Plus ca change: Three decades of Clarke and Dawe's political satire 1987-2017

Abstract

Even the best broadcast satire tends to have a relatively short lifespan in Australia: After a couple of years or so, the creators run out of ideas, characters grow stale or the zeitgeist shifts and audiences and sponsors look elsewhere. Remarkably, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe's eponymous weekly political satire segment of Australian news media endured for thirty years before ending abruptly, a consequence of Clarke's sudden death in 2017. Originally framed in newsprint in 1987, Clarke's deadpan mock interviews underwent their first evolutionary leap in media format the same year when he collaborated with Dawe to perform them as episodic radio scripts. Two years later, a transition to television established the show's definitive audio-visual format-one which later facilitated Clarke & Dawe's online success with the advent of Web 2.0 media. Despite these radical changes in media form, Clarke & Dawe's satirical mechanics remained largely unchanged. In around two-and-a-half minutes, an interview would deliver a revelatory and forensic dismantling of a complex topical event or concept by gently but mischievously eviscerating its advocate. This article outlines the durable structural format of Clarke's satiric creations and his deliberate cultivation of a recognisable and idiosyncratic approach to interview, including tone, rhythm and delivery of speech. It then examines the impact on these formal aspects of respective media potentialities (newsprint, radio, television and the Internet) in order to investigate the lengthy popular success of the series. Show more