Housekeeping: old news
Exciting old news: back in January I had an opinion piece about the Barron Trump tweet which got Katie Rich booted off of SNL published on Chortle. It may be of some interest in light of the post below on Stephen Colbert.
14.5.17
Colbert Report
Steven
Colbert’s suggestion that Donald Trump’s mouth is suitable only to be “Valdimir
Putin’s cock holster” (above video, about 11:30 in) has drawn a great deal of
comment, both on its implications for free speech and how the issue (and
coverage of it) have been manipulated by different political factions.
Two issues which underlie a lot of the debate have not drawn such attention:
whether his joke was in fact homophobic, and how an answer to that first
question is best decided.
I doubt if
Colbert himself is a homophobe, or if he intended to denigrate anyone but Trump
when he told this joke. Nevertheless, it is understandable that he has drawn
criticism, whatever the motivations of some of his critics. At the very least,
he and his writers were very careless in letting this joke through.
The joke is
making a point about Trump (that he is subservient to Putin) by assigning him a
fictional sexual relationship with Putin. The conceit of the joke is that the
fictional sexual relationship is a grossly exaggerated version of Trump’s
perceived relation with Putin. In order to grasp that conceit, one must assume,
at least for the purposes of the joke, that engaging in this kind of sexual
relationship (i.e., performing fellatio on someone else) is grossly subservient
behaviour.
This trope
about gay men (and heterosexual women) has a long and disreputable history. If
a similar joke had been told about a gay man, say Milo Yiannopoulos, I take it
that it would have been obviously homophobic; likewise if it had been told
about Hilary Clinton. In each case, the joke would have worked by presenting a
stereotyped characterisation of the target’s sexuality which many people –
rightly, I think – would find offensive.
It might be
thought that a relevant difference is that Trump is not actually gay. This
matters insofar as Trump himself could not claim to be have been the victim of
a certain stereotype; rather, he was the target of a joke which made use of
this stereotype. But that is the point: that the joke employed the stereotype
meant that gay men were, so to speak, collateral damage.
There is
another aspect to this debate which potentially has much father-reaching
implications. I am not gay, but I can give my opinion on whether or not
Colbert’s joke was homophobic. But is it not up to gay men (and perhaps women)
to decide whether or not this joke is genuinely offensive? If a number of gay
men were to say that they weren’t offended by the joke, or that no harm was
done in any case, who am I to disagree?
One reason
to take what they say seriously is that they are presumably better placed than
me to know what gay men in general would think about this issue. Better placed,
but not necessarily right; after all, it seems that different gay men had
different views on the joke (as, for instance, Steven Thrasher acknowledged in
his article). I am Irish, but I wouldn’t presume to know what all Irish people,
or even the majority, felt about a certain joke simply because of my
nationality.
There is
something clearly amiss with a person who is not a member of a certain
community presuming to know when members of that community should be offended,
regardless of what they actually feel. In recent years we have become much more
sensitive as a society to the importance of different social and culture
perspectives when it comes to deciding what is or is not offensive. But there
should also be a place for critical reflection from one’s own perspective,
informed by views from other perspectives but not wholly dependent on them.
24.4.17
The Good, The Bad and the Smugly
Caitlin Flanagan’s piece in The Atlantic is the latest in a long line of articles
berating American liberals for their condescending attitude towards their more
conservative fellow citizens, and suggesting that this attitude may have
contributed to the coronation of President Trump. A thread running through
these articles has been the role of satire, and in particular the late-night
talk-show monologues of John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Trevor Noah et al. As Emmett Rensin put it in a
widely-discussed piece from last year,
Over 20 years, an
industry arose to cater to the smug style [of American liberals]. It began in
humor, and culminated for a time in The Daily Show, a program that more
than any other thing advanced the idea that liberal orthodoxy was a kind of
educated savvy and that its opponents were, before anything else, stupid.
