Chris Lilley is an Angry Boy(s)

(First a quick note: I'm still in the process of constructing this blog, and deciding what I want to do with it, how to format it etc, so bear with me if things like pictures don't turn out looking as pretty as they could or as often as they should)

"The series explores what it means to be a 21st century boy by putting the male species under the microscope."

A short post today just because I'm in the process of writing a longer one, but was distracted from it by watching the first episode of Angry Boys.

For those out of the know, Angry Boys is the latest mockumentary project from the mind of Chris Lilley - the genius behind We Can Be Heroes, and the better known Summer Heights High. Angry Boys premiered on the ABC on 11 May 2011 in Australia - I believe it will also run sometime on HBO and BBC. 

This series recycles some of the characters from these past shows - focussing on Daniel and Nathan from WCBH, and featuring a surfer boy who appears to be a clone of Jonah from SHH. It also adds a couple of newbies - Gran is perhaps the most entertaining. She's a prison warden with a foul mouth and a loving stranglehold, respected by both her peers and the inmates at the juvenile detention centre for boys. Theres a young Asian boy under enormous pressure from his mother, and a black rapper from the states - who despite being in a well-off family, raps about 'the hood' and the hardships of the gangster life he doesn't lead.

The story, from what I've gathered from trailers and internet research (THE most trust worthy kind of research), goes something like this:

Daniels deaf brother Nathan is being sent to a special deaf school - the first time the twins will be permanently separated. To send him off well, Daniel decides to throw a party, and invite all their 'legends' along. These legends include rapper S.Mouse, young skater Tim Okazaki and surfing champ Blake Oakfield, and . Gran will be there, obviously, because she is their grandmother.

Now, there are two things that Chris Lilley is famous for: Shock value humour, and one-man-show character stories. As another blog pointed out to me (this one), Lilley is losing his shock value. This is his third series; his first was a surprise to those who watched it - a fresh approach to a comedy series, critically acclaimed but not so very popular. His second was essentially a perfection of the formula from the first. Summer Heights High was the most popular thing since toast, and put its creator on the map as an absolute Australian icon. Now the humour is wearing off. We've seen him play several characters at once - we've seen shocking generalisations, and horrible extremes of racism, ignorance and other such things before, and this time he's just doing it again. There will be plenty of new quotes, for sure, but even watching the first episode it occurred to me how unsurprised I was to see the old grandma spouting racial slurs at teenage boys in her care. I would be shocked if someone in real life did that, but for a Chris Lilley show, it's just par for the course.

But for me, what I'm looking forward to is not so much the shock humour. I merely put up with it in Summer Heights High, but what drew me into it so much was the way the characters developed. Most particularly Jonah. It wasn't a story about redemption, he didn't exactly overcome all his problems - it was not a classic kind of character arc. But it was one I was invested in, and it was one that changed and surprised me. I really felt sorry for this guy, despite the horrible things he might have done. At the end Summer Heights High (and the fact that this is the thing I most remember about it is testament to its effectiveness) Jonah reads his short story, confessing how thankful he is to a particular teacher for showing him some compassion and understanding. It really opens up to us the turmoil that's going through him as he's kicked out of yet another school. His life is chaotic. He has dreams and ambitions and the potential to achieve them - but he feels let down by his confused family life and a school system that doesn't treat him well. He's a caricature, sure, but he's a deep one. His struggle is one of so many bullies and loners in schools today, and rings true to us.

What I love about Chris Lilleys work is how true to life it can be, despite all the comedy. Daniel and Nathan are a stereotype of country bogans, but in coming weeks I'm expecting to see a deeper side to them. There's already a hint of it - from the trailer for the next episode, I gather that despite how he treats Nathan, the show will explore a deep sense of brotherly love he maintains when they try to take him away. Theres also the possibility that their mother will soon be married to Steve, and a plethora of issues that Gran could face with the prison boys. 

The quote up top is from the shows Facebook page, and it really sums up the potential that I hope this show can acheive "The series explores what it means to be a 21st century boy by putting the male species under the microscope." That is, to really cut to the heart of what it is to be male in this day and age. Lilley showed amazing insight into the experience of Australian schools in his last gig, and with this broader international approach involving all sorts of types and colours, I hope to see a fascinating examination of the modern man. 

This is what makes comedy excellent; through all the satire and laughter there is something uniquely engaging and human about each of Lilleys characters. This week we've just scratched the surface, setting up a plight for two young men. As for the rest of the characters, well we'll just see how their introduction goes next week, but I for one have high hopes for this series.

Let's start at the very beginning...

I feel like making a blog.
That's it.
Do you need any more explanation?

