Kath & Kim: articles


Kim and Kath

Enough to make you gropeable

There's no doubt Kath & Kim is having a dig at Australian suburbia. But is it a good-natured parody, or something nastier?

From the time Arnold Schwarzenegger was talked about as a possible governor of California, people were recalling how badly some of his films treat women characters.

The focus of discontent was Total Recall, where Doug Quaid (Schwarzenegger) shoots his "wife", Lori (Sharon Stone), and says: "Consider that a divorce." In the one debate he contested in his campaign, when he tried to speak over Arianna Huffington, she responded: "This is the way you treat women, we know that."

So why is it that Gina Riley and Jane Turner aren't in trouble for beating up, week after week, Sharon Strzlecki on Kath & Kim? The image of battered Sharon suggests that the writers, Riley and Turner, despise the character.

Michael Idato, of the Herald's TV Guide, previewing the second series of Kath & Kim, described it as an affectionate send-up of suburbia. I don't argue that the program isn't funny—that's a matter of individual taste. I just think it's anything but affectionate. What is affectionate about "But you are effluent, Kim"?

Malapropisms such as that are a stock device on Kath & Kim. I appreciated this exchange from the new series: "I want monogamy," Kim says (in reference to a new kitchen fitout).

"Oh, no, Kim, that's old-fashioned," replies her mother. "You just want a veneer of monogamy."

It is very witty. It's simultaneously a commentary on a taste that prefers the appearance to the substance; on pretension; on relationships; and, for all we know, on elements of the plot to come. And there's a split second after "Oh, no" during which we are allowed to think Kath might correct Kim.

It's worthy of Benny Hill or Frankie Howerd. So was the sequence where the characters walked around with their kit off (except, on Benny Hill's show, they would have run around while Yakety Sax blared, so that their bottoms jiggled).

Kath seems obsessed with what Hamlet called "country matters" and the boundaries of attraction imposed by an ageing body—referring to pubic hair as a "welcome mat" and commending Kim's use of a chutney douche in order to conceive a girl. Her anxiety even conquers her libido temporarily.

Kim Craig has an eating disorder, arising from depression (though some might argue it's food as a substitute for sex, which, I submit, amounts to the same thing). The audience is supposed to think this mental health issue is good for a giggle. Kim's bingeing is trending towards bulimia. One hopes it will end now she's resumed relations with her husband but, as she's pregnant, I doubt it.

Still, it's Sharon who is the real butt of the writers' distaste for the characters. Sure, she throws herself into harm's way, at netball and Army Reserves, but is self-harm a better subject for a laugh than battery?

Kim despises Sharon because she is obese and without a partner. At the same time, Kim treasures her because she is obese and without a partner. Kim can always feel superior to Sharon, just as the audience can feel comfortably superior to Kath and Kim.

The men are ciphers. Kel Day is a purveyor of fine meat—a pretentious euphemism for butcher deserving of satire but also, I suspect, another double entendre. The Guide quoted Glenn Robbins as saying he played Kel for the drama of the character, not the comedy. What comedy? Kel's only functions are to be a foil for Kath and Kim and to purvey his fine meat to the sexually anxious Kath.

Fountain Lakes is not Absolutely Fabulous territory. All the money in the PR world enables Eddie Monsoon and Patsy Stone to have any "names" they want. Eddie's pretensions and Patsy's excesses are fair game.

The belated introduction of Prue and Trude, who have some choices, is a confession that Riley and Turner have been shooting sitting ducks in Kath & Kim.

Magda Szubanski (Sharon) told the Herald that "just because you're rich, it doesn't mean you have taste". True, but the comment allows that some wealthy people might have taste. In Kath & Kim, the suburban poor universally do not.

Szubanksi advanced a rather arrogant defence to criticism: "People who criticise it, I think, completely misread it and don't get the point."

Why should television be excused the critical standards that apply to theatre or literature? If it is received differently from the way they intended, then the writers or actors have not controlled the message. It's not the audience's fault if a joke doesn't get a laugh.

Maybe the team behind Kath & Kim didn't set out to beat the daylights out of people so uncultured they accept any pop health fad and latch onto every verbal vogue 24/7. But belting them is what they're doing.

It may be a comedy whose purpose, as Szubanski put it, is to "live in the uncomfortable area". If so, fine. But nobody can pretend that a mother insisting her daughter is shit—that was the point of the joke—represents affection.

We'll probably never know whether Jane Turner's assessment is right—that "people in the suburbs" are strong enough to take being sent up. The show's on the ABC. Kaths and Kims watch Channel Ten. Riley and Turner aren't really writing for them.

By John Miner
October 25, 2003
Sydney Morning Herald