“Is This S**t For Real?” Adorno, Benjamin, and Anti-Comedy Dennis Golin

German cultural theorists Walter Benjamin and Teodore Adorno were outspoken in lamenting the industrially-churned sameness produced by the culture industry, yet both men also saw the power of truly authentic work to deliver moments of introspection (or, as is often the case in modern art, to highlight the absence of them). Te visual technologies of the twentieth century have the power to lull us into submission, but also to politically energize mass audiences through propagating absurdity, imperfection, and confrontation. According to Benjamin’s theories, flm may even have the power to form a window into the unconscious. Te philosophy sustained and elucidated by these two men has had a profound infuence on modern American comedy, particularly in the work of comedians and . Troughout their oeuvre of surreal comedy sketches, Tim and Eric take up the complex themes of alienation, greed, inadequacy, and a Freudian obsession with paternity (and by extension patriarchy), and feed them roughly through the meat grinder of lowbrow comedy. Te result embraces the derivative, the faulty, and the profane, creating authenticity by pointing out the hopelessness in trying to achieve it. In the process, their comedy expands our sensibilities and sensory vocabularies, challenges our relationships to reality, and redefnes the scope of artistic expression.

Dennis Golin is pursuing his Master's Degree in Media, Culture, and Communications at New York University. A lifelong resident of the Washington Heights neighborhood of , his research interests include alternative comedy, Public Access Television, the Cold War, and social media manipulation. Feel free to send comments and weird internet videos to [email protected].

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et me remark, by the way, that there Today, Kaufman’s unique performances on is no better starting point for thought stage and in life, which include reading than laughter; speaking more precisely, pages of Te Great Gatsby in a British spasms of the diaphragm generally ofer better accent (“ Reads Te Great Lchances for thought than spasms of the soul. Gatsby” [1978] 2016), a bowl of ice (Benjamin [1966] 2003, 101) cream while canned applause comes out of a cassette player (“Andy Kaufman - Eating Ice On a 1975 episode of the comedy program Cream” 2007), or “forgetting” the rest of his , a strange looking act—his staccato cries of anguish gradually man named Andy Kaufman applied a morphing into a bongo-infused scat—fall phonograph needle to a vinyl record and within a genre often dubbed “metacomedy” stood in silence. A scratchy recording of or “anti-comedy.” It’s a term that can an old cartoon theme song began to play as Kaufman continued to stand still with a further be applied to some of Kaufman’s kind of dazed look about him. Te audience contemporaries like Michael O’Donoghue, chuckled nervously. Ten, at the crucial progenitors like , and moment of the song – “Here I come to save successors like Eric Andre. Cultural theorist the day!” – Kaufman broke the tension and Philip Auslander defned it as “a practice boisterously mimed along, returning to his focused on the vulnerabilities and potential awkward silence at the line’s completion. ‘failures’ of public performance… comedy A few seconds later, he almost jumped that is explicitly about the art of comedy in early, missing his cue, but collected itself, a foregrounding of its expectations, his bearings and hit his mark with gusto conventions, and execution” (Sconce 2013, when it returned (“ - Andy 75). Whereas dry traditional humor, Kaufman” [1975] 2014). Te audience in according to philosopher Simon Critchley, the studio seemed to enjoy it, but perhaps is “a consequence of city life, maybe even of without knowing quite why. Audiences at metropolitan life… what civilized people home heard the confused but enthusiastic do, share, have in common” (Dillon & reception and were largely left questioning Critchley 2005), anti-comedy elevates the the reality and the meaning of what had just provincial, the unpleasant or disturbing, and occurred: “Was this meant to be ‘funny’ or the unfamiliar (it is worth remembering ‘not funny,’ or was it funny precisely because that Kaufman’s most successful character it wasn’t actually all that funny?” (Sconce was named “Foreign Man”)—to fnd 2013, 75). Trough the subtlest of acts, a comedy in the uncommon and to experience long tradition of narrative and, therefore, humanizing laughter rather than fear when didactic comedy, had been upended and assigned an almost dialectical character, faced with the idea of the Other. In keeping joining other art forms and genres in the with the iconoclastic spirit of Adorno and post-modernist mode of expression. Much Benjamin, it eschews conventional delivery like the spectator of Dada and Surrealist and subject matter by heightening just how art, the reader of French Symbolist poetry, vapid those conventions can be. It also speaks the listener of a Minimalist musical piece to the grouping of the comedic avant-garde by John Cage, or the viewer of a Beckett of 2018, as the most notable of Kaufman’s play, the comedy audience member was now heirs are a prolifc duo from given interpretative agency and was elevated with a predilection for the grotesque—Tim to the status of co-star. Heidecker and Eric Wareheim. 4 • gnovisjournal.org "Is This Sh*t For Real?"

