Australians have a capacity to laugh at ourselves which is generally admired by people from other lands, however it's often misunderstood by those for whom personal respect is held in very high regard in terms of behaviour...

Perhaps the British influence in the foundation of the nation has something to do with it, as English television comedy has pretty well always been well received, evoking laughter for Australians, where others might not ‘get' the humour.

Dr Wendy Davis

Older programs like The Comedy Company, My Name's McGooley, What's Yours?, Kingswood Country, The Mavis Bramston Show and so on evidently drew on the British formula, mainly using the plasticity of the language, and innuendo, to great effect. Kath and Kim aside, of late say in the last decade, programs have become much more personal, to the extent that, for some in the community, moral and decency boundaries have been stretched, almost to breaking. Examples might be Chris Lilley's We Can Be Heroes and the later Chaser and John Safran programs.

These programs and similar intrigued Dr Wendy Davis, to the extent she researched them and the genre more broadly, for her PhD thesis, 'Televisual Control: The Resistance of the Mockumentary'.

Wendy defines a mockumentary as a production which 'feels like' a documentary in that it's shot in that format, however, it's meant to be comic too, making fun of the subject it's documenting.

She followed up Kath and Kim, The Office, and latterly Curb your Enthusiasm with Larry David, the Seinfeld writer.

She said, "I find it an interesting form because it blurs the lines between the fictional and the ‘real', and has the capacity to critique our culture at the same time."

Dr Davis said, "It's a really tricky thing to get right ... a mockumentary is one way in which we can take a look at our own culture and laugh at it, but while you are laughing at it, it's also making you, hopefully, think, question and be a little bit critical, as well."  She added that, in her opinion, if a culture can't laugh at itself then, perhaps, it's taking itself a bit too seriously; it's all a question of taste.

For the mockumentary to be successful there are lots of dependencies, among them the particular culture, the time, the place and what's going on in the world.

Dr Davis concluded, "Some comedy can be timeless, other material can be very much of its time."

The academic was recently awarded one of CQUniversity's Research Advancement Award Scheme Early Career Fellowships for 2010. It is connected with the newly formed Learning and Teaching Education Research Centre (LTERC) at the University. Her role extends to that of Convenor of the Centre's Cultural Studies and Education Special Interest Group.