In 1998, Britain's The Eleven O'Clock Show introduced a new character in the line-up. Ali G was the "voice of da yoof", and his caricaturish portrayal of British "wiggers" was an immediate success. The man behind Ali G, Sascha Baron Cohen, was a young and talented comedian from the socialist-Zionist theatre scene. His skill with creating and portraying characters had already been noted - his "Bruno" character had appeared on the Paramount Comedy Channel earlier the same year, and a precursor to his later "Borat" character had caught the attention of a British producer.
Cohen almost never gives interviews out of character - when in the eye of the media, he is seldom himself, but rather Ali G, Borat, Bruno, or perhaps others. While some may dismiss this as shyness, others might applaud it as a commitment to his craft. Both his characters Ali G and Borat have been very popular in New Zealand, spawning terrible memes that involve people saying things like, "Very nice, I like," then pausing for laughter.
What few people realise is that New Zealand is itself the unwitting possessor of a comedic talent that rivals Cohen in skill and perhaps surpasses him in commitment. Whereas Cohen occasionally steps out of character, such as to get married, New Zealand's comedic artist never breaks character. Her commitment to the role, the art, the pure comedy, is more akin to Christian Bales' character in The Prestige - relentless living of the art for art's sake.
It's not publicly known when the character "Liz Shaw" was first invented, but several leaps of infamy have thrown her into the consciousness of a great many urbanite Kiwis. She began her performance at Auckland University in 2004, parading in bold attire, attracting enough attention to warrant mentions of "that girl who wears short dresses and no underwear" in student magazine Craccum. Her impassioned and in-character replies to her critics became a regular feature in the magazine until 2006, when editor Ryan Sproull - not yet realising her genius - banned the use of her name. (The only exception was BT Boyle's satirical letter listing "The Liz Shawshank Redemption" as a hypothetical pornographic film.)
In 2005, Auckland pornographer, businessman and later mayoral candidate Steve Crow published an advertisement in Craccum for an "A+ model search", which promised one lucky and adventurous lady a prize of $10,000 off her student loan. '05 editors Alec Hutchinson and Stian Overdahl became aware of the true nature of the advertisement too late to prevent it from going to print. The meeting with evangelical Christian student-association president Greg Langton was apparently hilarious.
The advertisement, which was not repeated in the magazine, was actually searching for models for a pornographic movie. Seeing an opportunity to promote the Liz Shaw character, the anonymous artist behind the character immediately put herself forward for the competition. Though she did not win the $10,000 - and I am not certain that anyone did - she was offered a much smaller sum for tasteful nudes in Steve Crow's gentlemen's magazine NZX. She accepted the offer.
After the photo shoot, The Artist Currently Known as Liz Shaw (or "TACKALS") wrote an article for Craccum detailing the experience, in her intentionally awkward English phraseology. She described it as a fairly positive experience - a position she reversed some several weeks later.
Craccum readers, unfamiliar with the subtlety of the humour, wrote letter after letter criticising and insulting the Liz Shaw character. Undaunted by a complete lack of appreciation, TACKALS made her next move: she enrolled the Liz Shaw character in the Young Nats group at Auckland University. While this information was not kept secret, the public still did not realise the extent of the joke being pulled on them.
TVNZ's current-events show 20/20 took a closer look at Steve Crow's competition, and TACKALS managed to get an interview with "Liz Shaw" included on film. The unsuspecting journalists bought the act hook, line and sinker. The footage is available online here.
Even with such a coup under her belt, TACKALS did not rest. Incredibly, nor did she break character. Reports of seeing Liz Shaw on buses began to spread through the Auckland University student populace, her attitude and attire (a studied, consistent "previous-year's Karen Walker") never dropping even for a moment.
