If you walk into a room full of student politicians and mention Simon Target’s 1996 documentary, Uni, you can watch a display of rabidity and pressure of speech. Though the observational documentary chronicles many aspects of university life, from revues to campus protests to Honours theses to intra-friend group relationships, it’s unknown to the standard student who traipses down Eastern Avenue and denies flyers. How has this documentary, immortalised in YouTube episodes, reached fever-pitch popularity in some student life circles, but not touched others?
The documentary follows the lives of three undergraduate students in 1996: 1995 Honi editor and Arts Revue Director Charles Firth, English Honours candidate and 1996 Honi editor Andrew Hansen and Psychology student Cal Beattie. Two of these subjects went on to become members of the household-name comedy group the Chaser.
In student politics circles, the fly-on-the-wall documentary is considered “an invaluable archive”. The documentary captures the three-way race for SRC presidency in 1996, between Firth’s mate and Labor Left candidate Sholto, Katrina for Student Education Action (essentially modern-day Grassroots), and Georgina for Reform (campus liberals). Strangely enough, this mirrors our current elections. While Firth and Sholto stress over the campaign, lecture-bash and pamphlet on Eastern Avenue, Target captures Cal’s struggle to finish an assignment in the fluorescent-lit Fisher Library.
In a 2014 Honi article, Dominic Ellis points to it as proof that “Hacklyf never changes”. Uni does the unfortunate job of making these hacks feel their lives deserve cinematic attention. It also immortalises a time to which many devote nostalgia, a campus-as-world untouched by austerity measures such as Voluntary Student Unionism. 1996 Honi editor Louise Buckingham articulated, “it was a magical time in student politics”, where aspects of student life were well-resourced. Uni preserves a time when campus life was pure folly when (wealthy private school) students were unburdened by the cost of living and could dedicate their time to the grift of student politics and the play of student theatre. Charles Firth reminisces, “it’s almost an advertisement for university”.
But these arenas were only available to those who could afford to play the game — an issue we continue to reckon with today. The plight of Beattie — the psychology student who struggles with a full-time work week, passing classes and an incidence of theft — contrasts the boys’ luxuriating and game-playing days on a sun-baked Manning Bar balcony. The joy in student life clearly runs on class and gendered lines — and, though the documentary fails to explore this — racial lines. Reflecting, Firth notes “if Target was smarter he would’ve woven a tale of class privilege”. Hansen confirms, stating that “it might’ve benefited from a broader spread of students” saying the three chosen were “atypical”. The games of student politics are still only available to those who have time to play them, meaning those who use the stupol arena as a training ground to federal/state politics end-up mirroring today’s; a boys’ club of privileged, white, privately-educated and power-hungry players.
Interestingly, the documentary was initially meant to follow Buckingham’s 1996 Honi team and their processes. The 1995 team’s antics — flagrant corruption, sex scandals, satirical protests and dope smoke-ins — had received wide press coverage and resulted in threatened expulsion. All of this got back to the ABC, who decided such editors would make a good documentary subject. Yet, once the ABC got to university in 1996, they realised that much of the work done for student journalism requires sitting behind a computer. Additionally, Buckingham shared that their team was divided on whether they should allow the camera crew to invade the treasured Honi office. “We were worried it would change the way we worked, if we were conscious cameras were there. Honi involves all-nighters and late-night drives to printers, so we were worried filming would change how we operated”, she explained.
It’s important to remember that the campus of 1996 was a lot more unfamiliar with reality TV than us. Buckingham explained that the release of scathing 1996 documentary, Rats in the Ranks, about the 1994 Leichhardt Council mayoral elections, cultivated fears around reality television. For the camera’s subjects, they often forgot about the lens’ presence. Firth remembered, “I would find myself in the shower chatting to the camera crew, and I would forget, and then they’d peel back the curtains just to get the shot because I’d be crying”.
Some of these fears did materialise when Uni was released, and audiences were shocked to watch storylines play out on screen that never took place: the concepts of staging and editing, central to reality television, was still foreign. In the filming process, Target lent on unethical methods to manufacture “TV-worthy” storylines. He clearly sought out characters who were either vulnerable or feasted on publicity. Some days, when Target didn’t feel he had gotten enough material he would ply his subjects with alcohol. Firth explained that Target was “able to find storylines that didn’t really exist”, which led to misrepresentations regarding relationships, and distortions of interpersonal dynamics.
