Poetry is an art form in which people can express their opinions and feelings about certain ideas. Poetry communicates an idea, a sentiment or concept significant to the poet’s life, Bruce Dawe’s “Americanized” develops a concern of human attitudes towards cultural imperialism and consumerism. To depict these ideas, Dawe characterises a mother and son as America and a younger, developing nation. The poet imparts a concept of America’s consumerist society indoctrinating other nations with their western culture as an act of cultural imperialism. He also employs various other poetic techniques to assist him in campaigning the issues of cultural loss of another country such as, extended metaphor, rhetorical question, alliteration, irony, entrapment, foreshadowing, denotation, motifs and punctuation marks to further emphasise his points. The study of his poem allows us sight into the concerns of consumerism and cultural imperialism.
** there's no need to list techniques and repeat your ideas...
America’s rise in cultural power has caused a raging concern from Bruce Dawe, to bring this about; he ( you mean Bruce ...expresses his emotions and opinions through his poem “Americanized”. He adopts a pun in the title to exemplify the expansion of American vocabulary into Australian literature. Not only does this pun emphasise his point on Australia being lost in America’s culture, but it also foreshadows the extended metaphor he utilises in the mother and son of the story. The mother is America and the son is a smaller, younger country, mostly likely Australia. Entrapment was a strong motif used in the story of the mother trapping her son in her house and arms long enough that he has changed and become just like her. Like America and Australia, Australia has become America in a cultural context with consumerist goods such as “chewing gum, hot dogs, electronic brains…” Bruce Dawe repeats the line “she loves him…” to emphasise that motherhood has become America’s behaviour towards Australia, but the ellipses have covert effects on the poem. Even though it clearly states that “she loves him…” it does not mean that there is a secret behind the love and the effect of having it repeated questions the readers about it. He gives the audience a chance to guess the issue he is raising in this poem and this encourages them to reflect on their own lives and how American culture is affecting them. ( the highlighted should be enough ..the rest in this sentence is redundant )
Americanized shows the negative impacts of American culture infiltrating Australian society but also the rest of the world. Dawe strongly debates the actions of American society and how it has become their duty to assist the rest of the world only due to the fact that these other countries are not like them. His opinion of this was represented in the line when “she’s off to nurse an invalid called the world”, describing the world as unsubstantial to the Great nation of America. The line that follows states that America will “let you play with mummy’s things”, indicating that the “things” this child already has is not worth playing with, like “the toys that” symbolises “his short life-christening, birthday, Christmas-into a corner hurled”. The constant wants of things you don’t have illustrates the negative impacts of living in a consumerist society. This not only shows the concept of Dawe’s concern but also a portrayal of the attitudes of materialistic lifestyles. Materialism has already eaten off the borders of this child and soon it will go far that all is left are hollow shells attempting to fill it in with consumerist goods, “from Pepsi-Cola figurines to Spam”. These are just the few examples that Bruce Dawe provides us in his poem that shows the negative impacts of American culture influencing the change in Australian society and the rest of the world. Life is now dictated by the consumption of materialistic products.
In his poem Americanized, Bruce Dawe as able to pin point two important issues concerning the human race, America’s cultural imperialism and the augmentation of consumerism( is it a threat to our society? you need to specify). These ideas were portrayed through the characters of the mother and her son as a representation of America and another small, “invalid” country.