By FRANCES GRANT
Some of society's assumptions don't stand up to rigorous scrutiny. It's easy, for example, to lay the blame for youth suicides on heavy metal rock lyrics. But do Ozzy Osbourne and the like really have the morbid effect on young people that some believe?
Tonight, Australian John Safran puts the heavy metal influence to the test in his show John Safran's Music Jamboree (TV One, 10.05pm).
He conducts an interview with Osbourne in front of an audience of young people controlling a "worm" that rates the Osbourne suicide effect. The worm shows viewers whether the youths feel more or less like killing themselves as the befuddled Osbourne exposes his inner soul: "I'm a lovable loony, I'm not satanic."
You get the picture. John Safran's Music Jamboree is satirical, guerrilla TV in the tradition of American Michael Moore (Bowling For Columbine, The Awful Truth, TV Nation).
But where Moore goes for broader targets and serious social issues, Safran centres his activities on the music business, an industry he has a personal interest in through the tragic failure of his hip-hop ambitions.
The show is set in a High Fidelity-style record shop, and includes general rants on topics such as album cover art and surreptitious meetings with the Music Mole, who exposes a music industry scandal each week.
But it's not just about digging the dirt. There are stunts and Moore-style ambushes, too.
In a hilarious sequence last week, Safran paid homage to 80s dance movie Footloose by taking its major plot elements back to his old college, a single-sex, Jewish high school in Melbourne.
As in the movie, dancing is banned at this conservative school. Cue Safran interviewing his old headmaster, using the biblical quotes employed by Footloose star Kevin Bacon in one of the movie's most impassioned scenes.
When his "quotes from the Book of Footloose" failed to sway the rabbi, Safran adopted more desperate measures, storming the school with a surprise Footloose dance routine. The bemused boys being hurried away from the scandal by their teachers might just have been converted.
From this side of the Tasman, the entertainment is completed by Safran taking the Aussie accent and Downunder rising inflection to searing new extremes. The ends of his sentences rear up like Uluru out of the desert, and he talks about "Austraya and Austrayans" with such relish he can only be spoofing.
Safran made his mark taking part in the TV series, Race Around the World, in which participants made short documentaries about their travels.
While other racers made conventional docos about interesting places, Safran's filmed exploits included breaking into Disneyland and planting a Saddam Hussein doll in the It's a Small World exhibition, running naked through Jerusalem and getting a voodoo priest in Mali to put a curse on an ex-girlfriend, which landed him in a bit of hot water back home.
He also ran into a spot of bother confronting current affairs host Ray Martin outside his house one morning. This did not further his career in television but Safran finally found a home for his own show with the rather more alternative SBS channel.
Safran isn't one to shy away from challenges. Last week he succeeded in getting nine ordinary blokes into one of Australia's most exclusive nightclubs through the simple trick of disguising them as masked rock stars Slip Knot.
The jamboree also includes regular features: an intriguing world music section, featuring deadpan musicologist "Dr Jordania", followed by strangely original performances by Australian bands.
Punks Frenzal Rhomb delivered Punch In The Face on traditional Pakistani instruments last week. Tonight, Mental As Anything play The Nips Are Getting Bigger on the instruments of Iran.
For sheer gall, Safran cannot be faulted. This is coupled with a breathtaking disregard for his own dignity. It takes guts to front up to a boys' school dressed in legwarmers, for example.
Tonight, Safran puts on an extraordinary performance around the Melbourne public transport system, dressed as Osbourne and singing Suicidal Solution backwards to distinctly unimpressed teens. The only life endangered here is his own.
Telly terrorist who targets music biz
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