Style
Fast Forward was noted for its fast paced satirical comedy which particularly lampooned the media, in particular film and TV, with its precise parodies of well known television shows (such as Kung Fu, Lost In Space, The Munsters, A Current Affair), personalities (such as Clive James, Jana Wendt, Hinch, Geoffrey Robertson) and commercials (such as Amex, Nescafe) .
It subjects were also Australian politics which it attacked through various political impersonations ( including John Howard, Paul Keating), and also using the political puppets, Rubbery Figures, previously seen in small segments on the ABC, and based was based on Peter Nicholsons political cartoons.
Another key distinguishing feature was the use of simulated channel surfing to switch from sketch to sketch, often in the middle of a sketch, sometimes after the punchline. Particularly a sketch would abruptly switch to a momentary segment of static, followed by another sketch, simulating the effect of the viewer repeatedly switching channels. The channel surfing device became a distinctive hallmark of the show that helped move quickly from sketch to sketch.
The television and multimedia subject matter of the sketches, pace, style and devices were real points of difference from predecessor sketch comedy shows of the time, particularly earlier shows such as The Mavis Bramston Show, The Naked Vicar Show, Australia You're Standing In It, The D-Generation, The Comedy Company : Fast Forward was more media-focused and parody-focused; a real difference, and the binding force for the whole show, was the now-famous channel changing device. The white noise and on-screen static that represented the channel change became the modern television equivalent of a curtain being drawn at an old-fashioned vaudeville show.
Fast Forward was also well known for its excellent musical parodies, particularly of current music video clips, many of which featured Gina Riley. Some of the better known music parodies included ABBA, Cher and Dannii Minogue.
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Famous quotes containing the word style:
“Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
—John Fiske (b. 1939)
“The authoritarian child-rearing style so often found in working-class families stems in part from the fact that parents see around them so many young people whose lives are touched by the pain and delinquency that so often accompanies a life of poverty. Therefore, these parents live in fear for their children’s future—fear that they’ll lose control, that the children will wind up on the streets or, worse yet, in jail.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)