The Chaser

[Jovial Monk]

That 'outrageous' episode properly discussed:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.as ... 042&page=0

[Ethnic]

Sorry JM but this article is far from "properly discussed". For example "All this to protect the war criminal George W Bush" shows his biased approach to the issue and the comparisons to GNW were very weak. This issue isn't about blows to free speech, it's about showing some respect towards terminally ill children and their parents, many were highly distressed for obvious reasons as a result of that sketch. The ABC could have pulled the plug on the entire show but they didn't - it's only gone for what? one week? boo-hoo. It'll be back soon and everyone will forget it ever happened.

[boxy]

I havn't watched the chaser much, but that's because it never really appealed to me. Their humour is self-satisfied pap, and I never saw them make any serious political point. Practical jokes are not satire. So they're irreverent, that's not the reason they're being censured (as opposed to censored) for tastelessness, the reason is that they're a publicly funded show. The footy shows get away with politically incorrect stuff (up to a point) because they only have to answer to ratings pressures... if advertisers still want to fund them, they survive. If politicians have an excuse to cut funding, they'll use it.

As to the comparison with GNW... the tastelessness of a joke needs to be offset by a higher level of humour... giving a terminally ill kid a stick just isn't funny, on any level.

[JW Frogen]

If we still had guest posting Unborn Cancer Kid would have something to say about this.

[boxy]

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/guide/netw/200 ... 221500.htm

[JW.Frogen]

It could have been worse, making a joke about a dying dog.

People REALLY get angry when you make fun of dying dogs.

[Hebe]

[JW.Frogen]

It gets even worse, jokes about making hot dogs from dying dogs.

But I will not go there.

[boxy]

OK, I'd just watched that lecture when I posted the link, and thought some of you might have been able to catch it if you were in different timezones. Anyway, it was late, I pissed off to bed, but here's the transcript. I'd recommend watching it. In part, however...

While they're nothing new, debates about taste and decency seem different now. And that's because they are both amplified and distorted with startling efficiency thanks to the interaction of new and old media. Culturally, it's a nuclear reaction.

Taste and decency debates in the broader community were easier to dismiss when technology was less advanced. Controversial content was hard to access, or re-access, so it was easy to argue that public debate was grounded in ignorance.

It's useful here, indeed I think it's important, to distinguish between what I call the primary audience and the secondary audience.

The primary audience is mainly people who want to watch a show or at least choose to for some reason or other. They come to content through the platforms of the original broadcaster, whether it's TV or radio, or the various catch-up technologies. The primary audience at least approximates in some way the target audience for content.

By contrast, the secondary audience come to access controversial content because it's controversial. The secondary audience often tends to be the very opposite of the target audience.

Today, thanks to widespread broadband access and social media applications, in particular YouTube and Twitter, the secondary audience is now much bigger and much closer than it has ever been before... it's now easy for them to access controversial content online. And one of the problems with giving people the ability to make up their own minds is that they do.

Thanks to high speed internet, content which is noteworthy in any way- whether its cute, inspirational, original, or involves cats - spreads like wildfire, sometimes around the world. The effect of anything can be instantly magnified by an avalanche - of YouTube postings, streams from media websites, forwarded emails, reTweets - all of which pile almost instantaneously on top of good old-fashioned cultural ripple effects like the watercooler, the schoolyard, or the B.O. infested taxi.

It means we've built the fastest most complex, high-tech cross-platform global echo chamber in history. And the impact on "debates", for want of a more accurate expression, about taste and decency is profound.

The dividing line between the primary audience and the secondary audience, where outrage blossoms, can often be observed well via the timing of complaints. I first noticed it after The Chaser's Eulogy Song aired on ABC TV. The song was a deliberately provocative, but in my view satirically accurate song about the affection we tend to grant to even unsavoury celebrities posthumously (a human trait, I might say, that I hope to be the beneficiary of, though I'm in no rush). When I came in to work the morning after the Eulogy Song, the production office voicemail had nine complaints on it. But when the song was picked up by talkback radio mid-morning, the phone went beserk, and by lunch there were hundreds of abusive complaints, many of which proudly declared that they hadn't actually heard the song.

My all time favourite voicemail complaint by the way was from an old woman who said in her message that our show was, and I quote, "filth - f-ing filth".

[JW.Frogen]

I think is it as simple as this, in the prosperous West most life is so fucking boring people need to be outraged or tickled profane.

We have it easy, and so we need cheap thrills.