Chaser is too much stunt, not enough comedy
Although the sketch felt like it had gone looking for outrage, the ABC still appears to have been caught on the hop by the furore over last night’s Chaser sketch.
Their PR man’s mobile mailbox is full, and new comments on The Chaser blog stopped appearing just after midnight last night.
That seems a little odd, because the sketch was alway going to be more controversial than it was funny.
And that’s been the issue so far in this series. The cast have appeared to feel under pressure to deliver controversy at all costs. The Vatican stunt delivered them far more in headlines than it did in laughs.
Indeed, I was surprised there wasn’t more comment on last week’s sketch which featured a black woman being lynched (about 4m 30s in on this clip):
Humour of course is subjective, but the problem for me is that the first priority seems to be to shock, rather than to make people laugh. These sketches would be a lot easier for the ABC to defend if they were funnier. (Others disagree, by the way. Tory Maguire of The Punch says it was “hilarious”).
Right now though, they remind me a bit of a five-year-old shouting “Bum!” because he wants to shock the adults. I’m not so much sickened by the bad taste as insulted by what they think we’re willing to accept from them.
The other thing that strikes me is that, after refusing to sell out by going to one of the commercial networks, The Chaser’s gone for an even bigger score instead. They’ve realised they’ll make a lot more from syndication if the show gets airtime in the UK and US, so half the stunts now take place on foreign soil.
And that’s when you find yourself thinking about how it seems like a very long way to go for a couple of minutes of not very funny stuff.
It seems curious that the ABC is willing to defend comedy about dying kids, but wouldn’t air The Gruen Transfer’s discrimination ad.
The Chaser has always been about the stunt comedy. So far this series though, the emphasis has been on the stunt rather than the comedy.
Update: The ABC has pulled the sketch from the online version of The Chaser and it will be edited out of tonight’s ABC2 repeat. The speed with which they moved suggests that the implications of broadcasting the sketch were not thought through before broadcast, which certainly raises questions about editorial approval procedures. Deputy heads will roll.
Tim Burrowes
Agree that the quality of the show seems to have declined this year. However, I don’t agree that this sketch wasn’t funny. I thought it was hilarious. If that labels me insensitive so be it. As you pointed out comedy is subjective.
Also can’t agree that the boys have gone overseas to chase international audiences. The fact is that they can’t pull off the local stunts any more because they are too widely recognised. They need to go to foreign locations to retain the anonymity that is needed to orchestrate the stunts.
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Great satire takes the wind out of the sails of the pompous, takes the piss out of the powerful and mocks the monied. The Chaser used to be very good at that. But now, the fallout from their comic sketches is hurting people with no power and no voice; from the desperately poor in Somalia, to the victims of sexual abuse in the church, and now to people trying to get through the trauma of their kid’s slow deaths.
These people don’t deserve to be satirised – their lives are pretty crap already. And it seems obscene that the Chaser crew profit from their misery.
Come on Chaser – there are plenty of politicians, rich bastards, stuck-up celebs and just plain arseholes out there who could do with being taken down a notch or three. Time to lift your game.
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Well said Fran.
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“Humour of course is subjective, but the problem for me is that the first priority seems to be to shock, rather than to make people laugh.”
you said it 🙂 which is why i don’t watch the chaser – shame, i love comedy, and want to support Aussie programs – but i do like something that aims higher than the crotch of a 24 yr old male virgin whose only real friend is his XBox.
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couldn’t have said it better Fran so I won’t…
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The best comedians are those who can make people laugh without offending anybody. That requires true talent and foresight.
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James: Yes, everything seems to suggest they are having to go further a field for their stunts because of their profile at home, and not to chase the overseas dollar as has been suggested by others here.
For the rest of you, we need to remember that tragedy + time = comedy. All those out there, including KRudd, are all taking the sketch far too literally and need a reality check.
Why target this sketch anyway? The Inbrady Bunch sketch last night was far more offensive by a country mile than Make a Realistic Wish – are we saying that as a nation we’re far more offended by a joke against the terminally ill then people then we are against the vile people behind, and the suffers of incest, rape and abuse? That alone shows we as a nation need to get our priorities right.
Anyone with a grain of intelligence would have seen it wasn’t meant as an attack on terminally ill people at all, but let’s not have the truth get in the way of a good story.
This story is a case of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’, and the press have gone for the jugular without a good justification other than ABC-bashing.
The sketch used the plot device (the tragedy) of ill children to illustrate the need for us humans with our life ahead of us might want to exercise some restraint in financially uncertain times like these, and it was masterfully done. If you didn’t laugh at this sketch, then your funny bone is out of whack.
Sure, it was black humour but it was right on the mark. I made this comment earlier on the topic over at TV Tonight, that Mark Scott couldn’t be any happier with The Chaser’s performance last night.
