Australian Tumbleweeds
Criticial Facilities
Unless you spend a lot of time wading around the shallow end of the music media, you probably missed the recent kerfuffle where a number of high-profile musicians (starting with Lorde) used social media to express their disapproval of magazines – specifically Complex – putting artists on the cover then bagging them out in reviews:
bugs me how publications like complex will profile interesting artists in order to sell copies/get clicks and then shit on their records? it happens to me all the time- pitchfork and that ilk being like “can we interview you?” after totally taking the piss out of me in a review. have a stance on an artist and stick to it. don’t act like you respect them then throw them under the bus.
[Yes, we know we’re not music reviewers. We’re going somewhere with this, trust us]
Unsurprisingly, Complex had their own take on this:
Contrary to whatever Lorde may think, for Complex to give a cover to an artist like Iggy Azalea or current covergirl Jhené Aiko (or even Lorde for that matter) it simply boils down to Complex thinking the artist is someone our audience is interested in. Giving someone a bad review basically boils down to thinking someone our audience is interested in didn’t make a very good record. We can’t speak for all publications, but we imagine it works about the same way for them.
And the internet being what it is, everyone else who’s ever written a word about music chimed in:
This, in turn, is indicative of a more pervasive problem, which is the idea that everyone’s opinion is equally valid, regardless of its premises or coherency. It’s not. You either know what the fuck you’re talking about or you don’t.
Still, you would like to think that most artists have some grasp of the difference between what we might call a “feature”, that is a story and/or photo, usually involving an interview with them, and a “review”, a critical appraisal of their work. And, in understanding the difference recognise the differing roles.
“suggesting that a magazine’s staff – let alone the freelancer who is not on the masthead but is increasingly responsible for producing this type of content in exchange for peanuts and pennies and open bar press passes – owes you a positive record review simply because you and your publicist were kind enough to grant their employers a mutually beneficial interview is tantamount to promoting corporate censorship in arts criticism.”
Why are we mentioning any of this in a comedy blog? For one thing, we’re jealous: can anyone seriously imagine the television critics of Australia rising up if someone famous took a swing at them for being inconsistent? Oh wait, that would never happen because the situation would never arise – the unity between “criticism” and overall editorial opinion that Lorde is asking for is what we currently have in the world of Australian television coverage. We live in a land where TV coverage is based entirely on having a (favourable) stance on an artist and sticking to it no matter what. And hasn’t that worked out so well for viewers?
As for comedy critics… well, not a year goes by it seems without one comedian or another having a go at the critics covering the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. It’s hard to know what’s more depressing about that: the fact that no-one steps up to defend comedy criticism the way these writers have defended music criticism, or the fact that the comedians are usually right.
But mostly we’re just in hysterics. If you said “suggesting that a magazine’s staff owes you a positive record review simply because you and your publicist were kind enough to grant their employers a mutually beneficial interview is tantamount to promoting corporate censorship in arts criticism” to a television publicist you’d see an awful lot of blinking and not much else. Because that’s exactly how television publicity works in this country: if you want access to the stars, you have to suck up to the stars. And if you don’t want access to the stars, what are you doing writing about television?
The winner wasn’t comedy
If there was ever a time when the Logies wasn’t dishing out awards to undeserving winners, we’d like to go there. Seriously, they declared that Housos was the Outstanding Light Entertainment Program of 2013. Even if you factor in that two of the other nominees were Please Like Me and The Voice Australia that’s a bizarre result. Or as the Sydney Morning Herald’s Logies blog put it “one of the biggest upsets” of the night.
The other two nominees, incidentally, were Upper Middle Bogan and It’s A Date, neither exactly amazing but each more thoughtful and better crafted than Housos, a show which eschewed such traditional sitcom features as plots and gags for 25 minutes of mindless shouting and the sort of slapstick sequences that are regularly done better by 15 year olds with smartphones and a YouTube account. Although fending off far better competition to take out this award was, in one sense, an outstanding achievement.
In comparison to this “upset”, Chris Lilley’s Most Popular Actor win troubles us far less – it was teenagers who don’t know better who decided that award, not a panel of supposed industry experts. Ditto Hamish & Andy’s win for Gap Year Asia, which deserved to beat Ja’mie Private School Girl, The Project and two talent shows.
