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A cautionary tale…
Q&A with Kamahl: why is Hey Hey so unkind?
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He was used for a laugh during “that” skit on Hey Hey It’s Saturday (now simply known as HHIS apparently) the other night, and he’s been quoted in print and on TV since, but there’s more to Kamahl’s argument against the skit than just one line quotes. Crikey spoke with Kamahl this morning to get the full story: Q: Were you watching Red Faces on Wednesday night? A: No, I didn’t watch Red Faces at all, I saw part of the show earlier, but I didn’t see Red Faces until the subject came up afterwards and I saw it on YouTube. Q: What was your initial reaction to the skit? A: I thought it was unfunny, tasteless and given that Michael Jackson passed away not so long ago that was in very poor taste. And always, whenever they do the “blackface” thing I don’t think it helps my basic insecurity, which is, always, that western civilisation uses the word black always with the negative aspects of life. The only time black is good is when your bank balance is black. But every other time black is, “blackday”, and black this and black that and “blackface”, it reeks with negativity. Q: What do you think about the reference they made to you during the skit?
A: I thought the timing was a bit unfortunate. They were sort of framing me in the same picture as such. Put it this way, as an artist, as a reasonably respected member of the community, I would have preferred a better position (chuckles) at a different part of the show perhaps. Given that I have reached a couple of milestones in my career this year, namely, this is my 40th year since I got my first hit record, and it’s some 50 years since I did my first television show, I thought they might have made something of that, instead of going the other way. Q: Were you asked to join the reunion shows? A: I was not asked to be part of the show but I was invited to be in the green room. I was invited, there was no airfares or accommodation provided and I didn’t think it warranted that. Q: Have you been contacted by anyone from Hey Hey it’s Saturday since Wednesday? A: Not from that show, only from Channel Nine News, to which I am going again today. They did a new item yesterday and I am now going to the morning news. Q: You were a regular on Hey Hey back in the day. Why did you keep going back? A: It’s like being a solider going into the mine field, oh I like that! Did you like that line? It’s like a soldier having to go into a mine field.
Q: So why did you keep going back? A: Because I’m a soldier! Q: 69% of Herald Sun readers said in a poll that the skit was neither racist nor tasteless. What do you think about that? A: Oh well, that’s their opinion, obviously they are the Anglo-Saxon readers. The thing is to me, that was not a show of respect, it was derisive. Q: The people who performed the skit were from mixed race backgrounds… A: And so what? So it doesn’t excuse them. I don’t think it was a calculated attempt to be racist or anything like that. But what I’m saying, the unfortunate outcome of it is, it’s negative not positive. That’s the way I feel, I’m not saying I’m right in thinking that, that’s the way I feel. The reason Harry Connick Jr. was so upset, to him, it reminded him of the past and how the negroes and the black people were treated, they were made to look like they were idiots. And because I’m hypersensitive, it is not an advantage to be a black person in this world, it is not as great an advantage to be a woman because, there are prejudices. You know, I still have difficulty if I know it is a woman pilot, it’s a silly thing to say, but that’s in the back of my mind, this stupid notion, that if you’re man you are stronger and better and more intelligent, which is a whole a lot of nonsense.
Q: Well, that’s a whole other issue that I probably don’t want to go into right now. You were involved with Hey Hey when this skit was done 20 years ago…
A: I don’t think I would have been happy about that, never!
Q: Then why do you think it’s a issue today and not back then?
A: Because nobody brought it up. The thing is, I wasn’t going to jump up and down, and as I said to you, the reason this came up is because Harry Connick brought it up. And I agree with him 100%. That’s the only reason, because if you do something right or wrong, just because you did something wrong and nobody said anything about it, it doesn’t mean it’s right. Q: Do you think Hey Hey is going to last? A: It’s a show a lot of people enjoy and love. If I’m asked to appear on it, I’m not so sure. I think if they are a little more sensitive to some of the people’s feelings. Humour, you know, some people do things to get a laugh, but I think there should be some sort of guidelines in how far you can push the envelope. Q: Do you think that, as unfortunate as it was, that this incident will make our country, maybe a bit more socially aware about such issues in the future? A: Frankly, as I said, the skit was not aimed to be racial, it just has been perceived by some to be like that. I think that, from my point of view, it was a harmless joke but it did create some harm and a lot of controversy. Q: I guess what I was trying to say was, have we learnt our lesson? A: Hopefully, hopefully! But it may not change anybody else’s mind really because, people in show business will do anything for a laugh, sadly, at the expense of others. Q: Well on that note, thank you Kamahl. A: But, and my last line as always…Why are people so unkind? Why couldn’t they be a bit more kinder? [chuckles]. |
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16 Comments
“You know, I still have difficulty if I know it is a woman pilot, it’s a silly thing to say, but that’s in the back of my mind, this stupid notion, that if you’re man you are stronger and better and more intelligent, which is a whole a lot of nonsense.”
