Lilley-White

I'm finally shaking the flu that has been hanging around for the past week like an annoying drunk at a party.  I think as I'm getting older, I'm getting more unconcerned with what people think. This is a good thing, isn't it? I'm all for being respectful, but not at the expense of art and comedy. Regular readers know this is a constant theme of mine. Anyway, Netflix has announced the new series from Chris Lilley: Lunatics. The usual gang of whingers has taken up, well, whingeing.

The biggest cry is that Lilley does blackface. Yes, he has done this in the past. But the character in this new one just looks like a lady with frizzy hair who happens to be South African. Did anybody care when Lilley did, um, yellowface in We Can Be Heroes? I'm referring to the character of the Chinese Physics student, Ricky Wong. Ricky, along with other Chinese students, was staging a revue about our nation's First People. It was called Indigereedoo, or something really, really rank like that. So we had a white man portraying an Asian trying to portray an Aborigine. You know what? It was fucking funny! I'm saying this as someone who has been involved in some rather cheesy amateur theatrical productions over the years, and I found this silly production he was doing very relatable. The songs made me want to cover my face and squeal with the sheer tackiness of it, but here's the thing: Lilley is bloody good at creating characters that make you cringe. Remember the character of Phil Olivetti, the police officer who had nominated himself for Australian of the Year? He was so AWFUL! The fact I didn't want to watch when he was onscreen showed how clever Lilley's characterisation was.

I couldn't get into the series Angry Boys, but I did enjoy Summer Heights High, and J'mie. I'm going to give this one a look, and if I enjoy it, I'm going to keep watching. He's been accused of cultural appropriation and ableism (I had to look up ableism), and probably in the running for a few other '-isms', too. The complaints seem to be coming from people under the age of forty. How in the blue blazes did a generation who grew up watching South Park and Family Guy get so fucking offended by everything? Memo to all aspiring comedians: find another career path because the whingers will be coming after you with pitchforks, no matter how innocuous you believe your joke to be. Shouldn't comedy push boundaries at times? And pretty much EVERYTHING has the potential to be offensive to SOMEBODY. I find the so-called comedy of Ray Romano offensive because I think the character he plays is a total knob, so I don't watch it.

Okay, here's my relatively informed (unlike much of what I've read) opinion on the verdict in the Geoffrey Rush defamation case. His Honour's ruling was the Telegraph defamed Rush. The Telegraph couldn't run their 'truth in defence' tactic because his Honour ruled the evidence of one of the witnesses to be what's known as 'unreliable'. This doesn't mean he called the young woman a liar. It means her evidence did not 'stack up' (not a standard legal term) for the guidelines, rules of evidence, and law to which his Honour had to refer when formulating his decision. It's rule of law here, folks. Nothing to do with 'old white men', and seriously, you could line up a row of shot glasses and skoll every time you read that phrase in your newsfeed - you'd be on the floor spewing up flecks of carrot in no time.

Anyway, the upshot of this is I'm still going to enjoy the art produced by people who aren't popular.

People, just enjoy things. Don't go through life being scared to fart in case you shit yourself.