Black Mirror
I recently watched Black Mirror season 1, episode 2, entitled "Fifteen Million Merits". It's about a man who, after having his sole dream crushed by a cruel dystopian system, delivers an epic rant about how inauthentic and soul-destroying and numbing and unchanging the system is. Immediately after this rant, he succumbs to greed and peer pressure and participates in this grotesque system he so hates in an even more perverse, inauthentic, soul-destroying way. In the end, nothing substantive changes.
I felt a lot of things when I watched this episode. The actors all delivered compelling performances. The story was smart and poignant, with clever foreshadowing and stunning twists. But one feeling I can't get away from is my dislike of the overwhelming, crippling cynicism of the episode. For a show that's clearly an acerbic satire of all the hollowness and inauthenticity of modern life, it left me feeling more hollow and inauthentic than ever.
Cynicism is paralyzing. It chokes us with a cloying sense of helplessness. It's seductive in this way. What effect can I have on a system so powerful, so evil, so massive? And besides, it's all pointless anyway. Nothing ever changes in the end. And so, freed of responsibility or agency, I do nothing, change nothing. The myth perpetuates itself, and in so doing, becomes reality.
Then there's the irony of it. Black Mirror is all about the corrupting influence of technology. Our screens stifle us, it says. We are captivated by an endless stream of trivial nonsense manufactured for the sole purpose of captivating us. Our attention is precious, and to let such meaningless content capture it is to let it rob us of genuine, worthwhile endeavors, like human interaction and connection. But Black Mirror -- so named for the look of the "cold, shiny screen" omnipresent in modern life -- itself strives to capture our attention, to keep us glued to the screen. It certainly kept me glued.
Political Satire
Another thing that has kept me glued against my will is political satire, which I find boringly predictable, rankly partisan, and horribly childish -- yet, to my own disgust, I still watch a lot of it.
To vent my concerns on the genre, I present this video from Vox's Carlos Maza explaining why modern political satire is good. I disagree with nearly every point he makes.
First, he says political satire has a "low tolerance for bullshit", whereas the mainstream media is burdened by the need to take everything seriously. I agree with the latter claim; major news networks' portrayal of Trump's egregious lies, featuring extensive back-and-forth debate from both sides, spread the illusion that there's something to debate, when actually there's not. A complete falsehood, stated with no evidence (and often, with easily verifiable evidence to the contrary), should not merit any kind of debate. It does, however, merit serious discussion.
Political satire is not serious discussion. It is flagrant derision and mockery, lacking just as much substance as the thing it's mocking. Political satire constantly makes fun of people on the basis of their appearance, their demeanor, and countless other meaningless traits devoid of substance. It converts an extremely serious issue -- the fact that the American president is a shameless, pathological liar -- into a series of breezy punchlines. Maza lauds this aspect of satire shows, because it gives more time to cover different topics. In reality, these rapid-fire one-liners diminish the full impact of the situation.
When the punchline of a joke hits, I laugh, the joke is over, and I don't feel any compulsion to do anything. Laughing is the end of the conversation. In this Wei, political satire has a lot in common with the paralyzing effects of cynicism in "Fifteen Million Merits". Maza even suggests things have gotten so ridiculous that the only response is to laugh at them, as though (a) laughter is somehow a solution in its own right, and (b) it is the sole solution. This is precisely the kind of seductive-yet-numbing effect cynicism can have, and it is far from the truth. Mocking laughter doesn't cause change. Genuine change is the result of hard work, resistance, often tedium. Genuine change is a fight.
The problem is, I don't want to go out and fight after a satirical joke because it seems like the joke was the fight, a clever bullet wryly fired into the heart of political evil. How chastised and excoriated Trump must feel in the wake of such incisive satire, I gleefully think. Of course, that's not what happens. The only thing such contemptuous mockery does is to make people like myself even more rigidly sure of my preexisting beliefs.
Worse yet, mockery of this sort also galvanizes the other side. Being ridiculed and laughed at has never caused anyone to change their mind, only incited them to more vehemently oppose the ridiculer. Maza claims political satire is good because "it trains your brain to think critically", when in fact it does the opposite. By lulling you with formulaic entertainment, satire more firmly entrenches you in your own opinions. It trains your brain to think condescendingly.
"Fifteen Million Merits" seemed inauthentic due to the irony of it being a television program. By making it, its writers had to buy into the notion of television in some way, thereby undermining their criticism of it. Political satire is also stained by insincerity, but for a different reason. While I have no doubt that the writers and performers believe the things they say on air, the constant influx of news content, and hence the necessity to make jokes at such a rapid pace, renders their jokes inert and predictable. They are all regurgitated freak-outs, tenuous analogies, references to youth culture desperate to be cool. They feel all too familiar, the joke you heard a second ago about one hideous Trump surrogate isomorphic to the next joke about a similar villain. There is no life in this comedic wasteland.
