humour: media / politics

[gek-opel]

Its the un-ending problem with satire- it reinforces the status quo.

Even worse when the savagery is tamed into a kind of American "Zing"-culture of smugly self-satisfied superiority.

 

[Slothrop]

a friend pointed out guys like John Stewart are probably more a part of the problem than anything aproaching any kind of attempt at solutions -- the effect they have is more pro-status-quo than pro any kind of change.

in fact, fake democracy loves guys like Stewart, because they (and 4 millions retards) can dish out the endlessly annoying party-line: "well at least we are allowed to criticize blah blah blah". which reinforces the illusory freedom. while in reality the Daily Show just makes people laugh about things they should be angry about and gives them a free pass to go on with biz as usual.

I'm not sure about that. Watching the Daily Show might not in itself inspire you to go and storm the White House, but I'd guess that it encourages a lot people to think of politics as something they're interested in and to be familiar with roughly what's out there, so they're more likely to read and appreciate (say) a Chomsky article or something genuinely radical.

Kind of like the way politico-punk bands are partly a harmless way for teenagers to let off steam and pretend they're part of a revolution, but they're also a first point of contact, responsible for bringing politics into a lot of teenagers awareness at all...

It's kind of tough to call where the balance lies in both cases.

 

[turtles]

I mostly agree with Zhao/Gek, but I'll stick up for the Daily Show for the one thing it does really well which isn't done much elsewhere is being heavily critical and incredulous towards to news media. Not just fox news, but cnn and the big three news networks get worked over pretty hard a lot of the time for their terrible, trivializing news coverage. So while in once sense Jon Stewart and co. are part of the problem, they are also one of the few popular media outlets that regularly points out how just generally moronic and misleading almost ALL news coverage is.

edit: I guess my point is I've actually heard many of the types of arguments put forward here on the Daily Show itself...

 

[Gavin]

OK, I accept that as a valid criticism, but Gavin's original remark about how "we in the West have so little say over what goes on" (or whatever it was, that was the gist of it) carries with it such an obvious implicit corollary, to the point that it's almost explicit, that there exists a much better and fairer system somewhere else. And I fail to see much evidence of this, to be honest. I mean, if people in the US/UK are making "ironic" art because they feel so powerless in the face of the ruling system in power in those countries, it follows that art from countries like Iran or Burma or wherever must be orders of magnitude more ironic, does it not? Whereas having seen some of the stuff Gavin's been posting in this thread, it seems as if the sort of revolutionary art being created in dictatorships or violently corrupt pseudo-democracies around the world draws its power precisely from its honesty and authenticity as a means of expression.

Come now, this is willfully obtuse. Your "Iran-Burma" corollary (if I may call it that) only works if we assume repressive power works the same way in democracies and dictatorships. They don't, which isn't a point I should have to make among such enlightened company. Because a dictatorship MUST use coercive force to instill rule, it builds its own overt resistance, of which truly radical art is one form -- as Foucault remarks, resistance is CREATED BY power -- power precedes resistance. In the case of democracies, because overt force is rarely necessary (although it underpins all functionings of power in the last instance) because we are so free to choose what TV show to watch or what sweetened cereal to eat for breakfast, it never occurs to the vast majority of people (including, according to arguments made in this thread, a sizable number of people who post here) that they actually have no control over anything important -- for instance, whether the government that "represents" them decides to unleash unprecedented carnage on the poorer, browner races and lie through its teeth about it. Even war protests feel like empty gestures because the government DOES NOT GIVE A FUCK ABOUT WHAT THE PEOPLE DO because THEY CAN'T THREATEN THE WAY IT IS, and most don't really want to anyway (seriously, I took an overnight bus to Washington to protest the war and afterwards it just felt like how I felt when I jacked off when I was 13 -- that weird mixture of transgression, shame, but ultimately futility because Big Other actually isn't watching and neither is anyone else). Of course the baby boomers in charge of things decided long ago that masturbation is the highest calling in life (they call it "fulfillment" or any number of new-age-jargon terms). It's so drastically different a situation than in a dictatorship, and OF COURSE I don't advocate dictatorships (so mean and smelly!), nor do I feel like championing the wonderful democracies we live in that allow us to get so fat and stupid while our governments gleefully massacre thousands with our money while bestowing social death upon thousands more within our own borders.

