While the bogan has embraced Underbelly to the extent that it is now being shot in an additional dimension, this shudderingly deep love of watching re-enactments of local organised crime has come up short in one crucial boganic area. Sure, the bogan can take itself on a highly satisfying rage/forgiveness/rage/forgiveness excursion using Matthew Newton’s private life, or it can admire how many different Ed Hardy t-shirts Mick Gatto has, but in the pursuit of genuine bogan-friendly lols, another Australian crime figure has the lot of them covered.
Mark “Chopper” Read, the 56 year old earless ex-convict turned celebrity, excites the bogan visually with his home-style tattoos, ultimate Movember moustache, and distinct lack of ear cartilage. He also excites the bogan with his backstory of torture, kidnapping, and prison violence. He has even offered to entertain the bogan with a hastily assembled rap album, a series of crime books, and comedy tours around the nation. But more than anything, the bogan’s love for Chopper can be more accurately attributed to watching other people pretending to be Chopper.
While using the term “Chinese whispers” to describe this multi-stage stupefying simulacra process would create uneasiness amongst the Southern Cross tattooed set, it is nonetheless true that the Eric Bana to Ronnie Johns alley ‘oop has distilled Chopper down to the barest of bogan baiting memes. The Chopper caricature of 2010 retains some theoretical capacity to commit crimes, but it is primarily a stammering pastiche of pitch-shifted dumbed down quips of indeterminate origin, designed to extract low-hanging bogan laughs in 90 second parcels. This, to the bogan, is the ideal model of a criminal; someone with a total of six jokes, loose morals, and a big moustache. In other words, a bogan male during the month of November. Waving a gun.
The bogan’s preference for “hyper-reality” is a result of its persistent dislike of detail, coupled with an attention span demolished by energy drinks, shit television, and spurious claims of ADHD. As a result, a bogan-favoured folkloric criminal needs to have an appearance suitable for costume parties, throwaway lines or mannerisms suitable for spirit-crushing repetition for the entire duration of said parties, and some sort of loveable streak that represents a credible each way bet between impressing other male bogans with its finger-gunning maxtremity, and endearing itself to other female bogans with its dangerous charm. The logical conclusion of this analysis is that thanks to someone impersonating someone who impersonated Mark Read, Ned Kelly will be given the chop as the bogan’s criminal of choice.
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