Above: Screengrab from Hey, Hey It's Saturday featuring the controversial Red Faces skit
When a troupe of men dressed up as The Jacksons appeared on the Red Faces segment of the second reunion show of Hey, Hey It's Saturday, I immediately cringed with horror because Harry Connick Jnr was a guest judge.
When the camera panned across to take in the American singer's pained expression, I knew that he was also thinking the American press won't be kind to him on this one.
The very idea that Connick Jnr appeared on a television program in which black performers were sent up in a comedy skit is really at the root of the drama over this relatively uneventful incident. As Daryl Somers showed during the program, the same guys performed virtually the same skit (albeit before Michael Jackson's skin colour began to pale) a couple of decades ago - and no one was outraged then.
The difference was that this time there was a celebrity from a country that is trying so hard to be politically correct in the face of a local media looking to catch someone out, 24/7.
As Connick Jnr expressed on the evening, Americans have been trying so hard not to make black people look like buffoons.
And that's really where the cultural differences between our two nations lies. The point of the skit wasn't to send up black people. In defence of Dr Anand Deva, who portrayed Michael Jackson and felt the need to defend himself to The Australian, it was merely a send-up of celebrities. It's something that is very Australian. Virtually every comedy sketch does it on a regular basis.
If we think this is racist, then are we happy with Chris Lilley's portrayal of an Islander teenager? Why weren't we outraged when The Chaser sent up Osama Bin Laden? Because Australians have developed a unique way of looking at life and the ridiculous little things that occur. We take the piss. That's what we do.
But that doesn't mean that Connick Jnr was wrong to defend himself on the program on Wednesday night. He had to. He didn't have a choice. If he hadn't taken a stand against the perceived racist nature of the content he was judging, instead of being branded a racial superhero by his countrymen, he would instead have been branded a racist. It appears to be how the gutter press operates in the US.
This incident wasn't really about racial prejudices for me. Instead it highlighted the vast differences in perception, humour, attitudes and freedom of expression between two clearly vastly different cultures.
Image: http://www.theage.com.au
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1 comments:
I find it really interesting that a lot of Australians have chosen to take this incident as the world somehow "not getting" Australian humour. I think what most people were astonished at was the racial insensitivity on display here. That it ran two decades ago without controversy is more an indictment of attitudes at that time rather than a validation. "Blacking up" is an umwelcome reminder of a practice that was, in the past, done in the most racially offensive way and as such, shouldn't be part of any routine, whatever the intention.
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