He also correctly predicted the wages of this style:
Faced with the prospect of an election between Donald Trump and Hillary
Clinton, the smug will reach a fever pitch: six straight months of a sure
thing, an opportunity to mock and scoff and ask, How could anybody vote
for this guy? until a morning in November when they ask, What the
fuck happened?
Quite.
There are points in both Rensin and Flanagan’s pieces with which one
could take issue. For instance, one could certainly question whether, as
Flanagan suggests, the late-night hosts decided en masse during the election to criticise not just Trump and his
retinue, but anyone considering voting for him. But it is hard to deny the
thought that for someone inclined to support Trump, it was reasonable to feel
that their views were being dismissed; or that the perceived smugness of
late-night comics and their liberal fans provides a convenient way of capturing
the liberal media and the whole liberal elite’s disdain, as more conservative
Americans see it, for Trump and his supporters.
Smugness is a term which is hard to pin down, but which
feels right in certain circumstances – and as someone who watches a fair bit of
these late-night comics, I have to say that they often do come across as smug.
This is not so much a matter of what they say but as how it is said: it is a
question of tone, a sense of being overly satisfied with one’s own correctness
and of talking down to those who might disagree.[i]
Flanagan picks out the following clip from John Oliver as epitomising this:
When John Oliver
told viewers that if they opposed abortion they had to change the channel until
the last minute of the program, when they would be shown “an adorable bucket of
sloths,” he perfectly encapsulated the tone of these shows: one imbued with the
conviction that they and their fans are intellectually and morally superior to
those who espouse any of the beliefs of the political right.[ii]
Something which has not been much discussed in many of these
articles is the possibility that a certain format may contribute towards the
sense of smugness. All of the shows that Flanagan mentions involve their hosts
performing straight-to-camera monologues. Their styles
vary (Samantha Bee often comes across as irritated, verging on furious; Stephen
Colbert as trying to be suavely above it all; Seth Meyers as a little goofy)
but in each case the set-up involves the host assuming a position of authority.
They know what’s going on, they use this knowledge to expose the stupidity,
ignorance or hypocrisy of others (preferably Republican others), and they
invite you to follow their direction in laughing at the target. This is not a
format which tends to convey much self-doubt, even if the host acknowledges
that a particular issue is complicated or that different viewpoints are
legitimate; by acknowledging this, they are often implicitly contrasting their open-mindedness
with the dogmatism of others.
Of course, any form of
satire will involve poking fun at a target, and will implicitly set up the
satirist (and the audience) as above the butt of the joke. But not all satire
conveys a sense of superiority, even if it is predicated on it. For instance,
Stephen Colbert rose to fame playing right-wing wing-nut ‘Stephen Colbert’,
delivering straight-to-camera monologues eviscerating spineless liberals, while
of course really sending up the likes of Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.
Insofar as Colbert’s persona was modelled on right-wing talk-show hosts and
commentators, he was implicitly claiming superiority over them in order to heap
scorn upon them. But this sense of superiority isn’t manifest in his
performance.
This may be as simple a
matter as Colbert’s not talking down to his targets, but rather enacting their
hot air-fuelled rhetorical flourishes. The joke is still at their expense, but it’s
not spelled out. Colbert, in his old persona, showed the ridiculousness of
right-wing blow-hards rather than stating it. In contrast, a format in which the comedian is
constantly telling the audience just how wrong-headed certain people are can
hardly help being smug, whatever political stance the comedian is adopting.
[i]
Rensin subsequently pointed out that he was not so much concerned with liberal
smugness as with what he termed the ‘Smug Style. This phrase is somewhat
misleading: as Rensin defines it, the Smug Style is not really a style but a
set of beliefs about politics, liberals and conservatives. In any case, what I
am more interested in is what is properly termed ‘style’, a style of comedy
which conveys a sense of smugness. This style may in part be rooted in the
beliefs which Rensin identifies, but it is not a matter of having those beliefs
but rather of how they are conveyed.
