The “Andrew Olle Media Lecture” is one of my favourite nights of the year, professionally-speaking. I get to dress up (in the same tux I’ve been wearing for several years), I get to do a bit of schmoozing, and I get to hear someone interesting talk about the state of the Australian media.
According to this year’s lecturer, Julian Morrow from “The Chaser”, this was memorable as a year of comedy gaffes. He cited not only the “Make A Realistic Wish” sketch, but also the controversy around Kyle Sandilands, “Hey Hey, It’s Saturday” and a few others.
In tonight’s lecture, Julian apologised unreservedly to those people who had been hurt by the sketch, in particular those who had lived through childhood cancer, or have lost a child in such circumstances.
They are the people that I’m sorry about. I know that they have, arbitrarily, been afflicted with grief caused by one of life’s cruellest realities. You’ve got tears enough in your life if that happens. A comedy show shouldn’t add to those pools of grief. Lest there is any misunderstanding, if you are one of those people, I want to reiterate my sincerest apology to you for the unwarranted pain that sketch caused when you have already have too much suffering in your life.
He added he also understood why many people were offended by the sketch, defining these people as a second group who were usually motivated by compassionate, well-intentioned feelings.
But there’s a third group, he argued, that weren’t hurt by it, didn’t see it when it was first broadcast, and to an extent were expressing feelings of mock outrage. This was the group, he argued, who heard about the sketch through re-broadcast, re-transmission and so on.
The essence of his argument was the overall audience mostly likes and enjoys challenging material. There’s a danger, he argued however, that thanks to replay, discussion elsewhere, mock indignation and so on, that media companies will begin to under-estimate the audience and not be willing to take risks for their primary audiences.
It’s a nuanced argument, and I probably haven’t done it justice here, so I’d suggest you read the speech yourself.
As always it was a very entertaining evening, and it was great, once again, to get dressed up, to be wined and dined, and to discuss some interesting parts of my work.
As someone wrote to me in an email, ” the lecture caused a great deal of subsequent talk – for all the right reasons”. Couldn’t agree more.
