Most of the show 's humour stems from Lilley's exaggerated portrayal of stereotypical characters. My favourite character is probably Ja'mie King- I don't know how he does it so well, but he pulls off many posh teenage girl impressions perfectly, and when I saw the character I knew she was real, because I've seen a lot of girls like when I was in high school. Anyway, watching the show for me started off as a lot of laughs.
However, with me being the person I am, I found my own way to get depressed over a comedy. It mostly came from the character Jonah, who basically has really low literacy skills for his age, is a bit rough and doesn't know how to express himself in a socially acceptable manner. His tagline seems to be "fuck you miss" and he enjoys drawing penises all over the place. I can't recall how many manifestations of this character I've seen in real life, but it really resounded. I remember, starting from primary school, how there were kids who'd do these attention seeking things, and say really fucked up crap whilst being generally disruptive to the class. The teacher would break down, yell at them, and they'd spend more time at the principle's office than in class. As one of those high-achieving quiet Asian students, I'd just sort of sit there and try to work, while getting really annoyed that there was all this commotion in the background. I felt sorry for the teachers frequently- these kids were annoying as fuck, after all.
But here I am, roughly 8 years later, and I'm thinking "wow that teacher is being a bitch". I'm just watching TV, and this fictional kid is getting yelled at by his teacher, but it really hurts me. The school tries to get Jonah to participate in this "Polynesian Pathways" project, and he doesn't want to be there but the adults around him are pressuring him to embrace his culture. See my argument against these programs is that you can't embrace what you don't understand, and if you grew up in a foreign environment, then you adapt the culture of THAT particular environment. You can't force a kid to say things like "I'm really proud of my heritage and who I am" if they don't really understand their heritage. Like, as a developmental milestone, people go through an identity crisis phase (most commonly during their teenage years) where they try to figure out who they really are and what their place is in this world. I think in the show they made Jonah dress up in traditional clothing and perform a dance or something- I got kind of grossed out whilst watching, because it was essentially a bunch of outsiders pushing this kid into this foreign territory, giving him a label which he himself didn't understand, and yelling "LOOK THIS IS WHAT YOU ARE, NOW YOU BETTER ACCEPT IT AND BE PROUD OF IT EVEN IF YOU DON'T IDENTIFY WITH IT AT ALL".
It's kind of irrational to get upset over a satirical documentary, but I'm like this because I'm alarmed that what is supposed to be satire isn't even satire. I said the show was funny because it was exaggerated, but I'm watching this character storyline and I thinking "I've seen this happen in real life, it's not an exaggeration"- and then I just become horrified. I think our education system is fundamentally flawed in the way we try to bring kids with lower literacy and numeracy skills up to speed. These kids often also have what we consider as behavioural problems, so putting them in mainstream classes would be highly disruptive. I'm not sure totally seclusion from their other peer is the best idea, but what we do need are teachers who better equipped with ways to deal with difficult children. when the teacher yells and screams alongside the student you know something's gone wrong. I think overall this show just hit waaaay too close to home for me.
I really need to stop reading into these things...
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