[ii]
Actually, I found this example unconvincing. Oliver’s segment on abortion is
predicated on the assumption that abortion is a legitimate option for a
pregnant woman, at least in some circumstances. The people he was advising to
switch over were those opposed to allowing abortion in any circumstances
whatsoever. Given the particularly divisive nature of this issue, it is hardly
the epitome of liberal smugness to suggest that those holding such a view would
get little of value out of what was to follow.
23.1.17
Dissecting The Lobster
(Warning: some spoilers)
A man checks
into a hotel, accompanied only by his dog. He has forty-five days to find a mate and
begin the process of reintegrating into the only socially acceptable way of
living, in a couple. If he fails, he gets turned into an animal. It’s not all
bad, though; he does get to choose which animal.
The Lobster combines a wry look
at relationships and social pressures with Yorgos Lanthimos’s trademark devious
scenarios and obscurely threatening atmospherics.[i]
The film has been widely described as a satire and also compared to
Kafka, whose work is not exactly satirical but functions in a similar way,
presenting what is recognizably an exaggerated and distorted version of our
society. What I found curious about the film was how these different elements
undermined each other.
Not everyone would agree. In the generally favourable notices, reviewers
saw the combination of the film’s carefully constructed fictional world and
satirical edge as providing much of its bite. Here’s Bob Mondello on NPR:
Lanthimos is fond of hermetically sealed satires like
this, where the logic is rigidly internal and the results of following that
logic determinedly strange. The Lobster is his first film in English, and it plays
cleverly with the compatibility assumptions behind, say, singles groups and
online dating sites.
‘Hermetically sealed’ is the mot juste; Mondello inadvertently puts his
finger on what I disliked about the film. The fictional world is very cleverly
constructed, but it leads the film to overplay its satirical point.
The first half of the film, more or less, is set in the hotel, and there
is much fun to be had working out the rules of the game, both social and otherwise.
There are plenty of droll moments, from couples in the hotel being given
children to prevent them from arguing, to Colin Farrell inquiring into what
sexual options are available, to Olivia Coleman, dependably superb as the hotel manager, reminding
Farrell of what he has signed up for:
In this part of the film, the fictional construction and the satirical
points work together: the fictional world is unfolded for the audience in a
series of barbed comments about relationships, romance and the pressure to find
a partner. The world Farrell finds himself in is in many respects a version of
our own, but one where certain implicit social conventions have been codified
and are backed by the law.
The problems start when Farrell escapes from the hotel. The loners he
stumbles across living in the woods reject the strictures of mainstream
society, and are hunted for their pains by hotel guests. So far, so like a
number of science fiction films. However, the
loners do not only reject the requirement to form couples, they do not permit
their own members to pair off. This makes for a pleasing symmetry in the
fictional world: both ordinary society and the loners who reject it turn out to
be bound by rigid rules concerning relationships. But the satirical point of
this symmetry is less clear. The attitude of the loners feels like a
contrivance rather than an exaggerated version of something with which we are
familiar. It is noticeable that the jokes which studded the first half of the
film largely vanish during Farrell’s sojourn in the woods.
Perhaps it might be suggested that in these scenes the film is
satirising something more general, namely any group which rejects mainstream
society but which imposes its own strict conventions. But in the context of
this film, such an interpretation feels like a stretch. The loners are
rejecting mainstream society, but specifically because of the requirements
concerning couples. It is not explained why they would wish to be bound by new
rules, and without any motivation for this the satirical point is unclear.
Granted, it is not made clear either why mainstream society in this
fictional world insists so rigidly on people forming lasting relationships, but
there is no need, since in our society there is a familiar pressure on people
to do so. Without some way to link the motives of the loners back to our own
social mores, even if that way is rejecting them – because of a fear of
commitment, or an exaggerated sense of isolation or of personal space – the fictional
world is untethered from our own, drifting too far away for the kind of
proximity that is crucial to satire.
