Australian Comedy Research Articles

Getting the Joke: Self -Deprecating Humor in Anh Do’s The Happiest Refugee

Self-deprecating humor, the comedic act of making oneself the butt of the joke, is a staple of the Australian comedy industry and part of Australia’s national self-concept. Vietnamese Australian Anh Do is one of Australia’s most famous migrant comedians and performs self-deprecating humor while drawing on sometimes traumatic experiences from his personal life as part of his stand-up comedy sets. This essay examines how Do’s style of self-deprecating comedy extends from his stand-up comedy to his national bestselling memoir The Happiest Refugee (2010). The author argues that Do’s self-deprecating humor smuggles trauma to Australian audiences through laughs, and she explores the ambiguity in Do’s ability to occupy opposing identities of the “Other” and the “Aussie kid|bogan” simultaneously. Additionally, the author discusses how Do’s use of humor in his life narrative negotiates model-minority expectations leveled against Asian Australians to turn, in a subtle way, what appears to be a joke on him into a joke about the audience.

The comedy web series: Reshaping Australian script development and commissioning practices

This article argues that, for Australian comedy series creators, the web platform has opened a new space in which the 'rules' of script development are being expanded, enhanced or otherwise refashioned through having direct connection with and input from their audience. With the audience's potential as a 'comedy gatekeeper', the web series audience becomes integral to the ways in which these texts are developed, namely skipping the erstwhile second-guessing of demographic tastes by more traditional broadcast development executives and commissioners. Referring to a range of well-known Australian comedy web series, such as Bondi Hipsters (2011-2017) and The Katering Show (2015-17) - including what their creators, writers and audiences have said about them - we investigate the processes behind the success of these series to argue that a new form of script development has emerged: namely, that development is both facilitated and influenced by the direct line that exists between comedy creators and their viewers. Furthermore, we suggest that through such a collaborative and open-access process of script development, comedy writers and performers might also benefit from an expanded form of talent development.

A Public Health Response to the Poor Outcomes in Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrests in Australia

The high incidence and poor outcomes for those who suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, plus the knowledge that early bystander treatment improves outcomes, called for a public health response to this issue. The ‘Shock Verdict’ National CPR Campaign sought to improve the rates of bystander compression-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED) use, through a social media public health awareness campaign. An 8-week social media campaign centred around an educational video based on a popular Australian comedy drama ‘Rake’ was designed and developed through a partnership between the Tasmanian Branch of the Australian Resuscitation Council and the University of Tasmania. To date, there have been over 1 million views on the various social media platforms. The campaign focuses on how untrained bystanders can perform compression-only CPR and use an AED in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, to increase chances of survival. Baseline data collected from an online survey found approximately 50% of respondents rated their CPR knowledge and their confidence to perform CPR as good or fair. Participants were more likely to report a willingness to start hands-only CPR on strangers and unkempt individuals than standard CPR. The campaign provides an example of using social media to communicate a health message, and demonstrates the practicalities of planning such a campaign, including the design of content, and building partnerships. It highlights the importance of collaboration between academic research, health and marketing, and of applying a public health approach to improving clinical outcomes.

Australian made comedy online – laughs, shock, surprise and anger

This paper argues that the internet is changing development, commissioning and production practices of Australian screen comedy. Due to ease of shareability, online comedy is traditionally of shorter length and cheaper than television to produce and is therefore attracting increased funding opportunities. The online environment offers new opportunities for emerging Australian comedy performers, creators and developers to produce screen comedy that resonates with audiences. A high online viewership may result in a greater share of subsequent funding and future commissioning into longer alternate formats, such as television. The desire for producing online comedy that is more likely to be shared is therefore impacting comedy production practice in Australia. By investigating several successful Australian online comedies, in terms of funding, content and viewership, the essay argues that the online platform allows the audience to influence the types of screen comedy being produced in Australia. The study examines how the Australian made online projects that are the most successful, in terms of funding and views, tend to be those that elicit laughter, shock, surprise and anger as these are the online projects most likely to be shared. This paper draws upon a larger study that relates to Australian narrative television comedy development.

Diversity Agendas in Australian Stand-Up Comedy

Diversity Agendas in Australian Stand-Up Comedy

Right to the City, Desire for the Suburb?

The 2000s have been a lively decade for cities. The Worldwatch Institute estimated that 2007 was the first year in human history that more people worldwide lived in cities than the countryside. Globalisation and new digital media technologies have generated the seemingly paradoxical outcome that spatial location came to be more rather than less important, as combinations of firms, industries, cultural activities and creative talents have increasingly clustered around a select node of what have been termed “creative cities,” that are in turn highly networked into global circuits of economic capital, political power and entertainment media. Intellectually, the period has seen what the UCLA geographer Ed Soja refers to as the spatial turn in social theory, where “whatever your interests may be, they can be significantly advanced by adopting a critical spatial perspective”. This is related to the dynamic properties of socially constructed space itself, or what Soja terms “the powerful forces that arise from socially produced spaces such as urban agglomerations and cohesive regional economies,” with the result that “what can be called the stimulus of socio-spatial agglomeration is today being assertively described as the primary cause of economic development, technological innovation, and cultural creativity”

Mapping the vast suburban tundra: Australian comedy from Dame Edna to Kath and Kim

By the time of Australian Federation in 1901, almost 70 per cent of Sydney's population were living in the suburbs: a statistic that suggests that despite prevalent and enduring images of the bushman and the ocker, the 'real' Australia was, and still is, more likely to be located in what Barry Humphries has described as Australia's 'vast and unexplored suburban tundra'.1 As a satirist, Humphries has been in the forefront of an expedition to map the tragi-comic dimensions of this territory with characters such as Dame Edna Everage, who first appeared on Australian television in 1956, offering the box room of `her lovely home' as a potential billet for an athlete during the Melbourne Olympic Games.2 Some 50 years later, Dame Edna not only presided over the closing ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games, but was joined on the steps of the Melbourne Town Hall, during a ceremony to award her the key to the city, by two more recent suburban icons, Kath and Kim. With the international success of Dame Edna and Kath and Kim, it seems that the Antipodean suburb is still being mapped and mined for comic effect on television both at home and abroad. This article will explore the conditions of such success within a long tradition of anti-suburbanism dating back to the nineteenth century while exploring the role of comedy in constructing a national imaginary which is now widely circulated via increasingly transnational flows in television.

‘Look at Moiye, Kimmie, Look at Moiye!’: Kath and Kim and the Australian Comedy of Taste

This paper traces the genealogy of the ABC comedy series, Kath and Kim, in terms of its production history, the origins of its characters and themes, and its relationship to new hybrid comedy forms such as the mock-documentary (Roscoe and Hight, 2001). Issues such as the gender, class and taste politics of the comedy are explored in an attempt to rationalise the author's own ambivalent reactions to the show. Particular attention is paid to a number of shopping scenes in which Kath and Kim's failed suburban aesthetic becomes the source of what McCallum has described as a ‘comedy of recognition’ (McCallum, 1998). It is argued that the question of whether Kath and Kim is judged to be self-celebratory or self-critical has been rendered irrelevant by an extra-diagetic narrative which constructs the series as a little Aussie battler succeeding against the odds.