It’s been said before, but it’s a sad fact of the Australian television industry that the Logies remains the most high profile awards ceremony. The AACTAs tend to give their awards to more deserving shows, but they lack the profile that the Logies has. Also, where the hell was Mad As Hell in the list of nominations? It’s been firing for several years and didn’t even get a nomination in one of the Outstanding categories. You really do have to question who sits on the judging panel, and whether they have any sense of humour at all.
The Shadow Out Of Time
One of the more unusual book cover quotes you’ll see is this one from Tony Martin:
“I’m 33 and ready for my first cardigan yet whenever I read a paper I feel like I’m back in short pants. Let go of the wheel you old farts, and let someone else have a drive”
It’s not the quote itself that’s unusual, more the book it’s attached to: Mark Davis’ distinctly non-comedic Gangland, a mid-90s screed against the dead hand the baby boomers then had on the wheel of Australian media.
It seems almost laughable now, in today’s crazy world where it’s perfectly possible to live a well-informed and entertained life without having to pay the slightest attention to anyone in the Australian media, but in the mid 90s the local product was pretty much still the only choice you had. And thanks to a combination of economies of scale and the small size of the local biz, that meant a media dominated by people and products aimed at Baby Boomers; people in their mid-40s or older at the time. Two words: Daryl Somers.
Today only traces of that nightmare remain – The Logies for one, so hope you’ve all got your ballots in – but today’s Fairfax papers provided us with a stark reminder of the golden days of Boomer dummy-spits towards comedians they felt didn’t show them enough reverence. Sure, it may not quite be up there with this Somers classic:
“I don’t think there’d be such a groundswell of support for us if there wasn’t a clear swing back to family entertainment.
We went (in 1999) because we weren’t edgy enough. Andrew Denton used to call us prehistoric and dinosaurs.
He had a huge go at us and said we shouldn’t be on air. We used to cop it simply for trying to do a fun show.”
But digging Ray Martin up yet again is almost worth it just for the reminder of what a bitter, petty, humourless, small-minded fellow he still is. Yes, Martin’s taking a swing at John Safran yet again:
Years after his incendiary encounter with Safran, Martin is no closer to forgiving him for what he says was ”a pissant thing to do at the time”. Filming a pilot that never went to air, although the segment made it onto other ABC shows and YouTube, Safran turned up at Martin’s home posing as a TV news reporter.
What was intended to be a stunt exposing the questionable methods of foot-in-the-door shows such as ACA, which Martin at that time presented, turned ugly when Martin’s temper flared. Martin admits he lost his cool, but calmed down when Safran, realising the skit was backfiring, pleaded with Martin.
Unbeknown to Safran or the public, a week before that, guards had been called to Martin’s house after a death threat in the wake of an ACA story about marijuana trafficking.
This is ”context without giving an excuse”, Martin says. ”[ABC chairman] Brian Johns apologised to my wife, sent a bunch of flowers and said … it wouldn’t go to air. Three weeks later, it did. I put my hand up for being thin-skinned about these things, because in this business there are cheap shots and what you throw at people you should cop, but it was just singularly unfunny to come along.
”I thought it was The Footy Show doing something. Andrew Denton tells me I’d like [Safran], but I don’t think so. He’s a serial pest.”
On this occasion, it seems Martin gets the last word.
(hey, Fairfax fine-diner Paul Kalina, less of the sad clown face: Martin only gets the last word because you wrote your story that way.)
Of course, Ray has form in this area, and not just with regards to Safran. Remember this dummy-spit?
Seasoned presenter Ray Martin has long bemoaned the fact he does not have his own chat show and went so far as to speak enviously of Enough Rope.
Martin received widespread scorn late last year when he said: ‘‘Clearly before Denton’s Enough Rope was on, I owned the genre.
‘‘There’s a bloody big hole in TV outside of what Denton does. I saw the John Laws interview and thought ‘S—, I should have done that. I know Lawsy well and he would have talked to me and we don’t have a spot at the moment’.
‘‘I have 40 specials I’ve done literally while Andrew was still at uni. That’s not to put him down for a second. It seems silly not to have me do it.”
