In the twenty-first century, humour no longer operates as a simple addendum or ornament to the American political process; rather it has become a central aspect of the operation of American politics proper. From the popular success and wide cultural resonance of satirical media – such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (1999–2015), The Colbert Report (2005–14) and the online empire of The Onion – to the increasing willingness of prominent politicians to engage with and even indulge in comic performances, humour has become an acceptable way to both conduct and discuss politics. There is, of course, precedent for the embrace of such humour, which has long been a lauded aspect of the American political tradition. From Benjamin Franklin through Mark Twain, Walt Kelly, and Lenny Bruce to Gary Trudeau and Lorne Michaels, America has celebrated the use of comedy by essayists, authors, cartoonists and comics to draw attention to the inconsistencies, incongruities and oppressive practices of the state and its representatives. Such a history speaks to an understanding of humour that – especially when invoked in terms of satire – holds out the promise of a properly critical form of popular culture: one that calls out and challenges the inequities and prejudices of the social, political and economic status quo. Indeed, when considered alongside the litany of political anxieties currently afflicting America's political system, this utopian potential of satire appears as a rare glimmer of hope: a widely consumed, popular expression of political critique that promises to “encapsulate public sentiment … energize civic culture [and] engag[e] citizen-audiences.”Footnote 1 Yet, despite these optimistic investments, the source of this powerful political potential remains unaccounted for. In order to understand the cultural politics of contemporary satire, we must consider not only the political relevance actively claimed by its champions, but also the murkier ideological undercurrents that circulate in its political unconsciousness.
Deeply enmeshed in the cultural contexts of the USA yet removed from the affective investments and anxieties of its political process, the settler states of the South Pacific provide a particularly pertinent perspective from which to analyse the potential politics of contemporary American satire. As a consequence of long histories of English-language media flows and cultural imperialism, antipodean audiences are deeply familiar with programmes such as The Daily Show as cultural reference points, despite their detachment from the underlying political conflicts and lived consequences thereof: they are therefore often eager to join in the laughter despite (or perhaps because of) the unfamiliarity of the Electoral College and the irrelevance of the filibuster. Consequently, The Daily Show and affiliated comic texts, such as The Colbert Report, Last Week Tonight and Full Frontal, have long been a regular feature of television programming in Australia and New Zealand: interest that is indicative of a shared comic sensibility, even in the absence of a shared political context. Such an operation also flows the other way as well: Daily Show alumnus John Oliver, for example, engaged in sustained long-term mockery of the National-led government of Prime Minster John Key for the amusement of his predominantly American audience.Footnote 2 Such examples of transnational comic flow are evidence of the uneven interpellation that means that viewers in Australia and New Zealand can be both deeply acquainted with the comic conditions that underpin contemporary American popular culture (and vice versa) and unambiguously outside its immediate political context: a potentially productive analytic perspective for those who seek to unpack and account for the political work of popular culture. Freed from the animosity and fear upon which much contemporary political humour is built, but still familiar enough with the wider cultural context to find meaning and resonance in the comedy, the settler states of the Pacific thus provide a vantage from which to assess the cultural politics claimed for American satire from a place both familiar and remote: geographical distance here working as a proxy for the critical distance often thought lost in the postmodern context.Footnote 3 Viewed from “Down Under,” it thus becomes possible to be alert to the cultural and comic nuance of American political satire, while at the same time not being swept up in the immediate political passions that inform such modes of humour. The Pacific perspective thus allows a longer and less immediately invested view of how such comedy might intercede in, but also be caught up with, the narratives that shape American political culture and which can appear alternately unremarkably familiar and inherently alien from the Southern settler states.
