Tonight I experienced a very weird phenomenon. After watching The Chaser’s War on Everything, I was overcome by a wave of some sort of emotion. It was hard to pinpoint at first. It’s that emotion that forces you to consider the consequences of your actions and extrapolate to identify things you probably shouldn’t do in the future. You know the one. The one that stops most people from making the joke that Bindy Irwin would be snorting her father’s ashes at the Logies. The one that makes you think twice before conducting man-on-man BDSM in pubic places, complete with prosthetic breasts and gratuitous incest references. It’s the emotion that is so obviously lacking in every member of the Chaser team.
Eventually it dawned on me that I was feeling guilt. Their jokes and stunts are *so* horrendous that it actually induces a physiological empathetic guilt response. I sit there watching, feeling like what I’m doing is somehow “just wrong.” I think “I really shouldn’t be watching this, let alone enjoying it.”
Thankfully, this wears off after about 30 seconds and I go straight to the laptop and download the episode so I can watch it again ;-)
This post is getting a bit old now, but I was surprised at my disapproval of their pokie invasion of the Australian Chamber Orchestra concert…
I’m not sure if its because this stunt involved interfering with the enjoyment of large amounts of people who had paid quite a lot of money to be there (usually they pull their stunts in public, or only involve a few people), or just because they interfered with *gasp* Classical Music!!!
To be honest, I’d find my enjoyment of the whole concert shaken by such a stunt - it would jar the concert-appreciating frame of mind.
But then perhaps they pulled it in rehearsal and it was actually staged. I will not go and check out the editing…
I definitely agree that stunt was in particularly bad taste. I’m not sure if I imagined it, but I swear I could hear the audience hissing at the Chaser boys as they invaded the stage.
What makes it most annoying is that the point they were trying to make (about pokies replacing live music) wasn’t even all that witty. If you think about it, the fact the concert had a fairly decent turnout actually serves to disprove their point entirely, as people are obviously still attending live music events.
I’m hoping it was staged.