The Colbert Report and Its Nation as Critical and Productive Commodities
Critical Cultural Discourse and Political Economy Analysis of Satire and Fan Culture to Review Dallas Smythe
Research Master in Media Studies Dissertation
Name: Pauline Le E-mail addresses: [email protected] [email protected] Student number: 6075665
Supervisor: Jan Teurlings Second reader: Markus Stauff Third reader: Jaap Kooijman
Master: Research Master in Media Studies Department: Graduate School of Humanities University: University of Amsterdam Word Count: 19.014 Date: August 14th, 2014 Abstract In “Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism” (1977), political economist Dallas Smythe laid out the theoretical framework for the North American tradition/field of the political economy of media and communications. Being interested in the media industry as a capitalist system within a capitalist society, he convincingly argued that the content of media are ‘free lunch’ and that media audiences are produced as audience commodities for advertisers to buy and sell. His work is still being cited and revised today. This current study expands and problematises Smythe's two main claims about media content and media audiences by looking into The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 2005-present) as a political satire in the context of the culture war and the 24- hour news media culture, and as a television program with a dedicated fan following. In engaging with Smythe's theory, the paradoxes of the genre of satire and fan culture within capitalist society come to the fore. On the one hand, satire and fans desire to be critical and/or productive; on the other hand, they are part of a capitalist television industry undermining that desire. This study exemplifies how this paradox presents itself in the relation between the program content, producer and fan of satire. It extends political economy analysis and television studies by examining satire and the on-screen fan practices: political activism, fan charity and fanvidding. In solving this paradox, this thesis proposes that The Colbert Report and Its Nation are critical and productive commodities. That is, both the show and the fans are required to be commodified in order to be critical and productive within and outside of the capitalist system. This study demonstrates how they reinforce and critique the political economic logic of American cable television as they function as sites of struggle between critique, productivity and commodity.
Keywords: political economy of television, Dallas Smythe, free lunch, audience commodity, audience labour, The Colbert Report, satire, critique, culture war, fan productivity
2 Acknowledgments Starting with Late Night with Conan O'Brien (1993-2009), American late-night comedy television programs have been a hobby horse of mine since I was fifteen. My academic trajectory at the University of Amsterdam (Media en cultuur and the Research Master in Media Studies) has thought me many things. The fact that I managed to apply the acquired knowledge and skills to write about one of my favourite late night shows, The Colbert Report (2005-present), as topic of both my bachelor and now my master thesis is beyond belief. Whereas for my bachelor thesis I mainly focused on the textual practices of satire, for my master thesis I broadened the scope by paying attention to the production and reception practices as well. I thank my supervisor dr. Jan Teurlings for having the patience to deal with me the last couple of months. His guidance was unquestionably essential to my writing. I also thank my two thesis readers dr. Markus Stauff and dr. Jaap Kooijman. My thanks to my fellow rMA Media Studies students and professors for their critical assistance and feedback. Finally, my gratitude goes toward my friends and family. Their support, albeit surely dubious at times, gave me the strength to always look forward and keep moving.
3 Table of Contents Abstract...... 2 Acknowledgments...... 3 1 Introduction...... 5 2 Dallas Smythe's Theory...... 10 2.1 Media/Television Programming as Free Lunch...... 11 2.2 Audience Commodity...... 15 2.2.1 Audience Labour...... 17 2.3 Existing Expansions and Critiques on Smythe...... 17 2.3.1 “Watching Is Labour” and the Attention Economy...... 19 2.3.2 Audience Labour in Contemporary Media Culture...... 20 3 The Colbert Report...... 24 3.1 Free Lunch versus Satire as Critical Content...... 24 3.1.1 Defining Satire...... 26 3.1.1.1 Satire as Dominant Reading...... 28 3.1.2 Culture Wars in Contemporary News and Media Culture...... 29 3.1.3 Satire in Contemporary News and Media Culture...... 32 3.2 Audience Commodity versus ‘Productive Commodity’ ...... 35 3.2.1 Smythe on Contemporary Media Fan Practices...... 37 3.2.2 Fandom: To the Colbert Nation and Beyond...... 38 3.2.2.1 The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear...... 42 3.2.2.2 Fan Charity...... 45 3.2.2.3 Remix Culture...... 47 3.2.3 The Paradox of Satire and Fan Culture...... 50 4 Conclusion...... 53 References...... 57
4 1 Introduction Published in the first issue of the Canadian Journal of Political and Society Theory in 1977, political economist Dallas Smythe (1907-1992) wrote an article titled “Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism.” In it, he put forward two claims about media content and media audiences. According to him, the economic and political significance of media is more important than any political and cultural meaning in media (1). Under monopoly capitalism, media function with economic goals in mind. Two main points that derive out of this conception were: first, that media/television programming is to be considered as ‘free lunch,’ and second, that audiences and readerships of media are produced as ratings for sale to advertisers and thus are commodities (3). According to Smythe, cultural criticism and ideology play a lesser part in media. The labour and time that the audience put into watching television is what Smythe calls audience labour understood as a form of exploitation of the audience. The intent of this thesis is to expand Smythe's essay by simultaneously strengthening and critiquing his claims. This thesis demonstrates that while Smythe's political economic theory in the context of monopoly capitalism has valid points, he does not leave room for nuances that are intrinsically part of contemporary media culture and thus relevant to call attention to. The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 2005-present; TCR) as a satire and a TV show with a dedicated fan culture asks for a review of Smythe's essay. Focussing on this American satirical television news program, this dissertation shows how the genre of satire and fan culture help to identify overseen gaps in Smythe's ideas of free lunch and audience commodity. Indeed, TCR is a television show that is part of a money-making industry. As such, the genre of satire is to be perceived as yet another cog of a greater machinery. Furthermore, the show is produced to stimulate audience productivity – be it intentional or unintentional. That is, the fans offer labour and participate in events that are related to the show. This notion helps to strengthen the understanding of fans as audience commodity. The arguments here are that content in media does matter to a certain extent and audiences are to be see as ‘productive commodities.’ First, satire plays a role in a particular form of ideology that is not the same kind of ideology in the capitalist system that Smythe had in mind. Second, the fans of TCR – also known by the names names
5 varying from the Colbert Nation to Nation to Heroes – accurately fit the description of audience commodity, yet, at the same time, transcend it. In scrutinising Smythe's theory, this dissertation allow for a way to rethink the positions of the genre of satire and fan culture within today's mainstream television. Many theorists have and are still discussing Smythe's text in length (i.e. Jhally & Livant 1986, 2006; Fuchs and Caraway). A great deal has been written about the concepts of audience labour and audience commodity. Likewise, attention has already been paid to fan practices, fandom and other forms of reception or consumption of media in contemporary culture (i.e. Jenkins 2013, Hills, Gray). However, not much research has been done on fan studies in relation to commodification and the genre of satire in contemporary media landscape. Focusing on TCR and its audience, insight is given into how the relations between satire, fan practices and audience commodity uphold. In discussing Smythe's work, this thesis pays attention to satire and fan practices as critically and culturally meaningful, and as part of reinforcing aspects of the political economics of media. The central arguments are (a) satire functions as more than free lunch and (b) the different forms of fan activity by the Nation provide a nuanced understanding of commodity. Ultimately, the fans function as productive commodity. This is to highlight tensions as well as common grounds between, on the one hand, satire and fan studies from a cultural analysis standpoint and, on the other, media content, labour and audience commodity from Smythe's political economy standpoint. This thesis has two main objectives. First, it is to make nuances in Smythe's theory on media's free lunch and audience commodity in relation to satire and forms of fan culture. His theory is helpful in analysing the political economy of media communications in the context of monopoly capitalism in the 1970s. But in contemporary media culture there are new contexts and practices involved that require to revise Smythe's theory. While still a part of a capitalist society, satire and fan culture resides in an ambivalent position between cultural, social and political significance and commodification. This thesis brings to the fore how forms of fan practices, satirical critical intentions and commodification in media come together. By looking at the textual and contextual implications of TCR, this thesis offers
6 an examination of the critical intentions of satire and fan activity. From a cultural analysis perspective, media and media fan practices are politically, culturally and/or socially meaningful. In the case of satire, it is genre defined as a form of cultural expression with the intent to ridicule and criticise its source domain, which most often is an existing representation and/or discourse in society (i.e. Quintero; Colletta 859). In this thesis, satire plays an ideological role within the specific context of culture war in contemporary 24-hour news media culture. For fan practices, the in- and output by the fans include other affects and effects that cannot be reduced to finance. Some kinds of fan practices are more than just economic good consumerism. Ultimately, the meanings of satire and the practices by the Colbert Nation occur in- and outside of the TV show. They are to be understood as commodified yet critical processes. The second objective is, in channelling Smythe, to seek a way to combine both cultural analysis and political economy. Smythe stated that when studying media ideology should not be the central concept. This dissertation calls for a balance between political economy and critical cultural analysis to understand the mechanisms of ideology and audiences in contemporary media culture. Authors like Nicholas Garnham, Peter Golding & Graham Murdock and Eileen Meehan (1986) call for a revision of how to study media. According to them, there is a duality of media. Thinkers have either focused on the symbolic meanings of media or the economic/industrial organisation of media. Therefore, little attention has been paid to “the connections between the symbolic and the economic which together constitute television as a contradictory institution” (Meehan 1986, 448). They assert that both sides of media are to be examined using an approach of critical political economy of communications. It provides a method to deal with the “interplay between the symbolic and economic dimensions of public communications” (Golding & Murdock 15). The authors demonstrate the productive insight of combining approaches to better understand cultural production. In discussing media further, this thesis bears in mind the production of culture and audiences in advanced capitalist societies. What will be made clear in the next chapter, it is in part to make up for what Smythe calls the blindspot of Western Marxism. As the project revolves around TCR and the Colbert Nation as producers of
7 meaning and commodities, attention will be paid to the textual, production and reception practices of TCR. A combination of cultural discourse analysis and political economy analysis will be employed. Garnham argues that when looking at ideology behind media objects, it is crucial to look at the material conditions that shape the object. Specifically the relations between knowledge, production and infrastructure are of importance. Golding & Murdock assert that using the approach of critical political economy of communications, one finds an understanding of the mechanisms of media (i.e. control of media content, commodification). Their approach helps to contextualise the companies behind the making of the television show. Finnegan offers a framework that is useful. She postulates five elements for study: production, (visual) composition, reproduction, circulation and reception. According to the author, all of these independently or together contribute to the analysis of the meaning of the object. It is applicable to analyse the way how different discourses within society compete for meaning. Her framework helps to read both the textual practices of the satirical show (i.e. symbolic meaning, the use of fan content in the show) as well as the broader contexts related to production and consumption. While not all of the elements will be emphasised throughout this thesis, her approach is beneficial to understanding the different facets of TCR as a media product. In reviewing Smythe, the tension between critique, productivity and commodity comes to the fore. That is, the genre of satire poses a paradox: on the one hand, it is part of commercial TV, on the other hand, it has the desire to be critical. In solving this paradox, the thesis focusses on how satire is relevant as a form of critique and as a facilitator of fan engagement in a specific media context. As part of a capitalist industry, satire and fan culture can still be productive and meaningful in other ways. Ultimately, this project is to contribute to a better understanding of satire and fan activity within the political economy of entertainment programs in contemporary culture. The structure of this dissertation is as follows: first, the two arguments made by Smythe about content and audience will be outlined. In this chapter, attention is also paid to those who have expanded on Smythe's theories as well as those who have critiqued them in relation to contemporary media culture. This is to lay down the theoretical framework. The next chapter focusses specifically on the satirical intent and
8 the audience or fan culture of TCR in contemporary media culture. What follows is the conclusion exploring the relation between satire, forms of fan activity and audience commodity.