Hansen confirms this, remembering that Target would turn up “with all this booze and get me and whoever else as drunk as possible”. In most scenes, they aren’t sober. To get his subjects to open up, Target opened up about his own life – but of course, that wasn’t on camera. But Hansen’s perspective divulges the more unethical lean to Target’s filmmaking process, evincing that Target was “perhaps rather pleased to discover” that he was not in a good headspace.
Going on to discover the wonders of TV’s edit suite as part of the Chaser team, Hansen reflected on his naïvety and Target’s selective inclusion: “if you only include that person being self-aggrandising, then that person looks like a self-aggrandising person”. The scenes where subjects are squirming because of intrusive questions, or where people are being “normal and decent” aren’t included. As such, it was a learning experience “if you are not making the show, you are not safe”. This edit was not just dealt to the boys, Beattie’s life was made to be “more horrible” according to Hansen.
It becomes an uncomfortable watch, especially the lengthy scenes delving into Hansen’s emotional state. Target’s interventions in Cal’s life, filming a break-in and encouraging her to complete an assignment, are also unpleasant.
Certain scenes of Uni have aged poorly, though perhaps they aren’t as estranged from our reality as we might like to think. Modern audiences may cringe at Firth and Hansen’s decision to use the nom de plume “Susan Tsang” for their unsuccessful Wentworth Medal essay attempt, under the guise that the judging panel may be biased toward a female Asian name. Target’s camera crew at the Arts Revue camp witnessed all sorts of misogynistic jokes. While it’s easy to sanction this behaviour as “acceptable at the time”, many of the women onscreen expressed discomfort. So who was this behaviour really acceptable for? And does this behaviour continue to be acceptable for a certain kind of university student? — it’s impossible to pretend that this type of rhetoric is consigned to the past.
Uni captures a slice of time that may never be recovered. Corporatisation and austerity measures, especially in the form of VSU, have eroded campus life. The centrepiece of Episode One, Arts Revue, hasn’t run since 2022. Hansen recalls that it was a “magical time” and that he felt lucky as an “outer suburban twit” to be welcomed into a circle of people “much more clever than myself”.
Nowadays, many students’ lives more closely mirror Beattie’s — working tens of hours a week and struggling to keep on top of university work. Current stupol and stujo figures say they struggle to watch the documentary: Uni’s campus is something they will never experience. Moreso than in the 1990s, students are locked out of enjoying the campus life that does exist. Firth says this nostalgia can be useful –– it can help us understand what is missing.
Both Hansen and Firth extolled the importance of campus folly. Through trial and error, in stand-up comedy, writing, acting, campaigning, these men developed a skill-set that called them to the Australian media world. Hansen recalled a particular time he performed standup at Manning, where he bombed so horribly he decided to focus only on sketches and song, a decision reflective of his career. Campus publications and shows aren’t about the output – they are never really that ‘good’ – but the process and practice.
Though we may yearn to re-live university in this golden age, our time may be better spent imagining an inclusive and vibrant future. Despite VSU, cost-of-living, and COVID, our University still bears active communities, to the credit of student activists, theatre-makers, pamphleteers, nang-rippers and Flodge-regulars. These communities may not look like their 1990s halcyon counterparts, but they are still there, and certainly more present at USyd than other universities. For students like Firth and Hansen, the activities beyond the classroom will be ever more educational than those within.
So much of uni life – protests, elections, theatre shows, comedy – are lost and only preserved in tenuous oral memories. But for better or worse, whatever Beattie, Hansen, and Firth, and the University exhibited in 1996 is preserved for posterity.
In all its flaws, misrepresentations, skewed storylines and unethical practices, Target managed to make a series that lives on. In Vic Zerbst’s closing speech for the 2024 Student Media conference, run by yours truly, they introduced comedy partner Firth as the “star of the 1996 Uni documentary”. So, perhaps Uni’s afterlife is more interesting than its life.
You want to watch? Two VHS tapes sit in Fisher Library’s storage, but thankfully, someone has uploaded all episodes to Youtube. An earlier version was printed in our Week 8 edition. The article has been amended to include Hansen’s perspectives.
