SHAUN MICALLEF'S ONLINE WORLD AROUND HIM                             Back               Home
	Welcome to the tacky, whacky world of comedy, where even Ned gets a spray Author: John Huxley reports. Date: 20/02/2001 Words: 683 Publication: Sydney Morning Herald Section: News And Features Page: 3 When comedian Shaun Micallef takes aim, sacred cows should duck for cover. A laconic Australian Nazi war criminal, unmasked by a television reporter gleefully waving a skeleton, proves he hasn't lost his sense of humour by allowing himself to be tipped off a 15-storey building in a kayak. A demure Salvation Army major called Cockburn, who prefers the pronunciation Coburn, is so provoked by her interviewer (``like Cock-cock the Clown, I suppose?) that she eventually tells him to ``F--- off (consonants included). Crippled Stephen Hawking mechanically intones ``Stairway to Paradise", before slowly disappearing upstairs on an inclinator. Ku Klux Klansmen display game-show prizes. And a woodchopper determinedly hacks off his own legs. Yes, the very best in bad-taste television is back, as the award-winning Micallef Program now re-named The Micallef Pogram (geddit?) returned for a third series on the ABC last night. Significantly, there have been no reports of outraged viewers jamming the switchboard of the national broadcaster, whose own Richard Morecroft appeared, gravely reading the news in a new, dizzying, dance-club setting. So, just how far can bad-taste telly not the commercial-channel tosh but deliberately, creatively, imaginatively bad-taste telly go? The eponymous Shaun Micallef who was last seen as a disappointed suitor in SeaChange found out only two weeks ago when he was told to cut a sketch in which war hero Sir Edward ``Weary" Dunlop was depicted as a transexual ... followed, pointedly, by a shot showing a switchboard jammed with callers. News of the censorship leaked, ensuring that the joke which was to have been included in next week's pogram was not entirely lost. But Micallef was surprised. Of course, it was in bad taste, he explains, but that, in a sense, is the point of the joke. ``It's about excess and it's about audience overreaction ... not specifically about the fact or not of Weary Dunlop being a transexual. It's about the audacity in suggesting such a thing." In the view of the ABC, Dunlop clearly belonged to a special group of Australian icons, whose memory is sacred, whose lives are considered unsuitable cases for comedic treatment, however far-fetched, whose inclusion in sketches is still considered likely to cause too much offence to too many people. That is a status nowadays denied even to Jesus Christ, played for laughs in movies such as Life of Brian, or living celebrities such as Hawking, or lesser Australian icons such as Ned Kelly. He was depicted by Micallef as a whining wimp, unhappy in a mask that was too heavy, too uncomfortable, and dried out his skin. Like all of Micallef's high-risk, hit-or-miss, material it may or may not be funny. But perhaps the problem with the Dunlop ``joke" was that it was simply too juvenile, too personal. Certainly, in recent years, writers, artists, comedians have boldly gone into previous no-go areas, proving that disadvantaged groups, like politicians, like religions, like royalty, are no longer sacrosanct. British comic Alexei Sayle targets ``sacred cows", often several simultaneously. He once joked that if Adolf Hitler had told the world he invaded Poland to raise money for a charity, say muscular dystrophy, he would probably have got away with it. Cartoonist John Callahan frequently pays out on the disabled. One picture shows a small restaurant, blinds pulled, empty. In the window is a sign ``The Anorexic Cafe. Now Closed 24 hours a Day." Another shows a blind man and his guide dog being led across an airport tarmac to his plane. A flight attendant is explaining, ``We've arranged a window seat for the dog, so that you can enjoy the view." It is easier for Callahan. He is a quadriplegic. Such handicaps are not inherently funny, he concedes. However, pity should not monopolise feelings about the disabled: there is room, too, for humour. Inevitably, mostly black humour. As playwright of the absurd, Eugene Ionesco wrote: ``If we recognise what is atrocious and laugh at it, we can master the atrocious."