As much as I disagree with Vimothy and Mr. Tea etc., I really doubt they are so stupid as to seriously misread what I wrote to the degree that I have to type out the preceding diatribe. I mean, you made me bring up jacking off in middle school -- no one wants to see that. I would much prefer a response to the actual content of my posts and not waste my time trolling through arguments attributed to me that I never made.

P.S. I just saw the Jeff Koons Pink Panther last week... it had the best spot in the museum and it's absolutely atrocious. It's not even well done for sculpture, and the joke wasn't even very funny or relevant back in 1988 or whatever. Though I do like some of the fake metal balloon stuff on a formal level. This picture doesn't really do justice to how crappy the sculpture is:

I mean isn't this all a lot of urinal-in-the-museum hubbub all over again?

 

[Guybrush]

I'm not sure about that. Watching the Daily Show might not in itself inspire you to go and storm the White House, but I'd guess that it encourages a lot people to think of politics as something they're interested in and to be familiar with roughly what's out there, so they're more likely to read and appreciate (say) a Chomsky article or something genuinely radical.

Kind of like the way politico-punk bands are partly a harmless way for teenagers to let off steam and pretend they're part of a revolution, but they're also a first point of contact, responsible for bringing politics into a lot of teenagers awareness at all...

It's kind of tough to call where the balance lies in both cases.

Yeah, that’s an excellent point. However, I think Bill Maher mentioned that about a third of his viewers got all of their news from watching his show, a fact he was quite disappointed with. Still, I think you are right.

 

[Gavin]

I mostly agree with Zhao/Gek, but I'll stick up for the Daily Show for the one thing it does really well which isn't done much elsewhere is being heavily critical and incredulous towards to news media. Not just fox news, but cnn and the big three news networks get worked over pretty hard a lot of the time for their terrible, trivializing news coverage. So while in once sense Jon Stewart and co. are part of the problem, they are also one of the few popular media outlets that regularly points out how just generally moronic and misleading almost ALL news coverage is.

edit: I guess my point is I've actually heard many of the types of arguments put forward here on the Daily Show itself...

But everyone knows the media is full of crap, and no one trusts it (and they refer to it as "the media" as if it's some separate entity with its own momentum, not merely one more arm of the General Electric nuclear garrison, more mystification). Nixon knew this 50 years ago. All the politicians complain about the media. And guess what? The news only gets shittier. Critique in this case seems worthless. Indeed, the Daily Show's most potent jokes are usually just displaying news footage as is -- it needs no commentary, just a slight change of context, and a little push from the studio audience to become satirical hilarity.

The news media is so worthless (at least televised news media) that it's not worthy of critique. It's like satirizing a clogged toilet when you should be plunging the fucker.

 

[gek-opel]

I'd slot both of them into the pseudo-rebellion category. I actually don't mind the Jon Stewart bits of The Daily Show, for exactly the reasons Turtle describes. It doesn't seem to have effected the output of the "real" news stations though does it? It kind of adds up to a culture of despair, where many know how rotten (in this case TV news journalism) is, but beyond taking the piss there seems no ability to actually change it.

 

[gek-opel]

Critique in this case seems worthless...

Critique is all too readily absorbed!

 

[Gavin]

I think Lumet's Network should be taught in schools...

 

[zhao]

like satirizing a clogged toilet when you should be plunging the fucker.

nice

 

[turtles]

It's like satirizing a clogged toilet when you should be plunging the fucker.

Pshaw! That toilet is so full of shit...

