Still more on Colbert…
Michael Miner considers a spiked column by Charles Madigan about the recent Colbert comedy flap:
“Satire is dangerous because it assumes an audience is smart enough to know it’s satire, first, and not so egocentric that everything said is taken seriously,” Madigan wrote. “It’s not about getting a laugh so much as it is about getting a thought that leads to a laugh. That’s hard. There was no way Colbert could play that room, particularly when he turned his wit on journalism, basically describing it as a compliant scrivener eager to bow to power. Self-importance has a hard time being satirized.”
Too bad this column didn’t run. I like where this analysis appears to be going:
1. It correctly identifies the speech-act as satire. In the revised formula of the illocutionary act, F = a combination of assertives and declaratives. (p) = an observation of a state of affairs that the object of the satire might wish left unobserved or a proposition about the socio-political quality of a state of affairs involving the object of the satire. r includes 1) the disarming power of humor (not necessarily the ha-ha kind) as described by Aristotle and 2) the tropes and schemes employed to blur the boundaries between the assertives and the declaratives.
2. It correctly characterizes the intended effect of satire on an audience (perlocutionary effect).
3. It offers what I think is one good reason why Colbert’s routine fell flat (judging by the reactions of the audience): bad kairos. But who, really, was Colbert performing for? Yes, he was being paid to entertain the warm bodies in front of him. But I think it is a reasonable interpretation of his material (no different from his material on The Colbert Report) that his audience was the same as the audience for his show–certainly not many of those sitting in that ballroom. Was that bad kairos? It may have been bad manners.
I also found this an interesting bit from Miners’:
Is the Internet ruled by a law that reaction drives out reflection? That might explain why Stephen Colbert’s speech at the White House correspondents dinner was pretty much ignored by the print media: bloggers said so much so quickly that newspaper pundits asked themselves, what’s the point? Charles Madigan has a weekly column in the Tribune and intended to say his piece on May 16. But by then Colbert was ancient history, and Madigan spiked what he’d written.
I would argue that a media situation gets old once there’s nothing interesting left to say about it (which means almost nothing gets old for an academic–but that’s not necessarily a comment on the quality and contents of “interesting”). If the blogosphere ages the news quickly, then, perhaps, Madigan should be writing a blog.
And the reaction-reflection dichotomy is a canard.
