Newstopia

The clock strikes 10pm and glowing graphics stream across a turning digital globe as urgent orchestral music announces the impending arrival of important information – but this is not your normal late night news. That becomes immediately apparent as the deep-voiced announcer reads the headlines. “Serbia says it doesn’t recognise Kosovo because it’s wearing a false beard … Haneef’s slap in the face to Aussie hospitality … Poll rigging tampered with claims Mugabe.” Welcome to Shaun Micallef’s Newstopia.

This latest offering of Australian satire has our news bulletins firmly in its sites, and our political leaders are often crowding Micallef’s cross-hairs. Prime Minister Rudd’s first international visit is announced with the mock-serious statement, “Nothing makes a country prouder than when the man you elected visits other countries and meets other people who are actually important.”

Australians have a proud heritage of laughing at their politicians. It’s as if we grant them permission to lead us with the standing warning, “But don’t take yourself too seriously.” The cartoons of early publications have been supplanted by today’s television comedians, but the message is the same. Our laconic style of humour loves to set tall poppies trembling, and Newstopia’s hour of insight into the week’s events carries on the tradition admirably.

The question is, to what extent can Christians join in the laughter? Sometimes humour is used to excuse what would otherwise be just immorality, bad behaviour, or mean spiritedness. The Bible is actually very familiar with the “only joking!” excuse and has little time for it (Prov 26:18,19). So, clearly there are some styles of humour that will get more laughs on earth than they will in Heaven.

Australian television currently has at least two distinctly different types of humour hiding under the title of ‘satire’. Newstopia is one of the better examples. Like all good send-ups, it doesn’t just consist of broadsides of barely planned abuse. The purpose of satire is to hold an idea up so that its failings become laughable to the audience. Mockery on the other hand, forgoes the analysis and merely laughs at the topic. In the first the reason for the laughter is clear; in the second the comedian is merely flippant and encourages us to laugh as if we all know the reason. But the joke hasn’t been made. This might all sound needlessly technical but in reality it’s the difference between pointing out the problem, and simply pointing and laughing.

Not all of the incongruities Newstopia highlights are equally serious or funny to me, but the effort and integrity behind each line is obvious. When Micallef considers Australian politicians’ stolid refusal to link Chinese outrages in Tibet with the coming Beijing Olympics, he applauds the tactic and considers how successful such approaches have been in the past. Our host reminds us the policy of just going along and saying nothing has precedent and should be listened to, pointing to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the dictatorship and human rights violations that preceded it. “There was no boycott, everyone turned up, and it went really well,” he reminds us. “And those games really sent a message to Hitler, and went a long way to changing German international policy. After 1936 there were very few problems.” It’s not just a laugh at our short memories; through it we’re reminded that appeasement is a highly ineffective way of dealing with dictatorships.

Newstopia, like other good satires, takes aim not just at politicians but the viewer who might take shelter behind their policies. It’s also not afraid to laugh at itself with the host often representing the silliest positions and becoming the butt of his own jokes. In that respect it follows firmly in the footsteps of other Australian champions of wit, like The 7.30 Report’s John Clarke and Brian Dawes, The Gilles Report and even Norman Gunston. It’s a far cry from the style of the more popular comedies of recent times like The Glass House, Good News Week and The Chaser where the mockery is more obvious, the skill less evident and the laughter directed outwards to anybody who isn’t ‘us’. These seeming satires have more in common with The Late Show and Comedy Inc where the emphasis is more on the delivering the outrageous than the insightful.

So, when it comes to Aussie TV, does God have a favourite? Would Jesus be more likely to laugh at Shaun Micallef or Paul McDermott? Maybe both, but for different reasons. The idea that Jesus is a no-nonsense starched-toga is hard to reconcile with the Gospels. But he doesn’t just bait or mock his targets. He was clearly a fan of pointed humour. You see his wit active in the way he nicknames James and John the ‘Sons of Thunder’, and his sense of the ridiculous when he complains about people blinded by logs trying to pick specks out of others’ eyes. His satire is at its sharpest, though, when he considers the leaders of his day. He calls Herod a ‘fox’, highlighting the cunning that directs his murderous heart, and the religious authorities are pictured ‘straining out gnats’ but ‘swallowing camels’. I’m sure that one would have involved at least a little physical comedy in the delivery and got some appreciative laughs. But note carefully, he’s has a message behind his method. He doesn’t just them yell ‘Camel swallower!’ to demonstrate his daring, and pretend he has made a joke.