No More Please: Barry Humphries and Australian English

Abstract

In her autobiography My Gorgeous Life (1989) Edna Everage declares herself to be 'a pioneer of Relevance', boasting that she played Lady Macbeth as 'an ordinary Scottish housewife trying to cope with her husband's mid-life crisis'. Barry Humphries' most enduring character, Edna Everage, made her stage debut in Melbourne in 1955. She rose to become a celebrity in Britain where she is better known than her creator. But she and her inventor are no longer pioneers of relevance, and have not been for some time. In the 1960s and 1970s Humphries' satire was culturally and linguistically rich and relevant. Humphries' Barry McKenzie films and cartoons took on the ugliness and the peculiar innocence of 'ockerism' at the time, as well as the absurdities of the cultural cringe. Sir Les Patterson satirised the gross philistinism of Australian political culture. This comic material was full of Australian idiomatic expressions. Yet political satire and Australian colloquialisms barely feature in Humphries' more recent performances. Although these days Edna can speak to audiences in Australia, the UK and the US, Humphries' global 'reach' has meant that both his humour and his language have become impoverished. Of course there are many reasons for this, not least of which is Humphries' desire for ever increasing fame and fortune. But the desire for 'global megastar' status only partially explains the transformation of Humphries' humour over the last two decades. Humphries' move away from Australia, the nature of satire itself, and the significant developments in Australian English that coincided with Humphries' career trajectory, are some of the factors that help explain Humphries' declining powers as a satirist and his loss of connection with Australian English.