Uh-oh, he’s about to speak about a dead celebrity. Michael Jackson fans, run, run away! Now! But the thing is – hear me out, here – my fascination and condemnation of the frenzy that follows the death of a celebrity has nothing to do with the actual celebrity. Everybody carries on in this bizarre state of delusion - one that pretends to be about the dead celebrity in question, but is nothing of the kind. And it is no more illustrated as such, as when someone dies who has had, let’s just be real here, as questionable a life as Jackson’s. I pointed it out with Irwin’s death, because he was simply unremarkable and largely unimportant until his death. Ledger’s neared closer, as we all chose to romanticise a damaged Hollywood heart-thob who partied just a little too hard. But now, we have the death of Michel Jackson. It seems bizarre to write it. But he’s dead. And when he was alive - for the longest while now, at very least – he wasn’t the kind of man we rejoiced the merits of. He was one of the most hated celebrities of the last decade – and, beyond that, for the last few years we had basically forgotten him (although it would seem he did not forget us). Every now and then, he would pop up (on places like Australian Idol - of all things!) to be indulged as nothing more than a fleeting symbol of yesteryear – we would consume him with a fondness every bit as self-indulgent and meaningless as symbols of yesteryears are for us. But now, he’s dead. And open up any paper, and you’d think it was one of the most shocking turning points of modern civilisation itself. I mean, really. Michael Jackson, the tortured, fucked up monster that we made – the guy who had all but mutilated his body in a manner that wasn’t anywhere near as amusing as we so viciously exploited him for - died. Go figure. If anything, that he made 50 astonishes me.  

I always hated bananas. Now, I know why. This week's video has to be seen to be... er... believed. Enjoy...

 

While I’m aware this website pools a similar demographic to The Chaser (so I’m not expecting this to go down too well), I’ve never really been a fan. Yes, the team come up with the odd mildly amusing piece; but they sit amongst a lot of crass skit-comedy that, to my mind, is no better than any of the other compilation shows aired on commercial networks. In fact, some of their rivals are much better; but they fail to create the cultural context that deems their work so supposedly intelligent and socially cutting, as The Chaser has so successfully cultivated. And I’ve always had a problem with the legitimacy of their staple “pranks”, because so many of them are fake. I personally know one of the "actors" hired for one of the stunts that was, like all of them, aired as a supposedly riotous scene that not only were we expected to believe was "real", but one that's entire comedy revolved around that realness (the Borat style of watching real people respond to absurd situations). In this particular skit, an unsuspecting Japanese businessman shares a cab with two of the boys; but, truth be told, there was nothing unsuspecting about him – he had a friend who was part of the production team, who called on him after the casting department had difficulty finding the right unsuspecting Japanese businessman for the role. He knew nothing of the television show, and – unbelievably – did it for free, as a “favour”. Needless to say, he never heard from them, again; but the sketch became one of their most notorious – a sketch that was (particularly considering that it was completely scripted) unnecessarily racist. But that’s The Chaser for you – peel away the feeling we have that, as lefties, we’re supposed to see it all as some searing social portrait or, worse, an important warrior in an ideological crusade (I mean, really), 80 percent of their work is filled with nothing more than dressed up toilet humour. They forever crucify the Bogans, but they have more in common with them than they presume. They just wear nicer clothes, and hang out in cultured areas of the inner city. Oh, and they've made a lot more money. But this week, a week into their latest series, the similarities have been highlighted.

 

 

Laughter can be cruel. We all know that – I’m sure every single one of us, at some point in our life (for some, many points) have been laughed at. To remember it, is to remember the emotional wound – whether brief, or that lingering, subconscious kind. And it really does come down to that cliché conceptual division, between laughing "at" someone and laughing "with" them. Truth be told, we don’t laugh with each other nearly enough; but it’s lovely when it happens - a true empathetic kind of joy, and decidedly healthy. Very different, of course, to laughing at someone. That is sadism. We find it first in young teens, who, in their evolving socialisation, take a brutal, blatant pleasure in the misfortune and chastising of others. Some would say it’s a kind of developmental phenomenon, a by-product of the mechanism of empathy being something we are not born with but grow into – as if sadism should become slowly eradicated, as we learn it is “wrong” on the basis of understanding how it makes its victims feel. Or, perhaps, it is a reactionary phenomenon, a kind of cornered or threatened mechanism, a way to attack those who we feel attack us in some way. At times, it’s probably either or both these dynamics. But human beings are, there’s no doubt about it, seemingly challenged when it comes to empathy for others, as well as rather territorial. And “comedy” – the process of eliciting laughter – has long been a favourite weapon for threatened societies who are unable to transcend the divides of that perception of threat. In the war years of my Great Grandmother, beautiful everyday Aussies sang the most horrendous comedy songs about the Asians they fought against in the war (cultural or otherwise). “I like Chinese” – bizarrely destined to be rewritten as the commercial theme for an electronics retail giant owned by Chinese Australians (“I like Bing Lee”) – was a crass tune punning the advent of the Chinese restaurants (how bizarre to think that these symbolised the perceived invasion) with literally eating Chinese people. Racism meets cannibalism – charming. And this week, all these progressive years later, we had the Chk Chk Boom Girl™. Wogs of the world, beware; we’re not that much further than 1955 as you would think.