On On Cinema: Medium-Nihilism and How Postdigital Humor Led to Political Accelerationism Devin Dougherty ABSTRACT The postdigital age, the combination of the postmodern and digital eras, has bred a certain breed of media-savvy spectators: self-conscious and aware yet ironically detached. Using the transmedia series On Cinema as a case study, this paper defines medium-nihilism: the willful disregard for the traditional boundaries of television, both on the part of the creators and the spectator. The causes and effects of medium- nihilism—the nature of television/information and the proliferation of humor for the former, and a destructive accelerationist attitude for the latter—are explored through and supported by the writings of cultural theorists such as Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, McKenzie Wark, and Slavoj Žižek, among others. I argue through this framework that this attitude of accelerationism, brought upon by medium-nihilism, has had a concrete effect in the real world with the presidential election of Donald Trump, using monographs by James Poniewozik and Ken Jennings as evidence.
On November 16, 2019, the comedy ever put on screen, one that Museum of the Moving Image (MoMI) requires plenty of background in New York closed out its series “No knowledge from the series. Following Joke: Absurd Comedy as Political this screening, co-creators and stars Reality” with a screening of The Trial, Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington a nearly five-hour event in the On video-called in and answered ques- Cinema extended universe, shown in tions from the audience: “This is not its entirety. The director, Eric how we expected this to be viewed… Notarnicola, affectionately referred to at a museum in New York in a single the program as “basically 280 sitting… it’s not a movie, I don’t know 1 minutes of raw court footage.” What what it is, but it’s not a movie.” To followed was one of the most them, it was just another part of the aggressive and difficult pieces of joke; they do not care about the
1 Tim Heidecker, Q&A at Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, NY, November 16, 2019.
Screen Studies Quarterly 3 Dougherty medium or semantic arguments lives of the characters continue on about what is film, they care about into other series, videos, as well as the dispersing the joke into as many comedian-stars’ respective Twitter media as possible. What Ken accounts.2 On Cinema is the Jennings has called Planet Funny, the apotheosis of transmedia as well as its total proliferation of humor into all natural conclusion. When Henry parts of life, works as a specific Jenkins writes that transmedia story- application of what McKenzie Wark telling is “a process where integral calls the disintegrating spectacle. I elements of a fiction get dispersed argue that this proliferation, systematically across multiple chan- epitomized by On Cinema, leads to a nels for the purpose of creating a media-savvy, yet nihilistic audience unified and coordinated enter- willing to accelerate the spectacle to tainment experience,”3 he anticipates capitalism’s natural end. On Cinema. Turkington quipped during the call at MoMI, “the problem The issue here is not what the is we’re running out of medi[a].”4 The next medium is, but that the next problem with Turkington’s half-joke is medium does not matter—the joke is that On Cinema does not explicitly everywhere. On Cinema is ostensibly signify its joke, and yet its content is a satirical movie review webseries on ever-present. Heidecker explained Adult Swim in the ‘basic cable’ style, that a handful of people have come keeping up to date with the actual up to him, praising him for The Trial, films being released to theaters in the and had no idea that it was connected non-fictional world. Beyond that, the in any way to a larger series.5 This
2 Briefly, On Cinema started as a podcast 3 Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling reviewing older movies and moved to a 101,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official weekly webseries reviewing contemporary Weblog of Henry Jenkins, March 21, 2007, ones. The On Cinema hosts (in-character) also http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2007/03/transme create a short movie-series called Decker dia_storytelling_101.html. (airing on Adult Swim). The Trial is a miniseries 4 Gregg Turkington, Q&A at Museum of the about Heidecker’s character going on trial for Moving Image, Queens, NY, November 16, murder, and Mister America is a theatrically 2019. released movie about Heidecker’s character (following his trial) running for District Attorney 5 Heidecker, Q&A. Additionally, my own of San Bernardino county. There are also sibling told me that he watched a portion of supplemental tie-in books. The Trial online without any background knowledge of On Cinema.