[i] Dogtooth, his first film, is highly recommended (both that film and The Lobster were written by Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou).
31.12.16
Holiday Season
Jacques Tati
is frequently mentioned as a comic pioneer, and occasionally as a comic genius.
His body of work is relatively small, but has influenced some very well-known
comic figures (Terry Jones has recorded enthusiastic DVD introductions for some
of Tati’s films, and Rowan Atkinson has acknowledged the significant debt Mr.
Bean owes to M. Hulot, Tati’s most famous creation).
I recently
saw Les Vacances du M. Hulot, Tati’s
second feature and the only non-English-language film in Time Out’s list of the best 100 comedy films.[i]
It was a curious experience – I saw it in a cinema where the audience were
mostly silent throughout, and yet I didn’t get the impression that people were
put out by the film’s failure to coax many laughs. In part this may be because
some of the appeal of the film is less about comedy than about something harder
to pin down: nostalgia, simplicity, or an acceptance of the vagaries of life
and the idiosyncrasies of other people.[ii]
Or the
audience may have primarily come to admire the film’s technical
accomplishments.[iii] Tati
has a superb eye for constructing a scene that develops (or falls apart) to
reveal one telling detail. To take one example, the sequence featuring tourists
boarding an overcrowded bus (starting at 1.10 here)
culminates in a spare child
popping up in the steering wheel, the kind of droll grace note of which Tati is
so fond. This meticulous construction of a scene around a single visual detail has
been taken up a number of subsequent directors, for instance Jean-Pierre
Jeunet, who has used it in films ranging from the rather saccharine (Amélie) to the inventively dark (Delicatessen).[iv]
That said,
these kinds of details are charming or at most somewhat amusing, rather than
being actually funny. More generally, the film sharply illustrates some of the
limitations of the kind of comedy Tati was working with, which might be characterised
as gentle slapstick.
The first
limitation is that too many of the jokes rely on people behaving extremely
stupidly. It is true that a great deal of narrative comedy relies on people
making mistakes of one sort or another, but this need not be an issue for the
audience (for instance, it may be plausible that from the character’s point of
view, what they are doing makes sense). In M.
Hulot there is no attempt to explain this behaviour or put it into some
sort of context where it can be understood – it is crushingly obvious, and the
film is cheapened by including so many set-pieces which rely on it. Other
characters are endlessly prone to being distracted by Hulot and spilling their
drinks, or mistaking what is plainly a canoe for (presumably) a sea monster
(from 0.28 here)
or proving to be the among most inept tennis players the world has ever seen:
or proving to be the among most inept tennis players the world has ever seen:
A different
film could probably get away with scenes like these – a film which was set a
few degrees further removed from reality, or one with a wilder feel or looser
logic. As a general rule of thumb, the more antic a film, the more stupid
behaviour can be funny in it. To complain about an entire marching band walking
into a wall
or a fleet
of police cars finding new and inventive ways to enter a pileup
would be to
miss the point – and the tone – of Animal
House or The Blues Brothers. But
in M. Hulot, such behaviour feels
forced – it jars with the gentle observations of much of the film.
The second
drawback of this kind of humour is its rigidity. Again, a great deal of humour
relies on fairly rigid conventions and rules, but again this can be moderated
or at least disguised, for example by varying the subject-matter or tone of
different scenes, or even by subtleties of phrasing and expression. In M. Hulot, the scenes are set up and
dispatched practically by clockwork, in a way which quickly becomes irritating:
things are always arranged so that Hulot inadvertently upsets the other
characters, or they inadvertently upset each other. This means that a sense of
the unexpected, so crucial to genuine comic creativity, is missing. The film
reminded me of a stand-up relying too heavily on puns – some might be genuinely
funny, but if everything is a pun then not only do they tend to become
predictable, but the element of contrivance becomes obvious and gets in the way
of enjoying the comedy.
