I admit it; I loved Ja’mie: Private School Girl.
The new comedy series, which premiered last night on ABC1, fed all my prejudices and biases, unconscious or otherwise.
The show’s writer, Chris Lilley, who also plays Ja’mie, has created a monster of privilege and ego in this character – a magnificent comic creation with just enough truth about her to make us squirm as we laugh.
Clearly the granddaughter of Dame Edna, Ja’mie King has exactly the same blind self-satisfaction that makes both Aussie females so horrifying, hilarious and strangely admirable.
Ja’mie is who she is, and not only does she not apologise for it, she expects to receive nothing but applause. It is interesting that both female characters are played by men. I’m not sure I want to think too hard about what that means – except to say that the distance it creates between the performers and their characters probably helps them to see so acutely.
Ja’mie accepts her privilege as nothing less than her right and her due as, I suspect, do most of the offspring of the well-to-do. Indeed, I recently ran a creative writing workshop in a school not a million metaphorical miles from Ja’mie’s fictional Hillford Girls Grammar School, and before I began the teacher who had organised it sighed deeply and asked if I could somehow disabuse the girls of the notion that they were all going to end up CEOs of major corporations one day.
Unlike Lilley, she wasn’t joking.
Because, as Private School Girl makes abundantly clear, Australia is rapidly creating a class system via the mechanism most of the rest of the world has at least attempted to use to dismantle theirs – school education.
As I have experienced personally, it has become an act of some courage for a relatively prosperous family to actually choose a public, comprehensive school for their children.
It is now simply accepted that if you are a good parent, particularly with aspirations to identify as part of an upper class, you will send your children to the most expensive fee charging school you can afford.
In Summer Heights High, Lilley’s most recent show featuring Ja’mie, her disdain for the public school she suddenly found herself in was refreshingly frank and honest. That’s the endearing part of both Everage and King, they say what they mean – which is often what most people think.
But unlike the rest of us, they feel absolutely no need to apologise for it. They are like our secret selves let loose in all their venal snobbery and self-aggrandising narcissism – and what a relief it is to see our hypocrisy run free.
Most public school parents have probably found themselves either attacked or – more commonly – patronised. “I hear it’s a very good school!” says the horrified private school mother, with a ghastly fake smile, as she reacts to the startling news that the perfectly reasonable looking woman she’s just met is actually a creature from another planet entirely – planet public.
Top Comments
I went to a public high school with quite a good reputation for good student behaviour, strict uniform regulations, great HSC results and quality teaching in South West Sydney. Before that, i went to another local high school with a terrible reputation and they were just minutes away from each other. There was a massive difference, despite them being on the borderline of the different suburbs they were in. I don't think people should be judging others based on the area of which they live. Sure, Western Sydney has a horrific reputation but if people keep judging the area by the reputation, will it ever change and become a nicer community? I am regardless, always proud to say where i am from. People i meet always ask about any shootings or stabbings as if i were there on the street, watching it happen and i just pass it off as a joke because let's be serious now. We shouldn't be judging people based on what private or public education they received or where they live or have lived, especially to put one down. Sure, they may be girls like Ja'mie that attend private schools but that doesn't mean all private school students are like that. I know a few girls that are like that in a public high school. It is all based on the person. If a person doesn't feel comfortable in a public high school, they should move to private and vice versa. This isn't a reason to put the other education system down though. Just because it didn't work for them, it doesn't mean it won't work for other people. The article is very reasonable but some of the comments aren't so much.
Lighten up people! Ja'mie is just a very extreme version of self-obsessed, narcissistic and vainglorious teenage girl - and she can be found in any school, and unfortunately even in the workplace.