Rory Gibson: Our Aussie sense of humour is still on life support

The cult of being offended is still winning the race but perhaps the pendulum is slowly swinging, writes Rory Gibson.

I thought the Australian sense of humour was dead.

Well, maybe not dead, but certainly on life support. The once-familiar larrikin banter and good-natured ribbing that in no small part defined the Australian character has been in retreat for years, banished by the cult of being offended.

But maybe the pendulum has been wrenched from the grasp of the pinch-lipped speech police and is swinging back towards a time when we could laugh at ourselves – and others – without fear of
being shamed. I offer two pieces of evidence.

The first was on the Yamba Community Noticeboard page on Facebook, not renowned for its jolly content.

Scrolling through last week to see whose dog was missing or where the police had set up their RBT, I came across a post by a bloke who had mislaid his prosthetic hand and was seeking help to find it. He’d taken it off when he sat down for a rest in the shopping centre and left it on the seat.

What followed was hilarious. Hand pun after hand pun loaded up the comments section as people tried to outdo each other in their mirth.

Cartoon of a woman slapping a man in the face.

There were quips about under-handed thieves and light-fingered louts, people wanting to lend a hand, how shopping was costing not only an arm and a leg these days, but also a hand, no point reporting it to the police because they’d just palm it off … on and on it went. Far from being offended, the hand’s owner chimed in to reveal he’d taken his hand off so he didn’t have to help his wife carry the groceries to the car.

What was great about the entire exchange was that none of the usual finger-waggers scolded the crowd for being disablist or insensitive.

Everyone just had a good laugh. Remember those days?

The second bit of evidence came in the cinema. I went to see the new movie Spit, starring David Wenham.

Spit is the sequel to the 2003 film Gettin’ Square, which featured Wenham in one of the greatest scenes in Aussie cinema history, Wenham as Johnny “Spit” Spiteri insisting on getting his bus fare and lunch money before giving evidence in court. There’s a scene in Spit where our hero tries to teach a group of asylum seekers with limited English skills the meaning of the F-word and its many subtle variations. This is comedy gold, right up there with Gettin’ Square’s courtroom fiasco and other iconic Aussie scenes such as The Castle’s “How’s the serenity?”. As Spit would say, “F--k yeah!”

Originally published as Rory Gibson: Our Aussie sense of humour is still on life support