Media

1
Media Democracy

• Week 6

2
Street Popular Culture as Politics

• Popular Culture as a Site of Politics
• Popular Culture as Political Activism (outside
  the system)
• Popular Culture as Political Pressure (inside the
  system)
• Popular Culture as Political Control

3
Street Popular Culture as Politics

• Politics of the Text
• Politics of (personal) Identity
• Politics of Production
• Politics of Politics

4
Street Popular Culture as Politics

• Politicians
• We are witness to a transformation of politics
  itself
• Significance (commercial relationships which bind
  leaders and led)
• Sound-byte attention span
• Image over content
• Instant delivery/response
• Pop culture often blamed for diminished character
  of communication
• Street pop culture has always been part of
  politics has not necessarily diminished
  political sphere
• Argument Packaging politics devaluation of
  authentic politics where the artificial image
  trumps understanding policy
• people are subject to mass manipulation

5
Street Popular Culture as Politics

• cultural context of media-politics relations
• soundbyte just latest technique of many used
  historically
• another version of the slogan tailored to the
  contemporary medium
• incentives for (and effects of) packaging
• political theory says it is the most effective
  way to reach contemporary citizens (investment
  vs. return efficiency)
• people see politicians as characters (like on
  TV) packaging works for todays media for
  communication because it gives the people what
  they want
• And what they need?
• impossibility for separating form and content
• media image is polysemic
• political economy of mass media and popular
  culture
• packaging politics follows contemporary medias
  systemic logics
• changing news values changing news/political
  coverage ()
• pressure to entertain/maintain audiences
  changed coverage style
• politicians must adapt

6
Facts and Figures

• Back in the Day
• All in the Family
• http//www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-august-17-20
  09/poll-bearers (politics of polls 530)
• http//www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-september-3-
  2008/sarah-palin-gender-card (fact-checking 543)
• http//www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-june-21-2004
  /headlines---9-11-commission-report (Cheney)
• Media Bias
• http//crooksandliars.com/2007/06/28/daily-show-le
  wis-black-exposes-right-wing-media-paranoia/  
  (Black - 4)
• http//youtube.com/watch?v1Ra3vpAkS5A Liberal
  Media Bias (Kudlow - 7 min.)
• Calling out the Watchdog
• http//youtube.com/watch?vaFQFB5YpDZE Stewart
  on Crossfire (14 min.)
• http//www.ifilm.com/video/2653047 (Jon Stewart
  spins his Crossfire experience - 3 min)
  http//www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04272007/watch.h
  tml (Jon Stewart on Bill Moyers 30 min)
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vQquTUR9nbC4
  (Colbert on OReilly - 7 min.)
• Check to Ideology
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vebexx89yohE
  (Stewarts Critique of Beck)
• Check to power

7
Street Popular Culture as Politics

• Political communication is about capturing the
  popular imagination
• about giving acts and ideas symbolic importance
• commercial techniques become common sense
• impacts how texts are read
• reflects the dominant logics of its cultural
  context
• Comedy pokes a hole in this artifice
• reflects on tensions News itself popular
  culture/entertainment
• Deconstruct performances as the
  construction/manipulation of meaning
• Political performance needs to be understood in
  similar terms as applied to popular culture
  popular fiction
• Passing Judgments?

8
Jones The Comedian-Talk Show Host as Political
Commentator

• The wise fool exemplifies the important role that
  humor can play in safely advancing what is often
  devastatingly honest (and sometimes personally
  risky) critiques of power
• They can effectively respond/talk back to power
  in ways not open to others
• Celebrity allows/helps them to do this
• Colbert
• Stewart
• Conservative Comedians?

9
Jones The Comedian-Talk Show Host as Political
Commentator

• Jon Stewart
• Reality increasingly becomes difficult to
  define or locate as the absurdities of the
  political process seem ever more constructed,
  arbitrary, and chaotic
• A fake news show becomes at times, a legitimate
  substitute and/or supplement to its fake but
  all-too-real cable competitors
• Serves bewildered and punch-drunk audience
• Jester makes more sense than institutional voices
  of authority
• Pokes holes in the fabrications of reality (2000
  election, 9/11, war on terror, elections, etc.)
  by using the words of the powerful against
  themselves revealing truth (or at least,
  contradictions in political truth as it is
  formulated for the media)
• Patriotic duty is to parody and ridicule these
  government-constructed falsities
• Expose government absurdities
• Stewarts approach
• The Daily Show attempts to lead people to think
  again about the type and quality of information
  they are being given, by whom, and for what
  purposes.