Well I suppose you deserve it anyway; you've read this far. I like writing stuff. I like writing fiction mainly, but there is something to be said of the thrill of constructing a good factual argument. I don't enjoy writing science papers. The idea of having to back up everything I say, referencing and such sounds like a drag. I like the idea of just writing whatever I feel like - jotting it down on to the proverbial page (haha, who uses paper these days?) just as it comes when it shoots through my head. Just like now.
Usually, yes, it needs a little massaging, some fixing up in places etc. But the real fun of writing is just to write. So yeah, this is a blog of whatever I wanna write, however I wanna write it. And some of it may be full of crap, because that's usually what goes shooting through my head first. I guess if enough people hate it I could change it or delete it though...

Ahem, about me:
You could probably guess I'm a Uni student. I tend to write only when called upon by the looming threat of an assignment deadline. Usually with only hours to spare. I think I write my best stuff then - ideas-wise anyway. It may not be grammatically perfect, and probably doesn't respond appropriately to the topic, which is probably why I tended towards the mid-Bs in year 11/12. The things I get an A on are the ones I really get excited about early, and plan well in advance. But I like writing just on a whim - just going with the flow of the words and the rhythm of the sentence, regardless of structure or planning. I'm really passionate about short stories... mostly because they're the only kind of fiction I have the patience to finish. But I do find that the fewer words it is expressed in, the more powerful a sentiment is. I'll give you an example of one I heard; the challenge was to write a story in less than 20 words. Are you ready? Don't blink, it's that short...

For sale. Baby shoes. Second hand. never used.

I didn't come up with this. This probably isn't the exact wording, but I remember the gist of the story because it's so powerful - for such a short space of words it gets across so much stuff! Evoking a sharp mix of curiosity, empathy and tragedy: this is a story of deep and serious loss. Such a sad tale is written here between the words - of an expectant mother likely joyously looking forward to giving birth, buying cutesy little gifts for her unborn child. When dealt a jarring blow of abortion, the stricken woman - likely near-paralysed by anguish, horror, even guilt - is forced to sell these tiny little symbols of innocence, in an effort to cut herself off from the things that remind her of the life she could have brought to the world.

But that's only what I think when I hear this story - doubtless there are others with different ideas of what it means. Some slightly different, some outright crazy. If you have a different opinion to me, I would love you to post a comment, so I can angrily delete it :)
I'm kidding of course, I welcome discussion. Feel free to attack my ideas, so long as you can provide a firm basis for doing so.

On further research, I should point out that the story was written by Ernest Hemingway, and the original was only 6 words long (For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn). This wording perhaps better drives home the emotionally charged story behind the story. Even the punctuation - in such a short word-space - better signifies pauses that create a kind of tension that one would not normally expect of something so short. The story has a complete beginning middle and end. Chronologically, the story is reversed however; first we learn that something is being sold: a setting. We then learn that the thing is a pair of baby shoes - which immediately implies a baby, and a mother. This is the complication. Finally, the twist ending; the climax, having built up tension until this point: Never Worn. These two words elegantly unveil a revelation - that the baby is dead; which immediately changes the way we view all of the rest of the story. We move from a ho-hum average kind of sentence, with a baby and salesmanship involved somewhere, to an emotional and cathartic penny-drop, which I'm sure many people have remembered for the rest of their lives.

Back to why we're here.

This blog is about me writing - because I enjoy it. But it's not gonna be about my stories, my fiction, none of that. I'm nowhere near prolific enough - or deep enough!

This blog is about Stories that I like. It's about things that I find in life - typically fiction of one form or another - that captivate me, make me think, make me wonder, surprise me, motivate me, inspire me, terrify me, bewilder me and amaze me. This is a blog for me to practice my writing, sure, but it's also about reflecting on what it is about a particular thing that makes me think "I like that story."

I'm not talking just about writing here. Really, I'm talking about any medium. I don't have time read books mostly, though I have a few in mind that I look back on fondly, but really the media I ingest the most are movies - followed closely by video games. These are my hobbies; I like watching films, and thinking about them (I'm in a film studies class at the moment, which is quite an enthralling subject), and I also like listening to or reading reviews - comparing my opinions to that of others, in one sense, and discovering new ideas and perspectives, in another. I enjoy playing video games - mindless or otherwise (OMGPORTALTWO!) - and also following gaming journalism. I find it fascinating hearing about how the industry is growing and developing, or about how different factors in how the game is constructed affect whether it is fun or not... Yeah, I'm a bit weird. I think I'm the only one I know who's so into analysing stuff that most people mindlessly enjoy. BUT, this being the internet, maybe... just maybe... there's a few like-minded people out there who will like the same sort of stories as me.

Perhaps I'll post some short stories later - but I'll have to come up with them first! But for now I'll just promise to update at least once a month with a new thing that I find interesting. I'll be striving to make them entertaining, educational, thought provoking, etc. But really it's all about whether or not this stuff interests you like it does me.
Most updates will probably be longer than this one - though I'm not sure, this has turned out longer than I first planned... And although this post has been mainly about me, I promise to stop the vain streak soon, and start talking about the good stuff... The Stories. That I like.
;)