Is the American Identity overtaking Australia?

It would seem that for an Australian film to have Global success, it needs to have elements of American culture. Most noticeably in big budget Australian films; American actors. It would seem that to be a success financially, we must adhere to certain formulas and put American representation in our films, even if its a matter of changing the accent, or in the case of Crocodile Dundee (which grossed $328,203,506 worldwide) , establish a skewed Australian Identity and then cross-over geographically into American representation.



With this example, we tend to ignore the setting an influence because we become too bogged down with the Australian representation to bother getting upset about the American one. Many people find the character of Mick, exaggerated and paints Australians in a comical light, that we are all stupid in the face of technology. And perhaps this thought process is still floating around in the heads of Global audiences, especially after the ozpliotation films were being produced.

But Crocodile Dundee wasn't the only box office success to utilise the American Influence. With films like Babe (earning $254,134,910 worldwide) having American accents popping up all over the place, it is no wonder that American actors are so often employed to appear in Australian films, with the money of a Blockbuster at stake.

This idea of American influences and representation in Australian film can be seen as selling out. It would seem that Australian's want our films to have our people in them. The temptation to make a film that is successful is alluring considering how little Australian films make in Australia compared to other (predominantly American films.)

If we take a look at this chart, we can see that the highest percentage of money earned at the Australian box office by Australian films in the last 5 years is 5%. So only 5% of Australian cinema-goers money is on our own films. With this in mind we can understand why we are
(this image is from the screen Australia Website;
http://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/gtp/wcboshare.html) attempting to use the Hollywood formula to try and get bigger budgets, and bigger stars and leave the narrative slightly on the sidelines like in Australia, or even more recently I Love You Too