Satire -- specifically, late-night television political satire -- is a bad vehicle with which to confront the current state of American politics because it is cloying, divisive, and substanceless (I'm talking about the satire, here). It's yet another cheap, hollow contrivance engineered to keep you glued to the screen.
Conclusion
I don't like political satire, and I consider it terrible television, yet I still watch it. On the other hand, I didn't like "Fifteen Million Merits", but I consider it fantastic television. These paradoxes caused another, more personal irony to surface in my mind: For all I was supposedly paralyzed by Black Mirror's cynicism, for all my cynicism towards it, it absolutely compelled me enough to write this entire blog post. And I don't know what to think about that.
Other Stuff
I listened to this podcast recently, which was why I watched that episode of Black Mirror. The creators' heartfelt takedown of a specific instance of satire in the academic community is what enabled me to verbalize my own long-held distaste toward political satire.
For political commentary I think is valuable, check out this other podcast.
This is really compelling, and I have to say while I know that political satire never gives the facts as straight as regular news, I never thought this critically about it before. A agree with a lot of the points you make here, but at least to me personally, I have a pretty good opinion of political satire despite these concerns. Yeah, it can be pretty childish, unnecessarily rude, and extremely biased, but I think there is a lot of value to political satire as long as you take it with a grain of salt and examine more unbiased sources of news to get the full picture along with it. Perhaps ideally, satire isn't the best way to inform the public about current events, however at this point in time I think it really is the way that works the best. Political satire, at it's core, is really just entertainment, but it's an excellent way to at least get people interested in current events. Luckily, a lot of political satire is grounded in facts that can easily be verified, and are even often much more reliable sources of news than, say, breitbart *shudders*. I really appreciate how John Oliver often examines both sides of an argument critically, and gives facts supporting each side. And from the (admittedly small amount) of research I've done he is extremely accurate. Without political satire, I think I certainly wouldn't have realized how abnormal recent events have really been. I agree with that vox video, that the news has a tendency to make is seem like this has all happened before, but it really hasn't. It has also spurned me to action more than once. Most recently, I was convinced by a John Oliver episode to send a complaint to the FCC about net neutrality.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, it is pretty alarming to think that I'm just being consistently brainwashed into supporting the ideas of these actors. Certainly some of the audience, if not many, don't follow through with research and blindly trust everything they're told by these shows. I guess you just have to wonder whether it's worse for people to be influenced into a certain political orientation by baised (but I would say mostly trustworthy) political satire, or be more ignorant of current events that they're not as motivated to follow. I am also obviously extremely biased, so although I try as hard as possible to see both sides of every issue, I may just not have found a way to look at political satire critically enough yet.
So, I guess that was a long roundabout way to say: yes, I agree political satire can seem dumb and uselessly aggravating, but I think it's also had a huge effect in getting more people to pay attention to what's happening around us and even convincing us to act on what we believe is right. For that reason I'm really thankful for it, and I think it is pretty funny too :D. It's definitely not a substitute for real news though.
BTW I haven't seen that episode of Black Mirror yet, that's usually how they go though. They're so compelling and well written, but so cynical you can only watch like one every month D:. There are a couple that have light tones at the end though later on. I like them a lot not only cause they're so well written, but despite the cynicism they often make me think about things in a new way and sometimes even question my believes and concept of morality. Maybe if I watched that episode I would have a different opinion of political satire...
oh wow I did not realize what a large block of text that was
ReplyDeletePolitical satire really is just entertainment, but it's a bad kind of entertainment. It's bad because it erodes the quality of political discourse by suffusing it with mockery and derision. If you require satire to get interested in politics, I don't think that's good. You should get interested in politics because it matters, because it affects people, because you want the world to be a better place. Not because it's entertaining.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you need satire to realize how abnormal things are right now, either. Just look at that NY Times link listing all of Trump's lies. That's clearly abnormal, and much more alarming than a 10-minute satirical rant with frequent digressions to mock how people look. Or consider this article, written by an hardcore lifelong conservative: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/time-for-republicans-to-leap-from-the-boat/536715/ . The guy who wrote this was a speechwriter for George Bush. These things show the abnormality of things much better than satire. To me, at least.