Since 2004, Tim and Eric have created he dubbed “epic theatre” which employed a number of shows that have aired on unconventional methods to destroy the the ’s illusion of straightforward representation: programming block. Te most infuential “Actors spoke as if they were reciting of these, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, someone else’s words; they went in and Great Job! has been described as “like out of character on stage; scenes formed a outtakes from a public-access channel that’s discontinuous montage, and were, at times, broadcast only in hell… full of shoddily frozen into a tableau vivant” (Ezcurra 2012). produced, sloppily edited talk shows Adorno seemed to dislike it, claiming, about acne and commercials for utterly “Brecht distrusts aesthetic individuation as unnecessary gadgets, and populated by an ideology. Tis is why he wants to turn people who should never stand within 50 the gruesomeness of society into a theatrical feet of a camera lens” (Itzkof 2008). While phenomenon by dragging it out into the slyly skewering the consumerism of late open” (1991, 82). Benjamin, on the other capitalism through their “CINCO” brand’s hand, was entranced by the possibilities infomercials (“Every Cinco Product Ever of this form “to alienate the audience in a | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great lasting manner, through thought, from the Job!” 2017) and the shadowy “Channel 5” conditions in which it lives” (2003, 101). it controls, the very look and feel of their Te weirdness of modern anti-comedy can show experiments with perception itself, trace its history to this principle. Tim and playing with Walter Benjamin’s convention Eric frequently use non-professional actors, that “the audience’s identifcation with degraded video, and abrupt edits to break the actor is really an identifcation with through the artifce of conventional sketch the camera” (Benjamin 1969, 230). As premises. As Eric Wareheim told the New comedian Scott Aukerman recalled, “Tey York Times, “It added to the mystery. It makes were using editing and sound efects in a people think: Is this real? Is this acting or way I had never seen” (Zinoman 2017). not? Tat’s exciting to us” (Zinoman 2017). Tese efects usually include a crescendo of Benjamin was strongly in favor of such gurgles, static, lip smacking, and still frames trickery, recalling how “Brecht talks about that always seem to get stuck on the most epic theatre, and mentions plays acted by unfattering pose. Certainly, a casual TV children in which faults of performance, watcher who came across one of their early operating as alienation efects, impart epic episodes found himself in the same position characteristics to the production. Something as that SNL audience 40 years ago, asking, similar may occur in third-rate provincial “Are these people for real?” Te line between theatre” (2003, 115). art and reality wasn’t just blurred, it was smeared. Obviously, a well-funded show on a national cable network is not “third-rate Another duo, the critical theorists Teodore provincial theater” by any means. Just Adorno and Walter Benjamin, were because the aesthetic of the program takes themselves no strangers to the cutting on a provocative quality doesn’t mean it edge. Playwright Bertolt Brecht was a is not in service to what Adorno called friend to both men, having spent time with “nothing but business as an ideology to Benjamin in Sweden as exiles and in Los legitimize the trash they intentionally Angeles with Adorno. Beginning in the produce” (Horkheimer & Adorno 2006, 1920s, Brecht created a theatrical technique 42). Indeed, the very editing style that Tim

