Slate magazine is running an article regarding how weak most of what passes as political satire on television is. They quote heavily from Russell L. Peterson's new book Strange Bedfellows: How Late Night Comedy Turns Democracy into a Joke and also take some time to body-slam CNN's new comedy show, Not Just Another Cable News Show (Wait. What? CNN has a new comedy show on it? I thought that was the thing Wolf Blitzer hosted every day. Are you telling me that's not a comedy?)Peterson's book, at first blush, seems to be another overly-alarmist, semi-academic attack on pop-culture -- Darrell Hammond is destroying democracy? Really? -- that I usually just ignore. Well, maybe it's the Tylenol PM I took to ease the pain of being in Utica tonight, but after reading Slate's discussion of it, I started to come around to Peterson's way of thinking...
The argument, for those of you that don't want to read Slate's 2000 word analysis of Peterson's book (much less the actual book itself, which I'm guessing has to be, like, easily 4000 words or more), is this:
1. Late night television does not do actual satire; most of the shows do "pseudo-satire." Instead of attacking real issues, pseudo-satire tends to be personality based. For example, rather than satirizing the (staggering) number of missteps of the current administration, most late night talk show hosts sum George Bush up as "Stooopid!" If you're on the other side of the political fence, the same argument can be made about Clinton: it's been eight years since he left office and we're still characterizing him as a cankle-obsessed horndog.
2. These character-based attacks have a softening quality to them. The goal of good satire is to illuminate a problem with the hope to correct it. One assumes that Will Ferrell's "Dubya" and Darrell Hammond's "Slick Willy" were originally written with the idea of negatively portraying Bush's frat-boy sensibility and Clinton's easily distracted lower extremities.
But, think about how you feel about those characters. I know I love them. Same with Dana Carvey's H. W. Bush, Chevy Chase's Gerald Ford, Dan Akroyd's Nixon and Carter, and every-single-bad-stand-up-comic-ever's Ronald Reagan. The result -- people loving the character not despite the flaws but because of them -- is the exact opposite of what satire hopes to do.
3. Ultimately, this approach removes any kind of real dialog from our comedy. We're not mocking the choices of the president, we're basically just calling him dumb, then folding our arms in rhetorical triumph. Aren't we clever?!
Except we're not. We've just simplified the argument. Do that enough and the argument itself disappears.
That, Peterson says, is how Darrell Hammond is single handedly destroying democracy!
Okay, maybe "destroying democracy" is a bit much, but when you consider that the vast majority of the people in our country keep up-to-date not from the nightly news but from late night television hosts, you begin to see the logic in Peterson's reasoning.
I'd like to use you guys as a sounding board: does the generally toothless satire of SNL or Jay Leno hurt the political dialog? Or should it be appreciated solely as an entertainment? Or does it not matter at all; that the people stupid enough to let their opinions be formed by what David Letterman says about Barack Obama probably would be too stupid to understand any kind of real satire of the man? Let me know what you think in the comments!
(By the way, it should be noted that the two shows generally given a thumbs up in the article were The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. I'd like to hear your opinion of that, too: is that pair of shows working on a deeper level?)
The Cheers episode Ken Levine's still writing in his head
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-10-2008 @ 2:16PM
moreartplease said...
I have not reads the article yet, but there does seem to be some truth to that argument, especially in the line they draw between SNL and Colbert/Stewart, who I think do true satire.
I'm not academic, but I don't know that SNL ever met the definition of satire--more parody, really. Chevy Chase's Ford was just a stumbling buffoon--not much sublety there.
I suppose the question is, did they ever claim to be satirists? In other words, did they take it upon themselves to be the sort of gadfly for truth or change or whatever that the satirist aspires to? Certainly Colbert's best work is on the level of A Modest Proposal or the like, but isn't SNL a sketch comedy show?
Just my initial $.02
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4-10-2008 @ 3:07PM
Zarquon said...
