Laughs are on us — just the way we like it
Peter Munro
September 2, 2007
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When Kath Day-Knight calls on Kim to "look at moiye", many of us are laughing at more than just a pair of high-maintenance ladies on the television screen. Australia's most famous mother and daughter act is funny because it's familiar and their muffin tops and fadoobadas would not look out of place on most suburban street corners. The show's best jokes are on us, so why are we giggling at the punchlines?
Self-mockery runs strong in Australian comedy, from Dame Edna's suburban home in Moonee Ponds to Daryl Kerrigan's castle and, this week, to Summer Heights High and student Ja'mie King's dreams of becoming a United Nations ambassador or an international supermodel. Australians take particular pleasure in having the piss taken out of them, and you don't have to live in Kath & Kim's Fountain Lakes to see there is a little effluence in every one of us.
Tom Gleisner, co-creator of Working Dog's film The Castle and TV hit Thank God You're Here, says that self-mockery is an innate part of the Australian culture. "We tend to be inherently suspicious of anyone who looks like being a bit full of themselves, and our preferred way of dealing with this is through humour," he says. "Even if it means turning that humour on ourselves."
Local comedies are the top two most-watched TV programs in the country. Last month's opening episode of Kath & Kim on Seven was the most-watched show of the year, drawing a national average audience of 2.52 million, including 882,000 viewers in Melbourne. In second place was Ten's Thank God You're Here, with 2 million viewers nationwide.
Gleisner says Australians are particularly good at giggling at themselves. "Self-deprecation is the most generous form of comedy," he says. "Whilst we all love a sharp, American-style put-down, there is something ultimately cruel about it. But when the punch-line of a joke is yourself, how can it possibly be construed as mean?" Melbourne International Comedy Festival director Susan Provan says that every comedian in the world has a good putdown line, whether directed at themselves or at their audience. In Britain, that has been exemplified by the success of The Office and in the United States by Seinfeld and The Simpsons. She says that the secret to Kath & Kim's success is the familiarity of the show's stars to local viewers. "I think the characters are just so bizarre but so completely related to characters we all know," she says.
The show's creators, Jane Turner and Gina Riley, drew their inspiration from Australian reality TV shows such as Sylvania Waters and Weddings, in which the characters oscillated between being embarrassing and unintentionally hilarious. Kath & Kim's plum-mouthed characters, Prue and Trude, who run a homewares shop selling "threws for the carch" (throws for the couch), were drawn from the streets of Toorak and Armidale, in Melbourne's wealthy inner suburbs.
Sue Turnbull, associate professor in media studies at La Trobe University, says that Australians' love of self-mockery goes back to the 1930s hayseed comedies of Dad and Dave, and their loveable but naive country bumpkins. In the 1960s, Barry Humphries turned the spotlight on suburbia with Edna Everage, and encouraged audiences to cast a critical but ultimately affectionate eye over themselves with his ocker Aussie, Barry McKenzie, and boozing cultural attache, Sir Les Patterson.
"The role of comedy is precisely to hold up a mirror to society or culture and to reflect back to that society aspects of itself which are funny, ridiculous, silly or outrageous," Dr Turnbull says. "I think the laughter comes from recognition and pleasure in recognition."
Dr Turnbull is co-convener of a special research project examining the impact of comedy on Australia's national identity. She says that it is debatable whether Kath and Kim or any of Barry Humphries' characters are celebrations or critiques of Australian society. "Dame Edna originally was a form of self-loathing about suburbia," she says.
But Laura Waters, a former producer on Kath & Kim and currently executive producer on Summer Heights High, which premieres on the ABC on Wednesday, says that such comedies are not about trying to take the mickey out of the audience. "It's just finding humour in the little details of day-to-day human life," she says. "To me, it is more giggling than poking fun. The characters highlight how funny life is."
Comedian Chris Lilley's Summer Heights High follows last year's acclaimed mockumentary series, We Can Be Heroes, which introduced Australian audiences to Ja'mie King, who completes the 40- Hour Famine each week to "keep me looking hot", and Ricky Wong, who played the lead in his Chinese musical theatre group's Aboriginal musical, Indigeridoo.
Lilley also played the character of Daniel Sims, a mildly intellectually handicapped twin. He was among the show's fictional nominees for Australian of the Year, and certainly deserved an award for Australian self-mockery comedy with his rap, "Who is the wanker?" and his definitive answer — we all are.
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'We Could Be Heroes' was a very funny series - Ja'Mie King (in the pic) plays a different character in each episode and does them all brilliantly. Kath and Kim is also excellent and I'm sure a lot of people would get into it if they gave it a chance. And 'The Castle' was just fantastic too - a great film about a man who decides to fight against plans to flatten his house to make way for an airport runway.
I don't think I've ever been so positive about an article in a long time, but there's absolutely no doubt that Australian comedy has been great in the last few years and with any luck they'll keep knocking out the quality.
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