9.3 Aussie Bites Podcast

Reflection

For the Making History project, I chose to create a podcast on the far-reaching impacts ‘wog humour’ has, and continues to have, on Australian society. My interest in the topic was piqued when, in an interview I conducted for an earlier university assignment, my dad briefly mentioned that he noticed how the emergence of wog humour started a shift in how it felt to be Italian in Australia. With this passing comment, my curiosity took me to informal research, further conversations with my dad and others, and 18 months later, this project.

I constructed the podcast by first engaging with said wog humour, using the film The Wog Boy (2000) as my main building block. From this, I read articles on both the positive outcomes and the potential harm that this form of ‘ethnic humour’ brings about. I conducted interviews to gain insight into how Italian Australians, both young and old, feel about being Italian Australian.

I chose to present my project as a podcast to correctly convey the tone and invite casual conversation about the topic, as that is exactly the way I developed an interest in how such a seemingly unimportant thing managed to make a real difference in how Southern-European Australians are perceived in Australian society.