9 2 Dallas Smythe's Theory In “Communications: Blindspot of Western Marxism” (1977), Canadian political activist and economist Dallas Walker Smythe (1907-1992) laid out an eye-opening revision of the theoretical framework for the North American tradition/field of the political economy of media and communications. He was mostly interested in communications within capitalist societies. Smythe wrote and published his article with the intention to start a debate with the movement of Western Marxism. In effect, he set out to critique the movement. For Western Marxists – including the names of theorists like Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Raymond Williams – theories of ideology in the study of mass media and culture were primarily used to understand society. According to Smythe, this preoccupation of examining cultural ideology in media content was not sufficient enough to understand the media and the related society, especially of that time period. Smythe expanded on the concept of monopoly capitalism (Baran & Sweezy) by putting emphasis on the materialist approach to media which in turn highlighted the underlying economic and political aspect of the functioning of media. This aspect was hardly taken into account by Western Marxists. The blindspot of Western Marxism entailed the notion that they never understood this function of media. Marxist analyses of media overlooked this political and economic significance of media. In consequence, they have never understood how media work on society. In his article for the Canadian Journal of Political and Society Theory, Smythe convincingly argued that the content of media are free lunch and that the media audience is actually the product being produced by media. In other words, the audience is a commodity for monopoly capitalist advertisers to buy and sell. In this chapter, the focus will be on these two claims of his that are part of the academic blindspot of the economic function of media overlooked by Western Marxists. From a political economic point of view, TCR is indeed a fitting example of a media object that functions as how Smythe asserts media objects work in a monopoly capitalist society. That is, the television producers of the program offer satisfying content to their audience in order to get the audience to stay tuned and thus profit off of them through advertisement and labour. However, as media culture and media studies are in constant change, the theories of both the Western Marxist as well as political economic fields are
10 relevant. To this day, they are still being used and revised to understand media within the current society. Thus, besides focussing on Smythe's thinking, this chapter also pays attention to some cultural, social and media theorists who have expanded on as well as critiqued Smythe's two claims in order to make a relevant connection to the contemporary media culture.
2.1 Media/Television Programming as Free Lunch Whereas at the time Marxist analyses of media would focus on the ideological content of media to understand media, Smythe made the case that doing so would be not sufficient enough to understand the workings of media. Again, the Western Marxist approach to media was to look into the ways how media reproduce (capitalist) ideologies. For Smythe, however, media analyses should not spend energy on questions about manipulation and how media infiltrate the consciousness of media audiences. That would distract from the acknowledgement of the material functioning of the production of media. Smythe was thus of the opinion that Western Marxists failed to properly understand media. Smythe believed that media analysts should put the emphasis on the economic and political significance and function of media (1). This statement did not come out of thin air. As a political economist, Smythe was very much interested in the media industry as a capitalist system. From the 1960s onwards, the economic landscape in North America was shaped by the rise and continuation of integrations of companies forming conglomerations (Hesmondhalgh 140). As a result, it meant “an increase in the scope and power of individual cultural-industry corporations, in that the same corporation can have stakes in many different forms of communication. Fewer companies therefore come to dominate the cultural industries as a whole” (143). With these economic developments going on in the backdrop of academic research on media, Smythe underscored the economic and political aspect of media within capitalist societies. He focussed on the power concentration of those companies. Thus, according to Smythe, the questions related to ideological content of media raised by Western Marxists were not encompassing and thus not effective enough to analyse media. What was deemed important were the process of media production and how they function
11 economically. He was interested in the question of how the media industry work on political economic grounds. Rather than approaching the content of media as ways for the culture industry to reinforce ideological discourses within society, Smythe regarded media content as advertising to lure audiences to stay glued to the screen and to potentially purchase products advertised. One of the arguments that Smythe put forward was that media content was free lunch (5), which is to say that the media content is to be perceived as a form of bait by media companies to attract audiences and to keep their attention. This would make the line between ad and program increasingly blurry. He wrote:
What is the nature of the content of the mass media in economic terms under monopoly capitalism? The information, entertainment and ‘educational’ material transmitted to the audience is an inducement (gift, bribe or ‘free lunch’) to recruit potential members of the audience and to maintain their loyal attention. The appropriateness of the analogy to the free lunch in the old-time saloon or cocktail bar is manifest: the free lunch consists of materials which whet the prospective audience members' appetites and thus (1) attract and keep them attending to the programme, newspaper or magazine, and (2) cultivate a mood conducive to favourable reaction to the explicit and implicit advertisers' messages.
According to Smythe, everything that was being broadcast had the sole intention to accumulate an audience. This included messages, information, images, meaning, entertainment, education. Under monopoly capitalism, free media content was being offered in return of the loyalty and purchasing power of the audience. Of course, there were costs associated to the free lunch. These costs, as Smythe reasoned, made to cover the distribution of the content in order to monetise on audiences even more so (6). By saying that media programming was free lunch, Smythe argued that media content and analysing media content in point of fact did not matter and are meaningless. All media content function as advertising which would lead to sales. For Smythe, this political economic function of free lunch serving capitalism overshadowed any ideological
12 meaning of media. TCR, then, is a fitting example of Smythe's understanding of media content. First of all, the context in which the show airs is important to take into account. It is therefore relevant to acknowledge the ownership of the media text. It originally airs on the cable channel Comedy Central in the United States. Launched in 1991, the channel is part of the global mass media company Viacom Inc. Along with The Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, 21st Century Fox and CBS, it belongs to the top five largest media and entertainment conglomerates in the world (CNN Money). The channel is known for its original programmings as well as broadcasts of syndicated TV shows. TCR shares a network with other television programs like South Park (1997-present), Futurama (2008-present), and Tosh.0 (2009-present) that are known for their edgy and controversial comedy that at times is perceived as offensive. By any means, for all the programs on Comedy Central, comedy comes first. While the comedy can be informed by ideology, ideology is not the primitive motivating force for the shows. Further, knowing who the authors are is relevant. The show is hosted by actor/comedian, Stephen Colbert, and is written by comedy writers. This background knowledge helps us to understand the position of TCR as a comedy show. By branding the channel and its television shows as such, it helps audiences to know and recognize the kind of content being offered to them. In most if not all of its programmings, comedy is – for a lack of a better word – central. If audiences are interested in a certain specialisation, they are inclined to stick around for similar shows. As a result, not only would audiences be exposed to the advertisements in between shows, they would also see the shows themselves acting as advertisements for the next shows. For Smythe, then, TCR functions merely as a television show that is a component of the strategy of Comedy Central to accumulate viewers. The guests that appear on the show for interviews are there to promote their latest project. This type of strategy made by the television industry could be seen as a form of demand management of television programming. On a related note, this kind of associative branding strategy does not only happen on the medium of television. In contemporary media landscape, traditional television content is distributed and received across a multitude of media platforms. To
13 an increasingly great extent, there are more sources and platforms available to the public to access media content. Full episodes of TCR are not only available on broadcast television, but also elsewhere including the show's official website
14 People see what they want to see. The show contains contrasting meanings for people and thus caters to different niches of audiences. All that matters is audience maximization. Again, according to Smythe's thinking, there is no need, then, to analyse the ideological meanings of satire. In the end, satire in the form of television is and remains part of a commercial industry required to seek an audience to create and sustain its own television production.
2.2 Audience Commodity The second argument by Smythe is that under monopoly capitalism the primary economic function of media is to create audiences and to sell them to advertisers (1). Audiences and readerships of media are produced as ratings that end up being for sale to advertisers. In the process of creation and being sold, audiences become commodified and work as the most essential commodities in mass media. Commodification entails changing a material resource into something of social value. Ultimately, audiences have a price tag hanging from them. This theory of audience commodity is an intrinsic part of the capitalist system, because it manages demand which is crucial in monopoly capitalism. When understanding audiences as commodity, the social relations that arise from producing and consuming television either become invisible or get intensified to the point that the relations turn into a battle of economic power relations. Following Karl Marx' description of the function of a commodity, it “reflects the social characteristics of men's own labour as objective characteristics [...] as properties of things” (164-5). This is to say that the object is a bundle of social relations, but, through the eyes of capitalism, it is not recognised as such. Marx focuses on structural aspects in patterns that are the basis for the position of actors instead of focusing on the actors. The individual is not the natural starting point of economics. It is the idea of the individual that is a specific outcome of economics. When understanding audiences as commodity, then, the underlying social relations that shape and derive from television are condensed into objective commodities. Here, it is important to note the distinction between commercialisation and commodification. According to Vincent Mosco, commercialisation is the process in
15 which a relationship between advertisers and audience is created. Commodification is the transformation of use value to exchange value – most often the social relation gets substituted (130). The acknowledgement of the kinds of values that go into this commodification process is significant as it offers an understanding of the mechanism of the media production and the commodification. This gives insight to how media function in creating an audience. In the case of TCR, the show is created to attract viewers which are to be sold as a good to advertisers. This good includes all of the social relations of production offered and manifested by the Colbert Nation. Generally, the target audience of Comedy Central and TCR consists of young males of the age between 18 and 34 (Carter; Viacom 2014a) that is attractive to advertisers. The show responds to this fact by explicitly calling the Nation to consume show-related products, produce fan-made content for the show, participate in project or events and support things support things financially. The show plays in on the audience by creating situations that make the audience in the mood for consumption. The phenomenon of the so-called ‘Colbert Bump’ – a semi-proven measure of the popularity or commercial success of the people or products that appear and are advertised on the show (Fowler 533) – highlights the profitable base of the Nation. In Colbert's words: “The Colbert Bump is the curious phenomenon whereby anyone who appears on this program gets a huge boost in popularity [causing them to win elections, receive major awards, even get laid]” (The Colbert Report). In the process, the audience reconfirms itself as commodity. In the end, all that matters to the media industry is the amount of audiences as ratings that sustains profit for and to the advertisers. This means that other fan practices like engaging in forum discussions, sharing and creating original content are closely related to commodification as well. They are audience labour are enabled by and manifested in the political economy of the media. This also means that they are an inherent part of the logic of media. The value created by fan labour eventually feeds back into the production of the media object that benefit the producers and advertisers of and in media. The amount of audience labour that goes into the fan practices goes back into the contents of the show. As Mosco writes, ratings are commodities that art part of a vicious circle of the market (141). The audience commodity functions as the end point of media.
