Magda Szubanski inducted into the Logies Hall of Fame

Sydney Morning Herald

4 days ago

Sharon Strzelecki. Pixie-Anne Wheatley. Wee Mary MacGregor. Chenille from the Institute de Beauté and House of Hair Removal. And the exquisitely awful Lynne Postlethwaite, whose whining anthem of 'tired, tired, tired' has, along with many other comedy catchphrases, found immortality on social media.
All of those women, from the delightfully doe-eyed Pixie-Anne to the wretched and unyielding Lynne, share the same DNA. Each was crafted from the dark, demented and infectiously funny mind of comedian Madga Szubanski, the star of some of TV's finest comedies, including The D-Generation, Fast Forward, Big Girl's Blouse and Kath & Kim.
Szubanski, who announced earlier this year she had been diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, has been named this year's inductee to the TV Week Logies Hall of Fame.
It is an honour that earns Szubanski a Gold Logie, and confirms her place at the epicentre of Australian culture. At times, in the expression of Pixie-Anne's indefatigable optimism, or the pathos of Sharon Strzelecki, she is the personification of Australia's complex sense of humour.
The Hall of Fame also books the 64-year-old comedian a place in the history books, alongside TV pioneers such as Reg Grundy and Hector Crawford, and iconic personalities, including Graham Kennedy, Garry McDonald, Ruth Cracknell, Noni Hazlehurst, Bert Newton and Brian Henderson.
And it is an important acknowledgement, despite the tendency to dismiss the Logies as either frivolous colour and movement or mere ego flattery. Important, because Magda's story is a migrant story, the daughter of working-class parents whose journey is mirrored by many of us. And important because in the four-decade history of the award, only four women have previously been inducted.
In a stellar career, Szubanski has emerged as one of television's great funny women. She stands, in this moment, as a flag-bearer for Australia's wider culture of female comedians. We're a funny country, and we certainly have some funny men. But our funny women, truly, are the funniest women in the world.
Back in the 1960s, the Australian bloodline of funny girls was born with The Mavis Bramston Show, which starred Maggie Dence as the titular character, and was created and co-written by the legendary Carol Raye. It was also the launchpad for another iconic Australian funny woman, Noeline Brown.
That trinity of hilarious ladies laid down a bedrock which has served as a conduit to bring out a richness of female comedic talent in this country which continues to leave us collectively awestruck.
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Not just Jane Turner, Gina Riley and Marg Downey, with whom Szubanski has been inextricably linked for much of her career, but countless more names are on that roll of honour: Julia Morris, Wendy Harmer, Jean Kittson, Judith Lucy, Jane Kennedy, Kitty Flanagan, Caroline Reid (aka Pam Ann), Mary Coustas, Mary-Anne Fahey, Gretel Killeen, Fiona O'Loughlin, Julia Zemiro, Rebel Wilson, Denise Scott, Lynda Gibson ... and on it goes.
It's hard to look past Pat McDonald, too, who might not have considered herself a comedian but brought to life the hilarious Dorrie Evans from Number 96. Or Jeannie Little, who was more cabaret than comedy, but was unquestioningly hilarious. And Dame Edna Everage, who of course set the high bar for them all.
But first, Magda Szubanski. As a high-school kid, The D-Generation consumed my life, every sketch seared in my memory. Szubanski specialised in playing monstrous wives, corporate women or eccentric personalities, from stout country types in vintage cat-eye spectacles and neurotic mothers, to a woman who dressed as lounge furniture, and the earliest iteration of Lynne Postlethwaite.
Then, a few years later as a young television critic, I was regularly dispatched to Melbourne where, on a Friday night, we would sit in the audience while episodes of Fast Forward were taped in Channel Seven's South Melbourne studios.
As a fan, it was an embarrassment of riches, where Szubanski – as well as Jane Turner, Gina Riley and Marg Downey – shimmered with brilliance. They regularly broke character, laughing. And those moments were often included in the broadcast programs. With a wave of TV magic, we weren't laughing at them, we were invited into the joke.
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In that strange crucible of thin budgets and ridiculous ideas, these women brought to life all manner of characters that would endure in various ways. Szubanski infamously parodied Victorian premier Joan Kirner and fashion icon Maggie Tabberer, while Turner's take on housewife Kath Knight (nee Day) from Kath & Kim was born there, as an unnamed mother giving a speech at the 21st birthday of her pregnant daughter Caitlin, played by Riley.
Szubanski, Turner, Riley and Downey were devastatingly funny as the Brisbane-based Brides of Satan ('We are your concubines!'), Australian soaps were given a merciless slaying in Dumb Street, and Szubanski and Downey, as Chenille and Janelle, would turn a staple of sketch comedy – morning TV satire – into one of the show's institutions.
On Big Girl's Blouse, the Labor Party leadership crisis of the 1990s was distilled down to 'Midweek Ladies', a satire set amid the power struggle to control a women's tennis club, in which Szubanski played an unforgettable take on a female Graham Richardson ('Nobble the bitch').
But ultimately, it is Sharon Strzelecki with whom Szubanski remains most deeply associated. The perennially put-upon second-best friend of spoiled Kim Craig (née Day), Sharon is the conscience of Kath & Kim. As mother and daughter lurch deeply into the funny stuff, it is Sharon's task to bring a dark and emotionally complex layer to the table.
While it costs the character some punchlines, that humanity and pathos gave Kath & Kim the emotional dimension it needed to become something greater than the sum of its parts.
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Sharon's loneliness and low self-esteem is a deep ache felt by us all. Rejected by her own family, her need to belong somewhere turns 4 Lagoon Court, Fountain Lakes, into the only home she knows.
That performance and the way it continues to resonate in Australian culture is perhaps the greatest credit to Szubanski, and an illuminating reminder than few comedians can be truly funny without a deep understanding of the dramatic.
It is a cliche to talk about the tears of a clown, but it is equally true that the most powerful moments in comedy are those which are not in the service of easy laughs.
It is also true that a real talent is worthless unless it is shared. The noted pop singer and philosopher Madonna said: 'I'm not the owner of my talent; I'm the manager of it.' And if that is true, then the real gift of Magda Szubanski is not that she is as funny as she is, but that she has spent so much of her life sharing it with us.
The Logies will be broadcast from 7pm on Sunday, August 3, on Seven.