1.4 million people tuned in for the much anticipated premiere of Chris Lilley’s new show Angry Boys on Saturday night. People from all walks of life pulled themselves away from their daily routines to catch a glimpse of Lilley in his biggest show yet. There were the die-hard Lilley fans, who had watched his genius since his first Big Bite sketches. There were the people who were just watching it because of all the hype. And then there were those people. Those people are the kind of people who stare stony faced at stand-ups, who attempt to dissect the meaning of off-handed jokes, and who can’t tell a mockumentary from a documentary. Yes, there are actually people like that; thousands, in fact, who created a twitter furore with their negative comments and harsh criticisms of Lilley’s new show. The ABC released an article, “Angry Boys premiere fires up twitter”, which released many of the harsh comments concerning Lilley’s new hit show. One tweeter wrote “Load of crap (Angry boys). Not funny. How many times does the F bomb need to be slapped in our face. Lost me”. It is viewers like these who don’t seem to understand how Lilley’s creations are all backed up with hours of research, editing, and writing. Does the audience really expect to be given a handbook on how to handle the “MA stuff” that’s gone along with his work since the very beginning?

In an article by The Telegraph, an unnamed journalist writes, “Chris Lilley’s Angry Boys is expected to spark controversy …” Yet in an interview with Lilley, which appears throughout the article, Lilley says that he is not worried about criticism. “I make it for the people who love it and get it” he says.  The people who can’t take the provocative humour– well, in Lilley’s own words in an interview conducted by Timeout Sydney, “I’m not trying to be provocative and offensive for the sake of it, but if you are offended… too bad.” There’s a certain edginess that comes with Lilley’s shows, and he admits that Angry Boys isn’t for everyone. “You know that somebody is always going to be offended,” he observes. “But I’ve never tried to make shows for everyone. If someone doesn’t like it [Angry Boys] they can watch something else.” Angry Boys isn’t for the light hearted, yet it is not only for the rebellious. You don’t have to watch Angry Boys and squirm in your seat, nor do you have to load up your twitter page with angry remarks about how much swearing there is in the show. “Mostly when I’m pushing the boundaries and seemingly provoking people, it’s more about me just wanting to do something to surprise people and do something interesting,” Lilley says.

Gran is a character who created an internet storm for her racist slurs and politically incorrect attitude in Angry Boys. “Get your lazy aboriginal ass off the couch” she says, making a reference to Aboriginal youth, a topic so touchy that it’s barely mentioned on its own in society. However, Lilley explains that it is not the racist slurs that should be laughed at, however it is who is saying it that makes it funny. In an interview by PerthNow journalist Darren Devlin, Lilley says “… To me, that’s so blatantly obvious that I think it’s really funny…” That basically sums up his intention with Angry Boys. It’s only rude if you believe what the character says. As for the tweeter who complained about the swearing,  he or she doesn’t seem to realise that the swearing in itself wrong, but the character saying it makes it so right. In all of Lilley’s mockumentaries, the characters are being mocked by the audience. In his previous show, Summer Heights High, one character told us of his obsession with “sniffing” the students each morning to make sure they didn’t have any illegal drugs in their possession. Rather than empathising with the character and his or her motives, we sit there and laugh at them. There is an obvious parallel between this character and the characters in Angry Boys. It is clear that the audience who take offence at his work are either too smart, or not smart enough.  “It’s a rare thing, to have the opportunity to make a show, so why not do something that’s different, and I like entertainment that’s a bit provocative and a bit shocking.”, Lilley said in his PerthNow interview.

In 1962, legendary Jewish-American comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested at his first Australian performance for saying “What a wonderful effing audience.” Today, comedians or writers alike can get away with almost any form of vulgarity they desire. The world isn’t set in black and white anymore – we have moved on from laughing at jokes to laughing at the inside joke. Back in the ‘60s, we may have found ourselves laughing at the racial slurs in Angry Boys, yet today we see his shows from a different angle. Are we supposed to laugh at the swearing, slurs, vulgarity and inappropriateness of his show, or are we there to laugh at the meaning behind the offensiveness? No doubt, the answer is the latter.

Whether we see ourselves as the type of person who stands up for racism, or the type who’s prone to the occasional (or not) swear word, we all have one thing in common; we’ve lived through an era of political incorrectness. If we’re hit with a couple of F-bombs in a show filled with classic humour, beautiful detail, and unique clarity in its message to the audience, we can just shrug our shoulders and pretend we didn’t notice. As an anonymous tweeter not-so-famously wrote; “it’s so wrong, but so funny.”