The theology of Chris Lilley
The jury is out on whether Chris Lilley's new ABC1 comedy Jonah from Tonga gives a free kick to racism and other forms of discriminatory behaviour.
TV critic Giles Hardie says it is 'fantastic that people are accusing this show of being racist, because that is exactly the way to start the relevant and important conversation'. But Polynesian writer Morgan Godfery argues that Lilley empowers racism. '[He] reinscribe[s] the very stereotypes [he's] acting out ... Whenever people dress in racial drag, they channel that history of racism.'
Critic David Knox borrows a theological concept when he suggests Jonah and Lilley's previous work should be judged on the basis of redemption. 'Showing an abusive character (particularly to an impressionable young audience) must service a point, which should also include the lesson-learning that the abuse is hardly acceptable to a reasonable-thinking person.'
Knox believes redemption in Lilley's characters does take place, but it's a case of too little too late. He cites the character Ja'mie becoming 'momentarily same-sex attracted after her tirade of "lesbian" insults'. But, Knox says, 'the risk is that before you reach that point the wider audience is potentially so offended that it does not stick around for that lesson'.
However the effort to avoid offence can also be seen as an attempt to deny reality in a way that creates a set of politically correct stereotypes that may themselves be discriminatory.
Irish writer Colm Tóibín speaks in his recent lecture 'The censor in each of us' of the perceived need to deny the existence of behaviour that offends social aspiration. We choose 'images that are comforting and comfortable, images that cover the national or social or religious wound, or attempt to heal it'. Hence our politically correct depictions of racial harmony. Until the 1960s, we were comforted by images of 'white Australia'.
Tóibín describes hostile demonstrations of political correctness outside Dublin's Abbey Theatre early last century. Inside were performances of plays that depicted Irish peasant women as 'earthy and sexually alive'. The protesters saw them as frustrating attempts to make Irish women 'seem more pure, more fully Victorian than their English counterparts'.
The prejudices in Lilley's Jonah are depictions of the wounds of Australian society, not the attempt of a far-right ideologue to promote a stratified nation based on race. Before the redemption can take place, we need to own our woundedness and moral imperfection. That is the theology of Chris Lillley.
Michael Mullins is editor