4 May 2020 Vol. 1.1 On On Cinema miniseries could theoretically be convey information. Without these viewed by anyone interested in boundaries in place, I argue that the whatever the museum is prog- spectator sees all media with blurred ramming; it is now elevated to boundaries—a postmodern hellscape museum piece, cultural touchstone, where all media has to be decontextualized from the program entertaining, and if it is not, then it can from which it originated. be made entertaining. Guy Debord, in his seminal The Society of the When decontextualization toys Spectacle, writes that “the spectacle with reality in the way that On Cinema cannot be understood as a mere does, it is troubling—not what could visual excess produced by mass- happen to the accidental spectator, media technologies. It is a worldview but what is already happening with that has actually been materialized, a the spectators the show caters to. To view of a world that has become be a fan of On Cinema requires objective.”6 Because of this, mass- effort—it requires work. It is a media that is not entertaining is constant story taking place from consequently ignored—it is more podcast to webseries, from spin-off to than the aesthetic of transmediality event, from the printed word to the being present, more than the Twitter feed, from the courtroom to overwhelming dispersion of trans/ the cinema—it is all a part of the media, it has become how we relate spectacle. To navigate all this, the fan to one another and the world as a must be Internet-savvy, must be able whole. The audience now expects to to keep up with the jokes, must have find entertainment in their a knowledge of all that came before. information, leading not to better Thus, the dedicated spectator information but more and faster ascribes to a mindset of medium- information into more areas of life. “I nihilism, the inevitable conclusion to can guarantee you,” Ken Jennings the ever-expanding transmedia predicts, “that jokes will continue to method of content distribution. squeeze into more and more places I am defining medium-nihilism as where they were once… completely numbness and indifference to the verboten. Ironic eulogies and funny boundaries of the medium used to headstones are coming. Funnier
6 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, trans. Ken Knabb (2002), 11.
Screen Studies Quarterly 5 Dougherty appliance manuals, funnier judges other than their separateness.”10 In giving funnier decisions.”7 Evidently, this second statement, Wark theorizes it is the case that we can make court that due to the proliferation of the proceedings funny (and two years spectacle into every part of our lives, later, we expect them to be, with NBC we have become detached from one News claiming that Trump’s another; more frightening, the savvy impeachment hearings lack ‘pizazz’8); spectator is aware of this proliferation The Trial does nothing to make it and has begun to distrust reality itself. seem like the miniseries it is—it is fully The nihilistic retort to president formally consistent with a televised Donald Trump’s “fake news” that “all court proceeding.9 news is fake” does nothing but give one a sense of superiority for seeing Because of medium-nihilism, the the spectacle-as-spectacle—and on search for entertainment has become the surface, supports Trump’s the spectator’s responsibility, which aggravated criticism of media. “In we have gleefully taken. This is the asserting the indiscernibility of fact core of the disintegrating spectacle, and fiction,” Erika Balsom writes, “the “where once the spectacle panicked statement that reality has entertained us, now we must collapsed at times accomplishes little entertain each other…. Spectators but furthering the collapse of reality. are now obliged to make images and Proclaiming the unreality of the stories for each other that do not present lifts the heavy burdens of unite those spectators in anything gravity, belief, and action, effecting a
7 Ken Jennings, Planet Funny: How Comedy 9 At its most aggressive, the last day of the Took Over Our Culture (New York: Scribner, trial opens with a full 12 minutes of 2018), 267. Tellingly, the paperback version uninterrupted near-silence as we watch the changed the book’s subtitle from “How gallery, the attorneys, Tim, and finally the Comedy Took Over Our Culture” to “How judge enter in real-time, with a “LIVE” digital Comedy Ruined Everything.” on-screen graphic in the corner.
8 Jonathan Allen, “Plenty of Substance but 10 McKenzie Wark, The Spectacle of Little Drama on First Day of Impeachment Disintegration: Situationist Passages Out of Hearings,” NBCNews.com (NBC Universal the 20th Century (New York: Verso, 2013), 6. News Group, November 14, 2019), https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump- impeachment-inquiry/plenty-substance-little- drama-first-day-impeachment-hearings- n1081926?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma.
