The Duke of Conceptual Architecture

So The Chaser is once again in trouble. This time, however, it has reached ridiculous proportions.

The first time, it was because they made fun of sick and terminally ill children. This time, it’s because they have supposedly made fun of guide dogs. I say ‘supposedly’, because, contrary to what the Guide Dog Association is saying, The Chaser is actually making fun of drunk people – not guide dogs. See for yourself:

However, this hasnt stopped the news media from using the occasion to crack a joke of their own. The ABC news online headline reads: ‘Chaser in doghouse over latest skit’. SBS’ headline reads: ‘Chaser led astray over guide dog skit’.

On another interesting note, the text of the ABC and Daily Telegraph articles are almost word for word the same.

Unoffensive comedy usually captures the significance of the insignifcant. This is what Jorge Garcia said about Seinfeld, for example. Inversely, Garcia points out, tragedy resonates with us in an unproblematic and predictable way because it captures how insignifant the significant really is.

As Garcia rightly suggests, however, these are not the only reasons we laugh and cry at artistic works. We can laugh and cry by completely inverting the relationships laid out: comedy is funny because it highglights to us the insignificance of the significant; tragedy makes us cry because the significant becomes insignificant. In the case of tragedy, one only has to think of any deeply depressing work. The first two movies that come to mind for me are Happiness and Requiem for a Dream. Both movies portray a very dark and disturbing underbelly of humanity. The Chaser, make us laugh because they make light of the things we hold important. This was especially the case with the ‘Make a Realistic Wish’ skit. I definitely do not think this was the case with the latest skit: altough I wonder if some organisation representing drunks will come out against being satirised and, therefore, feeling mocked because druknenness is serious business (at least, for drunks).

There are two things to be said about comedic and tragic artistic works that invert the safe relationship between significance and insignificance. Firstly, it ruins the expectation that entertainment is to be enjoyed. Why? Because, secondly, it makes painfully visible that which is typically invisible. In Requiem for a Dream, self-destruction is the key theme, I would say. Happiness touches on the sensitive subject of child sexuality. The Chaser, in their first skit, exposed the ways in which we create hope where only despair would otherwise reign: death and illness. To make it especially funny, of course The Chaser team had to paint this picture as ‘false hope’. Where would we be if we were to always fully recognise the inevitable gap between reality and expectations? The assumption is that we would be in a desperate and depressed state of hopelessness. Perhaps only a situation something akin to what Durkheim called anomie could produce such a permanent state. So while it appears OK to satirise some gaps between expectation and reality (e.g. drunks), others are not (e.g. premature death or unforeseen illness). Why? Because it disturbs the notions of normality that give our contingent existence a comfortable sense of security.

The likes of The Chaser, Darren Aronofsky (Requiem for a Dream) and Todd Solondz (Happiness) are pretty damn good critical sociologists in this regard.