“It’s Satire, Apparently”: Mark Humphries Unmasks Himself As The Real Captain GetUp
"I didn't think it was possible for a fictional superhero to get #MeToo'd, but, well, here we are," Humphries says of his foam-headed alter-ego.
Like most things in the leadup to the May federal election, the story of satirical superhero Captain GetUp has alternated between the ludicrous and the downright confusing.
The foam-headed mascot was designed as a kind of twisted lampoon of everything that GetUp stands for — which made his name all the more confusing. Why is the thing doing the parodying called the same thing as the thing being parodied?
Add to that the fact that the good Captain’s videos have all the production design and general sense of pacing you’d expect of a safety instruction video in a ’90s laser tag parlour, his complicated backstory, and the fact that the character has been unmasked as a Columbian YouTuber, and it’s hard not to see his very brief rise and catastrophic fall as typical of election buffoonery we have come to expect this political season.
Now, to add to the general sense of mayhem, comedian Mark Humphries has come forward and revealed himself to be the “true” mastermind behind Captain GetUp, Columbian Youtubers be damned.
The man inside the Captain GetUp costume.pic.twitter.com/9Tb62eb92o
— Mark Humphries (@markhumphries) April 18, 2019
“In my stage career performing Shakespeare and Moliere, I’ve inhabited some incredibly complex and flawed characters,” Humphries says at the start of the sketch. “But none was as complex and flawed and just fucking dumb as my current role, Captain GetUp.”
From there, he goes on to skewer the confusingly communicated intent of the character. “So they want me to play a satirical superhero that represents a left wing lobby group, but was actually created by a conservative lobby group to destroy the left wing lobby group that the character represents? Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.”
He also references the bizarre saga that embroiled the Captain when he began rubbing himself up against a bilboard of Tony Abbott’s political rival, Zali Steggall.
“I didn’t think it was possible for a fictional superhero to get #MeToo’d, but, well, here we are,” Humphries says.
Though, the line that sums up the whole mess comes towards the middle of the video, when a confused punter tries to work out the Captain’s true political leanings.
“It’s satire, apparently,” Humphries says with a shrug.