SATIRE IN THE AMERICAN CONTEXT
The concept of satire, especially as it is mobilized in the American context, is not so much a stable genre or form of culture as an idea of what humour is and what it can do; and overwhelmingly what satire is thought to do is offer a form of critical judgement through playful means.Footnote 4 In this sense, to name a text as satirical is not to offer a reading of its formal elements, but rather to make a claim that it acts in the world in particular critical ways.Footnote 5 Such descriptions of satire as the critical articulation of humour to wider social and political concerns abound in accounts of historical forms of American satire. For example, writing on the earliest literary manifestations, Linda A. Morris argues that such work “relies upon humour to expose both humour and institutional failures [and] offer sustained critiques of contemporary society.”Footnote 6 Luminaires of American letters – such as Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving and Mark TwainFootnote 7 – all made use of satire as a “weapon” against the social and political problems of their day. Contemporary with Twain, early and influential editorial cartoonists, such as Thomas Nast, pursued similar ends through visual means and exerted considerable power over electoral politics as a result.Footnote 8 Nast's success in turn presaged the role of editorial cartoons and newspaper comic strips, such as Li'l Abner (1934–77) and Pogo (1948–75), as central sites of satirical analysis and comment in popular American culture for much of the twentieth century.Footnote 9
The success and perceived political importance of satire have – if anything – only increased in the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond. Stephen E. Kercher charts how “humour with a social purpose … thrived in the two decades after World War II.”Footnote 10 This period sees not only the continued success of older iterations like Li'l Abner and Pogo, but also the rise of new institutional and technological frameworks for the production and distribution of satire. This manifested in the expanding subcultures of print media, such as the “social criticism” of MAD magazine (1952–present) and Playboy (1953–present):Footnote 11 the latter of which featured interviews with the new satiric stars of the burgeoning postwar stand-up scene where the critical improv comedy of Chicago's Second City troupe and the scathing and scandalous rants of comedians like Lenny Bruce were indicative of a new socially engaged tone.Footnote 12 This satirical success – carried into living rooms via long-playing records – also laid the groundwork for the slow rise of American satirical television in programmes such as That Was The Week That Was (1964–65) and Saturday Night Live (1975–present) that “commonly depended upon parody of current events, political figures, movies, and television.”Footnote 13 Indeed, from the 1970s onwards even the television situation comedy, often lambasted as an inherently conservative genre, began to incorporate nascent critical commentary regarding the surrounding society in shows such as All in the Family (1971–79), Diff'rent Strokes (1978–86), and eventually The Simpsons (1989–present).Footnote 14 Moreover, at the same time, critical humour also flourished in older media forms, such as the novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon and Don Delilo,Footnote 15 and popular newspaper comics like Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury (1970–present)Footnote 16 and Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes (1985–95).Footnote 17 Thus even before the 1990s saw the rise of cable channel Comedy Central as a central hub for the production and distribution of critical, politically–oriented comedy that defines the current state of American satire,Footnote 18 there existed a long and celebrated history of humour as a means of actively engaging, challenging and unsettling social, cultural and political norms.
CONTEMPORARY HUMOUR AS CRITIQUE
In the first two decades of the twentieth century, The Daily Show has stood out as the most prominent inheritor of this American tradition of satire. Not only the central text of American political humour, but also one of the most important reference points in the wider media cultural context, The Daily Show and its host, Jon Stewart, have been the subject of countless editorials, feature articles, blog posts and scholarly essays alternately articulating, attacking and applauding its address of politics through humour. Eschewing the rigid formal and professional conventions that had come to define the rote practice of conventional news sources, The Daily Show captured national (and international) attention as evidence of an (ostensibly) new way of addressing politics through humour as a means to analyse and unpack the affairs of state and federal governance. In this particular focus upon direct political address, The Daily Show perpetuates the organizing principle of humour as a form of critique: which is here expressed here primarily in terms of the comic interrogation of directly political matters such policy, parties and elections. (However, although the comic critique of the affairs of state is the most often noted aspect of the show, those familiar with it will no doubt be aware that it is often equally concerned with politics in the wider sense of the word as it relates to issues such as gender and racial politics, corporate power and especially the politics of media representation.) It is the juxtaposition of what is traditionally regarded as the serious executive, legislative and judicial work of government with the irreverent tone of The Daily Show’s comedy that informs the perceived political work of the show in terms of satire: here imaged as a comic mode that expresses a particular critical relationship between humour and politics.
