The ABC screened a video clip made by one of the contestants in a reality show called ‘Race Around the World.’
This contestant submitted a video clip which proposed subjecting Gina Rinehart to a painful and humiliating death.
It was a fantasy sketch in which a ‘Scottish forest warrior ninja’ did things to Gina Rineharr that are too disgusting for me to report here.
It is surprising that the ABC agreed to screen it.
Here’s their official defence: ‘The film was intended to be satirical in tone and considered to be editorially justifiable with the context of the program.’
So, it was ‘satire’ was it?
And that makes fantasising about Gina Rinehart suffering a painful and humiliating death ‘justifiable’?
So, let’s test this defence.
What does the word ‘satire’ mean?
The Cambridge English Dictionary says that ‘satire’ means: ‘criticizing people or ideas in a humorous way.’
And all the dictionaries agree on those two points: that satire is (a) humorous and (b) critical.
The video shown by the ABC was neither.
There was no criticism of Gina Rinehart, just the proposal that she be killed painfully, and there was no humour—not even the hint of a joke.
The word ‘satire’ is recorded in English from 1509.
It comes from a French source word, behind which is a bit of classical Latin.
And from the beginning ‘satire’ was always meant to be those two things: critical and funny.
The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English speaks for all the major dictionaries when it says that ‘satire’ is ‘a way of criticizing something such as a group of people or a system, in which you deliberately make them seem funny so that people will see their faults.’
But in this video, there was no criticism, no faults pointed out, and nothing funny.
It was not ‘satire’.
That means that the ABC getting down into the gutter to broadcast this video is without justification.
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