 

[Guybrush]

I’m trying hard here not coming across as politically naïve, but I do think that your living in the U.S., Gavin, makes you slightly blind to the extent that the current White House’s decisions have handicapped the U.S.’s ability to impose its ideas on the world. For one thing, the U.S. military is already so severely over-stretched it is all but impossible for it to engage in further major operations. You can go down the list: the fragile economy, the loss of the so-called ‘moral highground’ (i.e. its cultural leverage), the U.S.’s decreased relative wealth relative other countries (China, Russia, India, etc.) ... What I’m getting at is that while things may be harsh enough for the poor citizens of the U.S., its capacity to commit ill abroad has been acutely circumscribed.

 

[Gavin]

Critique is all too readily absorbed!

 

[Gavin]

I’m trying hard here not coming across as politically naïve, but I do think that your living in the U.S., Gavin, makes you slightly blind to the extent that the current White House’s decisions have handicapped the U.S.’s ability to impose its ideas on the world. For one thing, the U.S. military is already so severely over-stretched it is all but impossible for it to engage in further major operations. You can go down the list: the fragile economy, the loss of the so-called ‘moral highground’ (i.e. its cultural leverage), the U.S.’s decreased relative wealth relative other countries (China, Russia, India, etc.) ... What I’m getting at is that while things may be harsh enough for the poor citizens of the U.S., its capacity to commit ill abroad has been acutely circumscribed.

So you don't think Iran is getting bombed in the next year?

Also I'm not sure what part of what I said this is in response to... I'm certainly not letting Britain or anyone else in the coalition of the willing off the hook for just doing what the U.S. says.

 

[Guybrush]

I have heard rumours of a limited — which is to say air force and rockets — attack supposedly being planned as soon as this autumn, but I doubt it. One can never be sure, of course. But I think you would agree that the risk of that happening would have been infinitely greater had not the Iraq endeavour been so thoroughly botched.

 

[Guybrush]

I’m not letting anyone off the hook. I’m just saying that one of the few good things to come out of this awful mess is that the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ has few options left but to listen to the saner voices of the world (to which I count Putin and *googles* Hu Jintao, ironically.)

 

[Gavin]

I have heard rumours of a limited — which is to say air force and rockets — attack supposedly being planned as soon as this autumn, but I doubt it. One can never be sure, of course. But I think you would agree that the risk of that happening would have been infinitely greater had not the Iraq endeavour been so thoroughly botched.

Maybe, but you can't expect a desperate empire with tons of clusterbombs to behave rationally in these situations. I still am not sure if you are addressing something I said upthread...?

Anyway, if what you say is true, that the U.S. failure in Iraq (are we sure it's a failure? that would mean we believe the objectives that we were told) is putting a hold on further invasions, then if anything this is an endorsement of sustained armed insurrection as the only effective "critique" of American power. I'm pretty sure the satire content in those IEDs is pretty low.

 

[Gavin]

I’m not letting anyone off the hook. I’m just saying that one of the few good things to come out of this awful mess is that the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ has few options left but to listen to the saner voices of the world (to which I count Putin and *googles* Hu Jintao, ironically.)

I trust the Russian and Chinese governments less than the U.S. one (and neither are democracies), but I was born during the Reagan era so I can't be held responsible for these prejudices.

 

[Guybrush]

The Russians I trust in behaving imperialistic but rational; the Chinese I don’t know enough about, but from what I can gather, they appear intent on not jeopardising the world peace at the moment. Which is nice. I should add that Russia and Scandinavia/East-Europe has quite a history, so it’s not like we would give them the benefit of the doubt.

I don’t know if you read the Economist article on Putin and his henchmen a couple of weeks ago, but either way you should check out Mark Ames’ dissection of it:

The Economist: The World’s Sleaziest Magazine

Anyway, if what you say is true, that the U.S. failure in Iraq (are we sure it's a failure? that would mean we believe the objectives that we were told) is putting a hold on further invasions, then if anything this is an endorsement of sustained armed insurrection as the only effective "critique" of American power.

Yeah, absolutely. It works a treat, doesn’t it?

 

[Gavin]

The Economist: The World’s Sleaziest Magazine

Hah, every time I read The Exile I always think I should read it more often. Maybe I actually will now.