Clarke and Dawe's mock interviews and the politics of duration

This chapter discusses Clarke and Dawe, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe’s satirical mock interview vignettes that appeared on Australian television for nearly 30 years, until Clarke’s death in April 2017. Applying a performance studies analysis to Clarke and Dawe for the first time, I enable examination of the hidden political aspects of this work, revealing it as creating a uniquely trans-temporal aesthetic, thus complicating the usual discussion of their work as simply political satire on Australian television. While Clarke and Dawe is performed on screen, I suggest that the entirety of their work, as recorded in books, DVDs, and the web archive, presents with a kind of performative force that can only be called political. I highlight how a new, composite performative body emerges from the ever-the-same stories of crooked political doings, Clarke and Dawe’s ever-the-same performance characters, and the persistent presence of their ageing bodies over time. I argue that it is the passage of time, evident through the video recordings of their performances, seen as a whole, that evokes a new, political dimension.