Wednesday 10 June 2009

Find the lady who is responsible and SACK HER!

That's what you do when seven adult men make total dickheads of themselves on the television. Obviously.

15 comments:

peacay said...

Now I don't know the full details and the demotion may well be wrong on many levels, but that doesn't mean your take on it has any validity. I call coincidence. If the head of comedy had been a male I presume it will have been the same outcome. Certainly there is nothing in your link supporting gender having played a role here. I wouldn't necessarily protest about kicking blokedom on general principles, because shiva knows we have a history of craptacularity, but I reckon your boot is whizzing past the target in this specific case.

Mindy said...

How strange, I think she's right on.

lucy tartan said...

Boot? Target? Just noting the facts of the matter.

Unknown said...

Exactly the same thing happened in London last year after Jonathan Ross and what's-his-name created a sexist scandal on BBC radio - the female head of their radio department had to stand down, in a 'buck stops here' display.

R.H. said...

Whenever there's a stink someone down the ladder gets sacrificed. That's the arrangement, built in at the start. The gender is irrelevant, whoever was in that position had to go. Mark Scott himself should have resigned, but never would. Meanwhile some ego-driven hash slinger whose show is totally about insulting people insults a woman for real and gets called a "new form of low life" by the prime minister. The truth is he slipped that's all, overplayed it, and the fun stops. But who watches these shit shows anyway? Who watches the chaser? Repressed graduates mainly, ashamed of their nice upbringing. Dirt gives them a laugh, quite a release, until it offends the decency they were born with.

ThirdCat said...

wot mindy said

Casey said...

"Mr Scott said the decision was made by the ABC's director of television Kim Dalton.
made by the ABC's director of television Kim Dalton."

I would be surprised if it was gender based. Has anyone met Kim Dalton? or Courtney Gibson - her direct superior? Any time spent around ABC TV would raise some doubts as to whether this is gender issue IMO. Its a hard nosed TV decision if you ask me, and it was made by a woman who is not easily pushed around.

But that does not mean it is a correct decision, regardless. It is indicative of the rise of a prurient moral policing that resists any cultural interrogation. And it makes me uneasy.

There has been no engaged debate on what the Chaser were trying to do. If they failed in hitting their target, then I would argue that it is a failure of technicality, a failure of depth in the skit, but not of content. The Chaser did a similar skit years ago with a dying teen (cant get it now - their site is down) and there was no such uproar. none. People always expect the Chaser to be funny - a lot of the time they are not, sometimes they are stupid and sometimes the target they are going after is not who you think it is. If this skit was was taking a shot - my interpretation was that it was not a mindless hit at dying children, but at the mindless consuming public who cannot get enough of these stories and at the organisations who churn them out for our cultural consumption on the tv while we eat dinner. I mean, what is nice about wheeling out dying kids so that the watching public can satiate their desire for happy endings by switching on the teev? And then switch it off and never think of it again?

Children are far more than consumables IMO, especially at the point of death or in grave situations. And the thing the Chaser was targetting was - who sets up these kids. They have a right to privacy and they do not understand what is going on when they appear on TV, seriously ill, and asking for trips to Disneyland. Just whose needs are being met by all this really?

I might suggest that a secondary target should be those parents who regularly roll out their traumatised children to appear on the cover of women's magazines every second month and for what reason? You have to ask for what reason. Take, as an example, Sophie Delizio, who is growing up in a very public way, with horrific scars consisently on show, in magazines and A Current Affair. And what kind of life will she have beyond the media glare? She was one of two children burnt in a tragic accident. Is it not enough that she has to deal with this trauma, does she really have to do it with a camera following her everywhere? The child that got burnt along with her is never seen. Why? Her parents moved to the UK long ago where she has some privacy. Where are these children's rights to privacy in their most gravely ill moments?

There are a far more complex set of questions that could be asked of this whole issue, but it seems the public is content to remain in a reactionary and uncritical frame of mind for whatever reason.

Have a good trip Laura. I like Basil's queen of the desert outfit!

R.H. said...

If you think things are getting prurient I don't know what you mean, because if this cruel trash had been broadcast a few decades ago the ABC chairman would be looking for a job and so would all his executives.

Link said...

I dunno. But its made me wonder about the 'Make a Wish Foundation'. If you were a kid and you were going to die and some adult said you could have a wish, whadda ya reckon your first wish might be?

Mindy said...

Bazlotto!

R.H. said...

Hi.

That's 'The Fourth Wish' (1976). John Meillon.

R.H. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
R.H. said...

I've deleted it. I realise there's
better ways of putting it. My point is I don't think they're told they're going to die.

Anonymous said...

I don't think it is directly an issue of sexism, but...

1. Interesting that the Chaser gang are all fellers. Girls not funny?

2. Women tend to gravitate to those mid-level positions behind the scenes which involve a lot of caring/developmental responsibility but no actual ordering around authority and no public profile. Why could that be?

Interesting too that the word 'sacked" was used, and that the ABC made the information about the job change public. Amanda Duthie is still on the same level, with the same salary, and with a satisfying job. A piece of it has been taken upstairs, to the point where it probably belongs, given the sensitivity.

What we get in the meedja is "sacked" etc, with a large photo of her looking a bit eccentric.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the ABC is both subject to a lot more scrutiny now, and tends to be braver, compared to twenty years ago.

This is surely a giant beatup. I do know that people who were there during the taping in front of an audience reckon that the audience laughed. So, they had no indication that the wheels were about to fall off the joke.

I reckon the meedja jumped on this, rang a bunch of people with dead/sick children and got them to talk about their outrage. I reckon most people dealing with sick kids have more important things to worry about, and probably much more outrage to express about much uglier things. But this is what they are allowed to say.

At the same time, I reckon the Chaser mob broke a basic rule: they are there to mock the powerful, and anything that deviates from that has risks. Thats why we like them.

- david tiley

R.H. said...

Sexism? At the ABC? OH!- my goodness gracious golly me! Sure, homophobia too, and the racism is dreadful.

Well look here, the ABC is as dreary as it was twenty years ago, trotting out weak pommy shows for office workers. It was never brave. SBS is ten times better.

And here's a tip, not all women are caring, some bump their relatives, okay? And Miz Duthie did have approval authority, but after letting this shit through wishes she hadn't. As for a public profile, she's got that too, and it's buggered her career. But what about the gigglers themselves, the meatheads peddling this crap? They thought it was okay because the audience laughed? Is that right? “...they had no indication that the wheels were about to fall off the joke.” Really? Wouldn't they know? Good heavens, what innocence. Someone should have told them about Frankenstein.
And so how did the media (the dirty dogs) find them, these people with dead/sick children, to ring them up? Golly, what animals. How low can you get. Sure, sick kids are good for a laugh, and if they're dying even better, it's just a pity parents can't appreciate the joke. But to tell you the truth neither can I, maybe that's why they didn't ring me up. So how about you: is it funny, would you laugh?

Let's know.

-Robert Hayden.