If it’s nonsense, why bring it up? There’s no question about women’s equality in the transcript, so why did that idea jump into his head at that point in the interview? None of us are perfect, but not all of us throw stones either.
It was a poor quality show. What it really means is that if they made a production on women it would have a discrimination tone, albeit unintended. If they made their skit about gay community it would have a discrimination overtone as well; and if they did it about migrants, etc..
Poor production is poor production. Nothing to laugh about. They will have to improve the quality of their show, if they can, so people would not be so picky. Personally, I did not see anything racial in the skit. But I did not see anything funny, either.
For some reasons, there have been less and less good quality comedy shows recently.. Or is it only me to have noticed…regardless whether you have a Foxtel or Austar or local channels only, there is not much to watch on TV nowadays. Particularly if someone is not terribly into sport.
Well, I was feeling some sympathy for Kamal up until that point. As a woman who grew up with blonde hair; who’s also very short, and when I was young I was overweight, I’ve had some insight into how hurtful jibes can be. Obviously, Kamal doesn’t have the same insight into how it must be to be a woman and the butt of jokes and prejudices. I just bet that women pilots have gone right off him now! As if they didn’t have enough trouble being recognised as competent etc. The saying, ‘feminists are MAN MADE’ springs to mind!
I didn’t see the skit live, but watched it last night on YouTube. I think it’s racist, and considering MJ(I’m not a fan, but I do have respect for his family’s pain) only died a few weeks ago, pretty insensitive too, particularly as I understand it was live 20 yrs ago! Who decided to play it now? We need to grow up as a country and realize, that racism hurts people very much, particularly as they have to cop taunts and prejudices every waking minute! No wonder aboriginal peoples’ life expectancy is less than the rest of the community. Imagine what racism does to your psyche, and how do you raise your kids to not be racist, when they get their heads punched in on a regular basis! I know by listening to people that this is their reality - shameful indeed! I ‘ve also heard, that aboriginal people know, that as soon as they walk into some stores, the ‘alert’ is given to watch them, just because they’re indigenous; can’t find jobs or properties to rent - it just goes on and on!I won’t be watching this program again!
What short memories we have. So worlwide exposure about a silly skit. A re-igniting of the “is Australia a racist country?” discussion. It’s less than two months ago that the UN special rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, professor James Anaya, visited Australia.
One of his conclusions was that the Northern Territory Emergency Response was racist…. “further stigmatizes already stigmatised people…” The response from our leaders? …. “James Anaya needs to visit some of these communities and see for himself… he needs to get a life” (this from Tony Abbott).
Living on one of the so called “Prescribed Areas” under the NTER I can assure you that a few men putting on boot polish seems to pale into insignificance when compared to the disempowerment of whole societies.
When I spoke to James Anaya (during his visit to Yuendumu) I mentioned that our problems paled into insignificance when compared to the Peruvian massacre of Amazonian protestors a few months ago. His reply: “Human Rights are important in ALL circumstances”
@Rena Zurawel
I agree that there really seems to be nothing on. What strikes me as paradoxical is that TVs keep getting bigger, with sharper pictures and better sound at more or less the same rate as the reasons for turning one on are dissappearing. Give me some decent tele and a 38cm screen in preference to 105cms of hi-def cr-p.
The problem with Aussie racism is it’s supposedly ‘innocent’ - as in ‘I didn’t mean it to be racial’. In fact the definition preferred by these unconscious racists is that if they say they were only joking and weren’t being racist then they weren’t. I suspect their idea of racism is lynch mobs and deaths camps and of course they aren’t in favour of that are they?
James, I think the point Kamahl was trying to make was that the potential for discrimination is in all of us. That said, Hey Hey was an equal opportunity offender in its day, picking on women, the elderly and the deranged in fairly equal proportion. Two questions to ponder. Is a movie like “White Chicks (2004)” which has the eponymous white girls played by made up black men equally offensive? Also, by making a group immune to ridicule, are we not treating them differently, that is, discriminating? This subject was treated years ago by Andrew Denton in an episode of “Money or the Gun” called “International year of the patronising b-stard”
Okay, so the Aussie cricket team comes back from the UK having lost the ashes. HHIS has a skit with Aboriginal folks all white faced, padded up and so spastic. Can’t throw, can’t catch, can’t bowl, can’t bat. They break into a routine like the umbilicals falling over eachother. A ‘white’ Shane Warne has a dong that he can’t keep in his pants, and various ‘white’ slags chase after him with mobile phone cameras. A ‘white’ Lara Bingle pops her over sized mammaries and has fake blood dripping from her teeth. Then they all break in to song ‘God save the Queen’. Is it getting funny yet?