TACKALS also entered the realm of New Zealand's blogosphere and cyberspace, first gaining infamy for her Liz Shaw character on the late Craccum Forum and the NZ Games forum, but quickly spreading from there. She was soon known as the "Candyman" of the Internet - speak her name three times and she arrives. This has yet to be confirmed, but one source suggests that she uses Ian Wishart's trick of Google Alerts to inform her of any reference - such as to his book "The Divinity Code". When someone posts anything anywhere about The Divinity Code, Ian Wishart is alerted and comes running, to see what is being said about The Divinity Code. It has to be in that order, too. Not just "Code Divinity The", but "The Divinity Code".
On the Internet, TACKALS found further chances to hone her "Liz Shaw-speak" abuse of the English language, revealing more of her genius. Such a perfect misuse of English comes only through an incredible literacy, akin to a clown's seemingly mistaken juggling, which actually requires years of practice. She was being noticed by major figures in the Kiwi blogosphere, too, with Kiwiblog's DPF calling her "an interesting Young Nat".
The end of 2005 marked a turning point in the art of TACKALS. She experimented with a darker kind of humour, claiming that her experience with Crow's NZX and the subsequent public criticism had caused an eating disorder. Cruder observers, if they were aware of the performance, might believe TACKALS was introducing a kind of offensive humour to liven up the character. A finer understanding of the art of Liz Shaw, however, appreciates the new evolution of the character as borderline Asperger's with a narcissistic disorder, parodying the youth of today.
In making this and other outrageous claims, commonly understood to be "cries for attention", TACKALS brought the Liz Shaw character full circle, eliciting both pity and disgust from an audience suddenly unsure of how to react. While the Liz Shaw character appeared merely ignorant and slightly out of kilter with societal norms, her audience could mock her with social impunity - the same kind of mockery was exacted daily on many others, by chauvinistic men and insecure women. The introduction of psychological and even psychiatric illness to the character threw this state of affairs into disarray. Perhaps the most perfect expression of this new development was Otago's regional TV show Cow TV ringing Ryan Sproull for comment about Liz Shaw. Sproull pleaded over the phone, "Please don't give her any more attention. I really do think she's ill. It's become a matter of ethics."
The next surge in Lizmania was provided by sickening TV show New Zealand Idol. In 1999, an obscure group of New Zealand Satanists attempted to immantise the Christian eschaton by creating a reality-TV show that sought members for a pop group. Popstars created TrueBliss, and the concept was sold first to Australia, then the UK and US. The virus mutated overseas and returned to New Zealand, whose immune system didn't recognise it and was infected again. So New Zealand Idol was born.
A major feature of the show was the initial auditions for short-listing. Realising that the televised auditions were selected for entertainment rather than for quality, TACKALS entered, secure in the knowledge her character, her art, was entertaining as hell - even (especially?) to those who did not realise they were being fooled.
Once again, people bought the Liz Shaw character without question, even after she selected a song with the lyrics "crash and burn" and badly performed it with such precision that she was interrupted and derided by the judges almost immediately. In her most public performance yet, TACKALS emphasised the mental illness of the Liz Shaw character, criticising the judges, including Frankie Stevens' male-pattern baldness. It was a calculated move, and it paid off. "Liz" having signed away the rights to the filming of the audition, South Pacific Pictures on-sold the footage to Telecom, through which it was played again and again on national television in the form of a cellphone ad.
2005 was truly an annus mirabilis for the Liz Shaw chracter. In the words of her website:
NZ Idol changed Liz in many ways and she has decided to pursue her goals of running her own newspaper. in October of this year, Liz started her own newspaper, The Right Word, which is distributed weekly. Unbeknown to the public, Liz had been planning this publication for over a year. Alongside Liz's latest project she continues to study at the University of Auckland and in summer is going to resume her diploma in advertising in order to gain the skills and knowledge required to make her newspaper a success.
Liz also has a part time job. She works for a small market research business, Prime Research in Auckland.
Liz has been a lover of cats all her life and she currently has a black and white kitten named Scratchy whom she adores.