[i]
Although it is, to all intents and purposes, a silent film. Nevertheless, it’s
the only representative on that list from the non-Anglophone world.
[iii]
About which Ebert is again spot on.
[iv]
Co-directed by Marc Caro.
5.12.16
In-jokes
(part of the occasional series What
is a joke?)
Almost every
joke relies on background knowledge, something that the person telling the joke
assumes those hearing it already know, and so does not actually state. Indeed, it is often crucial to the success of
the joke that this knowledge is left unstated. To include too much information
in setting the joke up is either to risk confusing the audience or to lose the
element of surprise which the punchline requires. Hence, the classic way to
kill a joke is to explain this background knowledge, though of course this fact
has become such a staple of comic lore that it is ripe for comic use itself.[i]
A good
number of jokes not only assume this background knowledge but exploit it – it
is often crucial to a misdirection which is reversed, or in establishing the
connection between the setup and the punchline. (For instance, the hoariest of
‘and that was just the teachers!’-style humour relies on our knowing how
teachers typically act, in order to undercut this assumption).
The
background knowledge is sometimes very general (jokes about the differences
between men and women) but it can be much more specific, e.g., limited to
knowledge common only to people in a certain social group, profession or nationality.
Any joke of this kind is an in-joke: it is intended to be heard by insiders,
people who will get the reference or already have the knowledge needed to
understand the joke.
One
interesting feature of in-jokes is that because they rely on this shared knowledge,
they can get a desired response not necessarily by being funny; often, they
work as a kind of shared affirmation that the joke-teller and the audience are
in the know, that they get the reference or are part of the relevant social
group. And yes, this can lead to a certain degree of smugness. But it does
raise the question of how an in-joke can actually be funny, as opposed to just
amusing those who understand what it’s about.
Here’s an example
of an in-joke which is clearly funny: two behaviourists have just finished
making love. The first says to the other ‘I know you enjoyed that, but how was
it for me?’[ii]
Why is this
funny? Well, it’s about sex, which helps; it’s a highbrow riff on a clichéd
situation, which is another plus; but basically, it’s funny because it brings
out a ridiculous consequence of a particular theory. It presents, in highly
exaggerated form, a line of thought which some people have been tempted to
follow, and it shows that this line of thought leads to an absurd dead end. In
doing this, the joke adds value to the reference: to get the joke, you need to
understand what behaviourism is, but in getting it you will also grasp how
ridiculous it is (at least in this exaggerated version).
By way of
contrast, here’s an example of an in-joke which is undoubtedly clever but not
particularly funny: three logicians walk into a bar. The barman asks ‘Does you
all want a drink?’ The first logician says ‘I don’t know’. The second says ‘I
don’t know’. The third says ‘Yes!’[iii]
(If you’re
not sure what the joke is – and for what it’s worth, it had to be explained to
me, which may say something about my aptitude for logic – see below.)[iv]
[v]
In fact, I’m
not sure if this counts as a joke at all (at least two people who heard it both
said the same thing to me). It does follow a well-known jocular format, has the
rhythm of a joke (including what looks a lot like a punchline), and relies on
the listener making a connection which draws on relevant background knowledge.
But what do you get, when you ‘get’ this joke?
It is true that in understanding
why the final logician answered as they did, the listener grasps the thought
processes behind the first two answers, so there is a leap from the information
in the premise to the conclusion; and it is true that in many jokes a similar
leap is required to get the punchline. But it is characteristic of jokes that
the final piece of information not only throws the rest of the joke in a new
light, but reverses or undercuts something (either our understanding of the
previous pieces of information, or some assumption which we had been led to
make).
I don’t think there is any comic reversal here. (At most, if you didn’t
understand why the first two logicians answered as they did, the final answer
might have clarified their thinking – but this doesn’t seem like a genuine
reversal so much as clearing up something which had seemed confusing or arbitrary.)