gnovis • 5 Volume 18, Issue 2 • Spring 2018 and Eric (along with their longtime editor incomprehensible—to the lower classes that Doug Lussenhop) pioneered is a feature in art was disconnected from market demands many advertisements, some of which are and was thus more “pure.” To put it plainly, directed by Tim and Eric themselves (Tim “as long as it was expensive, art kept the & Eric 2014). Benjamin and Adorno would citizen within some bounds. Tat is now likely be skeptical that someone ensconced over” (ibid., 67). within the capitalist mode of production could efectively critique it. However, Tim Likewise, Benjamin sees even the most and Eric were given complete creative challenging works as having their origins control by Adult Swim, something of a in bourgeois circles: “Te extravagances rarity in Adorno and Benjamin’s day of and crudities of art which thus appear, studio systems in the 1930s and 1940s. Tim particularly in the so-called decadent Heidecker remarked: “When Adult Swim epochs, actually arise from the nucleus of approached us about doing another show, its richest historical energies” (1969, 237). we said, ‘you have to trust us. You know us. Te progressive reaction to flm, according You know what we do. It’s just going to be to Benjamin, “is characterized by the direct, our show’” (Epstein 2007). Te arrangement intimate fusion of visual and emotional allowed them to reach an audience of enjoyment with the orientation of the expert,” millions while maintaining artistic integrity presumably referring to the director (ibid., in the face of corporate interests. 234). He speaks favorably of the Dadaists who “attached much less importance to Tere is a certain irony to the fetishization of the sales value of their work than to its so-called “high-art” on the part of Adorno uselessness for contemplative immersion,” and Benjamin. Adorno seems unaware speaking to how their deconstructions of of the classism in his argument when he word and image confronted the observer describes a revolutionary cultural creation with distraction, an efect perfected with like jazz as “routine travestied as nature” the rise of flm (ibid., 237). Adorno retorts: and “stylized barbarism.” He seems to insist that any cultural production that fts outside “Te idea that a reactionary individual the regimen of standardized production is can be transformed into a member of nonetheless in service to it: “ the avant-garde through an intimate is forgiven all his ofences against the usages acquaintance with the flms of Chaplin of the craft because, as calculated rudeness, strikes me as simple romanticization” they confrm the validity of the system (Adorno & Benjamin 1999, 130). Te two all the more zealously”—a deeply ironic intellectuals were of a similar mindset to statement considering that Welles’ work that of French sociologist and philosopher came to defne the craft of flmmaking itself Pierre Bourdieu, who asserted only a proper (Horkheimer & Adorno 2006, 46). Adorno background and grounding in the arts could lovingly speaks of the highly class-stratifed stimulate revolutionary thought, where “the culture of pre-Fascist Europe, calling it legitimate way of appropriating culture and “backward in relation to the monopoly works of art favors those who have had early of culture… it was precisely to such access to legitimate culture, in a cultured backwardness that intellectual activity owed household…” (2004, 432). In fact, Critchley a remnant of autonomy” (ibid., 49). He posits that the cultivation of “taste” has a conjectured that it was precisely because the strong relationship with the rise of humor work of art was inaccessible—and perhaps as a respected feld, claiming “you could 6 • gnovisjournal.org "Is This Sh*t For Real?" probably plot similar genealogies for both is simpler than it looks (Bourdieu 2004, concepts” (Dillon & Critchley 2005). 432). As cultural historian Jefrey Sconce postulates, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, A sketch by Tim and Eric (themselves Great Job! suggests, “even television—long- graduates of ’s flm considered the lowest and most debased of program) like “Poop Tube” would certainly the visual and performing arts—has both gain the ire of many “serious” cultural critics. ‘artists’ and an audience who have now Tis fake infomercial involves a medium- cultivated such a disposition” (2013, 81). energy inventor a la Billy Mays hawking Basic cultural literacy may not be required a device that supposedly restores dignity to comprehend anti-comedy, but it certainly and cleanliness to the act of defecation— helps interpret it. by rerouting the excrement so it shoots out of a helmet-mounted tube, allowing According to Benjamin, mechanical men to use the urinal instead of sitting reproduction led to the steep decline of the on the toilet seat (“Te Poop Tube | Tim “aura” as perceived through face-to-face and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | experience. Te aura, or “a quality of our Adult Swim” [2007] 2009). Tis parody of experience of objects…closely tied to the performative masculinity and the pragmatic religious or quasi-religious element in art” shamelessness of late capitalism can hardly (Rosen 2004, 10) of a performance or a work be called “in good taste.” Bourdieu remarks of art has been replaced by the “spell of a how, personality, the phony spell of a commodity” (Benjamin 1969, 231). Or, put more plainly, Te denial of lower, coarse, vulgar, venal, the ancient ethereal experience of a cultic servile—in a word, natural—enjoyment, object has been replaced by the monetized which constitutes the sacred sphere of spell of celebrity culture (satirized as a mad culture, implies an afrmation of the dash-for-cash game show in the Tim and superiority of those who can be satisfed Eric sketch “Celebrity Zillions” [“Celebrity with the sublimated… distinguished Zillions | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, pleasures forever closed to the profane. Great Job! | Adult Swim” [2009] 2010]). (2004, 432) Somewhat cynically, Benjamin states “[Mankind’s] self-alienation has reached Recognition from the cultural elite is such a degree that it can experience its own based mostly in “prohibitions applied to its destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the syntax and vocabulary,” something Adorno frst order” (1969, 242). As Situationist believes is true of both the “avant-garde” Guy Debord phrased it, “Te basically and the culture industry alike (Horkheimer tautological character of the spectacle fows & Adorno 2006, 46). Of course, much of from the simple fact that its means are modern “avant-garde” art and performance simultaneously its ends” (1977). It is a kind will incorporate scatological or grotesque of scripted pointlessness wherein we insist elements—the work of Marina Abramovic on our autonomy but perform exactly as we and Chris Ofli being some notable are expected. Adorno further clarifes: “For examples—blurring the expectations centuries society has prepared for Victor between what constitutes “tasteful” and Mature and Mickey Rooney. Tey come to “tasteless,” “high art” and “low art.” In the fulfll the very individuality they destroy” age of YouTube and Wikipedia, cultivating (Horkheimer & Adorno 2006). Tis is a what Bourdieu calls an “aesthetic disposition” kind of class-consciousness of an inevitable