The website, Slinky.net.nz, has sadly since disappeared, but much of the material remains available in the Wayback Machine, here. With this valuable source, the public can examine not only The Right Word - itself a masterpiece in political satire - but also TACKALS' experiments with poetry and song-writing. Here is just one sample:
I used to have a casual sex partner, for over ten months
and we always got sexually satisfied
sometimes I didn't mind but other times I wanted more
it's not about him, well maybe a little
I thought I knew him but I knew OF him for a long time
[chorus] Casual sex, casual sex everyone wants it till they've got it
no commitment and no problems it all seems good till you get it
casual sex casual sex it can do any harm to you
well this is wrong so very very wrong
I was attached to him, he knows this but he wasn't attached to me
I wish he was but he told me that he wasn't and will never be
I did enjoy the sex with him but he was very selfish
and there was no emotional connection, not on his part anyway
What the reader must understand is that while lesser artists, like Sascha Baron Cohen, might invent such events, TACKALS' dedication is such that she would actually engage in sexual practices with young men whom the Liz Shaw character would find personally and politically appealing. To match our Kiwi-made performance artist, Ali G would literally have to find someone named M'Julie and sleep with them.
Exhausted by the events of 2005, TACKALS took a brief sabbatical, directing her creative energies. Her performances were getting more and more blatant, and while they confronted such contemporary issues as mental illness, body image and politics, her art continued to be unappreciated. The situation is reminiscent of the Yes Men and their ever-increasing obviousness in parodying the positions of their victims. What Liz needed, to continue the analogy, was a huge inflatable phallus. She found that phallus in Shortland Street.
Television had worked in the past, and so to television TACKALS returned, this time finding work as an extra on hit New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street. Naturally, she understood that her standing in the public was not yet such that she would be noticed simply by being in the background of a soap-opera scene. Already having established an online presence at the Shortland Street fan site, TACKALS, still playing the Liz Shaw character, leaked essential plot details - ones South Pacific Pictures had invested considerable money in marketing. The uproar was immediate and, for the artist, gratifying.
The use of performance art to highlight contemporary issues in New Zealand society is a recurrent theme in the Liz Shaw project. Previously putting the spotlight on things like the porn industry, the National Party and mental illness, she now turned New Zealand's attention to the wasteful nature of capitalism and the amount of wealth that goes into promoting something as pointless as a soap-opera plot. TACKALS' point was left unmade directly, with mainstream New Zealand media seeing the "finger" and not the "moon" to which it pointed. Newspaper and television media leapt on her previous performances in NZX and NZ Idol, both failing to understand her art and, in a way, making her point for her.
What next for the Liz Shaw project? Well, I intend to interview the artist, though I have no hope that she will break character. Her latest performance in progress is a political blog, entitled Political Passion, where it seems she will be mixing emotional/sexual confession ("passion") with her own brand of studied drooling conservatism. Unable to resist the chance to broadcast the Liz Shaw character via video, she has introduced video-blogging to her repertoire. So far, she has recorded 10 performances, though there are sure to be more soon. They are all available on YouTube here.
Additionally, she has fooled "Don't Vote Labour" founder Andrew Moore, who has placed the Liz Shaw character as a moderator on the site's forum, where she has produced such gems as, "If National are elected then they will also reduce taxes therefore you'll have more money in the pocket. People are worried about health care, but having experienced both public and private, I can say that given the choice I wouldn't use public." Pure genius. She adds given the choice to highlight the fact that only those who can afford private healthcare have a choice in the matter at all. Her performance on the site is chronicled here. It's not yet as impressive as her other work, but no doubt she will work up to something great.
So there you have it. New Zealand's answer to Borat, infamous but not famous, well-known but not well-liked, dismissed but not understood - and yet undaunted. We can only hope that as more people understand the lifelong performance-art project of "the Liz Shaw character", she will find her place amongst our classics: Fred Dagg, the Wizard of Christchurch, and Brendan Horan.
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