16 2.2.1 Audience Labour In relation to the conceptualisation of the audience commodity, Smythe argued in the vein of Marx that audiences are labourers for the media industry. As working forces, media audiences provide labour for the industry by consuming content. This labour is translated into capitalist terms. According to Smythe, television watching is a form of labour. That is, following Marx, Smythe understood that leisure time is correlated to working time (10). Due to the lessening of the time spent to do necessary labour to sustain a livelihood in modern society, leisure time increases. Activities like watching television that are productive for the media system but that are not traditionally viewed as labour emerge as new forms of labour that generate value for the system. Here, capitalist attempts to colonise leisure time and labour power through commodification and profit generation come to the fore. Leisure activities become subjected under capitalism and a commercial logic. The amount of time not spend sleeping is the amount of time working. In television, the audience is being sold to the advertiser. The mere activity of watching TCR by the Colbert Nation represents a form of labour. The question of exploitation is inseparable from the discussion of audience labour. Audiences offer their labour in the form of watching media content. At the same time, they are being exploited by doing that labour. Capitalism is no longer only occupied with work time, but also leisure time. Under capitalism, leisure time is subjected to exploitation. In fact, capitalism runs on exploiting labour and making profit as quickly as possible. From a political economic point of view, life is structured around capitalism. While labour power by the audience does get compensated in multiple forms (i.e. free lunch), the compensation is not equal to the amount of labour put in by the audience. In capitalist terms, audiences do not get financial payment for their work as audiences. Like any other kind of media audience, the Colbert Nation is in the hands of advertisers exploiting their labour.
2.3 Existing Expansions and Critiques on Smythe After the publication of Smythe's essay, a lot of discussion has been going on in the field within political economy of communications and certainly in critical cultural
17 analysis. One of the most notable critique put forward is by Graham Murdock with his article “Blindspots about Western Marxism: A Reply to Dallas Smythe” in the same journal, the Canadian Journal of Political and Society Theory (1978). Murdock came in defence of Western Marxism. His rebuttal started what became the blindspot-debate. There were five points that Murdock critiques Dallas on. First, Smythe did not take the role of the state into account. Second, Smythe minimalised the role of ideology. Third, Smythe described a pessimistic analysis of a capitalist system that is supposedly perfect. Fourth, Smythe described an advertising model. Fifth, Smythe made a cliché out of Western Marxism. Even though Murdock made valid points, he neglected the context of the field of the political economy of communications that Smythe was coming from. Bill Livant continued the debate with “The Audience Commodity: On the ‘Blindspot’ Debate” (1979) noting that Smythe proposed a materialist theory of mass communications. In doing so, Smythe attempted “to grasp the motion of the media as a whole” (95) arguing that all media are part of the advertising model. The central point of Smythe's text was that the audience are commodity, which Murdock did not touch on. For many theorists – especially those from the critical cultural analysis corner – audience agency is a relevant aspect in the debate of audience commodity. In “Audience Labor in the New Media Environment: A Marxian Revisiting of the Audience Commodity,” Brett Caraway critiques Smythe for some of his claims. Caraway believes Smythe to present a “one-sided class analysis which devalues working-class subjectivity. Consequently, the theory is poorly suited to explain the trajectory of capitalist development” (696). For Caraway, the free lunch does not exist. That is, media content is not free for the audiences as they are eventually the ones who have to cover the advertising costs by way of choosing to purchase a product (699). Moreover, Caraway argues that Smythe's thinking neglects the subjectivity of the audience. Audiences put in agency to do the labour. Indeed, audiences today consume television that include engagement in a wide range of activities that assist in the marketing of products. These activities range from watching, spreading content mouth-to-mouth to online, fan creations. In any case, for Smythe, audiences engage in the work of the advertisers whether or not it is willingly or unwillingly. Caraway believes, however,
18 that the audience activities are “not under the direct control of the capitalist. Nor is it clear that the product of the labor of the audience (whatever that may be) is alienated from the audience” (697). In the past decades, more thinkers have reconceptualised Smythe's concepts. In looking into some relevant expansions of Smythe's theory in the following paragraphs, some tensions between free labour, exploitation and social productivity come to the fore.
2.3.1 “Watching Is Labour” and the Attention Economy One of the notable expansions on Smythe's theory on audience labour is put forth by Sud Jhally & Bill Livant (1986; 2006). Like Smythe, they believed that television audiences work in the form of watching television. For Smythe, relying on ratings companies and analysing ratings was sufficient enough to analyse audience commodity. For Meehan (1984; 1986), Smythe was not thorough in the analysis of audience commodity. She noted the distinction between commodity audience and the actual audience. In other words, television audience are discreet information products not to be confused with real viewers acting as social agents. According to Jhallly & Livant, analysis of the actual practice of watching television was shovelled to the background. For them, watching is “first, a human capacity for activity” and “a real economic process, a value-creating process” (1986, 126; 2006, 25). The authors argued that it was the actual time spend watching to be valuable to advertisers and thus to be the commodity relevant for media. Jhally & Livant considered that the act of watching was to be seen as a process of commodification of the consciousness of audiences. This assessment of theirs was to avoid examining audiences in relation to consumerist ideology. Audiences are well-aware of their position as labourers of mass media and the transaction between being commodities and watching content. This idea of watching as labour has gotten traction in academia. In his article that was later expanded into the book The Cinematic Mode of Production, Jonathan Beller writes: “At the moment, in principle, that is, in accord with the emerging principles of late-capitalism, to look is to labour” (2003, 92; 2006, 2). Beller states that looking and watching possess inherent abilities to connect with the social. As audiences
19 become familiar with the conventions of commercial cinema, they learn about “the rules of dominant social-structure” and produce an entire set of relations simultaneously (2, 14). In other words, as they watch and pay attention, they produce value and social relations. These set of relations are immaterial objects like information, affects and attention turning into commodities. This cinematic mode of production by perception is valuable for capital. How would one analyse such immateriality? In “Is Attention Really Immaterial? Visual Culture After Post-Fordism,” Seb Franklin puts forward the idea that attention counts for all kinds of media in the form of data (7). The way to collect the data depends on the specific practice of use of the media by the audience. In any case, the visual components of media help to distil and picture immaterial objects as attention in media. The next chapter focusses on three forms of fan activity as labour by the Colbert Nation. Each of them present different aspects of social relations.
2.3.2 Audience Labour in Contemporary Media Culture Smythe's work demonstrates the importance of studying audience labour contemporary media. His theory of audience commodity is becoming relevant again in the debate about digital labour and power relations between producers and audiences. In media studies, the political economy approach of the audience is still being widely used. While it is always important to be careful about making claims about the innovative nature of new and digital media, it is also necessary to be aware of the developments of those media within contemporary media culture. While avoiding to be technologically deterministic, existing concepts and theories of media should be revised as processes of production and consumption become blurred (i.e. Caraway, Van Dijck, Fuchs 2012). With increasing advances in digitisation, the means of production and the means of consumption change. Consuming behaviours of audiences change. At the same time, data collecting and storing is becoming a common practice. Related questions of exploitation come to the fore. This paragraph will briefly touch on how the concept of audience labour and exploitation have been reconceptualised in relation to digital media. Of course, for media producers, this audience exploitation is beneficial to their business. The text “Free Labor: Producing Culture for the Digital Economy” (2000) by
20 Tiziana Terranova poses questions about audience labour, money and commofidication. Terranova states that the distinction between production and consumption of culture has become unclear and has found its form in extensive free affective and cultural labour in a more advanced way in the ‘digital economy’ in late capitalist societies. Free labour via digital media is structural to the late capitalist cultural economy. It is not suddenly a new phenomenon; rather it is a mutation of a widespread cultural and economic logic. All activity in media have economical impact as values are produced that are beneficial to the media industry. Free labour is part of an exploitative system, even though it may not be recognised as such. Christian Fuchs has aptly placed Smythe's theory in today's digital media culture. As noted in the previous section, the production and distribution of media have and are changing in ways that affect the consumption of media by audiences. The current television economy includes the interactive relationship between producers and audiences. Mark Andrejevic even asserts that the current media era is one of interactivity (37). As such, Fuchs makes a difference between the audience commodity on traditional mass media and on the Internet (2012, 711):
[…] in the latter case the users are also content producers, there is user- generated content, the users engage in permanent creative activity, communication, community building and content-production. […] Due to the permanent activity of the recipients and their status as prosumers, we can say that in the case of corporate social media the audience commodity is an Internet prosumer commodity (Fuchs 2010, [192]).
Users play an increasingly significant role in creating content in the form of knowledge and media. Andrejevic demonstrates how online fan activity enhances value for television producers in different ways. On the one hand, fans desire to participate in culture. Online fan discussions help them increase their interest in media products to a level that is meaningful to them. On the other hand, the kind and amount of fan activity help producers figure out what is well received and what not. This overseeing eye of the producer that could lead to exploitation, Andrejevic argues, is something fans need to be
21 aware of. Thus, it becomes important to take into account their existence in capitalism (Fuchs 2010, 179). The internet prosumer commodity can be understood as yet another way for exploiting the audience. Similar to Fuchs, Dal Yong Jin rethinks the concept of audience commodity by moving on to the user commodity. In television, the social relations that go into producing content get lost. Meaning that the fan practices become commodities themselves. Fan practices are seen as audience labour enabled by and manifested in the political economy of the media. This argument is closely related to what David Hesmondhalgh writes in his article “User-Generated Content, Free Labour and the Cultural Industries.” He asserts how free labour on the part of media participants, or in this case fans, relate to conceptual issues of capitalism, exploitation and power. The value created by the labour eventually feeds back into the production of media objects that are sold back to the audiences. The acknowledgement of the kinds of values that go into this commodification process is significant as it offers an understanding of the mechanism of the media production.
In this chapter, two claims made by Smythe have been explained. They are: media are free lunch and the importance of audience commodity in media. In the next chapter, these two claims will be expanded on and problematised using TCR as case study. Once more, whereas at the time Marxist analyses of media would focus on the ideological content of media to understand media, Smythe made the case that doing so would be not sufficient enough to understand the workings of media. As will be demonstrated and argued in the next chapter, the approaches of cultural analysis and political economy analysis go hand in hand in analysing the genre of satire as it plays an ambiguous role in society. Also, attention will be paid to the audience in contemporary media culture. One of the notable characteristics of the Colbert Nation is their participation and added value to the show. The value is not only generated from watching as labour, but also user- generated content creation. Part of the next chapter on fan interactivity will get into more detail about that kind of value in the context of Smythe's conceptualisations. Of course, there has already been much academic attention devoted to new media and
22 convergence culture in relation to television. For now, it is important to realise the undertones of capitalism in the relation between audiences or fans and media companies. As an extension of Smythe, Hesmondhalgh (2010, 280) asserts:
The underlying but underdeveloped normative position is that all the time we spend under capitalism contributes to a vast negative machine called capitalism; nothing escapes this system. No work or leisure seems, by this account, to be any more meaningful than any other.