gnovis • 7 Volume 18, Issue 2 • Spring 2018 consumption towards death, whereby the society, as part of society, and as instrument means of continuing our existence through of unifcation” (Debord 1977). “Te more the fulfllment of our basest desires is densely and completely [flmic] techniques also the means by which our lives are duplicate empirical objects,” Adorno wrote, propelled toward their ends, in a pastiche “the more easily it creates the illusion that of Heidegger’s Sein-Zum-Tode (“being- the world outside is a seamless extension of towards-death”) (Heidegger 1962, 247). the one which has been revealed in cinema” (Horkheimer & Adorno, 2006). Tus, Here, Benjamin’s fascination with Dadaism it falls upon artists to utilize the unique once again reveals a desire to prod the representational features of cinema itself to audience: “Dadaistic activities actually span generations, link past with present, and assured a rather vehement distraction by shatter the adherence to a unifed present. making most works of art the center of As Benjamin believed, memory “traverses scandal. One requirement was foremost: the whole of life like lightning... Tat is the to outrage the public” (1969, 238). He sees only way in which [the audience] encounter these developments frmly in line with the themselves, and only thus – by feeing iconoclasts of the past, squaring his Marxist from the present – can they understand historical materialism with his religious life” (2003, 112). It is no accident that the tradition (Ezcurra 2012). “For the frst “techno-terroir” aesthetic of late and time in world history,” Benjamin writes, early 1990s videos are often mined for their “technological reproducibility emancipates comedic value by modern comedians, both the work of art from its parasitic subservience as an ironic fetishization of obsolescence and to ritual” (Ross 2014). Adorno also believed a slightly wistful reverence of a simpler time in this merger of mythmaking and historical (see the suburban dad-meets-Kraftwerk conditions, claiming, “[the] heart of the music video for Tim and Eric’s “Mini Van autonomous work of art does not in itself Highway,” complete with VHS grain and belong to the dimension of myth... but it is blocky PCs, that perfectly illustrates the inherently dialectical, that is, compounds quixotic struggle for a family man to seem within itself the magical element with the cool [“Mini Van Highway | Tim and Eric sign of freedom” (Adorno & Benjamin Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult Swim” 1999, 128). [2009] 2012]).