6 May 2020 Vol. 1.1 On On Cinema great leveling whereby all statements to get himself kicked out of the float by, cloaked in doubt.”11 gallery during The Trial when Gregg tells Star Trek film writer/director In On Cinema, the primary joke is Nicholas Meyer that he is confused that the spectacle is celebrated; when about his own movie. If anyone can it is not, it is often personal. claim expertise, that puts the burden Throughout the webseries, con- of proof on the inaccessible—the temporary new film releases are truth. “reviewed” by giving the most basic knowledge about the film (cast, A major part of On Cinema is that director, and plot summary), to which the “characters” respond to the Tim and Gregg, who usually have viewers on Twitter. But here we have obviously not seen the movie, the blurring of boundaries with reality attempt to give a brief review, nearly itself; the characters of Tim and always giving the film five “popcorn Gregg post from their respective bags” (their version of stars) out of actor’s actual Twitter profiles. Tim, five (and occasionally more—another the character, demagogues right- boundary that can be blurred based wing propaganda while Heidecker, on the whims of the creator). This the actor, defends himself from his satirical condemnation of “expert alt-right detractors. But often these opinions” never provides an personae are not signified, existing in alternative; it utilizes the same the blurred space between narrative language as political leaders who find and meta-narrative—irony and themselves beyond critique due to sincerity. When a Twitter user asks their so-called expertise. One long- about a visual gag in a recent Oscar running gag in the show is that Special (an annual live-streamed Gregg, the self-proclaimed resident commentary aired alongside the expert, fully believes that Star Trek II: Oscars), @timheidecker responds, The Wrath of Khan takes place in San “You can’t just meander into the Francisco, when it is actually Star Trek Oscar Special without trudging IV: The Voyage Home, going so far as through The Trial.”12 Indeed, both
11 Erika Balsom, "The Reality-Based 12 Tim Heidecker (@timheidecker), Twitter, Community," e-flux Journal 83 (June 13, Mar 8, 2018, 9:29 a.m., 2017): https://www.e- https://twitter.com/timheidecker/status/97175 flux.com/journal/83/142332/the-reality-based- 4671772610560. community/.
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The Trial and the Oscar Special exist extra step into that blurred boundary both in reality and within the fiction of to interact with the platform (the the show, so is the joke from in- “blue-checked” on Twitter) directly. character-Tim or actor-Tim? This is Trump rallies play on the same the core of postdigital humor—the experience, like a participatory rock idea of the wink—where the humorist concert, where Trump might point to (using the term extremely lightly) can you—aggressively or affectionately, say one thing with a wink and have or somewhere in between.14 This was the spectator react however they truly also mirrored by On Cinema live feel about the topic. This wink has appearances and the show’s own similarly become the bread-and- convention, Deckercon, where one butter of Donald Trump’s persona(e), can talk in person with the characters, the demagogue/businessman—the fully embodied in flesh-and-blood celebrity/politician. before you. Poniewozik writes, “Getting retweeted, for a Trump In his monograph on Donald follower, was like getting called from Trump and the media, James the studio audience to play on The Poniewozik explains this dichotomy Price Is Right…: it was the promise of as necessary for Trump’s candidacy, transitioning, even for a moment, “when you are always in a from spectator to spectacle…. Schrödinger’s-cat paradox of joking Someday it could be you.”15 and not joking, the same message can send different meanings to Interacting with the spectator was different audiences: I mean it but I the spectacle itself, not as a human don’t really mean it but I do. being, but as an entity of (Wink.)”13 Further, the idea that one entertainment—an entity that could become part of this spectacle creates/is created through the act of by interacting with Tim or the searching for it. The medium-nihilist, president or anyone on Twitter is then, treats all interaction with media extremely enticing; it only takes an (including actual people who have
13 James Poniewozik, Audience of One: 14 See: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/06/03/tr of America (United States: Liveright, 2019), 80. ump-look-at-my-african-american-over-here.
15 Poniewozik, Audience of One, 190-191.
8 May 2020 Vol. 1.1 On On Cinema become like media) like television— level, is already an ironic medium—by an accelerating sequence of adding picture (the image) to sound overwhelming events that accumulate (the audio/text), ironic juxtaposition without end—the Benjaminian becomes easily possible—so to add concept of “information.”16 Before the un-signified detached humor of the advent of cable, information postmodern writing instills numbness flowed into the house in a single in the spectator.17 stream—the spectator had the choice This aggressive numbness, I to simply turn the faucet on or off— argue, is part of the reason why On Cinema, indeed the whole world, Donald Trump was elected. The demands that you connect the pipes cynicism brought upon by the yourself by subjecting yourself to the numbness has led to a form of stream. To be a part of this endless accelerationism, "the insistence that spectacle is simply exhausting; yes, the only radical political response to the form of On Cinema is clever in its capitalism is not to protest, disrupt, meta-commentary on the pro- critique, or détourne it, but to liferation of information into every accelerate and exacerbate its medium, but then we go back to the uprooting, alienating, decoding, wink and remember that the [and] abstractive tendencies.”18 postdigitalist spirit exists between Deeply felt in a community of media- narrative and meta-narrative. savvy younger people, they are Audiovisual media (at least in the U.S.) looking for a radical stance to take was not able to create an ironic within the means of their control. The language of its own beyond horrifying underside to accel- pastiching the modernists’ written erationism is that the already- language. David Foster Wallace underprivileged (probably not the writes that television, on a technical accelerationists feeding into the
16 Walter Benjamin, "The storyteller: 17 David Foster Wallace, "E unibus pluram: Observations on the works of Nikolai Leskov," Television and US fiction," The Review of in Selected Writings: 1935-1938, trans. Contemporary Fiction 13, no. 2 (1993): 160. Edmund Jephcott, ed. Howard Eiland and 18 Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian, Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge: Belknap “Introduction” in #ACCELERATE: The Press, 2002), 361-378. Accelerationist Reader, ed. Robin Mackay and Armen Avanessian (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2014), 4.
