{"id":135,"date":"2014-04-15T17:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T17:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/?p=135"},"modified":"2014-04-15T17:04:26","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T17:04:26","slug":"stephen-versus-the-twitterverse-cancelcolbert-and-the-rhetoric-of-bad-satire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/?p=135","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Versus the Twitterverse: #CancelColbert and the Rhetoric of Bad Satire"},"content":{"rendered":"

This guest post was authored by Matthew Meier<\/em>, a Ph.D. candidate in Media and Communication Studies at Bowling Green State University.<\/em><\/p>\n

I have a sneaking suspicion that on Friday March 28, 2014, Comedy Central fired an intern. The day immediately prior, the following message was posted to twitter by the Comedy Central operated @ColbertReport twitter handle:<\/p>\n

\"Colbert1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The tweet, which references the March 26 episode of The Colbert Report<\/i><\/a> <\/i>in which Colbert satirically criticizes Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder for his dismissal of cries to rename the team something a little less racist, drew the ire of Asian American social media activist and freelance writer Suey Park<\/a>.\u00a0 In response to the @ColbertReport tweet, Park used her considerable network to get a new hashtag trending: #CancelColbert<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Colbert2\"<\/p>\n

Her efforts created an avalanche of criticism of the show, its host, and its audience.\u00a0 Amidst the cries of racism and white-liberal privilege, even Colbert decided to chime in from his personal handle.<\/p>\n

\"Colbert3\"<\/a><\/p>\n

As Colbert\u2019s own admission suggests, the initial tweet from @ColbertReport was decidedly racist and, therefore, Park\u2019s outrage is warranted. \u00a0What is interesting about this twitter storm (twitternado?) against The Report<\/i> is that it started, I think, not because the tweet uses racial stereotypes, but because it does not clearly identify a target and, quite frankly, it isn\u2019t funny.\u00a0 Colbert\u2019s character regularly makes bombastic, outrageous jokes that are intended to be understood ironically\u2014that is, as the opposite<\/i> of what they appear to be\u2014and satirically critical.\u00a0 When those jokes get laughs and make their targets clear<\/i>, they are powerful tools for social and cultural criticism.\u00a0 When they fail on either account, they can be equally powerful in reinforcing the stereotypes of the status quo.<\/p>\n

In this case, the tweet fails in both respects. \u00a0This is partially the result of attempting to convert a complicated parodic performance into 140 characters, but that explanation seems overly simplistic.\u00a0 A careful examination of the bit from which the tweet was extracted offers more nuance and, arguably, indicated that the tweet was doomed from the start.\u00a0 The bit presents a satirical critique by analogy wherein Colbert\u2019s character attempts to play the foil to Dan Snyder by sending up his half-hearted attempts to atone for the racism he perpetuates by refusing to even consider changing his football team\u2019s logo.\u00a0 In context, it\u2019s reasonably clear that Colbert\u2019s aim is to underscore the racist absurdity of Snyder\u2019s actions by offering \u201cChing-Chong Ding-Dong\u201d as an equally absurd parodic analogy to the Redskins mascot that Snyder so ardently defends.\u00a0 Thus, the bit swings on Colbert\u2019s attempt to equate his \u201cChing-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation\u201d to Snyder\u2019s \u201cWashington Redskins Original Americans Foundation,\u201d highlighting the latent racism in the football magnate\u2019s charity by comparing it to an overtly racist, though perhaps in some ways silly, parody.\u00a0 What’s more, because Colbert always performs under a veil of irony, his critique of Snyder\u2019s organization also stands as a critique of his own.\u00a0 That is, by ironically advocating for the use of Asian stereotypes instead of Native American stereotypes, his comparison reveals the ways in which each<\/i> should be troubling for his audience.<\/p>\n

In referencing the bit in context, it is clear(ish) that the joke\u2019s intended target was Dan Snyder.\u00a0 The tweet, divorced from its larger context, implies no<\/i> such connection<\/i> to Snyder and therefore any audience unfamiliar with the original context is left to attempt to identify a target from the text of tweet itself in order to make sense of the joke.\u00a0 Arguably, the blue highlighted text of the \u201c#Asian community\u201d hyperlink offers the strongest indication of the tweeted joke\u2019s target.\u00a0 In this way, reducing the satire to a tweet shifts the target from a wealthy, white racist to a marginalized community and drastically alters its critical potential.\u00a0 As many a satirist and scholar suggest, laughter directed at the powerful can be subversive, but laughter directed at the powerless tends to be oppressive.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Twitterizing Colbert\u2019s extended bit into a one-liner transforms the joke\u2019s critique of white privilege into an actual example of the racism that such privilege perpetuates in action.<\/p>\n

The misrepresentation of the joke\u2019s target, however, tells only half of the story.\u00a0 Even before it was presented in twitter-friendly format, the joke wasn\u2019t funny. \u00a0The bit contains a few satirical gems such as a doctored image of Native Americans wearing Washington Redskins coats donated by the charity and a jab at Snyder for only providing a portion of funds to purchase equipment because paying the full amount would require selling \u201ca beer and a soft pretzel.\u201d\u00a0 However, the bit also relies heavily on stereotypical caricatures to generate much of the laughter.\u00a0 This latter strategy not only directs the audience\u2019s laughter at the wrong target, but it also overshadows the satirical critique because it earns a much bigger laugh.\u00a0 In fact, by the time Colbert actually delivers the soon to be infamous joke, his studio audience\u2019s laughter has been replaced by bursts of applause.\u00a0 This response, known to comics as \u201cclapture,\u201d suggests that the audience \u201cgets\u201d the joke, but that it isn\u2019t that <\/i>funny.\u00a0 In this way, even in a larger context the joke doesn\u2019t work because the laugh happens before the stereotypical caricature is revealed to be satirical critique.\u00a0 Given that the joke didn\u2019t actually work in context, its out of context failure is unsurprising.<\/p>\n

In sum, Colbert\u2019s twitter debacle reveals two key requirements of rhetorically successful satire\u2014a powerful target and well timed laughter.\u00a0 When satire lacks either of these qualities, as the tweet most certainly did, it turns its subversive potential into oppressive reinforcement of the status quo.\u00a0 Park\u2019s cry to #CancelColbert is an important reminder that when satire fails, it hurts and, from a rhetorical standpoint, that the things that we laugh about are just as important as the things that we talk about.<\/p>\n


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[1]<\/a> See, Alison Dagnes, A Conservative Walks into a Bar<\/i> or Paul Provensa, iSatiristas!<\/i> for more.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This guest post was authored by Matthew Meier, a Ph.D. candidate in Media and Communication Studies at Bowling Green State University. I have a sneaking suspicion that on Friday March 28, 2014, Comedy Central fired an intern. The day immediately … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[55,53,54,56,57],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhetoric.commarts.wisc.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}