Blurred Lines

You know that feeling when someone makes a joke and it’s completely obvious that it’s a joke and yet even though it’s a joke it’s also kind of revealing of their thought processes in a way that they maybe didn’t realise when they were making the joke? Yeah, that:

Television, for me, is an aspirational medium. At its best, it should make the viewer think, “one day, that could be ME up there on the flat screen.”

Yeah, it was so hard to get into The Wire because we were too busy wondering how we could get a job slinging dope on the streets of Baltimore to actually pay attention to anything taking place on the screen.

Originally we had around 900 words here explaining that a): we understood Pobjie was joking, b): we had no problem with him writing comedy articles based on a persona exaggerated for effect, c): we didn’t really have any problem with him writing serious criticism either, d): our problem was that he’s currently trying to do both in such a way that it’s unclear which views he holds for comedy purposes and which ones are serious, e): especially because he’s got a history of publicly begging for work from television producers in such a way that it seems fairly obvious to all that what Pobjie really wants is a career on television, in which case f): wait, is this meant to be a comedy article?

But then we gave up.

Ben Pobjie’s latest book, Error Australis, is on sale now. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, it’s “mean and derisive”.