This a clever connection, and the way you grasp it might be quite like the way
you grasp a punchline, but the line itself is more like the answer to a riddle,
presented in a joke-shaped format.
[i]
Douglas Walker had a great example of this in his Edinburgh show a couple of
years ago.
[iii]
Tip of the hat to Vincent for introducing me to this one.
[iv]
Each logician either wants a drink or does not. If the first logician did not
want a drink, then she would have known that the answer to the barman’s
question was ‘No’ (since in order for the correct answer to be negative, all it
takes is for one of the logicians to not want a drink). So because she did not
answer ‘No’, she must want a drink. But she does not know if either of her
colleagues want a drink, therefore she could not answer ‘Yes’, hence her
answering ‘I don’t know’. Same goes (more or less) for the second logician. But
the third logician, having heard the answers from the first two, deduces that
each of them wants a drink (since if either of them had not wanted a drink,
they would have said ‘No’). And since the third logician wants a drink, he knows
that the answer to the barman’s question is ‘Yes’. QED.
[v]
There’s a further issue here with some background assumptions which the joke
requires. Specifically, it only works if each of the logicians knows whether or
not they want a drink. If it is possible that they do not know this, then the
final logician could not conclude that the other two did want a drink, and so
would not be in a position to answer ‘Yes’.
20.8.16
The Satire Paradox
Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist
History podcast on the satire paradox touches on a number of
familiar themes, some of which are handled rather more surely than others.[i]
As Gladwell tells it, the paradox of satire is that because
different audience members will bring different assumptions and prejudices to
bear on the same material, what one person regards as satire another can regard
as a genuine expression of the position being satirised.[ii]
Heather LeMarre, an academic who has published on audience reactions to
satirists such as Stephen Colbert, emphasises the degree to which in effect we
see and hear what we want. To quote from the abstract of a paper she
co-authored on Colbert (back when he ‘was’ a rightwing wingnut),
individual-level political ideology
significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology […] conservatives were more
likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant
what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire
and was not serious when offering political statements.
On the face of it, this example betrays fairly basic
ignorance on the part of conservative viewers,[iii]
given that Stephen Colbert (the comedian, not the rightwing wingnut) is quite
clear that he does not mean what he says, describing his character as a “well-intentioned,
poorly informed, high-status idiot”. I don’t have any specific reason to
doubt LaMarre’s findings, but I suggest that there is another sense in which
satire is often more open to interpretation than it might seem. Indeed, it is
quite predictable that this is the case.
Satire works by presenting an exaggerated version of its
target, inflating some of its distinctive features beyond their usual
proportions. The exaggeration is intended to make the target look ridiculous
(or more obviously ridiculous), but the exaggerated version can also be taken
as an outsized celebration of just these features. What’s more, people can take
it this way even if they are aware that the exaggerated version is intended to
look ridiculous. In other words, they can embrace the exaggerated presentation
of the target while simply ignoring the satirical intent. Hence hand-wringing
articles on The Wolf of Wall Street
being celebrated by the very bankers it targets. Hence also Al Murray’s
response to critics who accuse his audience of being too keen on his often ignorant
and bigoted Pub Landlord character: “I think the people who are sympathetic to him may well be enjoying
laughing at themselves, which is a thing people are allowed to do as well.”[iv]
After all, people who enjoy Woody Allen’s films very often share the views and
sensibilities he mocks, and very often are well aware of this. If this is possible
for left-leaning cultural elites, it is surely possible for boorish bankers or
UKIP voters as well.
Gladwell’s other main point concerns what seems to be one of
the results of the satire paradox: more often than not, satire is intended to bring
about some kind of change but fails to do so. One of his examples is Harry
Enfield’s Loadsamoney:
a broad satire of lower-middle-class mores in the
Thatcher years which ended up being co-opted by its targets and failing to make
any difference.[v] Gladwell goes on to raise questions about the
effectiveness and even appropriateness of satire more generally.