Jesus Christ, do these entitled old farts ever stop whining about how they’ve been hard done by? “Context without giving an excuse”? To use a phrase synonymous with one of Martin’ contemporaries, “pigs arse”. The only problem with Safran’s sketch is – no, not “he didn’t go far enough”, give us some credit – but that simply using Martin’s tactics back on him doesn’t make those tactics right. “How would you like it”, is hardly basis for a decent argument, no matter how oh so very satisfying it is to see Martin crack the shits.
The other problem with all this upper-echelon Baby Boomer media hand-wringing is that you might come away from it all thinking that Andrew Denton is some kind of cutting-edge shit-stirring nice guy. Fortunately, there’s a cure for that, and it’s screening around 11pm Friday nights on ABC1. Yes, Randling is back on the air. The fuck?
In case you don’t remember Randling, here’s a sample joke from last night’s (we think) premiere episode: “the giant squid’s eyeball can grow to a foot in diameter. That’s why it lives in the sea – it simply can’t afford eyedrops”. Dead silence from the audience. Oooh, only 26 more episodes to go and they’ve all been pre-recorded. No wonder it killed Andrew Denton’s television career.
Obviously the real mystery here is why a show that’s become a byword for utter failure is back. The 11pm Friday timeslot is usually when ABC1 repeats its topical comedy shows – repeats of Mad as Hell previously held the time slot – so you’d think Spicks and Specks would be a shoo-in, especially as it’s currently only repeated the once (new episodes Wednesday ABC1, repeats Thursdays ABC2). But no. Noooo.
All we can guess is that the ABC doesn’t have to pay a cent to repeat this crap. And even then, the price they’re paying just for reminding people they let this train wreck happen in the first place is way too high. Having it back on the air is more of a joke than anything that ever happened on Randling. Unfortunately, just like the first time around, the joke is firmly on us.
The Roast with the least
The Roast is a concept which never quite manages to die. We don’t mean in the sense that pretty much every era of recent decades has thrown up a nightly or weekly topical comedy show, more that this particular team’s attempt to make a topical comedy show never manages to get axed. But you know that, we’ve talked about this before, you keep seeing it listed in TV guides and you keep not tuning in. Not even YouTube can bothered if the stats from The Roast’s channel are anything to go by. It’s just not very good. But why?
We’re not going to attempt to work out why this keeps getting re-commissioned – the ABC wants them to be the next Chaser, they’ve got compromising photos of Mark Scott – pick your favourite crazy theory, we don’t know! What we’re going to try and nail is why The Roast sucks.
1. The Host. If there’s one thing the great TV satires of the past couple of decades have taught is that there’s plenty of laughs to be had from a host who’s completely unaware that they and the situation they’re in are completely insane. From Chris Morris (On The Hour, The Day Today, Brass Eye) to Shaun Micallef (Mad As Hell) to Stephen Colbert (The Colbert Report), this isn’t about being a straight man introducing wacky news reports, this is about “The News!”. The conventions of news and current affairs shows are kinda ludicrous when you think about it – especially the ones which include any kind of on-air editorial – so comedians need to get stuck in. On The Roast the closest you’ll get is a gag about how the TV built in to the set is actually a microwave. LOLZ!
2. The Reporters. Again, there are plenty of ways you can get laughs by giving the reporters some character. Any character. On The Roast the reporters are a bunch of near-identical middle-class white guys, except for the Asian woman one, who’s different because she’s an Asian woman. Put it this way, it’s a good thing the male reporters have different haircuts or we’d never notice the difference between them. Dozens and dozens of fake news shows in the past have managed to give their league of young white guys various wacky characters; just sticking a wacky hat on one of these guys would be an improvement.
3. The Stories. When The Roast does a parody news report it often goes like this: host Tom Glasson reads out an intro about an actual news story, cut to a sketch which is based around one tiny, often not very pertinent, aspect of that story, the sketch goes on for a minute and there’s basically only one joke in there, which is the one about the not very pertinent aspect of the original story. This is not a roadmap to quality comedy. It’s not even a couple of lines drawn in the dirt directing people to a smirk.
