I need to continue with Lewis Black’s 2006 Grammy nominated HBO special, Red, White and Screwed. Black meanders through several topical and social bits, eventually coming to the following:
We have no energy policy, you know? None whatsoever. We still don’t have a good one, it’s ridiculous. And if you ask… We’re not going to have solar energy in my lifetime, you know? A few people have it, but it’s something we should all have, it’s ridiculous. I’ll take no flying cars, but solar energy? And if you ask your congressman why, he’ll say, [With his eyes crossed, a slightly slack-jawed expression and clutching at himself for emphasis] “‘Cause it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. Makes me wanna go poopy. You wanna know why we don’t have solar energy? Because the sun goes away each day, and it doesn’t tell us where it’s going.”
I want to continue to use this example to point out some of the problems with how parody is currently used, especially in terms of its assumed ties to satire.
Agenda Setting
Gary Saul Morson notes parody’s ironic nature (though he does not name it as such), stating that parody (even when satiric) always grants credit to the work it attempts to discredit; that one must first assert that the text is worthy of notice before it can be ridiculed–we must put it on the agenda.
In this respect, the parody always lends credibility to the original, if we haven’t heard of the original, we may seek it out, and it thus becomes more famous. This might greatly hamstring our ability to critique an argument by parodying it, as we’re only calling more attention to the original. In the above example, Black raises awareness of the energy policy, and the governmental difficulty in trying to implement it.
Shallow parody
Also, as Gring-Pemble and Watson note of shallow satire, Morson states that shallow parody or faint criticism may give the impression that “no more fundamental criticism could have been made” (73), leaving the original work intact (if not augmented) – and it may be difficult to determine in advance what audiences will designate as shallow.
For instance, though Black may make us more aware of the problem, we may know that the wheels of legislation are slow, and even good congress members are paralyzed by special interests, riders and the like – that it is “hard.” As such, we may read Black’s infantilization as an oversimplification of a very complex problem. Thus, parodic satire runs the risk of further bolstering the original speaker and/or text, rather than refuting them.
Simple negation
Further, for followers of the Situationists and Guy Debord, parody (and irony) errs on the side of too much determination. This comes from the translation of parody, mentioned previously, as “against the song,” which, as in the case of irony is read as direct opposition, as opposed to merely supplementation.
This conception makes the parody a replacement (if not a negation) of a primary text or speaker by the secondary text or speaker. For authors with this interpretation, irony and parody must always serve as a negation of the primary text, rather than retaining the possibility of a celebratory–or any other–function (for more on other functions of parody see Rose).
Détournement
Parody and irony would seem on face to accomplish the Situationists’ goal of détournement, the detour, diversion, hijacking, corruption or misappropriation of the capitalist spectacle enacted to bring about its demise–in short, a vested political act with some humorous potential.
However, Christine Harold explains that the Situationists reject parody as a persuasive strategy because its ironic, “double-voiced” structure simply effects a negation that “maintain[s], rather than unsettles, audiences’ purchase on the truth” (192). Parody cannot be détournement precisely because, for Situationists, parody maintains the intentions and investments of the author as a negation of the original text. While parody may serve as a repurposing of the spectacle, it still relies on the spectacle to further a message and thus does nothing to destroy the spectacle form itself. In other words, parody for these authors maintains a reliance on the existing system of litige to which they are very much opposed.
In the Lewis Black example, we can still see a reliance on elected officials–if we voted in people who weren’t incompetent…. There’s also a reliance on arguments made by our representatives within Congress, as opposed to political revolution or anarchy, or some other system. Black isn’t making arguments about changing the system, he’s just complaining about the people in it.
Summary
Some would say the problem here is I’m quoting scholars interested in arguments, and applying their theories to comics, who don’t necessarily have (and who actively claim they don’t have) an argument. However, to my mind, that points out the problems with these theories. If they don’t apply in all cases, then they don’t really explain the phenomenon. My major assumption in this project (as a whole) is that if we can pin down what comics can do through stand-up, then we have a rough estimate of what a bona fide speaker can be expected to achieve.
In relying on models from Aristotelian and classical rhetoric, we rely on a system of litige that would tether irony and parody to satire, to an authorial intent of ridicule, correction or censure:
- The parody always calls attention to the primary statement or source, which may make that statement or source more famous.
- The critique may not cut deep enough, thus the primary speaker remains unharmed, if not better off.
- The second speaker or utterance must always critique or negate the original, it can’t do anything else.
- Finally, because it works within a system, it doesn’t challenge the system itself.
While such a conception can be useful for a bona fide speaker constructing bona fide arguments–in helping the audience to “get it”–it in no way necessitates the reader accept the argument as such. It’s not as if audiences are required to read an argument in a particular way, and their laughter doesn’t signal agreement, they could be fake laughing or guffawing. This is what we learn when we try to apply these theories to comics, who are unreliable narrators.
Further, as articles on “outlaw rhetorics” attempt to show, forcing people to conform to conventional standards is weighted to favor elite, white, patriarchal heteronormativity, predicated on a level of social attainment that many disenfranchised groups would find difficult, when not unsavory, to achieve (Sloop and Ono).
Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?
References:
Black, Lewis. Lewis Black: Red, White and Screwed. New York: Home Box Office. Original air date: 10 June, 2006, 10pm EST. Rebroadcast 19 October, 2007, 9pm CST.
Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone, 1994.
Gring-Pemble, Lisa and Martha Solomon Watson. “The Rhetorical Limits of Satire: An Analysis of James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89.2 (2003): 132-53.
Harold, Christine. “Pranking Rhetoric: ‘Culture Jamming’ as Media Activism.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 21.3 (2004): 189-211.
Morson, Gary Saul. “Parody, History, and Metaparody.” Rethinking Bakhtin: Extensions and Challenges. Eds. G.S. Morson and Caryl Emerson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1989. 63-86.
Rose, Margaret A. Parody: Ancient, Modern, and Postmodern. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University, 1993.
Sloop, John M. and Kent A. Ono. “Out-law Discourse: The Critical Politics of Material Judgment.” Philosophy and Rhetoric 30 (1997): 50-69.
Wilson, Nathan. Was That Supposed to be Funny? A Rhetorical Analysis of Politics, Problems and Contradictions in Contemporary Stand-Up Comedy. Dissertation in partial completion of the Ph.D. August, 2008.
