Pizza and Housos: Neoliberalism, the Discursive Construction of the Underclass and Its Representation

ABSTRACT

There is limited scholarship about Paul Fenech’s television comedy series and films. What there is tends to focus on Pizza (2000–2007) and place it, and its spin-off film, Fat Pizza (2003), within what has been called the wogsploitation cycle that includes most prominently The Wog Boy (2000). In this article I discuss two of Fenech’s television series, Pizza and Housos (2011–2013), in the context of representations of the underclass. I argue that the discourse of the underclass has evolved as the Other of neoliberalism in a similar way that the dangerous class, what Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, was constructed as the Other of industrial capitalism. The characters in Pizza, with their pitiful below-minimum-wage earnings, exist on the borderline of the underclass, while the characters in Housos are immersed in the underclass existence. The film Housos v Authority (2012) is a populist exploration of Australian underclass life.

KEYWORDS:

• Underclass
• othering
• neoliberalism
• television comedy
• ethnic humour
• wogsploitation
• multiculturalism
• migration
• Australia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Jon Stratton is an Adjunct Professor at the School of Communication, International Studies, and Languages in the University of South Australia. Jon has published widely in Cultural Studies, Jewish Studies, Popular Music Studies, Australian Studies, and on race and multiculturalism. Jon’s most recent books are: Jon Stratton and Nabeel Zuberi eds. Black Popular Music in Britain since 1945 Ashgate, 2014; When Music Migrates: Crossing British and European Racial Faultlines 1945-2010 Ashgate, 2014; Uncertain Lives: Culture, Race and Neoliberalism in Australia Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.

Notes

1 It is intriguing that Kath and Kim has garnered a significant academic scholarship while very little has so far been published on Fenech’s series.

2 The British comedic equivalent to Toula is Vicky Pollard in the character sketch-driven series Little Britain. Pollard is a school-age, unemployed, single mother. There is, though, no ethnic inflection in Pollard’s portrayal (see Lockyer 2010). Little Britain was first broadcast on the BBC in 2003.