And they call us hysterical….
“In the latest dispatch from the End of Civilisation, I feel compelled to reveal a harrowing experience I had recently, an experience so disturbing that I have only just stopped shaking enough to write.
There I was, hoping for a relaxing Saturday, sitting down in front of the TV to enjoy a nice day’s football, when something so horrible, so dreadful, so blood-chilling happened that I can scarcely believe it wasn’t a dream.
The football started, the players hurled themselves into action, but as I pumped up the volume I heard it: a woman’s voice.”
Ben Pobjie’s ironic piece in this week’s Crikey (Keeping women in their place: on the Brownlow red carpet. Wearing dresses – http://tiny.cc/PJHxh) was instructive, less so for its satirising of the hysteria that has accompanied Kelli Underwood’s debut as a commentator (listen to this on Neil Mitchell if you don’t know what I mean – http://tiny.cc/J2LTJ) than it was for the content of the comments submitted on the article.
Apart from the fact that some Crikey readers can’t recognise satire when they see it, one might have expected the level of debate about whether having a woman call the football is a good thing or not might have produced slightly more enlightened comments than that of Crikey reader, Margaret Wenham:
Could be any number of factors: the girly voice, the fact that she (like I) is female and has never played and will never play the game (particularly at AFL level) and therefore can never know what it’s like and what it takes physically and mentally, or the constant stream of call cliches. Most likely it’s a combination, but the latter really grinds my goat. As for the Brownlows, if I had my druthers the chicks would be banned from that as well. Sorry girls, but‘s just not about you.
Hmmmm. Apart from wondering how one does ‘grind a goat’ – the mind boggles – Anthony Hudson and Steve Quartermain, on this reckoning, should be immediately out of a job.
A cursory search of the comments on other publications featuring stories on Kelli Underwood display an expected litany of similar complaints – her voice is too high, she speaks in clichés, and so it goes. Most of it is from men.
Most disturbing though is the level of vitriol coming from other women. Take Kaz from Sydney:
Her voice is annoying that is my primary thing, but yes i will say i don’t like it, what is next a women in the ch 9 cricket team with Bill , Tony and the Boys. I think my late grandfather said it correctly …just cause you can doesn’t mean you should.
Not exactly Solidarity Forever. Still not quite as bad as Vic whose misspelt misogyny took me right back to the days of back to back Magpie premierships and smoking on the ground at half-time:
Shielas calling the football, the AFL is really trying to cut costs now. Managed to hear call 10 minutes of a game just is not right changed the channel. The VFL has gone down the toilet alright.
S’pose the reference to the VFL should have been a giveaway…
Well Kelli has certainly stirred up the bullants’ nest by making her entry into AFL calling for Network Ten. The nasal drone of Gerard Whately and the honk of Andrew Maher, the self-satisfied repetitions and tone deaf squealing of Rex Hunt, the apparent disinterest in naming possessions compared to making personal opinions heard of various callers are as nothing compared to Kelli’s sins, it would seem. Of course every female making an entry into a previous male exclusivity zone is going to find trouble. Kelli is still learning, and needs, like all announcers do, more time to refine her voice projection, get into her diaphragm and tweak her style for TV. Personally, I hope she stays, and learns, and finds her place in the sun. I am sick of the wall to wall testosterone of the media of AFL.
Couldn’t agree more.