Often intemperate and sometimes foam-flecked rants about politics, current events and popular culture by Perth blogger and very occasional standup Matt Hayden (obviously not the cricketer). Your problem if you can't spot the sit-down comedy.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2012
Gillard's end of the world spoof is life imitating satire
I'm sure you've heard about Julia Gillard's allegedly tongue-in-cheek address to the nation about the impending catastrophe predicted by the Mayan calendar. It's such a stunningly stupid stunt my eyes started to bleed after I watched it. It's actually beyond cringe-worthy and even beats Craig Emerson's "No Whyalla Wipeout" as the most tragic publicity stunt by an Australian politician so far this century.
Countless people must be scratching their heads about why she's done this. I think her spin doctors have put her up to it to maintain her support amongst the sneering hipster demographic. But what's the point of that? It's a given anyway ... They're probably trying to get the focus off all this AWU stuff, too.
Whatever the motivation behind making the video, it's embarrassing in the extreme. Any non-moron would be wondering what on Earth it has to do with running the country. Can you imagine John Howard or even Paul Keating doing something so frivolous, puerile and totally unfunny?
The saddest thing about it is her droid-like delivery. She reads her lines in the same completely emotionless way that she announces her stupid failed policies.
You'd think that she'd know that for it to work as comedy it requires a bit of wit and oomph in the delivery. Apparently not.
And she's pretending to announce the end of the world, remember. Where's the mock-seriousness? She managed to summon something that seemed sorta heartfelt for her embarrassing suck-speech to the Yanks a while back (which actually was funny, for all the wrong reasons). Why not do a bit of pseudo-emoting here?
It's just sooo Gillard. Whatever she does she does not only badly, but in the most thoroughly inept manner possible. The only things she's good at are knifing people in the back, lying shamelessly and hanging onto power at all costs.
And I wonder who wrote it, by the way? Presumably someone on staff at Triple J. More of your hard-earned taxes at work, people ...
Countless people must be scratching their heads about why she's done this. I think her spin doctors have put her up to it to maintain her support amongst the sneering hipster demographic. But what's the point of that? It's a given anyway ... They're probably trying to get the focus off all this AWU stuff, too.
Whatever the motivation behind making the video, it's embarrassing in the extreme. Any non-moron would be wondering what on Earth it has to do with running the country. Can you imagine John Howard or even Paul Keating doing something so frivolous, puerile and totally unfunny?
The saddest thing about it is her droid-like delivery. She reads her lines in the same completely emotionless way that she announces her stupid failed policies.
You'd think that she'd know that for it to work as comedy it requires a bit of wit and oomph in the delivery. Apparently not.
And she's pretending to announce the end of the world, remember. Where's the mock-seriousness? She managed to summon something that seemed sorta heartfelt for her embarrassing suck-speech to the Yanks a while back (which actually was funny, for all the wrong reasons). Why not do a bit of pseudo-emoting here?
It's just sooo Gillard. Whatever she does she does not only badly, but in the most thoroughly inept manner possible. The only things she's good at are knifing people in the back, lying shamelessly and hanging onto power at all costs.
And I wonder who wrote it, by the way? Presumably someone on staff at Triple J. More of your hard-earned taxes at work, people ...
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)
Now back with the others "...must be one of us" moan shuffle, shuffle.
A dead-pan delivery works best when delivered by the living not the dead. Let the dead bury the dead.
And for such mock speeches to work, it has to be clear that the speaker is aware of the absurdity of what they're doing, while not making this overt. It's kind of a subtly knowing tone. (It's not like straight acting, in which the performer immerses himself in the character completely.)
There was absolutely none of that with Gillard, which made it doubly excruciating.
Please remember, we are Australian... have we really forgotten that? We can laugh at ourselves and revel in dry humour.. at leat that used to be out culture.
Triple J Rocks!
That's why I suspect Tony's comment above is itself parodic in nature.
Still, it's no surprise that as a conservative you prefer comedy that tells you when to laugh; Gillard should have included some rimshot sound effects and a canned laugh track for those who don't understand nuance or subtlety.
It's tempting to draw parallels with conservatives' preference for simple, black and white solutions to the problems we face.