Race Around the Safran
At school, everyone knew a naughty boy. At mine, it was a boy called Beasley, who attempted to show the teacher that the cleaners used turpentine to clean stains from the carpet, by trying to set it alight with matches. John Safran must have been that boy at his school and, with his new show, Race Relations, 9.30pm Wednesdays on ABC 1 (9pm Thursdays on ABC 2), is setting fire to the conventions of race in our society.
Safran attempts to look at racial situations in the context of our population becoming more integrated, meaning that the ‘tribes’ to which we belong, both social and religious, meet and mix, therefore raising the question of how we should deal with each other. Each show starts with Safran saying, ‘I’ve been a-thinking ...’ and he makes the viewer think as well.
In the first episode, he explored race relations by investigating his own relationships. He pointed out that many of his former girlfriends were Eurasian and investigated whether this preference could be a genetic disposition. He tried the ‘undergarment test’, by getting five underpants from Jewish girls and five from Eurasian girls, then putting the underwear to the ‘sniff test’ to see which he found the most attractive. Safran has the ability to shock even the most jaded viewer (yours truly) and in this episode he made my jaw drop as he surreptitiously acquired the panties under the guise of interviewing their owners. He stole them from a Pussycat Doll and a Eurasian princess, but failed to get any from climate change minister Penny Wong. When he found that he is, indeed, attracted to Eurasian girls, he concluded that there is a biological and moral imperative to break from the tribe, and so decided to mix some donations at Jewish and Palestinian sperm banks, and create a Jelestinian. If this weren’t outrageous enough, he then, upon finding he had no pornography to use for his Palestinian donation, utilised a book by the world’s most famous mixed-race human, Barack Obama, as masturbation fodder. Shocking though this may be, Safran’s intelligence means that he, in fact, showed that race isn’t discernible at sperm level.
In the second episode, Safran tried to walk in the shoes of others by black-facing himself, going to a black speed dating night and interviewing a black militant group. The bloke has guts – actually, cojones bigger than basketballs – and I laughed hysterically as the blacked-up pasty Jew from Melbourne attempted some appalling rapping, with no discernable sense of rhythm, and confronted racists at a hamburger stop. Safran has an unpredictability that makes it impossible to see where he will ultimately take his premise, but, whatever else, chances are you won’t be bored watching him.
What a delight it is to have this law-breaking, sidesplitting man back on the television. Even something as minor as his slight speech impediment defines him as a rough-edged diamond who hasn’t been churned out by the television celebrity factory. Safran’s ability to show the bigger picture of race relations through making small outrageous gestures is, seemingly, unique and defines Race Relations as compulsory viewing, no matter what colour your skin.
This piece originally appeared in ‘The Big Issue’.
Matt Quartermaine is a Melbourne-based writer and comedian. With Matt Parkinson, Tim Smith and Andrew Goodone, he produces ‘The Chat’, a weekly podcast in which four grown men in comfortable chairs spill their guts. Click here to download it for free at iTunes.
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