4. The Jokes. Often there aren’t any. Oh, it might seem like you’re watching something that contains jokes, but if you look closely you’ll find that all you’re actually getting is observations delivered with a layer of snark smeared across the top. This kind of thing is fine on occasion, especially when you’re dealing with politicians (as so much of The Roast does). But when that’s all you’ve got to say on a topic, you don’t have a television show – you barely even have the comments on a politics-themed blog.
5. The Perspectives. When you have what looks like a crew made up entirely of smug, entitled, well-off white guys – oh yeah, and that Asian woman written to sound exactly like a smug entitled, well-off white guy – it wouldn’t hurt to occasionally have some kind of perspective that wasn’t that of a crew of smug, entitled, well-off white guys. Usually here we’d say that part of the problem is the format: a send-up of bland news reporters covering the news is by it’s very nature going to contain elements of the bland, middle-class perspective it’s sending up. But then we remembered that Mad as Hell manages to cover an extremely wide spectrum of types and experiences while doing the exact same thing as The Roast and being roughly a zillion times funnier at it.
6. The Jokes Again. You know when you take a current situation – oh no, the government wants old folk to work longer / kids are being told to skip university and jump straight into the workforce / etc – and then you exaggerate it for comedic effect? That’s almost never funny unless you put some actual thought into the kind of exaggerations you’re going to make. So The Roast seems to do it at least once every episode, making sure to only ever go down the most obvious and least interesting path. Let’s bring back child labour and make old people into slaves! Oh ho ho.
7. The Fact It Never Seems To Get Any Better. Even most crap comedy shows change and grow over the course of their lifetimes as the cast and crew focus on what works, ditch what doesn’t, deal with changing interests and cast members, and so on. Not The Roast. Apart from the news being mocked, you could stack a current episode up against one at the start of the show’s run and you’d be hard pressed to detect any difference at all. Does this mean the show achieved perfection out the gate, thus leaving no room whatsoever for improvement? No. No it does not.
8. The Fact That It Never Gets Axed. It’s a head-scratcher! And an annoying one at that. Is The Roast hitting that right level of blandness and inoffensiveness that keeps hundreds of firmly average shows on air for years? Or does someone at the ABC seriously think they’re awesome? Got a theory? Post it in the comments.
One Weekend Only, Everything Must Go
Press release time!
WORLD PREMIERE OF CHRIS LILLEY COMEDY TO SCREEN IN EPIC WEEKEND BINGE ON ABC IVIEW
Australia’s leading internet TV service, ABC iview, is giving superfans the chance to watch puckloads of Chris Lilley’s new series JONAH FROM TONGA online, before it hits TV screens.
Every pucking episode of the six-part series will premiere in a not-to-be-missed weekend iview binge, available from 6pm Friday May 2 until 6pm Sunday May 4 AEST.
With more than 15 million monthly program plays*, iview is Australia’s most accessible TV on demand service, available on 15 connected platforms including computers, tablets, smart phones, internet-enabled TVs, gaming consoles and set top boxes – so you’ll never miss a moment of JONAH FROM TONGA, wherever you are.
Last time we caught up with Jonah Takalua he was expelled from Summer Heights High. JONAH FROM TONGA sees Jonah now in a new school but still up to his old tricks. The Tongan rebel finds himself in hot water with plenty of fights, frenemies, break-dancing & law-breaking.
“ABC iview was the first in the Australian market with an online streaming catch-up service and we continue to deliver ‘firsts’ five years on,” said Arul Baskaran, ABC Head of Online and Multiplatform.
“We’re firm believers in innovation and improving how technology can deliver outstanding Australian content to audiences no matter where they’re watching, and we’re thrilled to now offer binge viewing of a highly-anticipated show from one of Australia’s most respected comedic talents.” he added.
Princess Pictures’ Laura Waters, who produced the series with Lilley said: “Jonah From Tonga is a thrilling series, coming out in the most thrilling era of television,
“Chris and I will always put the fan’s experience first. We’re so excited that people can choose their own way of getting involved with Jonah!” Laura added.
Companion broadcaster BBC Three will follow suit with their own binge weekend with the entire series available on the popular BBC iPlayer.
JONAH FROM TONGA will also screen Wednesday nights from May 7 at 9pm on ABC1, with each episode being made available again on iview after broadcast.