Te smoothing over of time and place into “By means of its technical structure,” wrote a homogenous present plays an essential Benjamin, “the flm has taken the physical role in Benjamin and Adorno’s belief in the shock efect out of the wrappers in which decline of aura. As Benjamin puts it, “Even Dadaism had, as it were, kept inside the the most perfect reproduction of a work of moral shock efect” (1969, 238). Tis is art is lacking in one element: its presence the nucleus of Benjamin’s “shock efect”— in time and space, its unique existence at the audience feels actual physiological the place where it happens to be” (1969, sensations through flm via its use of 220). Te cheapness of reproduction cannot montage, jump-cuts, special efects and so help but extend into the lived experience of on, overwhelming our senses with secondary, the consumer, replacing the uniqueness of emotional stimuli. Media theorist Marshall empirical perception with a copy of a copy McLuhan would later take it a step further, of a copy. Technology has created a spectacle postulating how flm’s “sheer speeding up which “presents itself simultaneously as all of [of ] the mechanical, carried us from the 8 • gnovisjournal.org "Is This Sh*t For Real?" world of sequence and connections into (“New!” “Improved!” “Guaranteed!”) betrays the world of creative confguration and a kind of intellectual bankruptcy that is only structure. Te message of the movie medium made more perverse through its constant is that of transition from lineal connections replication, and repetition on television and to confgurations” (McLuhan 1973, 27). In a the internet (a special kind of advertising sense, our brains are being rewired to identify hell that neither Adorno nor Benjamin ever with the clustering of subjects and objects got to experience). as they are related visually, rather than the linear approach that came with thousands For Adorno and Benjamin, even if of years of written communication. Te something authentic were to slip by the frenetic pace of many Tim and Eric videos cultural industry, the industry would quickly refects this—what calls “the commodify it (or, if it failed to do so, produce perfect wrong thing at the right time with knock-ofs). On a television appearance, a rhythm to it” (Zinoman 2017)—as does Adorno remarked how “when somebody… the principle of interruption in epic theatre, for whatever reason [accompanies] maudlin itself a reinterpretation of flm montage music by singing something or other about for the stage (Benjamin 2003, 99). Indeed, Vietnam being unbearable… I fnd, in there may be evidence for such a theory. fact, this song unbearable, in that by taking New research shows that people “faced with the horrendous and making it somehow information overload tend to shift their consumable, it ends up wringing something medium of information from long texts… like consumption-qualities out of it” to condensed information such as video… (“Adorno about Popular Music (now with or short texts ( and the like). In english annotation)” 2007). Anti-comedy other words, we stopped reading and began purveyors would agree that there is no watching” (Ahn 2016). way to speak authentically to the tragedy of warfare. Te more truthful, and indeed Reading the work of Charles Baudelaire, shocking approach would be to refect on the Benjamin remarked how he “placed the shock horrendousness of conficts like Vietnam as experience at the very center of his artistic an essential, inevitable part of “the spectacle” work” agreeing that “the highly sensitized that is incapable of being expressed artist is constantly being shocked, over- without falsely imposed narratives (see the stimulated, by the world around him and overwrought jingoism and shamelessly must enlist his consciousness to aid him in applied stock footage of Tim Heidecker’s the battle” (Slocombe 2004). In fact, Brecht’s Trumpian secret agent show Decker, where conception of Verfremdung (estrangement the bad acting and special efects prove the or alienation) and Benjamin’s idea of “shock” perfect accompaniment to faux-nationalist “are often deemed identical” (Ezcurra bloviating [“Decker: Unclassifed Trailer 2012). Both men believed the heightened | Adult Swim” 2016]). Anti-comedy state of mind required to combat audience embodies a kind of ‘Detournement,’ the complacency is progressively weakened Situationist method of using preexisting through exposure, both from voluntary aesthetic elements to construct propaganda exposure to things like flms and plays and within the old cultural spheres, “a method involuntary exposure to urban environments, which reveals the wearing out and loss of large crowds and so on (Slocombe 2004). importance of those spheres” (“Defnitions” When one harnesses the ability to pay 1958). Likewise, epic theatre “aims at attention, the rote language of the market creating awareness by exposing its own

