Yesterday Chris Lilley posted, then deleted, a video to his Instagram account from his days as S.Mouse, a widely-criticised African-American character from his 2011 show ‘Angry Boys‘. The music video, called ‘Squashed N***a‘, opens with a shot of a black boy dead on the road after being hit by a car, and features Lilley, in blackface, using the N-word 15 times.
The reaction was swift and harsh, as a number of high profile Australians, Indigenous and otherwise, expressed their shock and dismay that Lilley would post a video like this less than a week after the verdict in the Elijah Doughty case, in which a 56-year-old man ran over and killed the Indigenous 14-year-old.
Lilley responded by deleting his social media accounts, and then reinstating his Twitter in order to post the following “apology”:
https://twitter.com/ChrisLilley/status/891203760361357312
Not surprisingly, the standard “sorry you got upset” non-apology format is not flying with many punters, who see Lilley’s ongoing determination to use other ethnicities to make weak jokes as part of a culture that allows Indigenous Australians to be systemically dehumanised.
We didn’t ‘misinterpret’ your videos racism. We responded correctly. You re-posted it as if it served some kind relevance. This is YOURS. https://t.co/WKLG0aiUvm
— A.B. Original (@ABOriginalBAM) July 29, 2017
https://twitter.com/broek_af/status/891211619883073537
https://twitter.com/_centrista/status/891229916401852417
https://twitter.com/aarghpirates/status/891217358026547201
Obviously some people are defending him, most using the age-old “but it was so long ago” excuse. Fortunately, that’s been neatly rebutted by this succinct summary of events:
https://twitter.com/catherinebouris/status/891152685705052160
Once again: come on, Chris. You have got to start doing better than this.