I have also not read either the article or the book, only this review. And I have to agree with moreartplease, that SNL and other imitators likely never set out to do true satire. I also think it insults our intelligence to assume that us common folk can't tell the difference between comedy and real life. No amount of dumbing down GWB would ever make me feel sentimental about the guy. Likewise I don't actually think HRC is as witchy as comedians pretend she is (but its still funny).
I'm surprised that the Daily Show and Colbert Report were given a pass; they're the ones I'm most concerned about. They're on at 11 and 11:30 (and rerun around 7, I think) the same time as the local news. Maybe they wouldn't be watching the local news anyway, but a lot of people only get their news from the Daily Show, and the fact is, its fake news. It can also be deeply cynical and makes no pretension of offering solutions or asking its audience to otherwise engage in the process at all. It just points a finger and says "broken, broken, broken". And its funny, I love the Daily Show, but its not news; I think one can be fooled into believing you're "informed" when you aren't necessarily.
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4-10-2008 @ 3:11PM
Zarquon said...
btw, I realize I got on my high horse about our intelligence being insulted for not knowing the difference between fact and fiction, and then accused others of the same thing. Forgive me.
4-10-2008 @ 4:17PM
Meg said...
I understand what you're saying, but I think that a lot of people who watch the Daily Show as a news source wouldn't watch the 11 o'clock news anyway. I know I wouldn't. The internet has really fundamentally changed the way college students get news, and I know I probably get more news online (from newspapers and other news websites), so while some people say they only get their news from the Daily Show, I think they usually mean they only get their TELEVISION news from the Daily Show.
I think the reason The Daily Show and Colbert work on a different level is because they aren't just jokes, but they tend to pique my interest in a subject so I'm more likely to seek out more information. So I think in that way, they don't necessarily have to offer solutions to problems in order to be a positive force for democracy.
4-10-2008 @ 4:54PM
Richie said...
No, that's wrong, very, very wrong. Stewart and Colbert don't breed cynicism. The system breeds cynicism.
4-10-2008 @ 3:11PM
GL said...
I don't think the impersonations on SNL are destroying democracy. The concept seems to be that these actors have a duty to help TV viewers understand the world, which is a stretch. The failure or success of the process is not dependent on one outlet (in this case, TV satire).
Personally, I don't think Colbert or Stewart are doing anything spectacular for public discourse either. They can be humorous and, at times, biting. However, they are not holding up the democratic discourse in any amazing way.
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4-10-2008 @ 3:19PM
Kim said...
The fact that many people choose to get their news from late night tv is, in my opinion, a sad testament to the poor quality of the network/cable news industry. Cable news is a complete joke as it is so filled with politically-biased hosts and commentators i feel as if I'm watching Monday Night Raw. Even the network national news resembles Entertainment Tonight more than a serious look at the news and issues facing our nation.
I get my news from a variety of different sources - online (although I try not to read any viewer comments as they often are ignorant, hate-filled rants), BBC World News (the only world news program that actually has world news other than 100% US news), and, yes, The Daily Show and Colbert Report.
The author fails to understand that the use of humor is a valid means of looking at an issue. Plus, if politicians didn't behave like such self-serving baffoons, they wouldn't be the butt of so many jokes. After all, it's better to laugh then it is to cry.
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4-10-2008 @ 3:38PM
RAB said...
I'd take that critique a step further and say that The Daily Show is also becoming defanged, partly by Jon and his writers eventually turning everything into a joke about his supposed incompetence as host. It's like they're trying to undermine themselves before anyone else can accuse them of being too serious...but they take it too far and it's made the show a real chore to watch.
On the other hand, The Colbert Report has only become better with time, and the humor has gotten even sharper. The White House Correspondents Dinner was indeed a watershed moment in political satire: he took his critique of the Bush administration and its loyal journalists right to them, scored a direct hit, and the proof of his effectiveness can be seen in how those same journalists are still avoiding his show.
The Slate article probably undervalues the SNL Clinton/Obama commentary, though. They've managed to shine a little light on the way that race has been framed by reporters and get people talking about the subject. The real target, as with the best stuff by Stewart and Colbert, isn't the politicians but the reporters. Reporters can't assess and report their own failings -- who ever does? -- that task falls to the satirists.
