Summer Heights High » Reviews

Episode Two
Green Guide

Surely somewhere in Australia today there’s an army of university students hard at work on PhD’s that will examine the worldwide vouge for cringe comedy; or as US critic David Edelstein wittily describes it, “the squirm-und-drang genre”. If not, they should be. It’s a school of comedy that regards no character as too monstrous, too grotesque or too unsympathetic for public consumption. It invites us to laugh at faux-pas and shocking gaucheries (usually it’s perpetuated by a male, though not always, to wit the appalling Jill of Nighty Night), then slaps us in the face for being so insensitive as to laugh at the offence that’s just been caused. The genre’s flagbearers are Sacha Baron Cohen, Ricky Gervais, Matt Lucas and David Williams, among others, while locally Kath & Kim creators Gina Riley and Jane Turner, and the disturbingly talented Chris Lilley are doing a good job of flying the flag. Discussing what is arguably the crown-in-the-jewel of squirm comedy, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, Edelstein then suggests we look elsewhere to understand what Borat’s creator, Sacha Baron Cohen, is up to. In that case, a scene from the landmark documentary on the Jewish holocaust of World War II, Shoah, in which Polish peasants living near the death camps unflinchingly remark straight to the camera that the exterminations were a terrible thing but that the Jews brought it on themselves, didn’t they? So where do we look to grasp what writer and actor Chris Lilley is up to in the second instalment of his latest mockumentary when he lets drama teacher Mr G, a petty tyrant with a Napoleon complex, break the hearts of his charges, or when private-school girl Ja’mie, noticing that the public school at which she is on exchange has a disabled student in a wheelchair, bristles with satisfaction over how her social standing might benefit from keeping such supposedly humble company? Unlike some of Lilley’s other comedy creations, there’s no redemption (so far, at least) as far as these pitiless and relentlessly mean characters are concerned. Sharing a room with Mr G, Ja’mie or school bully Jonah Takalua is, like contracting a serious illness, but through the safety of a television screen it’s an unbeatable guilty pleasure.

- Paul Kalina