Screen Studies Quarterly 9 Dougherty annihilating machine) will be drained, the “Numb Spiral,” being “the point harmed, and likely liquidated in an at which consciousness negates attempt to keep control of being, and a cruel illusion maintains capitalism—or worse, as a direct control of the flailing senses. What result of accelerationistic action. The begins as apathy, surreptitiously election of Trump is, sadly, not the devolves into solipsism and nihilism, end-result for the more misanthropic until the infected succumbs to the anarchist or total political-atheist, but perception of total illusion. The a marker on the way to chaos/an end Digital Sickness... marches onwards of some sort (depending on which towards the eradication of the accelerationist you ask). real….”19 Woods’s description of the spectacle of mediated representation This numbness is a result of the (this persistent transmedial unfurling saturation of transmedial storytelling of appearances) leading to apathy in the contemporary media and later nihilism, where landscape—the medium-nihilist is “consciousness negates being” anxious and overwhelmed because (where reality has collapsed, as stories no longer have ends, they Balsom sneeringly points out), is expand and become necessary absolutely the result of our information. On Cinema has no end in unconscious, accelerated medium- sight and is a longform kayfabe nihilism. There is an argument to be performance for its co-creators, who made about Trump’s appeal to have accepted this blurred boundary nihilism as having fascist precedence. between their fictional lives and their According to Slavoj Žižek, mass real lives. The concept of Donald demonstrations (rallies) rarely stir the Trump has been relevant for decades emotions necessary to become and surely will not be posthumously fascist, but what fascism does is forgotten, and as explained above— convince the masses that they already he is in a blurred boundary of his own: agree with it.20 Trump, the spectacle he is dually the entertainer and that we unconsciously seek, appeals politician. Artist M. Woods refers to
19 M. Woods, “Disassociative Productions,” 20 Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End Times, Rev. Disamedia, accessed December 4, 2019, ed. (New York: Verso, 2018), 372. http://disamedia.squarespace.com/?fbclid=Iw AR1lNn1VNV_S1bCgphl2esLhouVUIPGtlfiVKQ FDByaHX9RUeU-f3gzThbU.
10 May 2020 Vol. 1.1 On On Cinema to the nihilists because he embodies to medium-nihilism, an indifference the accelerationist attitude brought for the boundaries between media upon by the spectacle of and ultimately between the real and disintegration. the performed. Medium-nihilism, combined with Wark’s disintegrating Jennings wrote that “Donald spectacle, has led to a disturbing Trump was supposed to be the end of feeling of accelerationism in the satire, but that was only true if by “the media-savvy—those who can keep up end of satire” you meant “an with the increasing speed of content, incredible proliferation of satire.””21 who can interact, and ultimately who Truthfully, it could not have been any can perform. When the performance other way, with SNL on air in New never ends, when the content and the York City two weeks following the information never end, where do we 9/11 attacks, there is no reason to go to escape? When whole imagine the death of parody. On friendships are based around sitting Cinema had been parodying Trump down and sharing quotes from shared in the months leading up to his media consumed, performing jokes election and continue to today. This already heard, talking about what saturation of transmedial storytelling, Donald Trump has done today—what apotheosized by On Cinema, has led is next? It’s all so funny until it’s not.
BIO Devin Dougherty is a graduate student in Screen Studies. Her areas of interest are in documentary theory, Marxism, nihilism, postmodernism, and situationist theory. She has her bachelor’s degree in screenwriting from Brooklyn College and she continues to work on screenplays in her free time. She drinks a lot of iced coffee.
21 Jennings, Planet Funny, 267.
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