The celebration of The Daily Show is emblematic of a particular way of articulating the cultural work of humour to the political and social world, but it is far from being the only American popular cultural text that enacts this form of directly political humour in the twenty-first century. Such a category could also include examples such as the impersonation-based satire of Saturday Night Live, Daily Show precursor Bill Maher's recent success with Real Time (2003–present), the animated critique of the successful South Park (1997–present), the Onion Web portal and the political wing of other websites like Funnyordie.com, and a host of political comedy talk-show variants hosted by Daily Show alumni: The Colbert Report (2005–14), Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (2014–present), The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (2015–16), and Full Frontal with Samantha Bee (2016–present). Moreover, this wide range of texts is not just indicative of the popular success of satire oriented towards the political sphere, but also maps out the key coordinates of an important cultural constellation that speaks to contemporary anxieties and desires regarding the political work of popular culture. This satirical constellation is held together not simply by a shared orientation towards politics, but also by an understanding of humour as a disruptive, critical force that unsettles convention and threatens politics as usual. At this level, humour emerges as the inheritor of a rebellious tradition of radical liberty and trickster dynamism: a conscious and critical intervention in the practice of politics whereby the humorous text itself emerges as a political act by bringing the “serious” practice of politics into the unregulated zone of the comic.
Such an account of the political power of humour constitutes the “political consciousness” of satirical humour: a seductive and self-congratulatory story that presents the effects of satire in heroic cultural and political terms. This narrative has certainly captured the attention, and indeed the affections, of many scholars of both historical and contemporary humour.Footnote 19 Such a critical model involves challenging the “reproduction” of politics as a site of eminent seriousness and thereby opens it up for question in a manner that Allon White identified as a “fundamental – perhaps the fundamental – hegemonic manoeuvre.”Footnote 20 Satire so imagined thus appears as the direct negotiation of the boundaries of accepted political practice and attitudes. Unfortunately, such an explanation of satire is incomplete insofar as it leaves out any engagement with the wider political economic context which fundamentally shapes and determines the production of those texts that constitute satire. Hence, while such an understanding of satirical humour may seem politically desirable, that interpretation is complicated when we consider how the formal construction of satire might be determined by deeper levels of social and cultural structure: what can be thought of as the “political unconscious” of satire.
THE UNCONSCIOUSNESS OF CONTEMPORARY SATIRE
The concept of the political unconscious arises out of the work of Fredric Jameson, who develops it as a means to account for the political and historical specificity of cultural texts under capitalism.Footnote 21 Constituted across three levels – the immediate historical circumstances, the class struggles of a historical moment, and the broad inscription of the capitalist mode of production – the political unconsciousness captures “the repressed and buried reality of [the] fundamental [capitalist] history” that informs the ideological complexity of cultural texts.Footnote 22 In the case of satire, the political unconsciousness provides a means for rethinking the commonsense political work claimed on the part of satire with particular attention to the role of humour as an aesthetic category. At its heart, this is a question of mediation: of how the cultural form of satire relates to the political question of what satire can do in the world, and of how the relative autonomy of a cultural form, like satire, can be understood in relation to the conditions of its production and legibility in a given historical moment.Footnote 23
At Jameson's first level, that of immediate historical circumstance, contemporary American satire needs to be understood not simply as a reflection of context, but rather as a symbolic act that emerges in response to that context. Such contextual details are what necessitate the proliferation of footnotes in contemporary editions of historical (or translated) works, so that the reader might appreciate the subtexts and sly allusions that inform scenes and characters.Footnote 24 Indeed, if the future is such that we ever see a “scholarly edition” of The Daily Show, we can be sure that it will necessarily be accompanied by copious background notes explaining the particulars of this moment in American political history. Moreover, this is not simply the relatively straightforward point that understanding the satire of the early twenty-first century requires some knowledge of topics such as the “War on Terror,” the European Union and digital disruption, but also a larger point that the idea of satire as a form of critique is made possible by the political conditions of this moment. In particular, the casual contempt for the political class that informs (but does not overdetermine) much of satire can be considered symptomatic of the fantasy of the “post-political,”Footnote 25 which satire alternately indulges in and repudiates. At this first level, then, the political unconsciousness of satire is bound up with the specific historical texture of its moment of production and can be productively compared to Raymond Williams's concept of a “structure of feeling”: the unlearned social character that forms the implicit background for all cultural texts.Footnote 26 The contemporary success of texts that address politics through humour is not, therefore, a coincidence, but a way of intervening in the formal and cultural terms enabled by a particular historical moment.
