irony & its contents

Recently there was a suggestion that some of us split from the local Book Club and form a TV Club.  The reasons for this were as follows: we don't have time to read the books, some of the people who come to Book Club don't read the book club but just come for a feed, and Book Club was starting to do weird things like discuss two books at once.  The biggest gripe about Book Club probably was that you might end up reading a book you'd rather not.

Book Club, in case you were wondering, looks like this:

<A book club in action, discussing We Need to Talk about Kevin: note enigmatic participation by Lulu>

No Swedish footballers' wives involved: it's all incredibly nerdy and dorky, but this is how you socialise in Alice, through joining clubs and groups.

Some of us were occasionally meeting to watch The Chaser and Summer Heights High.  So it seemed like a natural progression, to form a TV Club. (But why can't you just watch TV? -- Ed.) Being a member of a TV Club suggests a chance to be totally passive, to wing things, not to have to read anything you don't like. Or even to read, full stop. Non-reading being something I'm bitterly opposed to, but this is total nerdsville, for all those who miss the joy of a tutorial situation, so that has to count for something.

This week we'll have our first inaugural non-meeting, watching the last episode of Summer Heights High.  I'm rather intrigued by Summer Heights High as an example of one of the recent wave of comedies that use irony to satirise (the handling of) PC-ness and diversity.   The other thing about Summer Heights High is that its appeal seems to have been instantaneous: a cult following has developed overnight (at least amongst high school children in Alice).  While the show owes some of its momentum to We Can Be Heroes, it rides on the coat-tails of British comedies such as Little Britain, Ali G and the deadpan humour of the mockumentary, The Office, comedies in which you often don't know whether to laugh or cringe.  Lilley's work also follows in the Australian comic genealogy of suburban satire sired (or maybe just popularised) by Barry Humphrey: Ja'mie (not my most favourite of Lilley's characters) could be Dame Edna's long-lost grand-daughter, with her distinct superstar tendencies.

Anyway, I've thought so much about the use of irony in these comedies that I've tied myself in knots and I'm not really sure I have anything to say...which perhaps relates to the point Pav Cat made recently about The Chaser's eulogy song ultimately deconstructing itself.  One of the sources of discomfort provoked by these shows is the question of when is too much irony too much, i.e. when does it become a vehicle for expressing downright, say, racist sentiments, as maybe the case (depending on your reading) in relation to the Arab semen stains in the eulogy song.

Strictly speaking, The Chasers is another comic TV subgenre but I think it shares similar ground in its use of satire with some of these shows.  To me, the problem with The Chasers is that it's too indiscriminate: it sets up any and every target.  While all of the abovementioned shows do push the envelope at times, the difference is that most of them set a context or a trope for their satire. Those with a loose trope -- Little Britain, Ali G -- tend to, er, get out  of hand (nay, run out of original ideas -- Ed), whereas those with a clear premise -- e.g. satire of the public school system in Summer Heights High and office culture in The Office --  so they're better able to handle layers of irony because the context and objects of satire are more focused.  Chris Lilley's and Ricky Gervais's work is effective because of its verisimilitude (tho I think some of the language in SHH is getting a bit worn now -- he'd better not make another series) and because of the awareness they provoke of the gap between the mundanity of their characters' lives and their ambitions and, by proxy, ours.

If you're still wondering about the value of irony-laden shows like these that, then consider ads for The Librarians, soon to replace Summer Heights High.  This show looks absolutely terrible, because of the singular lack of ambiguity in its humour.  For example, in one of the promos, a librarian chirps to a woman in a hijab: 'You have to come back at our opening time. It's our country; our rules.'  It's back to the grotesquerie of the late 80s/early 90s Australian cinema moment, with join-the-dots caricatures.  In a comedy like The Librarians, I'm guessing that 'Polynesian Pathways' would probably be championed as an embattled site of multiculturalism. In Summer Heights High, however, a more complex set of relations is invoked: the very program that's meant to shore up Jonah's sense of identity undermines the coolness he wants to project.

Another thing which interests me about these comedies is whether there's an American equivalent or if (a) the prospect of ironising diversity is too tricky in the States or (b) irony is not enough of a staple of American humour for such comedies to work.  I can think of films like Little Miss Sunshine that satirise ordinary white middle-class Americans' aspirations, tho PC-ness isn't really a target in this film.  One of the points that British comedian Sacha Baron-Cohen's film Borat turns on is the belief that Americans can be provoked like some kind of endearing savants because of their lack of irony, (not to mention their cultural myopia, possibly the reason why so many of Borat's interviewees take him at face value).   But perhaps I haven't watched enough American TV.

I've had a number of discussions (usually with other Australians) about whether Americans have a sense of irony, and the conclusion I've drawn from my brief experiences in the States is that many of them indeed do have a sense of irony but it's not a national institution, in the way that irony is in Britain or being laconic is in Australia.  There is a Commitment to Earnestness, I've found.  Some Americans also go a bit wobbly at the knees if you throw some particularly deadpan or complex irony at them.  (I've noticed that some of Denton's American guests just don't know what to say when he does this.)

