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You won’t believe where Ja’mie ends up

If there is no redemption for Ja'mie then we risk viewing her as nothing more than a racist and bully.

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2013-11-23_0149For the entire run of Ja’mie: Private School Girl, Chris Lilley’s character has spent the time deriding everybody in sight: peers, teachers, parents, Africans, gays.

It has to be asked does she ever learn anything, or will she get her come-uppance?

While we already saw that she had lost the Hillford Medal prize there are still some life lessons owing to her big time, including to the audience. If there is no redemption for the character then we risk viewing her as nothing more than a racist and bully.

Without giving anything anyway, you won’t believe where she ends up in the season finale next week.

There should be a fair bit of conversation about this one. For a number of reasons….

9pm Wednesday ABC1.

16 Responses

  1. I think the redemption has been left too late for Ja’mie’s character. She is perceived by a fair proportion of her age group as a role model, anecdotal evidence I know, but it is there. Povvo is a word that is gaining widespread use along with some of the negative attitudes portrayed by her……and yes Chris Lilley does look a bit too old now to play Ja’mie and not quite right…

  2. The reason I turned ‘against’ Ja’mee is the fact that watching an adult male playing a school girl turns my stomach. Chris Lily is a genius, but maybe he has become a bit ‘old’ now to play his own, truly brilliant, young female character. I know it’s all part of the package (write, perform, direct, etc.) but really Chris, for the sake of future watch-ability try and have a girl play that role?

  6. While not his intention I have always felt uncomfortable with Lilley dressing up as Asian, Islander or Black characters. I feel his ‘ironic’ racism is not clever or funny enough. No doubt a lot of Asian kids will suffer at school as a result of Ja’mie. If his characters weren’t such broad stereotypes perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad. He’s not responsible for other peoples actions but he celebrates the ignorance.

  8. Well in all his productions Lily has made his shows comically educating the masses. The vast majority of people don’t really see the similarities to todays societal behviours, it’s no different to Glee using music as a tool, another program on educating the masses. Be great to see how the consequences of how the character plays out.

  9. I put my money on Jam’ee being shipped off to the Africa region.Remember her parents are South African. No matter what people think of the show and I realize that it is not for the older gen,Chris has nailed the behavior of today’s teen!! It’s shocking but oh so true…I have a 17 year old and see this all going on. Eventually something will give and there will be some normality in this world of teens. Well done Chris.

  11. 2 issues cnrmlj, everybody pays for everything, using the “taxpayer” argument is invalid. Secondly, whilst I cannot personally stand this show, only the ABC takes risks like this on new ideas (I know Chris Lily is now no longer new but he did get his start at the ABC), not all work or are to my taste but at least they try and in fact lead most innovation in free to air TV. It is better than the US or whitebread content the commercial networks feed us.

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