Committed to the Bit

I’ve been weirdly obsessed with Australia lately. This is not my first time around. When I was a kid, I was pretty wild about the Mad Max movies, of which there were only two for a minute. Then, sometime in the early 1980s, I remember seeing a grainy magazine photo of Mick Jagger playing the eponymous Australian outlaw in Tony Richardson’s 1970 Ned Kelly. I became fascinated by Kelly’s homemade suit of iron armor, including that extraordinary bucket-like helmet with a narrow slit for the eyes. I knew basically nothing about the guy, but that thing sure looked cool.

And, of course, plenty of great music comes from a land Down Under, but that’s another post.

These days, I’m fixated on Australian improvisational comedy. In fact, some of the most gloriously idiotic humor I’ve encountered in ages is Oz-originating. Here’s an amusing tidbit: parts of Australia now get three hours of free electricity every day. That means the government is indirectly using solar energy to power some of the most out-there improv around.

Listen, I know the country has its issues. I’m not describing a utopia. Australia began as a British penal colony and has an appalling history of treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Nevertheless, its government is apparently willing to directly fund nonsense, which I can appreciate.

Aussie absurdity suits my sensibilities. As a pup, I loved Steven Wright and George Carlin. From there, you can follow a thread through sketch surrealists like Monty Python, into Mr. Show, and eventually to more aggressive contemporary versions, such as Comedy Bang! Bang! Nathan Fielder fits in that lineage, as does Tim Robinson and, of course, the granddaddy of the current strain, the other Tim (Heidecker).

But Australians take it to another level.

A great example is the Melbourne comedy group Aunty Donna. I first discovered them through their short-lived Netflix series, Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun. I watched it and then apparently forgot I did, probably because it melted my brain. Later, I stumbled into their YouTube archives, where I’ve spent way too many midnights.

Exhibit A is “Morning Brown,” a grindingly catchy musical production built around their alternative name for coffee. It’s a joke with the conceptual sophistication of an obnoxious 12-year-old boy. Yet somehow the disparity between the stupidity of the premise and the precision of its execution makes it even funnier.

Aunty Donna is three grown men—Mark Bonanno, Broden Kelly and Zachary Ruane—bringing well-honed theater chops to staggeringly inane, occasionally off-putting comedy. I say “inane” with affection, but also some trepidation. They will likely make you laugh, but it’s a lot like being trapped in a bounce house with three drunk acrobats. Afterwards, you just want to take a shower and collapse.

The trio also helped establish a broader production ecosystem, including Grouse House, which showcases other Australian comedians, including a number of wickedly funny women. Much of the comedy relies on absurdity, repetition, awkwardness and deliberate incompetence. If you’re allergic to cringe, stay away.

The key ingredient, though, is commitment. These performance artists can take something that maybe isn’t even funny to begin with and make it so simply by refusing to stop. It goes from confusing to awkward to irritating to, somehow, vastly more hilarious than it was at the start. I can’t diagram this process. Explanation may actually ruin it. The bit is sustained by commitment to the bit.

This is also pretty much what it’s like living inside my head. My puzzlingly accommodating wife has become fluent in a private language of deliberate mispronunciations, word swaps, puns, stupid voices and lines from songs detached from their original contexts and repurposed into something else. The whole thing is funny largely because we’ve kept it going for no good reason.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been enjoying the Australian stuff so much. There’s a kind of free-range purposelessness to it that feels increasingly rare. So much of modern life has to demonstrate productivity, optimization, monetization or measurable benefit. The bit doesn’t give a fuck. It produces nothing except amusement and connection.

Amazingly, Aunty Donna has turned this into an international career, while Australia’s public institutions have decided that at least some of their foolishness is worthy of support. I find that incredibly heartening. A society that can occasionally spend public resources enabling adults to pursue extremely stupid ideas with great seriousness is on to something.

What, exactly, I have no idea. But I’m still committed to the bit.