I recommend Timothy Snyder's book, "On Tyranny", where he talks about strategies to deal with the current situation in the US. These are lessons learned from European countries that have actually been through tyrannies in the past. He recommends things like reading books and print journalism, genuine conversations, engaged activism. These are the things that are actually helpful, not sitting back and snickering at some villainous caricatures on a TV screen.
On John Oliver specifically, he does to a better job at actually giving a call to action, but other than that, he's still guilty of all the things I don't like about satire. I hated the whole "Drumpf" thing. I get that it was making fun of how Trump's whole thing is marketing his brand and selling his name, but ultimately, it was literally just mocking someone's name for sounding bad, like a schoolyard bully. And I think the two sides thing is largely illusory. In the end he's just telling you what to believe. I mean, did his latest border control video motivate you to watch this video, for example? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oJ1ndAVcXc
Note: I don't agree with the video I linked at all. I think that Youtube channel is even worse than political satire. I was just pointing out that John Oliver doesn't do a good job of showing both sides. He does a good job of seeming like he's showing both sides, to convince you.
DeleteI understand your argument, and yet I still deeply believe that political satire has much more value than you give it credit for. You argue that political satire is degrading; that it shouldn’t be necessary to get people interested in politics, but I don’t see what the harm is if it does. Why can’t someone both become interested in politics through satire, and through satire also be driven to realize how much it matters, and how much it affects people? I first started becoming interested in politics because of watching political satire with my parents, and it led me to really care and pay attention. The very nature of the jokes in political satire requires you to already have a basic understanding of current events, so I think very few people who watch it aren’t already passionate and interested in politics. What is your basis that political satire erodes the quality of political discourse? Sure, satire isn’t a replacement for traditional news, but it’s a refreshingly light reprieve from a regular news report and can still be engaging and informative.
ReplyDeleteI think political satire has its own value, not in spite of the jokes, but because of the jokes. I like commentator Rex Murphy’s description of satire, as a piece that includes critique, irony, and implicitness. Any work that doesn’t include these traits is generally just making fun of people, which you stress is the basis of much of political satire, making it shallow and tasteless. However, from my perspective, pretty much all of these late-night shows we’ve been talking about still have all three of these traits, and are good examples of compelling satire. Because of these traits, political satire does not seem shallow at all to me, but rather complex and engaging.
Political satire does something that a serious article or editorial simply can’t. A regular news source might give you the same facts, but it doesn’t give you the same chance to put those facts into perspective. You say that these show hosts are just telling you what to think, but I don’t think that’s it at all. Editorials often give you their opinion, and that’s it. They might introduce you to a new opinion, but they won’t engage you any further. Political satire gives you the tools and perspective to reach conclusions and an understanding of current events much faster and more thoroughly than regular news. By using jokes, the audience is generally much more interested and engaged. Because satire relies on implications, you have to really think to understand it. You have to connect ideas, make comparisons, and dive beneath the surface layer of the joke to recognize the greater truth behind it. A simple one-liner can make a complex statement about current events that would otherwise take a paragraph to explain.
ReplyDeleteYou may argue that while some satire is good, political satire isn’t clever or original enough to actually contribute to the audience’s knowledge and understanding. So here’s an example of how this specific genre of late night political satire can actually be informative. I’m not trying to argue that political satire is the best source of news (of course it’s not), but I want to make the point that it may be more effective at informing than you think. A 2012 study by the Pew Research center found that when they asked audiences of different news sources four questions, 15% more of the Daily Show’s audience answered all four correctly than the audience of CNN. Other more traditional news sources were closer to the Daily Show’s score, but the point is often political satire does leave its audience with an understanding of current events. It’s not as useless as you make it sound.
Finally, I don’t even see a problem with these show hosts acting like “schoolyard bullies”. Is it really necessary for everyone to be clever and polite in every situation? As you already said, they’re not offending anyone, and there are no impressionable children in the audience, so what’s the harm in some silly jokes made at the expense of a silly politician? In my opinion it doesn’t make light of serious situations, because often by the end of an episode I’m more alarmed and willing to take action then I was before. In fact, regular news has never motivated me to act, and I don’t think that says anything bad about myself being too complacent or impassioned, but it says something good about political satire’s ability to inspire me more. You call it predictable and lifeless, yet you admit you still consume it, so you must find it at least funny enough to come back to it more than once. Besides, I think saying that the “drumpf” joke was just calling names is a vast oversimplification of the point John Oliver was trying to make. I know you’re aware of the context of the joke, but I think the fact that “drumpf” sounds ridiculous was just a funny addition and I don’t see what makes it so distasteful. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing that jokes get us interested in politics. Caring about current events and being able to laugh at them aren’t mutually exclusive.