gnovis • 9 Volume 18, Issue 2 • Spring 2018 artifce” (Ezcurra 2012), and relishes in the while watching a video will, in degradation of form to return the observer addition to rational analysis, facilitate to detail-oriented thinking. emotional reaction depending on how the information was presented visually. “Tim and Eric mock clumsy cable access, for (2016) sure,” wrote , “but also venerate the possibilities of terrible acting or Benjamin had foreseen that the mechanical the kinds of mistakes that reveal an honest principles of flm could reveal things that moment in the middle of the artifce of simple perception could not (e.g., the show business” (Zinoman 2017). Lowering Muybridge Experiment’s use of flm to expectations allows one to be more fearless prove horses gallop with all four hooves in their choices, taking expectations and of the ground). As he wrote in Mechanical inverting them. Andy Kaufman insisted: Representation, “I’m not a comedian. What I am is a song- and-dance man. And if someone wants to Evidently a diferent nature opens itself really fatter me and be complimentary, they to the camera than opens to the naked can call me an absurdist and a surrealist. eye, if only because an unconsciously Because I’m not trying to be funny” (Hecht penetrated space is substituted for a 2001, 63). Perhaps levity is essential to space consciously explored by man… true insight, taking “art” out of the staid the camera introduces us to unconscious galleries and reorienting it to and within optics as does psychoanalysis to reality. Even the skeptical Marxist Adorno unconscious impulses. (Benjamin 1969, could not help but wonder if “absurdity in 236) the manner of Mark Twain, with which the American culture industry firts from Just as McLuhan saw media as an extension time to time, could be a corrective to art” of the human body—making us into (Adorno 1999, 55). Could the surrealist pseudo-cyborgs—Benjamin believes flm ‘rhizome’ in modern comedy be hinting has become a psychic apparatus: “Film is the toward a deeper truth about the human frst art form capable of demonstrating how regression, a reversion to irrationality in matter plays tricks on man. Hence, flms the age of cold mechanized efciency? As can be an excellent means of materialistic Marshall McLuhan postulated, “In the representation” (ibid., 247). electric age man seems to the conventional West to become irrational” (1973, 15). Could anti-Comedy be a kind of window into the id-saturated unconscious? Kaufman It has become evident that television and often bordered on the infantile in some of his flm are quite literally making us more “acts,” once famously getting into a physical emotionally invested and present, while altercation with wrestler on an simultaneously making it harder for us to episode of Late Night with think linearly. As Michael J. Ahn wrote for (the event, like countless other Kaufman Brookings Institute, , was later revealed to have been staged [“Lawler Kaufman on Letterman 82” Assuming there is a unit of information [1982] 2014]). Tim and Eric frequently use to be conveyed, acquiring that the convention of fatherhood as a source of information from reading long texts ridicule and borderline Oedipal obsession, will prompt people’s rational thinking writing songs like “I Wear My Dad’s Dirty 10 • gnovisjournal.org "Is This Sh*t For Real?"

Socks,” (“I Wear My Dad's Dirty Socks | Saturday Night Live often “repeat, reuse, and Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! re-contextualize” the sketches that resonate | Adult Swim” [2007] 2012) “Live With with them, expanding the show’s infuence My Dad” (“Live With My Dad | Tim and beyond just those viewers who watch the Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult initial live broadcasts” (Gurney 2013, 255). Swim” [2009] 2012) and “Meditation for It is the fulfllment of a desire harbored by Children” (“Meditation for Children | Benjamin ever since he frst became aware Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! of epic theatre: Tat the cultural apparatus | Adult Swim” [2007] 2012) where the host “will be better, the more consumers it brings attempts to obtain the email addresses of in contact with the production process, in the children’s fathers. Modern comedy has short, the more readers or spectators it a fxation on discomfort, perhaps refecting turns into collaborators” (2003, 98). As he and confronting the uneasy balance between predicted in Te Work of Art in Te Age of the virtual (i.e., contrived and socially Mechanical Representation, “Te distinction conditioned) and the real (i.e., authentic) in between author and public is about to lose our human relations. As such, it places itself its basic character” (ibid., 98). in a realm of tension and refection that is, as Martin Heidegger says, “on the one hand, Adorno knew that there will always be the akin to the essence of technology and, on the ideology of sameness to rally against and other, fundamentally diferent from it. Such watched as the Expressionists and Dadaists a realm is art” (1977, 35). For Benjamin, the “attacked in their polemics, the untruth duel between consciousness and distraction of style as such, triumphs today in the “is the creative process itself,” and has thus vocal jargon of the crooner” (Horkheimer “placed the shock experience at the very & Adorno 2006, 48). Te modern media center of his artistic work” (Slocombe 2004). landscape shows that even with an abundance of choice, the mediocre—as With the proliferation of reproduced images the common denominator—triumphs and the decline of real-life interpersonal nonetheless. Yet, as long as free access to connections, all the world has truly become culture burgeons, niche markets fnd their a stage, and life itself, an installation, a consumers more easily. Mutual appreciation performance. Adorno believed people who between outsiders (and the marginalized) just left a flm perceive the street outside can always be fruitful. Tim Heidecker as a continuation, because the flm “seeks once suggested fans of his shows “laugh at strictly to reproduce the world of everyday things that make other people squirm… perception” (Horkheimer & Adorno 2006, it’s fun to watch how diferent people are” 48). But Benjamin saw the blurring of lines (Wilson 2012). Even Andy Kaufman’s mom between author and audience as ripe for could see the autonomy and the existential radical possibility. In the flms of Dziga honesty in living through laughter: “Don’t Vertov for instance, Benjamin was thrilled you realize that with Andy it has to be by “the masses themselves becom[ing] fun? He won’t do it if it’s not fun” (Hecht actors, and the divide between author and 2001, 44). Fans of modern anti-comedy are public disintegrat[ing]” (Ross 2017). Tanks bound together as a group (and subculture) to technologies like YouTube, engagement outside the mainstream sensibility. As with a work's creator is easier than ever, and fans of the show proliferate (and as their can be done in a number of creative and own referential sketches take on a second deconstructive ways. For instance, fans of life on the internet), the show’s infuence