Okay, let’s just make this plain: Chris Lilley’s last two series – Angry Boys and Ja’mie: Private School Girl – started out strong in the ratings, only to see those figures drop off sharply as viewers realised they were being served the same old same old. So what this binge session really is – sorry “superfans” – is a naked attempt to rig the ratings: by releasing the whole series in one blurt, they can then claim the initial high ratings figures (that Lilley hopefully still manages to get in week one) are the figures for the entire series*.
Obviously this is bullshit, a blatant attempt to rig the system to artificially boost the ratings for the ABC’s fading golden child. But good news: by showing so little confidence in the finished product the ABC have done much of our work for us. If Lilley had come up with a show that improved week after week – or even just had a halfway decent story that would keep viewers tuning in – the ABC wouldn’t be resorting to this kind of crap.
No, it seems clear without having seen a second of the finished show that Lilley has yet again served up even more of the same “hilarious” quasi-racism, dubious sex jokes and bland unfocused “offensiveness”. Now the ABC are bricking it at the realisation that they’re stuck with six weeks of this turd smeared across their schedules. We’ll still be tuning in because, as the Romans put it, “haters gotta hate”. But after this stunt? You’re going to need diamond-tipped drilling equipment to dig down to where our expectations have sunk.
*they can also claim when the ratings fall off week after week for the ABC1 broadcast that the drop in viewers is because everyone watched the series on the first weekend. Pretty sneaky, ABC.
Vale Mad As Hell Series 3
Mad As Hell will probably be back next year – maybe even this year – so this is (hopefully) not a goodbye, merely an adieu. “But we want it on every week, all year ‘round!” you cry. And it’s at this point that if this blog was an episode of Mad As Hell, Shaun would introduce some bizarre character to riff on this topic for a minute or so and we’d all be cackling with laughter. Sigh.
One of the things that we find most impressive about Mad As Hell is that there is a formula to the show – oddly named, strange characters discuss topical issues with a hectoring semi-madman who breaks in to do some silly eye movements a couple of times an episode – but it’s okay because it’s a formula that works. And as the formulaic elements of Mad As Hell are used sparingly enough and inventively enough that you don’t really notice there’s a formula.
In pretty much any other topical sketch show made in Australia in the past however-many-decades being formulaic was one of its major flaws. Wednesday Night Fever, Live From Planet Earth…why are we even bothering to name them? All we need – and want – to remember are a) they had a very simplistic formula which they hammered in to the ground, i.e. they created a number of recurring characters and thought “recurring” equalled “must include in every episode”, and b) because they did a) audiences turned off and they were axed. Don’t get us wrong, we love Ian Orbspider, we love The Kraken, and we love Vomitoria Catchment, but we don’t mind not seeing them every week, or even every series, because we know that when they do appear they will be funny.
Another part of the Mad As Hell “formula” is, of course, the satire. While many of this country’s newspapers and news websites fail to make the government accountable, Mad As Hell usually manages to throw stones in the right direction. And in a country still plagued by wowsers full of OUTRAGE, satire – often seen as an audience repellent – seems to work just fine for anyone who happens to tune in. Maybe those audiences who normally wouldn’t enjoy satire are being satiated with the wacky costumes? Or, more likely, maybe it’s just that Mad As Hell has a knack of nailing the right targets in the right way. Behind every sketch, whether a scripted piece or a YouTube-esque moment of LOLZ footage, there’s usually a sage political point of some kind. And like the formula, it’s not always obvious but it is there.
Mad As Hell is more than a show that’s funny, for students of comedy it’s also instructive: you don’t have to set out to shock (The Chaser) or try to appeal to the lowest common denominator (Wednesday Night Fever) to get audiences to pay attention. You can even do basically the same thing every week. What you need is a unique vision, a flexible formula, and the ability to write a bunch of piss-funny gags. Oh right, so that’s why there aren’t more Mad As Hells. Sorry to have troubled you.
War Without End: A Conversation
A: So it seems ABC boss Mark Scott has apologised for The Chaser’s “comedy sketch” in which columnist for The Australian Chris Kenny was portrayed as having sex with a dog.
B: And just 49 minutes after The Australian once again found someone to demand they bend the knee. Heaven forbid we had a national broadcast who… well, heaven forbid we had a national broadcaster seems to be the editorial line over at their chief competitor these days.
A: You’re defending The Chaser then?