10
Jones The Comedian-Talk Show Host as Political
Commentator

• Postmodern Conditions and the Comedic Response
• 1) Political humor dwells on the contradiction
  between appearance and reality. It is an
  affective response to an entanglement of choices
  that may have no appropriate rational response.
  Laughter provides an affective response that CAN
  connect us to substantive meanings.
•  
• 2) Political humor helps us recognize the norms
  and values that we as a polity hold in common
  comedy reminds us of those common values and
  serves the construction of social stability and
  political equilibrium
•  
• 3) Political humor maintains a healthy negative
  and perhaps at times, cynical outlook on politics
  but it is balanced with a measure of idealism
  about our common political values that are
  challenged by the inanity it skewers.
•  

11
Jones The Comedian-Talk Show Host as Political
Commentator

• Comedians are our proxies actors/our voice in
  the contemporary public sphere and principal
  agents in the construction of a public voice of
  power and influence
• Comedy connects the political being and
  democratic citizen in us who believe at varying
  levels in the processes of self-governance and
  the will of the people.
• They offer
• a qualitatively different form of citizenship
• possibilities for truth
• insights into politics AND postmodern culture
• fill the gap between truths
• a voice that speaks back to power
• a product for the times
• a means to poke and provoke a jaded political
  audience
•  

12
Day And Now the News?Mimesis and the Real in
The Daily Show

• A comedic critical filter to process the suspect
  real world of reportage and debate
• Our Democratic Information Matrix
• Deconstructing/scrutinizing news to invigorate
  public debate
• Revealing roles officials/public figures play
  and the rhetoric/discourse used
  (PR/Spin/Scripted)
• Cross-examines the rhetoric of public officials
  and the standard news discourse
• Mimesis the representation or imitation of
  something
• Popularity
• Show is more real (i.e. more in-depth and
  watchdog-like) than the news?
• Includes audience in narrative (its about you)
• Daily Show has entered the real world of
  political discourse/opinion legitimacy as
  political speech
• Liberal Populism (leans left and outside of
  mainstream)
• Beck/Limbaugh conservative populism
• The Politics of Incredulity
• (the quality or state of being incredulous
  inability to believe in a shocking sense)

13
Comedians, Pundits and Politics

• What is the role of the comedian in politics?
• What is the role of pundit in politics?
• How are they the same? different?
• What do people want from these people/shows?
• Why do we watch them?

14
Comedians, Pundits and Politics

• How are these people/shows related to developing
  ideas about citizenship?
• How are these people/shows related to developing
  ideas about political activism?
• How are these people/shows related to ideas about
  entertainment?
• http//www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/business/media/0
  6msnb.html?_r2

15

• Why are liberal comedy shows more successful?
• Why are conservative talk-shows more successful?
• Which more effectively stimulates political
  thought? What types?
• Which more effectively stimulates political
  action? What types?

16
Conservative Comic Oxymoron?(Dan
Libit-Politico)

• Harder to make fun of liberal values
• Audiences are younger and lean left politically
• Left supports the arts more
• Right doesnt support its own comedians

17
Glen Beck Patriot or Agitator
18
Glen Beck the Tea Party Movement

• Is Glen Beck Bad For America? Time Magazine
• Is Glen Beck America?
• What is the role of the TV pundit?
• http//www.liveleak.com/view?i6ef_1255664302c1
  
• Speaks for Americans (simpler times) vs.
  Paranoid Politics (Im Afraid you should be
  afraid too)
• Stimuating Discussion or Shutting it Down?
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vDGeZQrpZbjI
  loses It
• http//mediamatters.org/blog/200907170010 - remix
  - Is it political?
• The 912 Project
• http//the912-project.com/test/about/the-9-princip
  les-12-values/
• http//www.glennbeck.com/book/glenn-becks-common-s
  ense/
• Playing on public narratives/amnesia
• Paine -radically progressive thoughts on
  universal suffrage, democracy, free public
  education, minimum wages and living standards. He
  hated slavery, monarchy, organized religion and
  capital punishment.
• What is the Tea Party Movement?
• http//www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-15-200
  9/tempest-in-a-tea-party
• Good for Activism?/Comedy?

19

• Paine used "reason", not just logic to forward
  his view and arguments, Beck falls flat in this
  regard. Beck's approach is simple (and I hate to
  say, but kindergarten) logic. If X is Y, and Y is
  Z, then Z must be X. On the surface you can make
  some very stunning conclusions, but the logic is
  flawed by reason - (unfortunately). I say
  unfortunately because Beck has some important
  points to make and does bring dialogue to the
  table as per the state of our federal government.
  This is an important debate as to where we are
  going, what our future holds, what is the role of
  the government. However, his ability to string a
  fluid thought process together with not just
  logic, but also reason, in order to give weight
  to his message fails. It is geared way below the
  bar and is so embarrassingly written for such an
  important topic that he does his view a
  disservice. Beck's problem is not his message,
  it's his delivery. It reads poorly and a ranting
  narrative trying to connect minutia based on
  logic. It most certainly will charge both the
  left and right (just like his show), but don't
  expect intelligent debate. 5 stars for a rehash
  of Beck's message, introducing people to a great
  and important work (Common Sense). If you love
  his delivery and his message - then by all means
  - purchase this book. 1 star for offering any
  intelligent debate that goes beyond a basic
  dot-to-dot connection on some frivolous examples.
  I really wanted this to be an inspirational book,
  but it significantly falls flat. Unfortunatly it
  reads as if the town jester is giving an
  inspiring message. -5 (that's negative) stars -
  for making any connection to one of the most
  important works in U.S. political history,
  "Common Sense". I would suggest reading "Common
  Sense", "Age of Reason", "Federalist Papers", and
  "Anti-Federalist Papers" - to see not only how
  logic and reason collectively work together, but
  to gain insight as to what Beck is TRYING to
  accomplish in this very rudimentary work. At the
  very least he brings awarness. The book should
  be called "Beck's Sense" (logic without reason)

20
Comedians Pundits

• Histrionics and/or Humor
• (Exaggerated emotional behavior
  calculated for effect)
• To What End?