In the case of the Colbert Nation and Comedy Central, whenever the Nation submits content for the show, they are subjected to Comedy Central's User Content Submission Agreement (Comedy Central). The Colbert Nation contributes content that is open to monetisation by the producers of the show. The following chapter seeks the extent to which fan cultures mobilise themselves in a system that is progressively monolithic. It focusses on how satire merges with audience activity, and how audiences as commodities become productive because of it.
23 3 The Colbert Report The previous chapter laid out two political economic conceptions made by Dallas Smythe: media content as free lunch and audience as audience commodity. In the process, it paid attention to how The Colbert Report fits into Smythe's framework. However, the show and its fans leave some space for problematising Smythe's theories. In this chapter, the focus will be in the name of rethinking Smythe in the context of, first, satire as critical voice within the culture war between conservative and liberal values on contemporary 24-hour news media and, second, contemporary fan culture. TCR is a spin-off of the successful news satire The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (1996-present, Comedy Central; TDS). Before helming TCR, Stephen Colbert worked as a faux-correspondent on TDS for six seasons where one of the personae he carved out would later become the host of TCR. The biggest difference between the two programs that are relevant to mention here are the tone of the satire and the audience engagement. Whereas TDS is presented with a clearly liberal tone of voice, TCR parodies conservative right-wing pundits making it appear more ambiguous in its style. On a similar note, whereas Stewart is essentially himself as the host, Colbert the actor hides behind Colbert the on-air character. TCR specifically parodies conservative punditry shows on FOX News (1996-present) which, will be argued in the next section, plays a role in the relevance of the satirical content put forward by TCR. The way the show engages with the audience, too, makes a difference. Indeed, in contemporary media culture a lot of television shows convergence with other media platforms to interact with their audience. What stands out for TCR is that the show explicitly mentions the audience on a regular basis and calls for them to do things that often times are integrated into future episodes. On occasion, the audience takes the initiative to produce content that the show is able to enact on. Part of this active audience engagement is due to the satirical pundit format of the show. In the following paragraphs where Smythe's claims will be nuanced, these two points of satire and audience participation are the main focus.
3.1 Free Lunch versus Satire as Critical Content Content and content analysis do not matter, Smythe argued. Likewise, Meehan wrote:
24 “From economic processes emerge ideological products, which re-inforce capitalist ideologies and presumably affect human consciousness. By examining the message [content] as commodity, the impersonal relationships surrounding the production of such commodities become susceptible to study” (1984, 217). However, that is not necessarily the case. Before going into satire, it is relevant to note that television content in general is a concern even on a political economic level. While Smythe made a relevant argument of the ultimate goal of media in monopoly capitalism, he and Meehan ignore the question of how media are used in order to achieve that goal. Free content is in essence useless unless it is made attractive to an audience and is able to hold that audience. Producers have to take into account the media logic of the kind of object they are producing (Altheide & Snow). They have to shape content according to certain rules and conventions so that their content becomes accessible to audiences. In relation to this, John Caldwell specifically talks about televisuality. Program makers employ visual aesthetic strategies in their shows to indicate to their audience they have the product for them (vii). That is, the content of television is produced and presented in such a way to attract audiences. Thus, there exists a dynamic between the (production of) content and the creation of the audience that plays a significant role in the relationship between audience and advertisers. Television producers produce content that gives shape to an audience that they then try to sell to advertisers. As TV producers create and tap into a consumer consciousness whereby the audience is put into a conductive mood for consuming (Smythe 5), the audience develop certain taste for brands and styles. This means that producers have to take into account the changing taste of the audience and incorporate that into the content of their programming. Also, as stated in the previous chapter, the way to capture the audience is relevant for producers. All the while, advertisers oversee this process. So, indeed, viewerships and ratings are produced, but how? The question of how audiences stay tuned is at least one to keep in mind when discussing the political economy of media. This makes paying attention to the kind of content that attracts viewers completely relevant, even in inquiring the political economy of media. Satirical content, then, too matters. First, it is a way to attract the audience. On a
25 political economic analysis level, it shapes and accumulates the audience as ratings. In correlation with Smythe's notion of audience mood for consumption, viewers who already enjoy watching satire TV seek out similar satirical content in their choice of program line-up. On a cultural analysis level, those who watch satire shape and reshape their perception of the world through satire. It has the potential to affect the way audiences think. This notion is related to the second way satirical content matters. By definition, satire aims to expose and critique subjects and objects in contemporary society. On a pure textual level, the meanings conveyed by the satirical text are relevant. Even on a commercial platform like television, satirical content bears significance in culture. The next section focusses on this significance of satire more so to counterpoint Smythe's unseen area.
3.1.1 Defining Satire The genre has a long history in Roman and Greek culture. The English word ‘satire’ derives from the Latin word ‘satura,’ which translates to ‘medley’ or ‘miscellany,’ concerning a particular form of poetry with critical commentary invented by Gaius Lucilius (180/160-103/102 BC). The word started out bearing no epistemological relation to the words ‘satirize,’ ‘satiric,’ and similar ones that were of Greek origin that primitively referred to ‘satyr,’ a mythological creature with horse-like features. However, as the word ‘satura’ got used more broadly, the Greek words relating to ‘satyr’ were appropriated to signify other verbal forms of ‘satura’ (Elliott 2014a). Merriam Webster defines satire “as a way of using humor to show that someone or something is foolish, weak, bad, etc.: humor that shows the weaknesses or bad qualities of a person, government, society, etc.” In the above definition, humour plays a central role in satire. However, humour does not have to be used for a work to be satiric (Test 14). The same goes for the tools irony or wit. Lisa Colletta explains that “satire is defined as a form that holds up human vices and follies to ridicule and scorn” (859). In Literary Terms: A Dictionary, Karl Beckson and Arthur Ganz define satire as “the ridicule of a subject to point out its faults” (qtd. in Kreuz & Roberts 100). What is important is that satire instructs moral messages (Elliott 2014b). The definition that will be employed here is – as stated in the introduction – a
26 form of cultural expression with the intent to ridicule and criticise its source domain, which most often is an existing representation and/or discourse in society (i.e. Griffin; Quintero; Colletta 859). In other words, satire is polemic. It is critical of the universe outside of the content that is presented. It distinguishes itself from other similar forms of expressions – namely parody – by having this inherent critical component. Further, with satire there exists a desire to change the current state of affairs (Colletta 872). It allows for subsequent political and ideological reflection. Satire is found in a range of human activities and has an established trajectory in the form of literary novels and print (Elliott 2014b). The point here is not to provide an outline of the historical development of satire and the different forms it has taken, but rather to focus on satire in the context of TCR and contemporary television. This specific genre is often times called fake news, albeit not without a grain of salt (Gray, Jones & Thompson 29; Day 85; Amarasingam). In the United States, satire of the news was not rare in early broadcast television (Cogan and Kelso 199), but it was contested. A so-called short-lived satire boom in the United Kingdom in the early 1960s entailed the production of several satirical media texts, including That Was the Week That Was (BBC, 1962-3), a political satire news show (Elliott 2014c; Marc xii). In 1964-5, an American version aired in a prime-time slot on NBC. However, satire relies heavily on the context in which it is produced (Test 32). Due to several social and political pressure both shows were cancelled a year after they started airing. For the American version, economic pressure played a role as well: “it was emasculated by restrictions imposed by sponsors fearful of offending customers and by program lawyers wary of libel suits” (Elliott 2014c). As a matter of course, reactions to satire can diverge widely which can cause frictions within the political economy of television. A common ground between the possibility of alienating audiences and seeking to maximise audience share needs to be found. The cancellation of That Was the Week That Was, of course, ultimately resonates with Smythe's point of the influence of advertisers on media production. Television in the early days was more susceptible to censorship due to the political climate as well as having to please bigger groups of viewers at once.
27 3.1.1.1 Satire as Dominant Reading Satire requires audiences to make connections between the satirical object and the context of the object (Test 32). According to the article by LaMarre et al. that was mentioned in the previous chapter, politically diverse groups of people interpret TCR in different ways. From a rhetorical point of view, the efficacy of satire may be undermined by the medium of television and the current age of postmodern culture where meanings of media are saturated. Nonetheless, satire by definition allows for different ways of thinking of the current situation (Colletta 872). On a methodological point, the dominant or intended reading of TCR here is satire. This is not to undermine the reception discourses of TCR, but more so to prove the point of cultural textual analysis being relevant for the understanding of media in political economic terms. As noted, satirical content serves a double function: to attract audiences and to be critical. In numerous interviews, Colbert the actor has pointed out that the show is a satire. In every episode, the show exposes and comments on what it deems to be the wrong doings of people and institutions in power in media and political culture. It does so by imitating conservative pundits and television formats, using extreme stereotypes, making over-exaggerated claims, referring to recent events, making arbitrary connections and playing with language and (news) conventions. The show reports on the failures in society in the hopes of opening up debate and eventually changing the status quo. In its satire, it unveils and criticises the political bias of those programs. TCR does that by giving exposing the positions that cable news programs take. The character of Colbert is created in likeness of one of the prominent pundits on FOX News, Bill O'Reilly, who is known for his conservative and right-wing partisanship. When the show was pitched by producer Jon Stewart and other colleagues to Comedy Central chief Doug Herzog, the show was described as “Our version of The O'Reilly Factor with Stephen Colbert” (Levin). Colbert calls Bill O'Reilly by the name of Papa Bear. First, this name represents the idea that O'Reilly is the big father figure of all the conservative pundits and for Colbert. Second, the actor Colbert is personally scared of bears. Stephen Colbert's actual fear of bears as a playful metaphor for the scariness of pundits. Building on this idea, the show serves as a critique of right-wing conservative news programs and punditry. As such, Colbert plays the part of a
28 conservative pundit and the entire show parodies the ideological values of FOX News. Consequently, TCR assumes not only conventions of FOX News as a news channel, but also the broader conservative discourse that underlies FOX News. Subsequently, TCR puts forward a critique of the media culture in which it itself exists and is an intrinsic part of. Content matters in relation to satire in the context of contemporary American 24-hour news culture. Smythe discussed media as a functional element of a capitalist system as a whole rather than in specific contexts and as a site of conflict between culture and political economy. Satire is part of the same capitalist industry, but what is notable is that, in the case of TCR, it politicises the media system. This makes TCR a meaningful object within capitalism. Here, it is not the point to cover the wide range of specific arguments on issues put forward by TCR, but its general take and its position in contemporary news culture. Before going into the textual analysis, it is important to pay attention to the context in which the shows are produced (Finnegan 252-53) as noted in the introduction. Understanding the context of cable news and of TCR as satire makes one more aware of some of the textual choices made by the producers of TCR.