B: Of course. It’s obvious that the ABC shouldn’t have apologised to Kenny. It was clearly a joke, if one in poor taste, and if you’re going to start apologising for jokes where’s it going to end? You’ll give up making jokes in the first place – which, if Gerard Henderson’s “comedy” material is any guide, is what the Right want from their comedians.
A: But arguing for the “right to offend” with comedy sounds awfully close to what Andrew Bolt is currently angling for – the whole “people have a right to be bigots” thing.
B: Amazing, isn’t it, that these right wing types are out there claiming that limiting their right to incite racial hate is an attack on freedom of speech, while The Chaser’s right to show a clearly fake picture of Kenny having sex with a dog – in the context of a joke about how the image was obviously going too far – is one they’re more than happy to trample on. Why, it’s almost as if they had no firm principles at all beyond “we want to do what we want to do and you lot can shut up and take it”.
A: But that “context” you talk about is a sack of crap. Clearly the point of the joke was to show the image, not to make a point that the ABC are going to go too far when… see, I’ve seen the sketch a number of times and I can’t even remember the context. They wanted to show the picture, and they built a “joke” around it.
B: So what? It was on a comedy show, it clearly wasn’t real – it was a joke that only people looking to score points off the ABC could possibly take seriously. And judging by the ABC’s caving in, they’ve succeeded.
A: But the ABC wouldn’t have had to have caved in if it wasn’t such a shit joke. We’ve seen this urge towards pointless shocks time and time again with The Chaser – ever since the Osama Bin Laden / APEC bit which grabbed loads of headlines but as a joke had no point whatsoever. The “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” sketch was the same thing: they come up with the outrage first then try to put together a rationale to justify going on with it. It’s sloppy, and it creates material that’s all but impossible to defend if it’s challenged.
B: I don’t think that’s quite how The Chaser works. I’m sure they’ve said somewhere that they expected trouble in that season of The Chaser’s War on Everything, they just didn’t expect that sketch to set things off.
A: Which proves my point: when it comes to handling shocking or offensive material, they’re just not skilled enough to pull it off. Which is probably their aim: a more subtle and funny sketch making the same point about Kenny wouldn’t have got them anywhere near as much publicity.
B: So is the problem just that this is a bad time for The Chaser – and the ABC in general – to be stirring up the Right, or do you think there’s never a good time?
A: There’s never a good time when you don’t know what you’re doing. I’d say that Mad As Hell has scored harder hits on the Right than The Chaser have ever managed –
B: You would say that, what with our well-known love of all things Micallef.
A: – but that hardly anyone noticed because those hits have been smart and funny rather than crude and blunt. With News Corp controlling what, 72% of Australia’s newspapers, unless you piss off the right wing enough to get them howling for your blood no-one’s even going to know you’re on the air. Subtle comedy and nuanced takedowns aren’t going to get you a full page spread in the Daily Telegraph:
My only real quibble is the H. Would have gone for Hateful, Horrible, Hackneyed, Hypocritical or Heartless myself pic.twitter.com/h1eozr5yqY
— Jules Morrow (@julesmorrow) April 15, 2014
I wouldn’t even compare what The Chaser does to Micallef’s show – they’re more on par with Wil Anderson calling Senator Richard Alston a “right-wing pig rooter” on The Glasshouse.
B: Ouch.
A: And considering Morrow spent this morning cracking jokes about the disappearance of MH370… well, it’s business as usual there.
B: But this brings us back to the right to offend. MH370 jokes might be tasteless – though really, we’re well past the whole “too soon” stage by now – but they’re still clearly jokes. Comedy with any kind of edge to it can’t survive in an environment where anyone can stand up and say they’re offended and shut the whole thing down.
A: The trouble is that the people making the free speech argument in Australia at the moment are largely people who want the right to be openly racist towards powerless minorities. Do you really want to side with racists to defend The Chaser’s right to make shitty non-jokes?
B: But Bolt is being offensive about things people can’t help, like the colour of their skin and their social standing. Politicians can choose not to be right-wing dickheads.
A: True. Tho I feel many right-wing dickheads would argue their horrible hateful values are as much a part of them as their skin colour.
B: They would be wrong about that.