gnovis • 11 Volume 18, Issue 2 • Spring 2018 will increase exponentially, reverberating throughout the comedy world for years to come. Eventually, it will come to dominate mainstream culture by expanding and adjusting cultural sensibilities, just as the rebellious Bunuel, Brecht, or Baudelaire have become canon. But by then, new ways of representing our humanity and challenging the new mainstream will have emerged. What is now considered radical production will have been neutralized and neutered by appropriation, commodifcation, and the subsequent desensitization of the viewer. Te non-conformist inevitably ends up as kitsch, raising the threshold and necessitating a new rebellion. Te cycle continues. Te show goes on.

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Bibliography

Adorno, Theodor W. 1991. Notes to Literature. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann. Vol. II. New York: Columbia University Press. Adorno, Theodor W., and Walter Benjamin. 1999. The Complete Correspondence, 1928-1940. Edited by Henri Lonitz. Translated by Nicholas Walker. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. “Adorno about Popular Music (now with english annotation)” 2007. YouTube. From a television broadcast, n.d. Posted by FlorenceM1982. January 28, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Xd7Fhaji8ow. Ahn, Michael J. 2016. “2016 Election Results Exposed a Fractured Media Landscape.” Brookings (blog). November 23, 2016. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2016/11/23/2016- election-results-exposed-a-fractured-media-landscape/. “Andy Kaufman - Eating Ice Cream” 2007. YouTube. From a performance at , n.d. Posted by SillyCrazyInsane. November 6, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8vOt8_ T0mk. “Andy Kaufman Reads ” [1978] 2016. YouTube. From Saturday Night Live, broadcast by NBC on March 11, 1978. Posted by Charlie the Unicorn. August 9. 2016. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdVgdVMPIs8. Benjamin, Walter. 1969. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Benjamin, Walter. 2003. Understanding Brecht. Translated by Anna Bostock. New York: Verso. Bourdieu, Pierre. 2004. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. “Celebrity Zillions | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult Swim” [2009] 2010. YouTube. From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, broadcast by Adult Swim on February 22, 2009. Posted by Adult Swim UK. May 14, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFzTm6fy_zs. Critchley, Simon, and Brian Dillon. 2005. “Very Funny: An Interview with Simon Critchley.” Cabinet, April 2005. http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/17/dillon.php. Debord, Guy. 1977. “The Commodity as Spectacle.” In Society and the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red. “Decker: Unclassifed Trailer | Adult Swim” 2016. YouTube. From Decker, broadcast by Adult Swim on June 17, 2016. Posted by Adult Swim. June 6, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XELKAaCerps. “Defnitions.” Internationale Situationniste #1. Translated by Ken Knabb. June 1958. www.cddc. vt.edu/sionline///si/defnitions.html. Epstein, Daniel Robert. 2007. “Tim and Eric.” SuicideGirls (blog). March 28, 2007. https://www. suicidegirls.com/girls/anderswolleck/blog/2679817/tim-and-eric/. “Every Cinco Product Ever | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” 2017. YouTube. From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, broadcast by Adult Swim. Posted by SiliconSlingshot. January 10, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLa1jlhEtu8. Ezcurra, Mara Polgovsky. 2012. “On ‘Shock:’ The Artistic Imagination of Benjamin and Brecht.” Contemporary Aesthetics 10. www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article. php?articleID=659