3.1.2 Culture Wars in Contemporary News and Media Culture A culture war in general is about a “clash of cultures” or a split divide on political, social and cultural issues (Hunter; Thomson 2). In the United States, there is a long history of religious and cultural conflict stemming from struggles between Protestants and Catholics of the seventeenth century (Hunter 35). Published in 1992, Hunter classified in his book Culture Wars the myriad of notable voices within American society into two kinds of groups; one is driven by “the impulse toward orthodoxy,” the other by “the impulse toward progressivism” (43). Whereas the former puts emphasis on traditional values, the latter strives for change. These impulses or ideologies act in the form of moral codes which are the main driving force of society. Each side is arguing that their code or world view is the right one to be maintained. As a result, the impulses act as polarising visions in American public discourse. This is a different conception of ideology that Smythe recognised and criticised. Whereas Smythe conceded that ideology taken as a whole derived out of economic
29 relations, the theoretical understanding of the culture war propose ideology to be a starting point of society that exists a priori of economy. While he did not discuss culture war specifically, Antonio Gramsci's conceptualisation of the function of ideology or rather hegemony is relevant. He conceptualised that the cultural sphere as a place of negotiation between social groups (Bennett 95; Bennett et al. 197). This approach assumes that forms of ideology function as connectors and negotiators rather than purely as an economic product. It is this form of ideology that is at stake here. This is not to say that culture war is prominently present in society. Thomson argues that the idea of a culture war is more ambiguous than a strict dichotomy between one or the other. In reality, a moderation of the cultural opposites is more in place (1-2, 217). Further, Thomson points out that culture wars change over time. The viewpoints and the levels of importance of issues vary (17). Fiorina even goes on to argue that there is no culture war that the American public is aware of at all (7). People are less divided on issues as the concept of the culture war suggests. Hunter himself was aware of this as he stated that the “public discourse [of culture war] is more polarized than the American public” (43). It is rather in the appearance of the publicness of the culture war that American society seems segregated by two polar opposite distinctions. What plays a significant driving force in this appearance is the persistent representation and embodiment of the culture war in media. Fiorina fittingly pays attention to the practice of news media (2-3):
No one has embraced the concept of the culture war more enthusiastically than the journalistic community, ever alert for subjects that have ‘news value.’ Conflict, of course, is high in news value. Disagreement, division, polarization, battles, and war make good copy. Agreement, consensus, moderation, compromise, and peace do not. Thus, the concept of a culture war fits well with the news sense of journalists who cover American politics.
This battle between two ideological opposites has a defining presence in today's media landscape. The main reason that makes possible this situation is that news media are
30 vulnerable to bias, censorship and commercial pressure. Still relevant in understanding the context of culture war in contemporary news media is the model put forward by Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky. In the model, “the media serve, and propagandise on behalf of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them” (xii). To varying degree, content on cable news media are shaped by the five filters that they postulate: corporate media ownership, advertising revenue, elite news sources, flak and dominant political agendas (originally: ideology of anti-communism; Hackett & Carroll 2005, 22). Ideology in the form of culture war, then, becomes relevant in part of the functioning of economics of media. Advances in media technology make possible for the amount of channels and television programs on air to keep growing. In the American media market that is extremely competitive commercially, news programs and channels seek means to gather and maintain viewership. One way is to distinguish themselves from others by producing content that is outspoken and biased towards certain issues, and thus cater to the prejudices of their viewers (Cogan and Kelso 116; Iyengar & Hahn). The discourse of culture war is for pundits and politicians on cable news programs an easy way to identify and separate themselves from those whose opinions differ from theirs. In this context, the existence of the media news sphere is overwhelmed by the culture war that acts upon subjective views of the producers as well as the audience. This makes ideology and economy closely related. Arguing for either ideology or economy to be more important over the other is in this context therefore not much productive as they compliment each other in the functioning of at least cable news media. Partly due to the culture war and its high news value, politically tinted news programs are commercially viable and thus have a place in media. Here, culture war is understood as a very specific context of cable news in American society. That is, in American 24-hour cable news culture, the culture war is still prominently present as dichotomies under the name of the likes of conservative versus liberal, right-wing versus left-wing, red versus blue, and Republicans versus Democrats. There is an agenda that media stick to in order to maintain their audiences and the number of viewers. The most watched cable news channels today are Fox News, CNN (1980-present) and MSNBC (1996-present) (Wilstein). Previous research reveal
31 that these channels are biased. Whereas FOX News leans towards conservative and Republican views (i.e. Groeling, Iyengar & Hahn, Molek-Kozakowska), MSNBC and CNN moderately have a tendency to go the opposite ideologically-wise. As a consequence, ‘neutrality’ and ‘impartiality’ become problematic terms in relation to cable news. For the 24-hour cycle especially, those terms are buzzwords that are ideologically-laden used to describe news programs. This can be noted in the slogans of the cable news channels. FOX News' “Fair and Balanced,” MSNBC's “Lean Forward,” and CNN's “The Most Trusted Name in News” convey an importance through their slogans, while they are actually marketing strategies functioning to ‘justify’ their existence and importance to their viewers. However, as noted, the content of the three mentioned channels are largely divided between conservative versus liberal media. As channels compete between each other on ideological and economical grounds, neutrality and impartiality are hard to find. Ultimately, this dubious or false labelling results in a seemingly deepening of the polarisation of the American public discourse. It is this ideological and economic mechanism of the culture war in news media that TCR scrutinises.
3.1.3 Satire in Contemporary News and Media Culture TCR is created and produced in a society wherein 24-hour news media culture exists and plays a prominent role in news gathering. A big part of the satire of TCR is exactly directed towards the 24-hour news cycle. On April 27th, 2014, the joint canonisation mass of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II was held. The mass was attended by Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI. In the segment called Popechella that was dedicated to the mass, Colbert scrutinised the focus on the notion of conservatism versus liberalism emphasised by cable news media (season 10, episode 95).1 In a montage of three pundits on FOX News and MSNBC, the idea that Pope John XXIII was a liberal and Pope John II a conservative icon was repeated. Colbert commented:
It was a monumental day that brought all Catholics together. Luckily, the news media was there to help drive us apart. […] I was afraid that we would
1 From this point forward, all references to seasons and episodes are to TCR unless noted otherwise.
32 forget that everything in the world must be divided into liberal or conservative.
This divide between conservative and liberal values and stands on issues functions acts as a culture war in American society. What is at stake here is not only the mention of the culture war. As mentioned, more important is that TCR exposes the appropriation of the culture war by cable news programs and channels. By way of explanation, cable news put forward and emphasise one or the other perspective. The above comment by Colbert brings to light this divide maintained by cable news. Today's 24-hour news channels are coloured by the relation between the culture war and the economic functioning of media. TCR is, because it is a satire and a comedy that is part of the same system, not necessarily censored in the same way as ‘actual’ news programs. So it is capable of exposing some of the mechanism of 24-hour news cycle. Also, it is able to seek other ways to provide information than conventional ways. In recent years a number of satirical news programs are viewable on television. Shows that are similar to TCR include TDS, Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO, 2003-present) and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO, 2014-present). Not only are late night satirical news program formats relatively inexpensive and cost-effective to produce, they are popular amongst viewers. On the one hand, fake news satire is too part of this capitalistic media culture that is described above. On the other hand, however, by definition, the genre tries to be critical of that same media culture. On the other side of the spectrum, satire from a conservative right-wing point of view would too fit within this argument of satire being critical. Taking them at face value, they should function as critical voices. In 2007, FOX News produced and aired its own program satire of the news titled The 1/2 Hour News Hour describing it as “The Daily Show for conservatives.” Since 2014, Red Eye w/ Greg Gutfeld has been airing. However, there are caveats that have to be pointed out. A difference between TCR and the satirical shows on FOX News is the context of production and airing. The fact that Red Eye airs at 03:00AM indicates that it does not have the same popularity as TCR which airs before midnight and re-airs several times throughout the day the next day. Furthermore, they do not function alike. TCR is produced by Comedy Central.
33 Audiences are aware of that. The other satirical shows were and are created by the same network that produce(d) the news programs. Audiences are reminded by this fact due to the FOX News channel logo that is present on screen in the bottom left corner throughout the programs. The FOX News shows are unable to give the same level of critique as TCR, because they are subjected to the same kind of commercial guidelines of attaining the audience that watches FOX News in the first place. By its nature, satire runs the risk of alienating parts of the audience (Gray, Jones & Thompson 14-15). With this in mind, the satire on FOX News complies to the existing views of its audience. FOX News' satirical content is based in the middle of the culture war whereby they attack the ‘liberal’ media whereas TCR is able to extract itself from the culture war by commenting on the culture war as an outsider. Even if TCR is to be seen as no neutral player but in fact as a liberal voice itself, it does not take away the notion that it comments on and critiques the way cable news media use the culture war to advance. Here, TCR is to be understood as an object that offers a specific form of media criticism. It is precisely about exposing the presence of culture war in cable news media. TCR as a satire is able to be critical about cable news because it explicitly mentions the culture war and exposes cable news channels in functioning as facilitators of the culture war. In a recent published article titled “Stephen Colbert's Civics Lesson: How Colbert Super PAC Taught Viewers About Campaign Finance” (2014), Hardy et al. argue that compared to other news sources the viewers of TCR not only believe that they knew more, but actually held more knowledge about political financing. Two reasons the authors give are the narrative structure and the satire of TCR. Not being restricted to particular news media conventions, TCR is able to play with genre conventions and tell a narrative to attack the functioning of media within the culture war. The research by Hardy et al. highlights the notion that other news sources were less adequate in covering the topic of political financing than a satirical comedy show like TCR did. This heightens the political awareness of the audience. Here is Colbert's reaction upon learning this (season 10, episode 113):
I have been ranked the most informative of all American news organizations and I am incredibly sorry. [...] When we began this show I promised to feel
34 the news at you from my gut. That's why I yank everything I say directly out of my ass. […] I let you down, Nation. Clearly I must work harder at informing you less.
Colbert explicitly attacks the way news media lack the capability to present the news without a subjective or ideological undertone. On the first episode of TCR in 2005, Colbert introduced the word ‘truthiness’ describing a subjective sense of truth. He explained: “Those who think with their head and those who know with their heart. Anyone can read the news to you, I promise to feel the news at you.” Truthiness has been the overarching satirical discourse for the show. The underlying argument of it is that in news media the function of objectively informing the American public is overshadowed by the subjectivity of the news pundit. In the above, it is clear that Colbert emphases his role as faux pundit in order to highlight the idiocy of other pundits, specifically the right-wing pundits. This quote demonstrates that TCR scorns cable news media for not informing the viewers enough. For a satire to pick up this duty is, according to Colbert, unacceptable. In this narrative of exposing news media, Colbert imitates pundits by taking the role of a bigmouth. He deconstructs the rhetorical fallacies of pundits by doing the same in an exaggerated way. Colbert uses the familiar narrative of news media. By playing with it, Colbert exposes the mechanism of news media. For Hardy et al., Colbert is able to “effectively present complex issues using a humorous narrative, viewers may become better informed about the issues and more engaged in the political process […] with the satirist effectively able to inform by participating in the political process” (Hardy et al. 350). Colbert the satirist “cross[es] over from being a humorist observer to an active participant” (338) in the critique of media. This is not to say that TCR should be seen as an accurate news program, but to show that in the context of the culture war in contemporary news media, it functions as a specific critique of the news media within the same capitalist media system that Smythe discussed.