A: True. Skin colour is on the outside of your body and often hidden underneath your clothes. Having no compassion or empathy for others and hating strangers based solely on ignorance – that lives in your heart!
B: I think we’ll leave it there.
The Mainstream Event
ABC2’s Comedy Up Late is the kind of Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) stand-up showcase we want to see on TV: a couple of cameras pointed at a stage in a comedy room, with some comedians coming out and doing well-honed, five-minute sets for a live audience. This isn’t like when Channel 10 comes in and films the MICF Gala, where 95% of the acts have one eye on the cameras and are doing their most mainstream routines so they won’t get edited out of the broadcast. Comedy Up Late, like Stand Up @ Bella Union, manages to preserve the feel of a comedy room, in all its smokey, dirty, boozy glory – and with (seemingly) minimal editing of the acts.
If you live in a rural area or somewhere like Perth or Darwin or Adelaide or Hobart, where there isn’t much of a live comedy scene, this kind of show is one of the few ways you can experience a wide range of live comedy acts. For that reason alone it’s worth making. Problem is, whoever programmed the line-up for Comedy Up Late seems to have a slightly more MICF Gala sensibility than a Stand Up @ Bella Union sensibility – meaning that the kind of comedy you get on Comedy Up Late tends more towards the “first world problems” end of the LOLZ spectrum.
For us, Stand Up @ Bella Union is a more interesting program – we hadn’t seen a number of the acts before, the majority weren’t white middle-class males under 30, and most of them were pretty good. Comedy Up Late certainly had plenty of good comedians, including a number who are female and/or non-white, and a few who have also appeared on Stand Up @ Bella Union. It’s just that, overall, the material was pretty mainstream. And at the risk of sounding like inverted snobs or hipsters, that’s not all that appealing to us.
Comedy, as an artform, tends to work best when an underdog is getting the laughs – when they’re standing up to authority or in opposition to someone in a position of privilege. White middle-class males under 30, relatively speaking, are in a position of privilege; amongst other things they’ve got youth on their side, multiple opportunities open to them and lots of choices they can make about the direction of their lives. Their comedy may well reflect the experiences and viewpoints of a significant section of the Australian population, but it’s also the kinds of experiences and viewpoints we already see quite a lot of on TV.
A comedy festival, by it’s nature, is somewhere you should and can see a number of different genres and sensibilities. And compared to Stand Up @ Bella Union, Comedy Up Late didn’t do a good enough job of bringing these to television.
Again With The Dodgy Comedy Festival Reviews
The Sunday Age‘s entertainment section – “M: Melbourne Inside Out” – has a section titled “8 Days: Your One-Stop Guide To The Week Ahead”. The second listing in today’s edition is this:
“Comedy Writer, comedian and poet Ben Pobjie is talking rage at this year’s Comedy Festival. His show, Trigger Warning, takes to task the sheer amount of anger and offence that exists in our modern world, and tries to figure out why people enjoy outrage so much. Trigger Warning is running six nights a week [we’ve left out the booking details because this isn’t an ad for his show]”
Hmm. Why is there so much anger in the world? Here’s a suggestion: maybe people become angry when they read a prominent listing like this in The Age that somehow fails to mention anywhere that Ben Pobjie is an Age employee? Maybe they’re outraged at a supposed “guide to the week ahead” that – in the middle of a flood of comedians performing in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival – puts a three-star, “lukewarm” outing by someone who works for the paper as the second item on their long list of things they’re promoting?
This isn’t a swipe at Pobjie or his show. Fairfax’s business model, relying as it does more on freelancers and part-timers than News Corp, all but guarantees that many of its writers will have other gigs, some of which will be the kind of thing that the Fairfax papers usually promote. The problem is that no-one seems to be telling the people who work at Fairfax that promoting your mates, while a nice thing in theory, is crap journalism in practice.
If you think The Age shouldn’t have to reveal that Pobjie works for them in a listing like this, you’re wrong. If you think it’s fair enough for them to promote his act even though it’s during a period when a comedy festival brings literally dozens of more interesting comedy performers to town, you’re wrong. It makes the paper look bad if you’re a reader who knows the connection, and it’s treating the readers who don’t like suckers.
And to think, The Age hasn’t run a puff piece on Marieke Hardy in months…