Anyway, I'm not sure that I ultimately have anything smart to say about SHH so I've come up with a new We Can Be heroes personality type indicator instead...which Chris Lilley character are you?

Each time I watch Summer Heights High, I see more and more parallels between my life and that of Mr G:

Leonard dies. Celine dies. 

I want the Creative Writing program to be more mainstream and professional.

Mr G wants to build a Gregson drama institute with national standards.

Big Boss says to me: 'But you don't have the EFTSU'.

The Headmistress says: 'We don't have the resources.'

Big Boss implies / The headmistress says: 'From where I'm sitting, creative writing / drama doesn't feature much in the picture.'

I threaten to resign.  Mr G actually does resign.

In fact, I'm starting to wonder if Summer Heights High might be directly based on my own life. I think I might write to the ABC and complain, though I've noticed they've recently put a disclaimer at the start about all characters being fictitious.

Comments

[TPS]

ON the chaser:

Wouldn't the position of these guys be that 'too much irony is barely enough'? I have always thought the chasers a bit hit and miss, but often amusing.

I feel almost disappointed that the chasers can't achieve more. In terms of their indiscriminate approach, I would think this insulates them from more sustained criticism - if they are indiscriminate then their irony is all encompassing and without agenda. But, this dilutes or even extinguishes any commentary or message (notwithstanding that satire can be ambiguous, as you discuss) and leaves us with what? bad taste??

and would they be so popular if they had an agenda?

[Laura]

OMG you ARE Mr G. I knew I'd seen a version of him somewhere before (but I thought it was me.)

[elsewhere]

TPS - I thought your comment a while ago that the Chasers was just like the Sydney Uni Law Revue writ large pretty well summed things up.

i don't know about the more / less popular with an agenda question. There have been some popular shows with agendas tho certainly, a more subtle agenda is always preferable as far as I'm concerned.

I don't know that anything I've said above makes that much sense (I'm v addled at the moment)...it's probably just that I like a tight and clever conceit, more than anything else.

[Francis Xavier Holden]

Those with a loose trope..

ooh Mrs Slocum - I feel a Carry On moment coming on

[ThirdCat]

What do you think?
Especially now that some of the parallels are now unparalleled (apologies for possibly have too many or two few 'l's in the parallels).

[ThirdCat]

I meant what do you think of the final.

[Pavlov's Cat]

I found the final quite disturbing, especially the Jonah strand. ('Come and get me, car!')

As for which character we are, I'm the English teacher who went off her tree at Jonah last week. That or the headmistress, depending what day it is.

[elsewhere]

I don't think any of us were that satisfied by the Jonah thread last night. Jonah is maybe the most empathetic character in the series but his life has taken something of a tragic turn into 'real reality' rather than 'satiric reality' over the past couple of weeks. He's the 'real' victim of 'the system', etc. I think I would have liked some more appropriate comic resolution of his trajectory...it would have been nice to see him get more of his own back at 'the system', other than just tagging all the cars. (I am in trouble for sending Jonah tags --with the assistance of the ABC website -- to the local land council & legal aid myself.)

I thought the finale was overdone, in some respects, and underdone in others. I didn't get a lot of joy from the Mr G musical -- the narcissism was thoroughly predictable and heavyhanded, tho I did get some joy from the sight of Celine on wheels. The Ja'mie thread was probably the most apt in its resolution, tho likewise overly predictable.

What we need now is for Mr G to get a gig at Hilford Girls and Jonah and his dad to become cleaners there.

As for typology, hmm, maybe I'm David Powlett-Jones from To Serve Them All My Days rather than Mr G (sorry about obscure TV reference -- I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of British TV dramas from around 1975-85, thanks to my mother's influence).

[TPS]

I agree with PC re: 'the jonah strand'. i think i also wanted more action, eg:

- ja'aime pashing the teacher who made her give the money to AIDS
- celine dying (again)
- jonah doing a nudie run through young uptight teacher's classroom
- the lesbians crashing the formal
etc

And the big question is, as El has queried already - what will lilley do next? what SHOULD he do next?

[elsewhere]

Actually, I'm quite possibly the woman who works at Gumnut Cottage -- now there's a scary thought!

[suzoz]

You do know (do you?) that the disclaimer is because the name of the student who ODed in an early episode was the same as a woman who actually did OD this year in Syd and her family complained ... so art did imitate life a bit too closely.

[elsewhere]

Yes, but wasn't it the case that they had gone into production on the series before that story even broke?

[Sandra]

Am just catching up after some time in Canada. Thought you might be interested in a sit-com just starting there - wonderfully titled " Little Mosque on the Prairie".