Protecting legacy of a true genius is vital

Comedian Barry Humphries died just in time. If he’d been around too much longer, he may not have been able to save his comic legacy from being cancelled by the politically correct.

The rave reviews and rapturous applause Humphries spent a lifetime attracting were starting to dim among concerning murmurs about his uncomfortable views.

Humphries, one of the greatest Australian minds of his generation, was in danger of morphing from comic genius to politically incorrect embarrassment. What a shame that would have been.

Humphries was aware of the shift, which started around 2014. He called it the “new puritanism”. While he could get away with being offensive and outrageous on stage, there was no such indulgence in real life.

People roared with laughter when his characters were gross, obscene and offensive, or as Humphries put it once, “transcendentally filthy”.

We fondly remember Sir Les Patterson spitting about his “trouser snake”, which occasionally hung outside his trousers, not to mention his description of his lesbian daughter as “the sausage dodger”. But his reallife comments were met with a censorious black pen and a puritan scowl. It’s easy to chart the progress of his descent from grace.

In 1987, Humphries co-launched the Melbourne International

Comedy Festival to great acclaim. By 2019 the same event removed his name from an award for describing transgender people who had gender reassignment surgery as “selfmutilated” back in 2016.

At such times there is a need to separate the artist from their art; otherwise we risk silencing a whole generation of comedians.

I fear that in time the same censorious brush would be applied to Humphries’ comedic creations. In an era where dressing in drag has been likened to blackface, Dame Edna’s days were surely numbered.

Dame Edna, housewife superstar and Humphries’ finest comic creation, in time would be cancelled as an outdated trope and probably as an unacceptable parody of the transgender community, which of course it is not. Sir Les would no doubt meet the same fate, with critics too dumb to realise he’s a parody.

I’m glad Humphries goes to the grave defending his “ultimate right to give deep and profound offence” before this time has come.