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BrassEYE Special: TWAT

Started by weekender, July 10, 2005, 08:26:43 PM

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13 schoolyards

In Australia when Pauline Hanson (horrible racist woman, got up in parliment in the mid-90s and said 'keep Asians out, they're taking our jobs" and on the basis of that and that alone was taken seriously by many and became a powerful political force) first arrived on the scene, Martin /Molloy (a daily national radio show starring, surprisingly enough, Tony Martin and Mick Molloy of 'The Late Show fame) made fun of her every single day.  Nothing all that nasty, but (for example) they'd run silly competitions with a jingle based on her rabble-rousing slogan of 'Please Explain' and generally point out how stupid she was every single day.  Which was fair enough as she was in the news at the time every single day.  And eventually - I think based largely on their mockery (they were the top-rating show nationwide at the time) and the realisation that what they were saying was pretty much true - she turned into a national joke.

Fast-forward six-odd years: they're off the air (of their own choice, mind), our PM has adopted all of Pauline's racist policies, and she was on last week's episode of This is Your Life as a national hero.  So yes, comedy can make a difference.  Probably not a lasting one though.

matt

I think this is a great idea. It's been nearly 10 years since the first series of Brass Eye. There's a whole generation of people who haven't seen it, and haven't even heard of TDT or OTH. I very often find myself introducing people to these shows, and they love it - the only problem is that alot of the issues attacked are now dated, and the news coverage parody comes across as no different from the reality of today's news. Today's satire isn't a patch on even the average episodes of TDT. Original or not, this would be great.

A new one attacking something immediate (like TWAT) would have enormous resonance with a lot of people. Who cares if it's been done before? The majority of people haven't watched the Brass Eye DVD 264 times to the extent that they can quote it verbatim.

All that's going on at the moment needs to be satirised, and even an average episode of BE would do the job better than anything out there at present. Who cares if you've seen it before again and again, ad infinitum, on DVD, and are now bored of it? Most people haven't, and to those people this program would be as hard-hitting, thought provoking and hilarious as the first time you stumbled across TDT.

I agree that media parody as in TDT is now a pointless exercise, as the reality has become a parody of itself. But things have changed considerably since then, and there are now a huge amount of new aspects to be ridiculed - reality TV and interactive TV for example.

Anyway, my main point is that just because you've seen it a million times and analysed it to death, doesn't make it a pointless exercise.

Mister Cairo

I think satire can often highlight politcs that isn`t in the mainstream media, for example Have I Got News For You may seem naff to some, but I bet, for every five people who watches it, one thinks "That`s a good point...I didn`t realise that about the goverment...Now you say it like that..." (not all at once, of course) and may alter his opinions slightly the next time he votes or wathces Blair et al make a speech. I`m amazed the BBC, which fawns too much at the feet of the goverment (remember the grovelling the BBC directors did after Gillian?), even shows the programme. Taking Angus away removed some of this, Dyke and Blair must have been quite pleased that day.

Bremner Bird and Fortune, in particular, raises more questions about Blair`s fitness for the job that all of the mainstrema and some of the radical media.

And the reason satire does so well is it makes people laugh, and so is more popular than the comment pages of the News of the World or a book by John Pilger. Cheering people up and exposing sleaze, how good is that?

Come for the comedy, stay for the revelations.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

I think the argument that 'there's a whole generation who are too young to have seen TDT' is fair enough, but a new show would have to have its own voice. If it was done in pretty much the same style as TDT, it would be ersatz and limp no matter how new the targets were. I just have this horrible image of people doing what are essentially re-writes of TDT sketches.

I worry that people like John Oliver represent a new breed of post-TDT comedian:  people who say 'Nobody really cares about politics do they, let's face it' and so do lots of monkey-whimsy instead.

Pinball

Given the farcical current state of the world, there doesn't even need to be a script!