3.2 Audience Commodity versus ‘Productive Commodity’ In 2006, the now titled Megyeri Bridge in Hungary was almost called after Stephen
35 Colbert after his name was suggested and had received the majority vote on the online naming contest launched by the Ministry of Transport of Hungary (season 2, episode 114; DB). In 2009, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) named a new treadmill the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill (COLBERT) after Colbert got the most votes in the naming poll for what became the Tranquility module of the International Space Station (season 5, episode 49). Over the years, Colbert has been voted as one of the top “most influential person in the world” in online polls by TIME Magazine (season 3, episode 64; season 4, episode 60). Out of satirical selfishness, Stephen Colbert has urged his audience to vote on naming polls to get things named after him. The fans of TCR – also known as the Colbert Nation – have been instructed and encouraged by the host of the show to partake in such polls. The polling results make for new content for the program as Colbert often makes a self- centred deal out of them. While Dallas Smythe did not discuss or could have even contemplated the developments that would happen in the landscape of television and cross-media decades after he wrote his essay in the 1970s, the kind of practice described above fits well in his theory of the audience labour and audience commodity. Smythe argued that commercial television audiences are audience commodities for advertisers to buy and sell. According to him, social relations that go into producing and consuming television – and media in general – become invisible. Here, the Colbert Nation acts as a commodity by being part of a value-enhancing audience that is being sold. However, the concept of commodity pays little attention to the actual audience practices and the meanings they can convey. In order to understand the dynamic relation between fans/audiences and the industry, it is relevant to also consider the question of why and how exactly audiences buy into television. The following paragraphs reviews Smythe's theory in relation to contemporary audience practices. Next the point is made that the Colbert Nation accurately fit the description of audience commodity, yet, at the same time, transcend it. The underlying motivation of the Nation to participate bring about aspects of audience practices that problematise the understanding of the Nation as solely a commodity.
36 3.2.1 Smythe on Contemporary Media Fan Practices As noted in the previous chapter, research has already been done on audience commodity and the inclusion of practices the audience do related to media. In media, audiences are created to serve the purpose of the economic system. Producers are eager to find new forms to create value. With fan practices, audiences to that for them. It becomes apparent that production and consumption create each other: by consuming, audiences produce and continue the process of production. The act of voting by the audience sparks a renewed interest in the media theories of political economist Smythe (and others) who would argue that the voting is a form of immaterial audience labour in media (i.e. Terranova, Fuchs, Andrejevic). For the voting example above, it is clear that the Colbert Nation works for TCR. This kind of labour is yet another form of exploitation of the audience. However, Smythe's way of thinking about the media industry limits the understanding of a media industry that is capable of other things. As Hesmondhalgh (2010, 280) writes: “[...] Smythe's account is crude, reductionist and functionalist, totally underestimating contradiction and struggle in capitalism.” Smythe solely concentrated on a society dictated by Fordist monopoly capitalism. Throughout this thinking, advertising was understood as the main answer of the functionalistic problems of the media system. Historically, advertising played an important role in the making of the medium of television. Smythe believed that the reason for existence of television was as part due to advertising. It made it possible to promote products and artificially manage demand. Approaching media in such a functionalistic manner means limiting the understanding of the actual practices of contemporary media culture. While fan engagement is part of a capitalist system, there are forms of fan creation and sharing that bear political, social and cultural significance. As media and audiences are not perfectly functioning systems, there is room for resistance and critical reflection of institutions. The rest of the chapter demonstrates that while the practices by audiences that are an intrinsic part of the political economic workings of television as they are productive for the capitalist system, they can also be politically, socially and culturally productive. TCR as a satire makes and allows for other forms of fan practices that are
37 relevant outside of the production of the TV show as well. The introduction of the concept of productive commodity here refuses the notion of a pure dominant capitalist system. There is a notion of empowerment at play that is intrinsic to the audience.
3.2.2 Fandom: To the Colbert Nation and Beyond It would be dismissive to disregard fan activity as merely a cog in an economic machine. Smythe asserted that producing and consuming television content were kinds of working for the advertisers. But it is not just about that. Indeed, the Nation functions as a commodity as Smythe had described. However, there are instances whereby the fan activity have yield positive results outside of the capitalist idea of the money-generating media system. As will be demonstrated in the case studies below, media and fans can bring about social and political significance. Media analyst John Fiske has written prominently on media fandom defining it as a “culture of a self-selected fraction of the people’ having value in both economics and culture.” While his theory is outdated in context of today's media culture, it is relevant in trying to understand fandom. In the '90s, he wrote (30):
All popular audiences engage in varying degrees of semiotic productivity, producing meanings and pleasures that pertain to their social situation out of the products of the culture industries. But fans often turn this semiotic productivity into some form of textual production that can circulate among – and thus help to define – the fan community. Fans create a fan culture with its own systems of production and distribution that forms what I shall call a ‘shadow cultural economy’ that lies outside that of the cultural industries yet shares features with them which more normal culture lacks.
Following Fiske, the Colbert Nation can be seen as a fan community or fandom. Like fans of that time, fans of today are active participants of media (Jenkins 2013, Hill, Gray). The general idea is that people give their own meanings to the media object. Lawrence Grossberg states that audiences are able to use media texts in their own way: “what the audience does with these texts – what influence, power, effects or meaning
38 they take on; how we use them to construct personal or group identities; or how they fit into our ‘mattering maps’” (qtd. in Gray 66). Ideology or symbolic meaning then serves as a driving force for fans. This value for the audience then should be understood in terms of symbolic exchange that is created in both production and consumption (Bolin 3). Fiske writes that the cultural capital and productive created through popular culture and fandom is not “typically convertible into economic capital” (34). Fiske would seemingly argue against Smythe in saying that fandom acts on a level whereby economics plays a lesser role. Fiske gave prominence to “the creativity of popular culture and its role in distinguishing between different social formations within the subordinated […]. There are forms of popular cultural capital produced outside and often against official cultural capital.” A similar argument is made by political activist Lawrence Lessig in the contemporary context of remix culture. But unlike Fiske, Lessig does make a more visible connection to the economics of media. In his book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy, Lessig advocates for remix culture and argues to strive towards a hybrid economy. He states there are two kinds cultures and economies at work; the Read/Write (RW) and the Read/Only (RO) culture, and then there are the commercial and the sharing economies. The hybrid economy comes into existence when these cultures and economies come together to create. RO culture is a top-down culture that is solely open for consumption. The consumer in this culture is restricted from being a creator of culture (28). RW culture is a culture in which consumers participate in the creation and the recreation of their culture by remixing (28). They add to the culture they read. According to Lessig, the significance of RW culture is present on two levels: community and education (77). First, remix is not merely an individual activity. Rather, it is a tool or technique that is democratised to allow creativity. It is an act of social creativity whereby people come together and create collective expressions. The second function of remix stimulates the audience to become more active and engaged with objects. RW culture is a culture where people produce culture for the passion in what they are doing and not for financial reasons. While he specifically talks about remix
39 culture, his conception can be extended towards fan culture in general. These notions of community and education help to highlight parts of the context of the fan practices by the Colbert Nation. More on this point will be outlined later in the chapter. Central to the contemporary media culture whereby remix and convergence play a prominent role is the complexity of the dynamic processes between ‘top-down corporate’ and ‘bottom-up grassroots’ actors whereby both old and new media channels, their content and the access to the content change (Jenkins 2006, 243). In doing academic research on media, Henry Jenkins with Mark Deuze advocate to aim to address both media industries and media audiences (5). While mentioning Lev Manovich, they urge for an understanding of the “culture of remix and remixability, where user-generated content exists both within and outside commercial contexts, and supports as well as subverts corporate control” (7). What stands out for TCR is the loyal fan following of the show and the explicit integration of the following in its television content. For both Jenkins and Lessig respectively, the coming together of TCR and its Nation exemplifies clearly the convergence culture and hybrid economy they discuss. It displays a tangled relationship between the two sides of media production. As a sidenote to Lessig's conception of RO and RW culture and Jenkin's convergence culture, it is important to keep in mind that fandom pre-dates modern mass communication. According to the well-cited researcher of fandom Francesca Coppa, there have been “very few histories of individual fandoms and the works of art they produced” (41). Because of that, little of fan culture was visible in the mainstream. She highlights that fandom exists both despite and in spite of advancements in technology. With the existence of media, fandom has always played a part in the media landscape. Nonetheless, while fandom is not a sudden new phenomenon, it has become a prominent feature in the discourse of contemporary media culture. Advances in technological developments make the relationship between fandom and the commercial television industry visible and complicated. They make the relation between audiences and producers seem more intertwined with each another than has before. Fandom exists within a capitalist system. Within that system, it reinforces some aspects of the system. However, fandom is not necessary confined by the borders of the system. Fandom exceeds traditional media production and creates other meaningful relations. This brings
40 to the fore that fans do not reside in a system that is entirely monolithic as Smythe suggested. Media audiences go beyond viewership meaning that there are also other relations at play. As a commodity, they have the ability to apply to their own power. This makes audience participation not all about pure exploitation. Contemporary fandom and fan practices that reside within the capitalist system are still able to be meaningful. The Nation is not merely ‘passively’ receptive of the show, but also actively producing and providing content for the show as part of a community. Throughout the existence of TCR, there has been a great diversity of fan practices involved with the show. The fans of TCR (Colbert Nation) act beyond the confinements of the medium of TV. That is, they actively create content for and outside of the show. Corresponding to the genre of satire, an amount of media fan practices by the target audience of satire is related to the satirical intent of the satirical object. That is, the show has a strong fan base that has an urge to participate in change. Following this, there is a critical aspect to the fan practices. Burwell, Burwell & Boler and Schulzke have explicitly written about the Colbert Nation in relation to political participation. To study the ways in which the audience engage with the show, attention will be paid to three kinds of participatory activities of the audience: the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, donations to DonorsChoose.org and the Colbert Super PAC, and several remix challenges. While each practice contributes to the notion of the audience being an audience commodity, each also has its own cultural meaning that would undermine that very notion to different extents. Further, they showcase how the Colbert Nation can be understood as productive with the intent to do good. The first case demonstrates the event whereby the from-the-ground-up political fan activism extends the satirical meaning of TCR to scorn the culture war in cable news media. The second show how fans of entertainment and popular culture act as facilitators for good. The last one focusses on how by labouring, fans create meaning for themselves and the community they reside in. The goal is to examine to what extent the Nation can be placed in the spectrum of critical actors and commodity. On the one hand, fan activity stands on its own outside of capitalism. On the other hand, it acts as a building block for the satire of TCR that then breeds tension with itself as an aspect of the show that is intrinsically
41 related to capitalism. The examples demonstrate the tensions differently.
