Examining the recent Chaser controversy
Watching the sketch after all the controversy, it was much less dark than anticipated, and I would not have found it stood out from any other sketches they have done as particularly vulgar, possibly only the last line Chris spoke did cross a line “They’re going to die anyway”. I think someone people may not have realised the children in the beds were actors, but this in itself does not necessarily excuse the concepts these children were exposed to. I think deleting the segment from re-runs of the show has prevented them from profiting from the controversy, but there was actually no net loss or gain of ratings when they returned two weeks later. Many people did not turn The Chaser back on but these were made up for by new interests sparked by the wide broadcasting of complaints and apologies etc.
Parody - Yes We Can
The Black Eyed Peas song Yes We Can takes selections of the most inspirational lines of Barrack Obama’s oratory and overlaps them with light musical backing and will.i.am and his cast repeating them. In the Chaser’s parody In Due Season, some of Kevin Rudd’s most infamously boring and repetitive phrases create a montage of completely un-rhyming, un-musical lyrics. The Chasers take turns in repeating the lines, with as much un-enthusiasm as they can muster, and got a handful of random celebrities to do the same.
This satirical work is a blatant sending up of our prime minister’s comparative ineptitude at inspirational speech-making. They draw on recent idiomatic phrases he seems to have coined, that the public ceaselessly continue to scrutinise such as “a fair shake of the sauce bottle mate”. Upon hearing the original song, I instinctively could sense it was something that would attract the Chaser boys like flies, and they could not resist another opportunity to do a sketch about K Rudd.