Corinne Grant does not find The Castle funny

[13 schoolyards]

..."look, being working class myself, I found it condescending," says the comedian and panellist on the now-defunct The Glass House. So she's the one who found it snobbish and elitist - gee, now I wish I'd watched The Glass House more often so I could drag out the no doubt dozens of equally condescending jokes she made on that show. Why didn't she take Wil Anderson to task when his "George Bush is a retard!" jokes on that show were equally as condescending to her audiences' intelligence?

Anyway, that quote's from an article in The Sunday Age's Life magazine about what Australians find funny. Fans of the snark will notice that, by interviewing such comedy luminaries as Grant, Merrick & Rosso, Dave Hughes, Chris Taylor (from The Chaser), Mikey Robbins and GNW / Glass House one-trick pony Ted Robinson - who also informs us that "the warts-and-all style popularised by Judith Lucy will fade" - the writer of this article (Doug Hendrie, in case he's googling himself) has ensured he won't get close to an answer. Perhaps if he was writing an article about "what makes Australians mildly irritated" then his line-up would be more useful.

Oh, and there's also a hefty sidebar about Kenny's new show, where he hangs around toliets around the globe. If I made a joke about "it's crap", it would be funnier than the episode of it I've seen.

[menagers]

Great minds think alike....:-)
http://www.champagnecomedy.com/forum/showthread.php?p=19228#post19228

[Boots]

Oh, and there's also a hefty sidebar about Kenny's new show, where he hangs around toliets around the globe. If I made a joke about "it's crap", it would be funnier than the episode of it I've seen.

That Kenny movie was awful.

Im steering clear of ANYTHING that guy does.

[13 schoolyards]

I figured a few comedy-lovin' alarm bells would be set ringing from that article menagers - so many angles to sledge it from. The Sydney vs Melbourne (attitude, if not location) came to mind as well: everyone quoted here is very 'Sydney comedy', while the Melbourne side of things didn't get a run (even if half the people mentioned were originally from Melb). And if topical stuff dates and personal stuff will go out of style, what about the surreal work of Shaun Micallef? Or the root-and-branch insightful work of John Clarke and Brian Dawe? Such a crap article...

Oh, and isn't the proper reply to Grant's attitude to The Castle that she's the one being condescending by assuming that "working class" people are incapable of laughing at themselves? I'm not a huge fan of battler comedy myself, but if "working class" people found The Castle offensive, how'd it make so much money?

[menagers]

I think that's what bothered me so much. Where is the evidence to suggest that we are so thin skinned, that we can not handle being sent up? People have always underestimated the bogan and suburbanite. They are fully aware of who they are, and love a bit of recognition. In fact, this is something Kim Gyngell touched on in his article. Sandy Stone mentioned his local park on an album and he loved it. Remember when Brian Mannix did the Profile of a Bogan thing on The Comedy Company? Everybody loved that.

As for Corrine's opinion, it's quite misplaced. The Castle is a very lovely dipiction of a close knit family with strong values. There is nothing grotesque or cringe-worthy about the Kerrigans. There is much more of that type of thing in Kath & Kim, although it is nicely balanced with Prue and Trude from the other end of the spectrum.

[stupidmeatball]

I just find it funny that someone asks Corinne Grant about whats funny and whats not, isn't that like asking a leper for health advise?

[13 schoolyards]

Well, yeah - Grant isn't really out there kicking goals on a regular basis. Which might explain why she came out with such a "controversial" opinion...

Kath & Kim! That's a much better example of what Grant was struggling to crap on about. And even there, in the real world it's always just one lot of snooty types telling another lot of snooty types that the show is mocking suburban values - there's not a lot of bogans going "that shows makin' fun of us!!" about Kath & Kim*. Do Grant and company really think they know better than actual suburban bogans what bogans will find offensive? Or does she think that people should only make jokes about their own class and personal experiance... in which case, she might want to revisit most of her Glass House material.

Dissing The Castle in that particular way didn't really show Grant in that good a light either - it's such a "cool" opinion to have, and yet a fairly safe one as well amongst certian snobs. If she'd said The Chaser were just a bunch of prank-playing hacks it would have been much more surprising, and felt a lot more like it was an opinion she'd actually developed on her own rather than been told about by the cool kids at uni.



*Oddly, in contrast to Kenny, where I do know at least one truck driver who couldn't see the point because there weren't any actual jokes - just a depiction of a working class stiff doing his job. I'd say that's a much more condescending film, because all the comedy comes from laughing at the guy and his job, which is shown in a much more matter-of-fact way. On Kath & Kim the joke might be on these bogan types, but it's clearly a joke; on Kenny we're invited to laugh at a fairly accurate portrayal of working class life.

[baudrillard]

I have to be honest, I'm not unfamiliar with this very interpretation of The Castle from real life experience. I asked my cousin once what he thought of The Castle and that's exactly what he said. I was taken aback at first and then considered that he might be right, not that it's intended that way, but yeah can they walk away with that impression?

[13 schoolyards]

Anything's possible... but the few people I've met with that opinion seem to have developed it in conjunction with watching The Panel and finding Rob to be a smug upper-middle-class twit.

If The Castle had come out of nowhere - like Kenny did - it'd be a lot harder to argue it was mocking the working class. You really need that outside knowledge of WD to make that case... and if the film itself doesn't really support that reading, then what are they complaining about?

[baudrillard]

No, this guy got it from his interpretation of the text purely.

[13 schoolyards]

Oh well - it's his opinion, so he can't be wrong. But it'd be interesting to know exactly which scenes and lines gave him that idea. The universe of the film is pretty much full of tools and likeable idiots - it's hardly as if there's a shining example of rationality in there that puts the Kerrigans to shame.