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4-10-2008 @ 3:50PM
RC said...
I think The Daily Show is an adequate replacement for news, ESPECIALLY local news.
On The Daily Show I get:
news item, joke, news item, joke, etc.
On the local news I get:
shooting, shooting, murder, weather, sports, depression
I will take the comedy thank you.
http://www.bitsmack.com
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4-10-2008 @ 4:49PM
bevo said...
The Daily Show represents satire while the Cobert Report represents some of the finest parody since National Lampoon appeared in print form.
Saturday Night Live did parody off and on from its inception through roughly the Reagan administration. A great satire bit was the Pepsi Syndrome where Jimmy Carter explains the cause of Three Mile Island as a spilt Pepsi on the control panel. Good stuff.
Another example of good satire showed Ronald Reagan as the lucid, sharp mastermind of Iran Contra in private but a doddering old fool when in public. Since the dawn of the Bush I administration, Saturday Night Live gave up on satire, preferring easy sketches that are easy to understand by the masses.
For satire to work, people must have knowledge of the process. Most people today lack a rudimentary understanding of how government and politics work.
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4-10-2008 @ 4:56PM
Mike said...
I remember when The Daily Show was a COMEDY show. Takes itself way too serious the last few years. Only Larry Wilmore makes me laugh and he hasn't been on much, even since the end of the strike.
Expecting biting political satire from a mass medium like TV is like expecting a meaningful contribution to music from American Idol.
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4-10-2008 @ 9:18PM
mj said...
I've said it for years; if you want to know the truth, listen to comedians. While you are laughing, you are thinking. Watch the news, and you get frustrated, because who really believes the media? But comedians will make you say, "You know, that's right! (or wrong.)"
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4-10-2008 @ 10:32PM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Agree with the view that snl and most others don't really damage politicians. I think that most what passes as satire on SNL now is witless and juvenile. The snl debates of the 84 and 88 elections are legendary because they mocked the people involved and made a point. The stuff today has no point...it's just simple jabbing.
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4-10-2008 @ 11:11PM
pumpkinhead said...
I'm not crazy about the idea of criticizing our entertainment for trying to be entertaining first and anything else second, but there is definitely some validity to this. I remember some years ago when the late night comedies made Bob Dole seem so lovable that I had to keep reminding Mrs. Pumpkinhead that he is most certainly, definitely, and inarguably, NOT.
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4-11-2008 @ 2:27AM
Carlusa said...
The Daily Show and Colbert satirize the news media. Late night comedy is just that and to ask for or to take away anything other than attempts at humor from those sources reflects on the viewer. That being said I will be checking out this guys book. boy, writing my opinion on this really made me feel like an ass for some reason.
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4-11-2008 @ 9:21AM
Steven said...
It's a bit of a pity that no one mentions the ill-fated "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" in this discussion. Sorkin jumped on many sides of this political debate during the single season of the show.
In particular, he touched on the difficulty of doing comedy in the face of a government ready to slander anyone as "unpatriotic," as well as in the face of terrorist attack (whether that meant turning the comedy room into a den of bigotry or into something ineffectual for fearing of offending anyone). Much of it felt like a slap in the face to SNL, but also to a larger climate of writers being afraid (or their producers/networks being afraid) to do anything controversial.
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4-11-2008 @ 9:21AM
MERVE-THE-PERVE said...
I don't criticize just Lil Bush, its his whole damn admin I go after. There is ineptitude, incompetence, and fraud running rampant from top to bottom. But I have to give Dubya all the credit for that because they are all his hires and policies. I just wish Bubba wouldn't have let that special prosecutor law lapse that would have let every president the honor of having their very own Kenneth Starr living up their asses their entire terms like with Bubba. Imagine all the fraud, corruption, and deceit we would have found on Dubya's watch! Now we have to wait 20 years to find out when all of his papers will be released (unless they are destroying them all).
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4-15-2008 @ 12:43AM
sitruc said...
Meh. Take this discussion to the Newseum...
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