citizen. Accordingly, this article considers both the kind of ‘Greer’ and the kind of ‘Irwin’ being discursively constructed in these emails, and how the mutually constitutive discourses of misogyny and nationalism were deployed in these attempts to marginalise and silence Greer and to mourn and celebrate Irwin.

The Discursive Construction of Populist and Misogynist Nationalism: Digital Vigilantism Against Unpatriotic Intellectual Women in China

“…Discursive Conditions of Mediated Visibility: The Fluid "Us Versus Them" Just as Taylor's (2019) finding that when shaming the target as "totally unAustralian," no specification of what an "Australian" is, the specification of a "Chinese" is never provided, assuming and implying it as common knowledge and constructing a fluid boundary between us and them. This vagueness allows participants, the press, and the state to construct "traitor" discourse according to various conditions of mediated visibility (Trottier, 2019), such as the "pure people" populism (He et al, 2021) and misogyny.…”

“…Women are often viewed as prime representations and vessels of their culture and nation, which is a responsibility forced on them and they are denied agencies (Anand, 2022; McClintock et al, 1997). “Our” women—who share the same nationality and ethnicity as the nationalists—are shamed as ungrateful, unfeminine, and unpatriotic for criticizing “our” men or “our” masculine way of running the country (Bjork-James, 2020; Cloud, 2009; Saresma et al, 2021; Taylor, 2019; Vowles & Hultman, 2021). Gender issues are also added threats to the collective status of “our people” or “our men,” which generate the misogynist and nationalist online manosphere (Bratich & Banet-Weiser, 2019; Guy, 2021; Wilson, 2020).…”

Gender and Australian Celebrity Culture

“…While these claims would later acquire more sinister connotations, I suggest they are a relatively accurate summation of Harris's appeal and are bound up with his performance of an archetypal form of white, Australian masculinity; the figure of the 'bush bloke' (Elder 2007, p. 40). The popularity of this archetype, particularly in international markets, is evidenced by figures such as Paul Hogan in the film Crocodile Dundee (1986) and Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter (see Taylor 2019). It is characterised by a combination of mastery of the 'wildness' of Outback Australia with an ineptitude in navigating the complex social hierarchies of metropolitan societies such as Britain and the US.…”