In Defense of the Chasers

If you live anywhere in Australia, you must've heard about the shitstorm the above skit has caused. It's only a minute long - it was in the second episode of the new series of Chasers War on Everything. I'll confess that I'm not a huge Chasers fan, I find most of their stuff trivial at best. The only things that are consistently good are the talented Mr Andrew Hanson and his songs, Cannibal Corpse being one of my most played songs ;) So the first week they were back, I watched it because so many people on Facebook and Twitter were fapping on about it.

And they did not not disappoint.

Out of boredom I went and watched the second ep. Pretty much the only thing that made me laugh, and laugh really hard, was the above skit. One of the funniest things I've ever seen, and I assumed most people would've thought it was funny, because well it was fucking funny.

A few days later, I noticed something in my Twitter stream or Facebook feed, someone mentioning the Chasers being condemned or some such. Thus I investigated. It didn't take long for me to discover the furor that was been erected around this single minute of television time.

Suddenly the Chaser team have become disgusting people, the ABC has become a waste of taxpayer money because they approved it, the fathers on the Chaser team have become unfit fathers who don't care about their children.

Being the controversy seeking Shanan that I am, I posted the following on Facebook:

"Shanan 兆麟 Kan just discovered the whole furor over the Chaser's "Make a Realistic Wish Foundation" skit. What's wrong with you people? It's hilarious."

My good friend Nicole from Cooma replied a few hours later:

"why would u even joke about cancer? Its fucking low and sad to know u even think its funni. get a life."

Apparently the cancerous cancer sketch (ha ha) has spread to infect even the people who liked it. I've also joined the rank of an inhuman monster who cares not for the dying kids. I think I can provide only one response to that: Fuck off.

What's disgusting is the people who have completely overreacted to this, people who have irrationally taken offense at this. The kind of arse-ticklers who inappropriate attribute these labels onto people for all the wrong reasons.

And my reasoning for this is pretty simple. Jokes, like any form of language, are complex and sophisticated (in both senses of the word ;)), not something that can be taken at a surface level without investigating deeper. Let's take a moment to reflect upon what is funny in the sketch.

1. The absurdity of the sketch.
2. The harshness of the delivery of "take a stick" juxtaposed with the sickly children we're primed to pity
3. The spoof of the Make a Wish Foundation ads.
4. The timing of the last line "they're only going to die anyway"
5. The black humour in the truth of the last line
6. The meta-joke in the audacious nature of the sketch - its callowness makes it funny.

That's just off the top of my head. There's plenty more. Please note that nowhere on that list is "dying kids" or "kids with cancer". There's a very specific reason for that:

No one is literally laughing at the fucking dying kids for dying.

You'd think that observation would be abundantly clear. Like I argued on the comment thread of my Facebook status, it's not like everyone who thought that funny was laughing at the cancer kids for having cancer, as if a comedian could walk on the screen, just say "dying kids with cancer" and ellicit in me mirth. (As it so happens I probably would laugh, but only because of the randomness and absurdity of the statement, again not at the dying kids for dying).

Anyone who would laugh at the dying kids for dying could legitimately and rationally be called a monster or insensitive or whatever soccer mother term you wish to use. The kind of people who write into the Daily Telegraph and are always writing letters to people who "care".

If I wasn't totally cheap and didn't want to pay for a phonebill, I would call up the Make a Wish foundation and decry them for publically dismissing the Chasers and calling them out as offensive when they were nothing of the sort. I would slowly and very meticulously explain to them precisely why it was funny and they, parents of cancer kids and even the cancer kids should have laughed.

I admit it, dying kids are sad. But that doesn't make them immune to ever being included in any jokes ever. That's just stupid. Everything can be placed into a joke and everything should.

It's the same kind of retarded logic that people use when they tell you "don't laugh at the black guy for tripping ... 'cause it's racist". Fuck off it's racist. I'm not laughing at him because he's black. I'm laughing at him because he tripped, just as any ethnicity would. Or somehow we can't ever laugh at mentally retarded kids, or disabled people when they do something funny - even if they were deliberately trying to be funny.

This is what sickens me about society. People just lump everything together.

There's more to people than just what they are, be they of a certain race, gender, illness, disability etc. When you start saying we can't joke about them tripping because it would be offensive, you're the one who is actually insulting them, treating them as just an identity not a person. An arab person is more than just an arab person. I'm allowed to make arab jokes and so are you. I'm allowed to laugh when they do something stupid without being charged with racism.

When I seriously start laughing at them just for solely being an arab, that's when I'm starting to go into racism and you should totally call me on it.

But call me up on it at any point before that and I will fucking destroy you in an argument proving why I am right and you are most definitely wrong.