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Gurney, David. 2013. “Sketches Gone Viral: From Watercooler Talk to Participatory Comedy.” In Saturday Night Live & American TV, edited by Nick Marx, Matt Sienkiewicz, and Ron Becker. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hecht, Julie. 2001. Was This Man a Genius?: Talks with Andy Kaufman. New York: Random House. Heidegger, Martin. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. Translated by William Levitt. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John McQuarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor Adorno. 2006. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” In Media and Cultural Studies Keyworks, edited by Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M Kellner. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. “I Wear My Dad's Dirty Socks | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult Swim” [2007] 2012. YouTube. From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, broadcast by Adult Swim on March 18, 2007. Posted by Adult Swim. January 12, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=psOY_WNAUsM. Itzkof, Dave. 2008. “‘Tim and Eric Awesome Show’ Returns for Another Season of Nightmare TV.” The New York Times, July 27, 2008, sec. Television. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/27/arts/ television/27itzk.html. “Lawler Kaufman on Letterman 82” [1982] 2014. YouTube. From Late Show with David Letterman, broadcast by CBS on June 28, 1982. Posted by Rassle Reel. October 12, 2014. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=oHo_K0-1bP4. “Live With My Dad | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult Swim” [2009] 2012. YouTube. From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, broadcast by Adult Swim on March 29, 2009. Posted by Adult Swim. January 12, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP_ qF5E4w7U. McLuhan, Marshall. 1973. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Sphere Books. “Meditation for Children | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult Swim” [2007] 2012. YouTube. From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, broadcast by Adult Swim on April 1, 2007. Posted by Adult Swim. February 1, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=t6wEco6sNMY. “Mighty Mouse - Andy Kaufman” [1975] 2014. YouTube. From Saturday Night Live, broadcast by NBC on October 11, 1975. Posted by Maximiliano Lafuente. November 4, 2014. https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=t-wUe5aEwHM. “Mini Van Highway | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult Swim” [2009] 2012. YouTube. From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, broadcast by Adult Swim on March 1 2009. Posted by Adult Swim. January 12, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SAFC4_ KbW0 Rosen, Michael. 2004. “Benjamin, Adorno and the Decline of the Aura.” In The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, edited by Fred Rush. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ross, Alex. 2014. “The Naysayers: Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and the Critique of Pop Culture.” , September 15, 2014. https://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/2014/09/15/naysayers. Sconce, Jefrey. 2013. “Tim and Eric’s Aweome Show, Great Job!: Metacomedy.” In How to Watch Television, edited by Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell. New York: New York University Press. Slocombe, Will. 2004. “Shock.” Theories of Media: Keyword Glossary. University of Chicago. http:// csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/shock.htm.

14 • gnovisjournal.org “The Poop Tube | Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! | Adult Swim” [2007] 2009. YouTube. From Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!, broadcast by Adult Swim on November 18, 2007. Posted by Adult Swim. December 7, 2009. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFzTm6fy_zs. Tim and Eric. 2014. “TOTINO BOY!” YouTube. Posted by Tim and Eric. November 6, 2014. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lPX5b9m7ro. Wilson, John Wesley. 2012. “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Review: A ‘Shrimtastic’ Good Time, If You’re into That Sort of Thing.” The Louisville Cardinal, February 7, 2012. http://www. louisvillecardinal.com/2012/02/tim-erics-billion-dollar-review-shrimtastic-good-time-youre- sort/. Zinoman, Jason. 2017. “Tim and Eric Figure Out How to Do the Wrong Thing, Perfectly.” The New York Times, July 23, 2017, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/23/arts/tim-and-eric- awesome-show-great-job-tour.html.

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