John Molloy - The difference is that if you are called white, there isn’t a set of ideas attached to that word that are possibly negative. Imagine being called a ‘white bastard’ - the bastard part offensive, the white part…probably not, just a random thing to say, now, for example, imagine what it means to call someone a ‘black bastard’. Imagine if you were under constant scrutiny because of being black, imagine if you were judged before you said a word, imagine this happening daily for prolonged periods of time. That is the difference, white people don’t have that.
What are those that are campaigning against political correctness trying to achieve, what do you gain? The opportunity to make jokes at someone else’s expense? If that battle were won, imagine what those that are offended lose. They lose inclusion, acceptance and respect. Are they wrong to be offended? What is the point in seeking to discredit and invalidate someones feelings? If it is offensive why would any one want to make the ‘joke’? Isn’t the point of a joke to create good feelings/ happiness?
I agree that there are much more important battles than this to be won, but i think this is an important indicator of racial undertones in Australia and perhaps if this kind of thinking was more effectively scrutinised, rather than just putting it down to an Australian sense of humour and ‘its ok we get the joke’ kind of attitude (which i have heard frequently over the last couple of days), perhaps there wouldn’t be the wider problems that we are disgracing ourselves with currently. I’m Australian - making jokes at someone else’s expense, resulting in the perpetuation of negative stereotypes, is NOT my sense of humour, please don’t misrepresent me and say that it is.
Lets be tougher on our media and let them know we will not accept them polluting our society with racially driven nonsense, let them know that we support those that have been vilified and mariginalised and we will no longer accept their misrepresentation.
The whole world is telling us that we are racist, what do you gain from not listening to that?
A fish doesn’t realise that it’s wet because it has no concept of dry. Australians don’t realise quite how racist they actually are, simply because racism permeates our society and culture and “thats the way its always been”.
It doesn’t matter how many Australians don’t think the Hey Hey skit was racist. Godwin’s Law notwithstanding, relativism and utilitarianism have long been dismissed as a basis for determining what is acceptable behaviour. Most Australians still don’t seem to get that though. The only arguments brought fourth in “defense” of the skit have been along the lines that “we Aussies don’t think there’s a problem.”
Yes, this is an inherent problem in liberal democracy.
But, we CAN change this way of thinking, through situations like this. Look at the examples set by other countries in situations of race. This way of thinking can be changed.
We can change this by saying ‘we Aussies DO think there’s a problem’.
Tom, I’d love to see something like that. Faces covered in tinea-ointment with acne spots, poncing pretentiously around art galleries asking what does it all mean and insisting the book was better than the film, all competing to invite the one black person in the place to their party to celebrate the opening of their new chin, so that they can all tell their film appreciation clubs they have black friends. It could be hilarious. And it could never happen: if it did, some white reactionary clown would make a racism complaint and others would use it as an excuse for a new round of vilification.
There is a pretty good piss take by Aboriginal folks in a movie called BBQ Area or something like that - about 20 years back I think.
Actually here it is: BabaKiueria, made in 1986. Just google it. You will get it on Google Video rather than YouTube as such about 30 minutes long in3 parts. All power role reversals. Pioneering conceptual stuff.
Donkey Hotay, I agree that people are clinging to an ethnocentric value system founded in a very uncertain past. To continue to believe there is no problem in finding humour in such humiliating incidents as ‘hey hey’ ‘s pathetic skit is an act of willful ignorance - you do not need a university degree to be aware of the links between the minstrels, blackfacing, slavery and lynching. The ‘hey hey’ skit has shamed us in the eyes of the world. Pretending Australian society has transcended a violent and ethnocentric ‘past’ is a delusion - witness the setting aside of the Race Discrimination Act for the Northern Territory intervention, or the delay before the man selling t-shirts with swastikas in Alice Springs was brought to book. We are working towards the ideal of multicultural equality and respect but it continues to be a work-in-progress, just as it does in the rest of the world.
Harry Connick gave a solid demonstration of how to deal with discrimination, by emphatically and clearly rejecting the pathetic skit. If everyone dealt with such so-called humour in their everyday lives, however trivial and unimportant it may seem at the time, the world would be a better place.
Has anyone read Patrick White’s ‘Riders in the Chariot’ where the Jewish worker is hung up in the Jacaranda tree under the guise of humour? White, who visited Germany in the lead up to the second world war was only too aware of scapegoating power dynamics at work under the guise of ‘humour’.
Donkey Hotay (great handle that!) said: ‘The only arguments brought fourth in “defense” of the skit have been along the lines that “we Aussies don’t think there’s a problem.”’
So the various snap TV polls, etc, would have us believe, however, let’s see if any channel ever dares to program such stuff again. I know where I’d be placing my bet on that.
Seriously guys, there are bigger issues than some lame Red Faces skit. What is wrong with people? They’re becoming internet-fixated drones.