Character
The character was a parody of the boorish Australian overseas, particularly those in the United Kingdom – unsophisticated, loud, crude, drunk and aggressive – although McKenzie also proved popular with Australians because he embodied some of their positive characteristics: he was genuine, forthright, straightforward, candid to his English hosts, who themselves were often portrayed as stereotypes of pompous, arrogant colonial deviousness.
McKenzie frequently employs euphemisms for bodily functions or sexual allusions, one of the most well-known being "technicolour yawn" (vomiting). The film popularised several Australian euphemisms and slang terms which are still used today in the Australian vernacular (such as "point Percy at the porcelain", "sink the sausage", "flash the nasty"). Some of the slang was invented by Humphries, with other terms borrowed from existing Australian slang such as "chunder", and "up shit creek" (adopted by the Australian poetry magazine Shit Creek Review).
Men at Work lead singer Colin Hay said that the lyrics for "Down Under" were inspired by the Barry McKenzie character.
Read more about this topic: Barry McKenzie
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“When a man’s feeling and character are injured, he ought to seek a speedy redress.... My character you have injured, and further you have insulted me in the presence of a court and large audience. I therefore call upon you as a gentleman to give me satisfaction for the same.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“The truth and regularity of a character is not, in justice, to be looked upon as broken, from any one single act or omission which may seem a contradiction to it:Mthe best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without grandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,—which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)