One problem with this line of criticism is that Gladwell
relies on a rather rigid view of the aims of the satirist, as when he suggests “Satire
works best when the satirist has the courage not just to go for the joke”. This
assumes that the primary aim of satire is political and at most secondarily
about comedy. But why should we assume this? It might be that some satire is in
effect political commentary or protest through the medium of humour, but there
are other examples that are better characterised as humour directed at political
targets.[vi]
The limitations of Gladwell’s view are exposed in his
criticism of Tina Fey’s spoofs of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live.
He
tells us that “SNL brought Tina Fey in to skewer Palin out of a sense of
outrage that someone this unqualified was running for higher office”. But it is
highly questionable if a sense of outrage was the primary motive for this
decision. For a commercial comedy show the imperative is to produce something
which gets attention and viewers. No doubt the liberals who make SNL dearly
wanted to take Palin down a peg or two, but that wasn’t the reason they wrote
those sketches, still less why Palin herself appeared on the show.
A more general issue here is how satire, on Gladwell’s view,
is supposed to ‘work’. If the satirist has the courage to not go for the joke,
what are they going for, and what constitutes success in their endeavour? An
obvious answer is: to bring about political change, by challenging established
ideas and changing people’s minds. As Gladwell correctly points out, satire
often fails to achieve anything like this. But this line of criticism is in
danger of stacking the deck, by tasking satirists with a responsibility out of
all proportion to their influence. Satire is for the most part an ineffectual form of
protest, but as Bob Mankoff drily responded, “for the most part, even protest
is an ineffectual form of protest”.
Gladwell suggests “real satire […] uses a comic pretence to
land a massive blow” – but a blow to what end? His own example of ‘real satire’
is the Israeli left-wing sketch show Eretz Nehederet (A Wonderful Country). But more than a decade’s
worth of ‘massive blows’ from Eretz Nehederet have accompanied a steady
rightward drift in Israeli public opinion.
This doesn’t mean that satire has no effect: it just doesn’t,
by and large, tend to change people’s minds. It is hard to believe that a
supporter of consumer capitalism would come to a radically different opinion after
seeing Loadsamoney. I suggest that when satire has a political effect, it tends
to do so in other ways: it can form or consolidate our opinions on someone, or
provide people with a prism through which a general sense of distaste or unease
can be focused. Gladwell does not discuss this kind of effect, but considering it
allows for a very different take on some of the examples he considers. For
instance, SNL’s send-up of Palin is not particularly vicious as satire goes,
but it undoubtedly had an effect in cementing the public’s view of her: as
Gladwell himself admits, it can be hard to remember the difference between what
was said by the real Palin and by her SNL facsimile. On the other hand, while
Eretz Nehederet has not been particularly successful at winning over Israelis
who do not share the liberal-left outlook of its creators, it may be a very
appropriate vehicle for expressing the frustrations of those who do. Satire engages
with political targets, but it has more ways of doing so than Gladwell
acknowledges.
[i]
Despite what I go on to say, the podcast is well worth a listen.
[iii]
Or it suggests they have adopted a complex and subtle view according to which
‘Stephen Colbert’ the rightwing wingnut is a ‘creation’ of ‘Stephen Colbert’
the left-wing comedian who is himself the creation of a person called ‘Stephen
Colbert’ whose own views are more in line with the first of these creations
than the second. This sounds rather too complex and subtle to be very
plausible, but perhaps as left-wing liberal elitist I would be expected to say
that.
[iv]
As opposed to those, most famously Stewart Lee, who charged that Murray’s
popularity meant that he attracted a following of people who missed his
satirical point.
[v] And
yes, it has aged rather badly.
[vi]
Of course, comedy with no political or social target would presumably not be
satirical at all, but this isn’t Gladwell’s point: he is discussing when satire
works or does not work, not the difference between satire and non-satirical
forms of comedy.
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