Red Faces, black faces and rednecks

PETER KOHN

I DIDN’T have time to watch the second reunion special of Hey, Hey, It’s Saturday this week, letting my recorder do the viewing ahead of me. As I said in last week’s blog, I like the show a lot.

But when I heard that on the Red Faces segment, an act calling itself ‘Jackson Jive’ had sent up the Jackson Five and Michael Jackson, using the old vaudeville prop of ‘blackface’ makeup, I caught up with the footage.

The act was a reprise by amateur hoofer Dr Anand Dev and his troupe of a skit they performed on the show some years ago.

Sending up a Jackson Five performance, the group lumbered around in shoe-polish make-up and fright wigs.

There was even a one-liner, flashed up on the screen, asking “Where’s Kamahl?” because, you know, snicker, snicker, he’s not white either.

My reaction was: What? Australians involved in a racist incident? Surely not?

If you missed the sarcasm, please re-read now. It’s very definitely meant to be there.

I mean, how could any offence possibly be caused by staging a ‘blackface’ act lampooning an iconic African-American rock idol and his erstwhile family band?

Especially when you’ve invited Harry Connick Jr as a guest judge — he of New Orleans with its massive African-American population; he who has been organising aid and rehabiliation efforts for Hurricane Katrina victims since 2005?

Who could possibly be offended?

Connick Jr made it clear he thought the joke had crossed the line. Practising restraint, he played along with the Red Faces format, giving the act a zero, adding that the skit would not have got to air in his home country.

As Connick Jr later said, it was all he could do to stop himself getting up and walking off the set.

The incident made headlines in the US, and the blogosphere has been filled with negative comments about Australia — mostly deserved.

As a society, we Australians, generally speaking, have a blind spot when it comes to racial etiquette. When it comes to judging where the red lines run, we just don’t “get it”. Just look at Sam Newman.

The racist slur, the snicker, the elbow jab in the ribs rules. Everything is alright, as long as we add the line “It was a joke”. Humour rules the roost in Oz. Don’t you have a sense of humour, mate? If you say you were just trying to be funny, it’s like a free pass. Just ask Chaser.

Take the case of former Telstra boss Sol Trujillo. From the time he arrived in this country, he was lampooned with the ‘Mexican’ stereotype — he was an “amigo”, and cartoonists added an oversized moustache and sombrero.

And when it came time to depart, even Prime Minister Kevin Rudd came out with a howlingly gauche witticism, quipping “adios”.

The reason for all this carry-on was Trujillo’s Hispanic ethnicity, an unremarkable thing in the US, where Hispanic Americans make up a large slice of the population, and sombrero humour in public discourse is definitely out of vogue and out of the question.

Trujillo’s Telstra policies and his lordly executive salary were fair game for debate, but the Mexican shtick was out of bounds.

Similarly, you can say what you like about Michael Jackson, his endlessly bizarre behaviour and certainly those anti-Semitic lyrics he once used. This isn’t a defence of Jackson, far from it.

But don’t do the Jackson Five in ‘blackface’. It’s redneck, hick and racist. It ignores a history of centuries of persecution of African-Americans.

Imagine for a moment how the Jewish community would react if Hey, Hey did a skit in which a group of black-suited, black-hatted men wearing tzitzit and made up with oversized noses, were clowning around on TV. Would we sit for it, or would we protest, with echoes of the caricatures in Der Stuermer plaguing us?

When African-Americans are ridiculed, even in the name of ‘humour’, it triggers a heritage of white-hooded nightriding Klansmen, just as we recall the Nazis.

And if, for some Aussies, that sounds too much like the problems of other continents, let’s not forget the rather sad relations we have with indigenous Australians, who have been the butt of Australian jokes for decades.

It should be noted that Hey, Hey compere Daryl Somers apologised on air and he deserves credit for his effort.

But please, to avoid further ‘red faces’, can we stop acting like rednecks?