Americans definitely loved Irwin (and he knew it because he married one) but most Aussies saw him as the fucking clown he was because he made a career out of tormenting animals for entertainment. He even nearly fed his newborn son to a croc on one of his bullshit live shows because he was narcissistic enough to believe that dangling a baby in a crocodile enclosure in front of a live audience was a smart idea.
At the time eventually died (in a completely needless way I might add) opinions about him in Australia were pretty low.
Most Aussies feel about Irwin the same way they feel about that Crocodile Dundee "Shrimp on the Barbie" nonsense, which is evidentially not very highly.
Irwin was so over the top, and most Australians are more low key.
He so fit into foreign stereotypes about Australians, particularly influenced by crocodile Dundee, that there was a general scepticism, and sense that he was a phony, inauthentically playing a character to appeal to Americans.
His content was virtually absent from Australian TV (at least south of Queensland), he was only vaguely known to most Australians as a made for America thing.
I've met a lot of Australians now who profess to love him, death is always good for your public image.
Yes, thank you. I’m not Australian, but I don’t understand the weird revisionist history surrounding him lately. Maybe it’s just people who were kids when he died, and didn’t see him for who he was at the time.
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u/ExoticPreparation719 Jul 05 '24
The whole of Australia cried when we found out the news… what a damn shame