Australian Tumbleweeds
It’s in the stars
TV networks don’t like talent. They’re in the business of making programs, not making stars. Which is hardly surprising: once you’ve seen Eddie McGuire become a household name, clearly that side of things is in the hands – or tentacles- of some kind of morality- and sanity-free Lovecraftian Elder God.
But so ingrained is the notion that shows make stars and not the other way around that… well, let’s take a step back for a second. Last week on ABC radio Green Guide writer Debi Enker suggested that Ten’s 7pm cooking show Master Chef was doing so well its high ratings were lifting the ratings of the shows around it. The show that she used as an example was the Shaun Micallef hosted ratings smash – and there’s a phrase we all never thought we’d read – Talkin’ ‘bout Your Generation.
That’s right: supposedly fans of a cooking demonstration wrapped in a soft-sell reality show are sticking around to watch Shaun Micallef do his Woody Allen impersonation. And yet, from a TV insider’s point of view, this obviously dim-witted statement makes perfect sense. That’s because from a format point of view – and for insiders format is king – TAYG is hardly the stuff ratings dreams are made of.
It’s yet another limp comedy quiz featuring a collection of mostly also-ran guests, with question segments that drag on too long and an angle – generational facts and fads – that covers all the viewing demographics without doing much to make it appealing to any of them. So if you’re of a mind that the format is what viewers are coming to see, then clearly TAYG’s success (and it’s bringing in around 1.7 million viewers each week) must be slipstreaming from an earlier, even more successful show where the format actually is the reason why people tune in. After all, if viewers only tune into shows for the format, why aren’t they also tuning in for SBS’s mostly-ignored sports-themed comedy quiz The Squiz?
Leaving aside why Enker’s Green Guide fails to bring this angle up when covering every single locally-made ABC comedy shown at 9pm Wednesdays – where the slipstream effect from equally successful comedy quiz Spicks & Specks should apply just as strongly – this view pretty much sums up why so much Australian comedy each and every year is nothing more than steaming clumps of dung dropping from the gassy rectum of a bloated milk cow.
Who cares if the latest sketch comedy show is nothing more than the same old hack faces scraped together to do exactly the same face-pulling that failed the last time? Who cares if the latest panel show features the usual kak-handed suspects drivelling away with the jokes they couldn’t get up on their breakfast radio gigs? It’s the format that counts, not the people plugged into it.
(By the by, this is also a large part of why sitcoms hardly ever get up on Australian television: even at their most generic, a sitcom usually doesn’t look a lot like another sitcom. Kath & Kim didn’t lead to a new dawn for the Aussie sitcom, and yet The Panel spawned a good half-dozen knock-offs and Spicks & Specks is still spitting out imitations to this day.)
It’s little wonder that TV insiders are starting to put out the notion that TAYG’s success has something to do with what’s going on around it; the only other possible explanation for its success (bearing in mind that as a comedy quiz goes it’s hardly surprising or new) is that Shaun Micallef is a funny guy. And if viewers are tuning in to watch a funny guy be funny… well, what’s left for the people who think up (read: rip off other) TV formats to do?
Catherine Deveny knows comedy
We all know what the tabloid press were doing during the furore over The Chaser’s “Make a Realistic Wish” foundation sketch: they were obsessed with making rational and well-reasoned contributions to the debate, if the Herald-Sun’s “They spat in the face of dying children” headline was anything to go by.
And that kind of demented rabble-rousing is easy for them to say: if you discount the people who write those tiny “choice pick” blurbs at the top of the TV listings, the Herald-Sun doesn’t employ a single television critic who could have pointed out that The Chaser’s sketch was just something on television and not some kind of real-world living nightmare that was actually happening to sick kiddies every time the clip was viewed on YouTube.
But what about the “quality” press? Where were they in all the Chaser outrage? Hedging their bets for the most part, by covering “the outrage”, and running the same trashy stories while pretending to be above it all. And who can blame them? Like all media in this country, they’re running scared of shrinking readerships and revenues. But at least a paper like The Age actually has television reviewers to balance out the opinion pieces claiming that The Chaser’s sketch symbolised the Death of Compassion (Shaun Carney, The Age, June 9th), right?
Well, maybe. Marieke Hardy couldn’t pull herself away from her cappuccino long enough to comment – hardly surprising, as she’s also an ABC employee. Gee, that policy of only hiring media insiders to comment on the media is really working out, hey? And in the other corner we had Catherine Deveny’s ‘Couch Life’ column of June 13th. Surely a major metropolitan newspaper’s chief TV columnist would be able to point out that the sketch was merely a joke, right? Guess again, as she sums up life itself with impressive brevity:
“Wrong. Simple as that.” Wow. And they pay you to review television? Why bother giving you a full third of a tabloid page when all you need is a single word? Underbelly: “nup”. Four Corners: “hmm”. Master Chief : “burp”. But wait, there’s more: “And not funny. Not because it was offensive… Wrong because it didn’t make people laugh or think.” Not because it didn’t make Deveny laugh or think, mind you, but “people” in general. As Margaret Thatcher said to George Negus, “name six”.
So if it had made “people” laugh or think it would have been okay, right? Well, maybe not think: Deveny’s column is usually full of comedic references to her rough’n ready lifestyle and how she’d like her kids to play in traffic. It’s fair to assume she doesn’t really want people thinking too long or hard on what those jokes might mean – after all, they’re clearly just jokes, right?
(And it’s interesting to note also that the choice being offered is to “laugh or think”. Judged by those rigorous criteria, even Ian Kershaw’s two-volume biography of Adolf Hitler could get under the wire as a non-stop kak-fest in the newly discovered “think” comedy category. Sure, you’re mostly thinking what a tool this Hitler guy is, but at least you’re thinking – something that’s rarely at risk when Deveny picks up the pen.)
Perhaps if she’d simply stuck to “not funny” she could have added something to the sum total of useful human knowledge. And if she’d then gone on to explain exactly why it wasn’t funny in coherent, non-emotive terms, all would have been right with the world. But of course, not only did she say it didn’t make “people” laugh – declaring it one of the very rare events in human history that no-one at all will ever derive amusement from – she went on to say “The point wasn’t strong enough to warrant the offense”.
Jokes now need to have a point beyond making people laugh? Well, no. Jokes can have a point beyond getting a laugh, but when you argue that a joke fails because it doesn’t make a strong point… well, where were you when The Mighty Boosh was getting a run? Why aren’t you complaining about Sam Simmons each and every week? Or more to the point, what exactly is the higher meaning behind your jokes about you mistreating your kids that excuses their (on the surface) horrific content? Oh, it’s just a joke? So The Chaser’s sketch wasn’t?
To be fair, compared to the tabloid drivel on the topic Deveny’s a searing light of truth. But compared to the tabloid drivel on the topic the text message “LOLfagz 6 ded kidz” is the wisdom of Solomon. It might be difficult to imagine a sketch about dying children that was hysterically funny. It might be even more difficult to imagine The Chaser being the ones who came up with such a sketch. But it’s flat out impossible to imagine anyone taking Catherine Deveny’s views on comedy seriously when the best she can come up with is this barely coherent ramble designed more to justify her readers’ outrage than explain to them why sometimes comedy just might offend someone. And why comedy should always be treated first and foremost as a joke.
Welcome
This blog is a spin-off of the Australian Tumbleweeds – Australia’s most opinionated awards ceremony. 13 schoolyards and Bean Is A Carrot will start posting their usual mix of news, views and snark very soon. In the meantime, check out the 2008 awards.