Jackson Jive: the return of Aussie racism?

This article was published in Spiked Online 12 October 2009

Australia’s bizarre TV ‘black face’ scandal springs more from the politics of identity than old-fashioned racism.

‘Coming from the country I’m from’, said American crooner-cum-actor Harry Connick Jr to the bemused host of the Australian TV show Hey Hey It’s Saturday, ‘where we’ve struggled for so long to not represent black people as buffoons, well if I’d known this was going to be on, I wouldn’t have appeared on the show’ (1). The audience, who had come for an evening of knockabout comedy looked bemused at this sudden turn. What the hell was happening?

Hey Hey It’s Saturday, an anarchic live variety show, was a fixture of Australian TV for decades until the 1990s. After much fanfare this year, two reunion episodes of the show had been announced to great excitement – especially as they would include one of the favourite segments, ‘Red Faces’, an anti-talent show in the manner of the Gong Show.