Kath & Kim

There is one award for a television producer that out-shines all the statues and acclamation the industry and peers have to offer – the adoption of your catch-phrase by the Australian public. The creator of a particular Yellow Pages advertisement may never receive a Logie, but for the rest of their life they can be satisfied in the knowledge that they came up with the line, “NOT – happy – Jan!” And sure the producers of The Castle won an AFI for their efforts, but what was their most likely response? “This is going straight to the pool room…” Likewise, the success of all four series of Kath & Kim has as much to do with its capacity to make us laugh as Jane Turner and Gina Riley’s ability to encapsulate our self-obsession into one handy phrase: “Look at moiye, look at moiye! Now I’ve got one word to say to you Kimmy…” Well, several actually…

The fourth series of Kath & Kim doesn’t seem to have suffered too much from its transition to the Seven Network, though the commercial breaks do occasionally inhibit the subtle building of the domestic crisis our favourite mum and daughter drift into each week. A record-breaking 2.7 million Australians tuned into episode one to discover what shape the suburban nightmare would take. The only certainty is that it would involve another parody of our obsession with ourselves.

Key characters Kath Day-Knight and Kim Craig seem to be worlds apart in many respects. The former is a fit forty-something mum into any number of self-improvement courses; the latter a superior lay-about daughter expecting the world to be served up on a plate, with Dippity-bix on the side. The common thread binding them together is their solipsism. Kim’s answer to everything is to indulge herself at the Fountain Lakes mall and her constant refrain is, “I’m lovin’ myself in this!’ Everything in Kath and Kim’s world has been commodified for their easy consumption – and it has to be easy. In episode three Kath celebrates her newly attained qualifications as a spiritual healer, gained over a gruelling… weekend. “I could have done the Phd,” she tells husband Kel, “But I couldn’t commit to the three days.”

Kath & Kim are entertaining to watch because they are simultaneously endearing and dreadful. We want Epponnee-Rae to have a happy first birthday and wince at what Kim’s ‘celebrity theme’ makes of it. But all the while Turner and Riley are turning the spotlight on our own self-indulgence, in this case the need to throw lavish parties for barely conscious toddlers. Kath & Kim’s comic brilliance lies in its ability to draw on our own instances of self-centredness. But is the satire effective?

Satire, by definition, seeks to not only expose our follies but discredit them as well. Kath and Kim’s characters do a good job of displaying the childishness intrinsic to the ‘look at moiye!’ culture, but the comedy might ultimately under-cut the observation. It’s not as if Australians haven’t been exposed to evidence of our self-obsession before – remember a little documentary series called Sylvannia Waters? It introduced us to Noelene Baker, the matriarch of a suburban family Richard Glover described as “…materialistic, argumentative, uncultured, heavy drinking and acquisitive.” Sound familiar? But the reason the Bakers caused national cringing while the Day-Knight’s are embraced is that the Sylvania family was undeniably real. Kath & Kim’s comedy lets us keep a safe distance.

Kath & Kim makes for a great laugh but its unlikely to result in much self-examination. Quite the opposite in fact. Rather than smiling ruefully at their excesses, we find ourselves embracing their life-style one catch-phrase at a time. Why else would anyone be happy to wear a t-shirt that proclaims, “I’m a foxy-moron”? Sure, “It’s different … it’s unusual … it’s nice … I loiyk it…” but it’s hardly challenging.

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