3.2.2.1 The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear Political scientist Marcus Schulzke argues in his text “Fan Action and Political Participation on The Colbert Report” how the show merges political satire with political fan activism. The same point is argued by Catherine Burwell & Megan Boler and Dias da Silva & Luis Garcia in their articles. The fan activities by the Colbert Nation that occur online and end up appearing on the show demonstrates a form of interaction between fan and producer that can be politically meaningful. In the following instance, audience participation promoted collective action against the culture war, and encouraged critical thinking about contemporary media culture. On August 28th, 2010, Glenn Beck – who at the time was a conservative right- wing pundit hosting his own television show on the FOX News Channel – organised the Restoring Honor rally. The rally was intended to be a celebration of the “heroes and heritage” of America. Specifically, it was about American freedom and restoring “honour in America.” The speakers included former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin. The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. was filled by thousands of people. An estimate of the number of people, however, is unclear as news outlets have reported different figures. Nonetheless, it received news coverage on a national level. Most of the positive attention leading up the rally as well as afterwards came from FOX News. In the context of culture war, it should not be surprising, then, that the Restoring Honor rally was criticised for its bias. One of its opponents' critique was that its rhetoric did not offer accurate representation of Americans. Rather, it functioned as a political platform mainly for the viewers of FOX News and the Tea Party movement. Another controversial issue regarding the rally was the date: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ‘I Have a Dream’-speech (Halloran). Several rallies were organised in response to the Restoring Honor rally. What started out as an obscure post made by a commenter on Reddit – an online social media platform where share, discuss and vote on news items, pictures, videos and such – turned out to be a serious plan for the producers of TCR. Joseph Laughlin, by the name of /r/mrsammercer2, made a “self-post” in the subreddit r/Politics titled: “I've Had a
42 Vision and I Can't Shake It: Colbert Needs to Hold a Satirical Rally in DC.” In the post dating August 31st, 2010, he explained:
Think about it. It'll be just like Colbert's mockery of GW Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondent's Dinner, but 500,000 people will be able to participate with him. We'll all stay totally in character as teabaggers. The kid with the microphone that interviews all the idiots at these things can come by and we'll ramble into his microphone. This would be the high water mark of American satire. Half a million people pretending to suspend all rational thought in unison. Perfect harmony. It'll feel like San Francisco in the late 60s, only we won't be able to get any acid. I know you're out there somewhere, Stephen, watching LOLcat gifs along side us. We need you. There's no way to have a logical public discussion with the teabaggers. The best we can do is to mimic them. Show them a mirror and hopefully some will realize how ridiculous they actually are... Or maybe they won't even realize that they're being mocked, which could be even more awesome.
This post garnered a vote-count of 6368 of which 96% was positive (upvote). Other Redditors set up the subreddit /r/ColbertRally and the website
43 (TDS season 15, episode 111). Colbert, too, stated news was happening (season 6, episode 114). On September 16th, Jon Stewart finally made public the Rally to Restore Sanity (TDS season 15, episode 117) saying:
We live in troubled times, with real people, facing real problems – problems that have real, if not imperfect, solutions, that I believe 70 to 80% of our population could agree to try, and could ultimately live with. Unfortunately, the conversation and process is controlled by the other 15 to 20% [...]. We have seen these folks, the loud folks, over the years dominate our national conversation on our most important issues: [a clip compilation of news pundits and politicians on FOX News, CNN and MSNBC, and a dancing Stewart on an older episode of TDS (season 15, episode 54)]. But why don't we hear from the 70- to 80-percenters?
The above quote demonstrates the point made earlier about the culture war. The majority of the content on cable news media is about scorning the other side of the culture war. This presentation of the public discourse by cable news media was is not representative of the American public. Stewart made this clear by distinguishing the population and the media. Again, satirical news shows like TDS and TCR play a critical role in the culture war by revealing the way other media operate. The goal of the rally was to provide platform for the ‘majority’ of the American population to voice their distrust and weariness of the extreme political expressions, and, thus, to promote reasonableness and ‘restore sanity.’ The people in power in the news media and the political landscape were to “take it down a notch.” Furthermore, showing a clip of himself dancing indicates that he is well-aware of the position he and the show are within the media industry.2 The other important matter of the announcement was the inclusion of the viewers as ‘real people’ and their participatory part in the rally. Stewart turned the audience into active actors. TDS and TCR being on the same network and Stewart being the executive producer of TCR, the shows have close ties with one another. As a faux-rival counter- 2 Paradoxically, the original segment of which the dancing clip belongs to was intended to comment on the lack of seriousness of cable news media.
44 reaction to Stewart's rally, Colbert declared his own rally titled the March to Keep Fear Alive on his show ten minutes after Stewart did (season 6, episode 117). Leading up to the rallies, discussions and updates on Reddit kept going leading up to the rallies (Bell, Schiraldi). On October 14th, TDS and TCR combined forces informed the public that they were going to held a joint rally called The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. The rally was held at the National Mall in Washington, DC two weeks after, on October 30th, to be aired as a live special on Comedy Central. Public figures of different fields were present – ranging from politicians, musicians (The Roots, Wilco and Willie Nelson) and other entertainment personalities (the hosts of Mythbusters). It ended up being physically attended by 215,000 people. The amount of people and attention indicates the social and political significance of the event. Even though the effect or outcome of the rally is up for grabs, the entire organisation leading up to the rally and the rally itself did shed light to the news media landscape. In this case, Reddit and the Nation created an event that garnered attention in media and managed to direct towards bigger debates in media culture. The Colbert Nation helped to extend the satirical meaning of TCR of aiming to scorn the culture war in cable news media. TDS and TCR acted on their initiating discussion on social media to organise a rally. As the programs picked up on the call for action, they tapped back into the audience to actually participate in such event. Discussion and a form of political activism followed as national news media covered the event. Here, the producer and fan relation reinforced each other in creating an outcome that was politically relevant.
3.2.2.2 Fan Charity The practice of charity involves the generous or voluntary action to aid those in need (Dictionary.com). Charity works on different levels. A difference between individual private charity and government is that the latter has this collective responsibility to act together whereas individuals take the time to look at a particular situation and asses for themselves what they care about. They have their own responsibility and/or goodwill of donating an amount to charity they individually choose. The decision-making process of where their help or donation goes to lies with the individuals. Media can play a role in that process.
45 While it has been argued that the discourse of charity is intrinsically linked to capitalism as it is closely related to consumption and profit (i.e. Žižek 53, 56; Nickel & Eikenberry 2, 9-10), it is not the intention to argue against that. Instead, the notion of fan charity demonstrates the significance of such practice by the Colbert Nation in relation to audience commodity and productivity. It is another form of labour in service of the TV show. TCR has explicitly asked of its audience to donate to charities. Most of the time, they are legitimate charities. Occasionally, a seemingly dubious one appears. In any case, TCR has successfully garnered the Nation to donate over the years. The Colbert Nation always has always complied without hesitation. In some instances, donations by the Colbert Nation have helped further the satire of TCR. The following accounts the different levels in which the Nation engages with charities. Some of the examples of fan charity include: raising enough money for the U.S. speedskating squad to compete in the 2010 Winter Olympics after the Dutch bank DSB dropped its sponsoring (season 5, episode 139) and out-donating China's initial pledge of one hundred thousand US dollars to the relief efforts to the Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda in 2013 (season 10, episode 25). The online non-profit organisation DonorsChoose.org for teachers across America comes to the fore on the show more consistently as Colbert serves as an ongoing member of the Board of Directors of the organisation since 2009 (Marketwired). In between the Reddit post by /u/mrsammercer2 and the organisation of the rally by the producers of TDS and TCR, the Colbert Nation on Reddit set up a DonorsChoose.org fundraiser (Schiraldi; Friedman; season 6, episode 127). A more recent charity instance that also related to the satirical intent of TCR involves the Colbert Super PAC: Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, a political action committee (PAC), in 2011 (season 7, episode 36;
46 donating to his PAC was so he could cover his own personal expenses. This was to scorn how actual PACs would use money. Throughout the process, Colbert did not disclose to the Nation on how the donated money would actually be spend. Without knowing where the money would go exactly, the Nation still ended up raising one million dollars. It made possible for the PAC to grow in finance and power. Here, donating money is as yet another form of audience labouring. For TCR, whether or not fans would donate money played in how Colbert would react on the show. If it was not for the charity cases (the act of donating money), the reaction of Colbert on the show would have been different. In other words, the donations by the Nation furthered the narrative of the show. While charity is a part of capitalism, in the case of the Super PAC, it acted as a way to highlight the satirical intentions of TCR. In the process, Colbert managed to inform the viewers about the finances of Super PACs (related to education, see Hardy et al., paragraph 3.1.3). There are very few ways to get the popular American public engaged on an issue about financial campaigning. Yet not only were they engaged with that issue, they donated their money to that issue because they felt passionate about it. It is difficult to get so many people invested in. Since the dissolution of the Colbert Super PAC in 2012, the (remaining) contributions have been distributed to several charities. While at the beginning it was apparent that the Nation donated money for the sake of the show, this point does not diminish the fact that the donations by the Nation go to good causes.
3.2.2.3 Remix Culture As mentioned earlier, the hybrid economy is the result of a productive melting together of the RO and the RW cultures on the one hand, and the sharing and commercial economies on the other. According to Lessig, the hybrid economy is where art and commerce mix. It can pave a way toward legal remix creativity. Lessig defines ‘remix’ as a form of communicative amateur creativity. A remix can be understood as an object that adds value or new meaning to an otherwise already existing object. Remixers use different media to produce and distribute their remix. During the lifespan of the show, Colbert has called upon the Nation to remix (audio)visual footage of his choosing. Back in 2006, Colbert asked the Nation to
47 participate in the first of several Green Screen Challenges. As part of the program, Colbert stood on and in front of a green screen wielding a lightsaber. After exclaiming: “Oh, no, I'm being attacked by a space monster. I better use my lightsaber to fight it,” he played out an imaginary fight. While waving his sword, he kicked, ducked and rolled. As media savvy that his audience was at the time, it is not hard to imagine that the action-packed green screen footage created opportunity for them to play around with. After Colbert announced the challenge, people took the liberty to grab the footage off of the show's website, re-edit/remix Colbert in a myriad of situations, and upload their own creations back to the site. Some remixes found their way onto YouTube. A handful of remixes would then be shown later on the show either in their entirety or in compilations that the show itself has put together. In the episode of October 11th, 2006 (season 2, episode 129), the finalists of the challenge were announced. Leading up to this episode, Colbert had shown compilations of some of the remixes by the fans. The show would give credit to those where credit was due. In the concluding episode of the challenge, it was revealed that George Lucas – the creator of Star Wars – was one of the challengers who managed to secure a spot in the finale. The other runner-up was Colbert Nation member Bonnie R. To decide on who had made the better remix, Colbert used a random point-system. On January 8th, 2009, Lessig made an appearance on TCR to promote his book Remix (season 5, episode 4). In the interview, Lessig explained the main arguments of his book saying that contemporary copyright laws are outdated and therefore do not comply with contemporary media practices. In the hybrid economy remixing should be legally allowed. Colbert followed by playfully and sarcastically ‘provoking’ his audience (not) to remix the interview:
Nobody should take my work and do anything with it that is not approved. [...] Never, ever, take anything of mine and remix it. For instance, I will be very angry and possible litigious if somebody takes this interview here and remix it with some great dance beat and it starts showing up in clubs across America.
