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Comparing Deadly Unna And Summer Heights High

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To what extent has my understanding of ‘being Australian’ been influenced by the texts (and films) you’ve studied? (Deadly Unna?, Summer Heights High). My understanding of ‘being Australian’ has changed through the study of the book ‘Deadly Unna? (Phillip Gwynne 1988) and the comedic documentary Summer Heights High (Chris Lilley 2007). Summer Heights High is an Australian ‘mockumentary’ that mocks (hence the genre, mockumentary) the Australian public school system. The television series humorously ridicules how Australian schools are irreverent and racist, which remodels my understanding of ‘being Australian’. Deadly Unna? shows again how Australians are racist and irreverent but in a non-comedic way. By also making the main protagonist …show more content…

the main protagonist is ‘Blacky’ who is of white decent and lives at the port. Blacky encounters a lot of racism to the Aboriginal people while growing up in his town, mostly through jokes from the bar (e.g. Big Mac, “Hey did ya hear the one about the boong and the preist?” p.161). At the beginning of the novel Blacky is playing in his footy (AFL) team whose success was only because of the Aboriginals who played for them that lived at the point. Blacky states that, “we’re the only town on the peninsula with Nungas in our team”. This goes to show that the area in which Blacky and his family resides in is rather racist, Blacky (and everyone who lives at the point/ port) calls the Aboriginal’s ‘Nungas’, and the whites …show more content…

Jonah: Yeah, I just made a comment about him being fat. He is, sir. Look at him. Doug Peterson: Jonah, I gave him to you because he's not coping socially. Lucas: He called me a **. Jonah: Yeah, as a joke, idiot!’ The humour is quite crude and is directly attacking another person in this instance and does so a lot more throughout the show. Which influenced my understanding of ‘being Australian’ by proving my idea of Australians being humorous, and also showing me that they also take things seriously. Through the reading of Deadly Unna? and watching Summer Heights High, my view on ‘being Australian’ has been slightly changed. At first I thought that ‘being Australian’ meant eating a meat pie with your family down at the beach on a scorching summer’s day, or chugging down a beer at the local pub in your thongs, singlet and boardies while calling the guy who stole your pool table ‘mate’ and the guy who shouted you your beer ‘bastard’. But now I see that ‘being Australian’ means you can be racist, although racism is dying slowly it still floats around, and that humour is also a very large part of ‘being

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