Hey Hey It's Saturday was a long-running Australian comedy variety show that reconvened for two reunion specials in 2009. The second of these aired on October 7, and featured the now infamous "blackface" skit by the "Jackson Jive". This so-called tribute to the late Michael Jackson featured five men in Afro wigs and black-painted faces, plus "Michael" with his face painted white, singing and dancing to The Jacksons' 1980 hit Can You Feel It.
American singer Harry Connick Jr, who had appeared on Hey Hey It's Saturday multiple times in the past, was a guest judge on the mock talent segment Red Faces. Unlike the laughing studio audience, Connick was visibly offended by the "Jackson Jive" skit and awarded the group a score of zero, informing Hey Hey host Daryl Somers that “if they turned up looking like that in the United States… it’d be like ‘hey hey, there’s no more show’.”
Reactions to the Jackson Jive Skit
The international response to the skit has been scathing, with Australia portrayed as a racist backwater. UK newspaper The Guardian described it, and Somers' apparent ignorance of its offensiveness as "mind-boggling". On US political talk show The O'Reilly Factor, Margaret Hoover claimed Australia was behind the US in its civil rights movement. The View's Joy Behar pointed to the ill treatment of Aboriginal people as further evidence of Australian racism.
In Australia, the reaction has been mixed. Some believe the skit was, albeit unintentionally, racist and offensive. Others believe Connick's comments were arrogant and overly politically correct. News articles, blogs, and social networking sites such as Twitter and YouTube have been flooded with heated arguments between Australians and overseas viewers, particularly from the United States, about humour and racism in their respective countries.
Connick has also been accused of hypocrisy over a 1996 MadTV skit in which he and Orlando Jones played preachers. It was reported that Connick was racist in his portrayal of a black Baptist minister in the skit; however, Connick had actually played a white southern evangelical preacher.
Understanding the History of Blackface
Former Hey Hey co-host Jacki McDonald, who returned for the reunion show and sat next to Connick on the Red Faces judging panel, awarded the Jackson Jive a score of seven. "I thought you were very cute," she said, seemingly oblivious to the reason behind Connick's disapproval.
Perhaps at the heart of this cultural misunderstanding is ignorance in Australia about what blackface actually means. Somers and Connick both addressed this gap later in the program.
"I noticed that when we had the Jackson Jive on, and it didn't occur to me until afterwards, that I think we may have offended you with that act," Somers said. "I deeply apologise on behalf of all of us because I know that to your countrymen, that's an insult to have a blackfaced routine."
Connick accepted the apology and explained: "I know it was done humourously but we've spent so much time trying to not make black people look like buffoons that when we see something like that we take it really to heart ... You know how much I love this show and this country but I feel like I'm at home here and if I knew that was going to be part of the show, I definitely wouldn't have done it."
In the 19th century, white actors in minstrel shows donned blackface makeup to ridicule African-Americans and their culture. Australia, however, were not active participants in the slave trade and did not have minstrel shows or "blackface" theatre. This lack of knowledge about what the makeup implies, and the view that American history should have no bearing on what Australians find funny, are the main reasons why defenders of the skit continue to defend it.
However, Australians are not entirely strangers to the offensiveness of blackface. While no one seemed to object when the Jackson Jive performed a similar routine on Hey Hey 20 years ago, The Footy Show's Sam Newman stirred controversy in 1999 with a blackfaced impersonation of Aboriginal footballer Nicky Winmar.
 |