Not only is the ABC and one of their shining light programs being mentioned everywhere in the mediascape today (which no doubt makes marketing very happy), but they’ve fulfilled their role as a public broadcaster and kicked off a conversation in the community about an important issue.
Every Australian got double or triple their return on the ‘8c a day’ spent on Aunty, and that was achieved solely from 30min of programming.
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Listening to 702 this morning I heard a guy who called in saying his teen son who is in remission after having a brain tumor thought the sketch was hilarious. He said that if you are actually IN that situation you have two choices – to laugh in the face of it, or cry. They had chosen to laugh and thought the sketch was funny.
I agree with Michael – the Fritzl sketch was in much worse taste, as was the ku klux clan sketch last week mentioned by Tim above depicting a black woman being lynched (what the hell where they thinking?). We appear to be more prepared to be outraged by this sketch (mean and tight people and donations) versus disgusting abuse and racial violence.
The simple fact is that most of the stuff in the past two episodes has felt lazy and lame – the sort of sketch comedy you see in bad syd uni college reviews. The little air ship in the vatican courtyard was really “silly young boy” (and another gag about child abuse – such a funny subject!) – there has been nothing that has made me really laugh my head off. They have become a stunt show in search of a comedy routine. They need new writers – oh, that’s them? Then they need to be taken out to pasture, retire on their DVD sales royalties (people will be buying up the old stuff so they don’t need to watch the new stuff) and settle into a career doing whatever washed up comedy folks do in this country.
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I do agree with you, that the show has lost itts way, but i disagree, tim, that they are operating overseas to gain syndication in the US market. They operate overseas these days because they are too recognisable in Australia… if you were a shopowner or security gaurd you would recognise them instantly. This would make it a lot harder to pull off their increasingly crass comedy skits..
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Is such a thing as inoffensive satire possible? If it is, does it serve any worthwhile point?
There was potentially a serious point here — that maudlin sentiment and tokenistic gestures to the terminally ill amount to very little.
It’s unlikely tjhat the Chaser team chose the most effective and comic means to make this point, and it may not even have been a point that needed to be made, but in the end one of the marks of a free society is that people can be offensive in public space and suffer nothing worse than being widely disapproved of.
Few people like being offended, but the price of being safe from being offended is a price that no person who favours freedom should contemplate paying.
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Too much stunt, not enough intelligent subtle humour
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The shark has been jumped.
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Just not funny and voting with my eyeballs.
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I have laughed at death and tragedy before, and sometimes in bad taste. I have even often offended others with irreverent humour, but only those who can defend themselves .. I am nearly 50, I have had a good life, I own a Chaser DVD and enjoy it. I even hope to laugh in the face of my own death when the times comes. But I have never in my life found anything remotely funny about a young child who has not yet lived and is dying from a terminal illness. Whether watching young children I don’t even know die from afar, as we all do most of our life, or watching one die up close as I am doing in the case of my 10 year old niece right now, either way it is just not funny. I have tried to see the funny side of it, but nope, sorry, it is just not there.
Now, if there was a point to this sketch, I missed it, maybe my normal appreciation for the intelligent and subtle nuances of Chaser satire were numbed by the tastelessness of it. I wasn’t really offended though, more disappointed by the realisation that this was probably the end of the Chaser as I know it. This sketch and the other pooh-wee-poop-bum sketches in the new episodes so far suggest the well has run dry. Perhaps it IS time for the boys to move on to commercial television.
I did, however, have a laugh with my niece the other week watching the movie Underdog I bought for her birthday. Now if she wishes to meet Underdog, while that is not possible, I will get somemone to make a red little cape with a big U, I’ll put it on my beagle Stanley and take him to her. I’m sure it will put a big smile on her face and maybe even make her laugh, even if she knows he is not the real Underdog. I certainly won’t give her a stick or a pencil case though. At the end of the day though, the only unrealistic wish made is the one that me and my whole family makes every day, and I think you all know what that is. But I’ll keep wishing .. and you can laugh at that as much as you want.
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Tim, you said it. Chaser just ain’t funny anymore.
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To all those who were offended by that skit – GET OVER IT! It is hardly offensive. I work with hundreds of children (and adults) with terminal cancer and of all the patients I’ve asked who’d seen the skit, NONE said it offended them. As to whether they thought it funny, well, that was a 50/50 split. I too agree that this series isn’t as funny as their last
But, all you ABC bashers and moral-high-grounders… HANDS OFF THE CHASER! They’re the only ones with balls enough to take the big guys on.
And develop a sense of humour, assholes.
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They should be kickrd off the air. Sick kids are off limits in my boo to make fun of.
Very disappointed in the ABC
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