My War On The Chaser
In the year when I had planned to finally declare my war on The Chaser it seems this self-congratulatory sausage sizzle has gone and shot itself in the foot (again). As decribed here in this news article and then splendidly blogged about here a particularly offensive “skit” about how greedy and grabby are all those children in the hospital with terminal illnesses who so tiresomely expect to have wishes granted by the Make A Wish Foundation, has resulted in the dudes, and their obnoxious, privilege-oblivious dudebro humour, being taken off the air. Only for a couple of weeks, unfortunately, but it just could be that people are waking up and smelling the cruelty inherent in much of their dudecentric “comedic” bile.
Like many, I found the show quite amusing in its first season. In a time when the tv airwaves are beginning to resemble Bondi beach, as in peppered with crap, it seemed like a refreshing and creative attempt at political satire. Political satire, however, requires intelligence, wit and the ability to critically analyse your standpoint and that of your subject. The original purpose of satire was to critique the oppressive policies and practices of those in power, in order to make a statement on social injustices and unenlightened worldviews.
This is soo not what The Chaser men do, and I refer to them as men despite their habit of behaving like giant toddlers, because I believe that refering to them normatively as “the chaser boys” kind of minimises their behaviour and lets them off the accountability hook a bit. From this point on I won’t even bother to capitalise the chaser cos its way too much trouble.
No, the chaser are not in sufficient possession of the smarts needed to pull off political satire. Nor do they possess enough self-awareness to examine their position within social divisions while they sashay gaily around town, getting in the way of people who actually have to work to survive. Their approach to ’satire’ is to ridicule, harass and generally try to annoy, society’s most oppressed and unempowered groups such as women and minorities or in this particular case, terminally ill children (I shit you not). Therefore their approach to ‘comedy’ is in fact the polar opposite of satire, as what they do is fuel stereotypes and anti-progressive discourse about say, people who are poverty-stricken, people with disabilities or people of a particular ethnicity. This kind of ‘humour’ which some are claiming to be harmless, and I’ll get to them later, actually has social implications; it is NOT harmless. Language is what shapes discourses about social issues and groups. Jokes and humour that portray groups or individuals in a negative light, actually normalise and therefore perpetuate negative attitudes which are then often reflected in public policy or at the very least, prevent the level of public concern needed to put pressure on those in power to address certain issues. Anyone who thinks ‘jokes’ are harmless either has their head three quarters of the way up their own arse or are blinded by their own level of privilege.
Therefore the chaser men, rather than challenging anti-progressive discourses, public attitudes and the ruling classes, are actually reinforcing them and normalising them and by doing so are helping to perpetuate them. They are NOT on our side, they are NOT the edgy anti-establishment force that they have been masquerading as. They ARE the fucking establishment. The cheap shock tactics that they rely on in lieu of the smarts I mentioned earlier are the EXACT same tactics employed by those reactionary right wing rednecks on talkback radio! It’s not edgy and creative and out there to be deliberately offensive. Not only that, but they aren’t even the only guys doing this shit! It’s fuckin’ everywhere! Good News Week with notorious rape-jokester Mikey Robbins; Hamish & Andy; David- Misogynist Douchebag-Hughs et al. Obnoxious dudebro humour apparently passes for comedy and satire during these conservative times. Even shows that were previously of a higher quality such as Rove and GNW have over recent years, executed a gradual decline into some kind of sniggering circlejerk.
Some of the responses posted around the blogosphere are along the lines of “Lighten up people! It’s comedy! If you don’t like it don’t watch it!”
It really isn’t as simple as not watching it, and then what? Maybe it will go away? Not watching it isn’t going to prevent the damage that it’s doing, and then I still have to live in the society which tolerates not only the social injustice and inequality I talked about earlier, but some kind of sick perceived ‘right’ to laugh at it as well.
Not watching it really won’t achieve anything at all except to make me less informed when I want to write scathing blog posts calling them out on being a bunch of privilegedwhitemiddleclassmale pro-establishment lackeys, who are getting paid to fuck with us.
June 19, 2009 at 12:37 pm
You forgot to mention that they’re more or less being paid by the public to pull of these kind of stunts, seeing as how the ABC is taxpayer funded (? please, correct me if I’m wrong!)
June 19, 2009 at 4:12 pm
That’s a bloody good point, Aileen. They’re being funded by us to fuck with us.
I’m also pretty pissed off that a woman has lost her job over it. Imagine if Amanda Duthie had dared to refuse to approve the skit. She was damned either way.
June 19, 2009 at 5:24 pm
It’s unfortunate. I agree that show was kind of funny and clever when it first came out but I just can’t stand all the misogyny that’s so deeply entrenched in it. And most of popular media.
My parents think I’m being pedantic, but I’m sticking to my guns, damnit!
June 20, 2009 at 12:42 am
I’m so glad I read this post. Next time someone tries to give me some nonsense about how I need to “lighten up” or some such I will be much better prepared to make my case. Thank you.
June 20, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Thanks kardis! Good to see you around.
Aileen, the Anna Coren’s makeup truck skit was probably my first alarm bell, although there would undoubtedly have been others. Are they back on the air next week?
July 6, 2009 at 4:58 pm
And the Brady Bunch/ Fritzl thing in the same episode. Because rape and incest is so freaking hilarious.
July 6, 2009 at 5:12 pm
[...] Carnival is up at anjum rahman’s place. Full of interesting articles, including one by Linda about the Chaser. No, the chaser are not in sufficient possession of the smarts needed to pull off political satire. [...]
July 10, 2009 at 5:06 am
I remember sitting through their “Best Of” a few years ago; it was just so… pointless. Like, they stuff their socks full of meat and then walk past a drug sniffer dog, which naturally starts sniffing even though they don’t have drugs. End of sketch. This is satirising what, exactly? Or, say, booking a flight under the name “Al Kaida” and getting it read out over an airport PA. Or just dressing up as Osama Bin Laden and not bothering to include a joke at all.
What’s telling is that if the other comedians you mentioned did the *exact* same material, it’d be written off as a bunch of manchildren using shock value to get attention. But because The Chaser are middle-class ex-law students who work for a non-commercial channel and bill themselves as “satirists” rather than “comedians”, there’s a tendency to assume what they do is automatically clever on some level. Class privilege is basically all they’ve got. Do the exact same show with working class accents and you’d basically have Ronnie Johns, only worse.
July 10, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Yeah to that tendency to assume cleverness; I think they enjoy a kind of halo effect which is common here, Jimeoin benefited from it and so did Rodney Rude if I recall. They did some really funny stuff early on and then kind of rode along on their own coat tails for fuckin’ years, no wrong could they do.
I saw Jimeoin live once and he did this thing where he would deliberately utter something unintelligible just to see the audience get bent out of shape laughing at nothing. I think this is what the chaser guys are doing only it’s on our dime, as Aileen pointed out.