The second level of political unconsciousness corresponds most directly to conventional models of ideological analysis and addresses the way in which the text maps out “the structure of a particular political fantasy.”Footnote 27 We might therefore say that we have moved from a structure of feeling to one of fantasy: one which expresses class struggle through an antagonistic dialogue of “two opposing discourses [that] fight it out within the general unity of a shared code.”Footnote 28 So conceived, satire speaks simultaneously to opposed class interests by both expressing and containing challenges to the dominant order within its formal expression. On the first level is the utopian critique noted as the political consciousness of satire which can be understood as aligned with oppressed and disenfranchised groups in its disrespectful assault upon the hegemonic norms of politics as usual. Following Jameson, it is this critique that accounts for the attractiveness of popular culture in general, and satire in particular. However, this utopian promise does not exhaust the ideological work of contemporary American satire, which not only evokes political anxieties and fantasies, but also manages them. In the case of satire, this ideological containment is carried out by the same aesthetic form by which the critique is constituted: humour.
The satirical examples considered here do not offer a “straight” critique: instead, they employ the complex aesthetic form of humour that informs and refracts – that is, redirects – the critical thrust. This is because the humour here is not simply a statement that things are “wrong,” but rather a sustained reflection on a gap between the utopian ideals of the American political system and the complex, contingent nature of its concrete practice. To declare that things are not working as they should is not to be comic; rather the comic only emerges in the disjuncture between two competing explanations or frames of reference.Footnote 29 What this means is that satire's critique only operates as humour so far as it locates itself within – and draws attention to – the gap between ideal and actual forms of politics: if a text were to focus only on the failure (or the ideal) it would not be humour. Instead, such humour requires the movement between two different and somehow legitimate frameworks, which in turn requires implicit retention of a belief in the ideal practice of politics as a viable, although very distant, option. Such satire therefore only operates as humour insofar as it retains an implicit belief in the system that it apparently attacks. Contemporary American satire only function as humour so long as it is read against a continued investment in the sanctity of the existing political system and the failures of the political system are thus funny insofar as they are an incongruous departure from a persistent belief in a proper form of politics, rather than the ultimate failure and abandonment of that belief. In this way, satirical humour can be understood as example of the ideological operation by which “real social contradictions … find a purely formal resolution in the aesthetic realm.”Footnote 30 The aesthetic of humour requires rather than rejects a belief in the ultimate correctness and worthiness of the American political system and thereby resolves and recuperates the politics of any challenge that is mounted.
Taken in terms of the first two levels of political unconsciousness, contemporary American satire thus appears as a cultural constellation that, first, emerges in response to the particular demands of our current political moment and, second, both expresses and represses anxieties that emerge out of the manifestation of the American political system. This, however, still leaves Jameson's third and deepest level of the political unconscious – the broad inscription of the capitalist mode of production – unaccounted for. This third level asks us to consider how the form of satire itself might be determined by the context of neoliberal capitalism: a much larger question than can be accounted for here. Such a question does, however, point towards the importance of the aesthetic as a powerful determining factor when accounting for the political work of popular culture. While the contemporary constellation of American satire certainly does provide expression for powerful and potentially politically productive desires, we should be wary of claims to critical efficacy often made (or simply just assumed) on satire's behalf. What undercuts the political work of satire is not the form's powerlessness, but rather the manner in which its own comic aesthetic elements work against the reading of any clear meaning. Such a conclusion does not mean that humour cannot be political, but does suggest that when the formal aesthetic of humour is combined with the direct address of immediately political content there is a tendency for those two aspects to counteract one another. The political unconscious of contemporary American humour speaks the necessity of accounting for the ideological potential of aesthetic aspects of text, which can work to undercut or rearticulate the politics of even the most directly engaged interventions and therefore call on us to revisit, though not necessarily abandon, more radical claims towards the political work of American satire.
