I owe Dan Brader an apology. Last year I called him a “petulant upstart” for slagging these guys off during his show. Dan had the good grace to embrace the criticism and adopt it as the title for his 2010 show. Let me return that good grace with the good grace to admit the he was right and I was wrong. Whilst I don’t think it’s a good idea, in general, for new/young comedians to go around slagging off more experienced comedians, as far as these guys go…
I really, really thought that Hung Le and Gabriel Rossi were going to be a lot better than they were. I went in with an open mind, expecting something more intelligent, more insightful and more self aware. I walked out of The Comics Lounge with a horrible feeling in the pit of my belly.
Let me start with some pragmatics. The show is advertised to run from 8pm to 10pm. It’s more like 8:20pm to 10:20 pm, with a twenty minute break. If you turn up ten or twenty minutes early, or even on time, it makes for a very long night. But those of you who know The Comic’s Lounge will know that running only twenty minutes late is actually pretty good for them.
The show was loosely divided into three sections, first Gabriel Rossi and Hung Le each did a set of stand up, second was the audience participation section, the section I found the most galling, and third, some music played by both. Gabriel Rossi kicked things off with a set of stand up which was easily the part of the night I loathed the least. I’ve seen Gab perform before and I know he has the capacity to be an intelligent performer, which is a big part of the reason why I expected better things from this show. I enjoyed some of his material; I particularly liked the personal material about becoming a father. Gab Rossi can be a properly funny comedian, which makes it even more of a shame that he goes out of his way to cater his material to the lowest common denominator. In point form: Lara Bingle is a slut (shooting fish in a barrel anyone?), junkies are barely human and Indians, well it’s okay to be racist towards Indians apparently.
Hung Le was just dreadful. His set started with jokes which were often so unfunny that they were barely recognisable as jokes. Point form again: obese people deserve what they get, bogans are idiots (well that’s revolutionary), oh, and Indians again. The set then spiralled into a self loathing rant about how women don’t find him appealing. Really? He pulled himself out of this mire by telling us some stories about growing up, which I suspect is some earlier material, years earlier.
The musical selections, throughout and at the end of the show consisted of established songs rewritten into racist or just prejudiced material. Sweet Child of Mine, for example, was rewritten as Big Child of Mine. Get it. It’s about fat people. Neither Gab nor Hung is a great musician or singer, with Hung Le being, frankly, painful to listen to vocally.
The audience participation section involved audience members writing about their challenging experiences as Greeks/Italians or Asians, which were then read out after the break, without vetting or editorial discretion. As a result, this ended up being a section dominated by audience members who let themselves run rampant with their pent up opinions. The very first one read out started My Muslim neighbour… To be fair both Hung and Gab rebuffed this person as an idiot, but the point is, they had given people like this free reign, and they neglected to rebuff many more like this. At one point Gab did edit one of the submissions – he skirted around the word ‘cunt’, presumably because it’s too offensive. I don’t get the delineation, where ‘cunt’ is overstepping the mark, but ‘chink’, ‘wog’, ‘gook’, ‘nip’, ‘jap’, ‘leb’, ‘choco’ etc, are okay. I don’t understand why a simple swear is bad, but determining a man’s penis size by his race is not only okay, it’s fucking hilarious. I don’t understand why an innocuous swear words must be edited, whilst words, phrases and ideas which are indelibly indicative of systematic prejudice, oppression and abuse are just fine and dandy.
I expected an audience dominated by Italians, Greeks and Asians. I was wrong. Instead I looked around the room and found it to be dramatically dominated by Anglo Saxon Caucasians. Or, given the theme of the night, perhaps I would be better off saying skips, jocks and micks. And this was part of what made the experience so appalling and unsettling. This room wasn’t full of people making fun of themselves, the quirks of their own cultural heritages; this was a room full of people who had found a place, a sanctuary, where they could be massive racists without reserve or recrimination. What kind of happy racists’ club meeting had I walked into? I remember Wogs Out of Work and Acropolis Now. Whilst not my cup of tea, these were shows which were directed at a Greek/Italian audience and were actually full of a sense of self awareness. Now, the next generation seems to be acting as catalyst for people to gather and say, well you know who I hate, fucking lebs!. At the start of the show Gab Rossi defended his right to say “wog” because he was one. He complained about Caucasians who complain about words like “chink”. They have no right because they are not Asian he says. But this logic didn’t extend to himself, Hung and the bulk of the audience who ate up the large amount of material directed at Indians.
This show could be so much more. It could operate on a level on which ideas and discussion and insight can take place, and be so much more intelligent and funny. Instead it’s deeply unpleasant, quite unsettling, ludicrously stereotyped and massively racist.
For full details check the Melbourne Comedy Festival website