Four of the most popular Chris Lilley shows have been silently pulled from the Australian Netflix catalogue amid the Black Lives Matter movement.
Summer Heights High, Angry Boys, We Can be Heroes, and Jonah from Tonga have all disappeared from the platform following years of criticism as each show features Lilley performing in blackface and brownface.
Summer Heights High, and Jonah From Tonga saw Lilley wear brown makeup to portray Tongan character Jonah Takalua. In We Can Be Heroes, Lilley plays Chinese physics student Ricky Wong. The character of S.mouse in Angry Boys featured Lilley in blackface, where he repeatedly used the n-slur.
The discourse surrounding Chris Lilley and his propensity for racist caricatures was pushed to the forefront last year following the release of his emphatically ugly series Lunatics.
Lilley faced criticism over his portrayal of South African woman, Jana, who dons a large afro and tanned skin — an aesthetic plucked straight from the Rachel Dolezal handbook.
The Lunatics producer Laura Waters claims the character is not a woman of colour.
“Correcting some confusion – in the new show Lunatics, Chris Lilley is not portraying a woman of colour. When the series is released you will see that Jana is a white woman with huge 70s-style curly hair,” she said in a tweet.
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Chris Lilley blows and it should be illegal for North Shore white bros that went to Barker College to pursue a career in comedy.
The removal of the four Lilley shows are a ripple effect from the Black Lives Matter movement. The entertainment industry has been forced to reflect on the use of blackface, and entrenched racism in some of the most popular shows.
Earlier this week streaming services around the world have given Little Britain the flick for repeated instances of blackface.
Creators David Walliams and Matt Lucas have previously acknowledged that a number of the show’s most famous sketches would no longer be acceptable.
Cops – a US reality show that follows city police officers and country sheriff deputies during patrols – was also cancelled by the Paramount Network after 32 seasons.
The decision to can the show was praised by the civil rights group Color of Change who criticised the show for its “significant role in advancing distorted representations of crime, justice, race and gender within culture”.
