Stop Laughing…This is Serious: April 1

Another enjoyable episode of Stop Laughing… This is Serious tomorrow night on ABC, which focusses on our ability to take the piss out of ourselves.

“Look At Moi, Look At Moi” (Kath and Kim) looks inwards at the importance of our ability to laugh
at ourselves and how this has become a quintessential Australian trait. From Edna Everage, the mousy Melbourne housewife, and Sandy Stone – the man to whom nothing ever happens, to Aussie battlers like Dad and Dave, Paul Hogan and Kenny, we realise that what’s right under our very own nose is often the funniest thing of all.

Australian audiences couldn’t get enough of the series Kath and Kim perhaps because they could see themselves in it. The humour came from the familiarity. Similarly, Dame Edna pointed out the minutiae of the every day, making the mundane funny for the first time as she revealed so much about our own lives. With another character Sandy Stone, Barry Humphries expanded on this theme and found a winning combination of pathos and humour in the spectacularly uneventful life of an ageing pensioner. We see how comedians like Denise Scott and Dave Hughes continued to celebrate suburban normality in their own stand up routines while hit movies The Castle and Kenny have made a box office success of championing ordinary people – like us.

We look at the rise of the Aussie battler in our comedy characters – from The Sentimental Bloke to Kenny, the battler is an ever-popular figure. Epitomised by Paul Hogan with his cast of characters in the 1970s, our love of the battler culminated in the heroic Crocodile Dundee – as Mick Dundee, an exaggerated outback larrikin took the world by storm in the 1980s. Paul Hogan also unashamedly presented his own ocker Australian accent on TV – showing us that our own voice can provide humour.

“Look At Moi, Look At Moi” continues to explore how our comedy now reflects an inclusiveness about who we are now – a multicultural society, with a diversity of voice from Sean Choolburra to Kevin Kropinyeri, from Nick Giannopoulos to Hung Le, Mary Coustas and Nazeem Hussain.

This second episode of the three part series Stop Laughing… this is serious ultimately highlights that while our comedic voice changes and evolves constantly, it always reminds us that one of our greatest assets is to be able to laugh at ourselves, whoever we are.

9pm Wednesday ABC.