48 The Nation took its cue to do just that and ended up producing remixes. In this specific case, the show did not offer the footage directly from its website nor did it provide any upload options. The Nation sought its way on other online video platforms. Two weeks after the interview, TCR revealed some of the remixes on the show (season 5, episode 11). In the main example, TCR took a remix song by a member of the Nation and remixed it with its own footage specifically shot for the remix. The video exaggerates the aesthetics of remix. TCR being a satirical television program, it is relevant to see how its audience extend the satirical intent of the program. This particular act of remixing presents a critique towards copyright laws that has the potential to turn into a political discussion. Here it is relevant to recall Lessig's two functions of remix, community and education. In this case, attention is drawn towards the discussion of remix and copyright. In the end, the fan activities and audience participation are supposed to promote collective action and encourage critical thinking. The Lessig interview and the subsequent remixing of it demonstrates two things. For one, it exemplifies how remixing can have a critical meaning. TCR and the Colbert Nation pinpoint the outdatedness of copyright laws, which is directly linked to capitalism since it instils property rights on cultural goods. This critical aspect of remix breaks through Smythe's understanding of media as solely a for-profit entity. The very notion of remix is that it can combine elements of society and be more than merely a capitalist good. Secondly, however, the complex relation between audiences and producers is subject to undercutting any critical intent of remixes. Labour is performed by the audience. In the interview with Lessig, Colbert facetiously mentioned that when they do challenges with the audience, the audience “does all the work and the show gets all the ad revenue.” Despite the joky undertone, it does quickly point towards the question of exploitation. This is not to say that all cultural meaning of remix practices get lost, but it does challenge the power relation between the Nation and the producers of TCR. Other major remix or Green Screen Challenge moments on the show include the music video of the song ‘O Valencia!’ by the band The Decemberists and senator John McCain accepting his Republican presidential nomination during the American presidential campaign trail in 2008. Using their skills and tools available to them, the
49 Nation was encouraged to participate in the show. These challenges do not exemplify the first time TCR called on the audience to take part of the show nor is TCR the first television show to do so. The show and its audience do demonstrate an issue that is relevant: social relations versus commodity as part of the same system. Especially in the case of remix, the Nation can be as a productive commodity whereby social relations are made both visible and invisible.
3.2.3 The Paradox of Satire and Fan Culture From a political economic viewpoint, this notion of critical and cultural meaningful aspect of fandom is an inherent part of the capitalist commercial industry. The grassroots and corporate processes are all related to the commodification of audiences. Following Smythe's argument, TCR is created to attract viewers which are to be sold as selling good to advertisers. By having a collective name for the audience, the audience is compelled to feel connected with the show when addressed. The act of encouraging the Colbert Nation to produce content for the show by the show is to make the Colbert Nation spend more time and labour on the show so that the Colbert Nation remains attractive to advertisers and thus profitable. The show responds to this notion by explicitly asking the Nation to labour. Media companies are constantly seeking new ways to exploit the audience's value-enhancing labour. The fan involvement demonstrated by the Nation highlights an interactive relationship between program producers and fans. It can be seen as a cycle whereby the production of media are partly due to the fans. Rose Helens-Hart writes:
[...] participation is the essence of fan labor when fans are what Milner (2009) describes as “active, creative, productive participants within the labor system surrounding the text they esteem. Simply put, fans work for the text” (494). He argues that activities are labor when they ‘build the brand’ of the media text. Fans engage in value-enhancing labor by taking on part of the work of updating a text and making it interesting for themselves as well as providing feedback on content to producers (Andrejevic 2008).
50 As discussed above, this can be in the form of online discussion, charity and remixing. The show encourages the audiences to do something, so they get a sense of fulfilment that is not based on financial reward. As in RW culture, the Nation engages with the show to gain the value of the social relations. Again, Smythe argued that media always come down to buying and selling audiences. In this view, audiences are commodities. Due to commodification, the social relation gets substituted (Mosco 130). Specifically in the case of American media, of which TCR is part of, this political economic conception of media is relevant. American media predominantly follow an economic logic based on an advertising model. Whatever the audiences do is part of the economic industry. The amount of audience labour that goes into the fan practices goes back into the contents of the show. Here comes to the fore that audience participation exists within the boundaries of corporate media. The relation between audience and advertising companies is always a part of the fan practices. Taken together, this highlights the notion of commodification in and of fan culture, which consequently leads to the tension between fans as agents and the commodification of fan culture. However, this understanding above media should not stand in the way of the understanding audience practices as a production of culture. While Lessig solely discussed remix culture, his theory of the hybrid economy can be extended to contemporary culture more broadly. The three cases of the Colbert Nation described above can find their way in the hybrid economy. The first one shows how fans and TV producers can work together to helm a political activist event extending the satirical critique to media culture. The second illustrates how the participation of fans further the satirical narrative of the show. The last, of course, explicitly focusses on creative fan labour that complicates the traditional relationship between producer and audience the most out of the three. The other distinction of Lessig's not yet outlined is between the two economies of social production – commercial and sharing economies. A commercial economy is one “in which money or ‘price’ is a central term of the ordinary, or normal, exchange” (118). A sharing economy is an economy in which money is not a part of exchange. Instead, it is regulated by “a complex set of social relations” (145). Devices that are used in the sharing economy help to build connections between people. The hybrid
51 economy comes into existence when these cultures and economies come together to create: “the hybrid links two simpler, or purer, economies, and produces something from the link” (177). When commercial and sharing economies interact and work together well, they produce the hybrid economy (225). This form of economy is increasingly taking shape in contemporary media culture. As Smythe published his text in the 1970s and as he only saw the one economy as a capitalist product, the hybrid economy is one that he did not consider or was blind to. The hybrid economy allows for an understanding of the media environment in which fan culture can flourish helps to read media in both similar to and other terms than capitalism.
52 4 Conclusion The starting point of this thesis is Dallas Smythe's influential article on the political economy of the media landscape. While still relevant and valid today, it asks for a review in relation to contemporary news media and fan culture as they are not fixed or constant. The Colbert Report has helped to both problematise and expand on some of Smythe's conceptions of media content and media audiences. This thesis set out to make a contribution to a specific discussion of satire and fandom. TCR draws attention to the way that the show is an example of something that is simultaneously working with and against both the cable news media system as well as the capitalist system. In finding the political and cultural relevance of satire and fans within and outside of a commercial TV industry, the concepts used here have been the critical aspect of satire, fan practices, audience labour and audience commodity. The paradox of satire and audiences in a consumerist capitalist media system has come to the fore. Indeed, media are to make profit out of audiences. But economic profit is not the sole purpose of media. While the show does increase profit for Comedy Central and Viacom, in the process, it makes its content political and allows its audience to do things that are positive in a critical and productive sense. Media theorist Jostein Gripsrud argues that understanding the cultural function of television advances the understanding of other functions of television, including the economic. On the same note, the economic advances the cultural. It is problematic to entirely dismiss content as irrelevant in the functioning of media. The two systems are both dominant in their own way and will not always going to be in agreement. In intersecting between cultural and economic analysis, message commodity and audience commodity are related. Satirical content as message commodity remains relevant in today's media culture as it has the potential to be in a critical role in society that allows for political participation. The two critical public functions of late-night television David Gurney (3) notes are:
[…] first, they comment upon and reveal potential failings or hypocrisies of American society, especially those perpetrated by individuals in positions of political and/or economic power; second, and less overtly, they function as
53 supplemental gatekeepers and framers in the agenda-setting work of the media.
These tasks highlight the relevancy of satire TV in society. In capitalist society, the genre of satire makes itself relevant by engaging with political, cultural and social matters in society, or at least tries to. As stated earlier, satire has been defined as a genre that is intended to ridicule and has the desire to change the status quo – emphasis on desire (Colletta 872). By its definition, satire is a vehicle for political and social commentary. For a satire like TCR, there is the intention to work against a system of entrenched party politics. Specifically, TCR criticises the way how the culture war is seeped into the functioning of cable news media of today. It does so by mentioning it, pointing it out by parodying the way cable news act and thus bringing to light the mechanism of culture war. Here, satire, and comedy, in popular culture is perceived not only as a platform for amusing diversion, but also as a reuniting collective agent for critical reflection on society. What satire does makes audiences be more aware of their environment. Satire encourages audiences not to blindly consume and accept information provided to them, but to question it. It makes them more critical of society. In turn, it creates a loyal following in that it offers content that is an alternative to existing authoritative discourses. Smythe's concept of the audience commodity is helpful in understanding the audience in relation to media industries. The audience practices by the Colbert Nation adds to the Smythe's understanding of audience commodity. Aside from watching the show, the Colbert Nation does immaterial labour for the show. Forms of audience engagement are becoming visible. This notion is relevant in today's ongoing structure- agency debate. Today, production and consumption interrelate much more. Fuchs describes the paradox of audience participation between cultural studies and political economy of the media (2012, 711):
[…] the question of the activity and creativity of the audience has been resolved in relation to the Internet today: On Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc, users are fairly active and creative, which reflects Cultural Studies' insights
54 about the active character of recipients, but this active and creative user character is the very source of exploitation, which reflects Critical Political Economy's stress on class and exploitation.
Indeed, in the political economic context, TCR operates on the grounds of buying and selling audiences. The political economy is what allows for fan participation that in turn in fact reinforce marketing strategies and other corporation incentives. All the while, in producing and consuming media, fans are able to negotiate with existing (capitalist) media discourses. To different extents, their media engagement can be seen as politically and culturally meaningful. In some cases, satire merges with audience activity. As result, audience as commodities become critical and productive because of it. This makes the understanding of both satire and audiences not clear cut as the two different methodological approaches suggest. The genre and fandom keep moving positions within media culture. In this particular case, it is in the best interest to not stick to one methodological viewpoint to understand media and audiences. A dialect between political economy and cultural analysis is required to apprehend them. The notion of critical and productive commodity is helpful in finding a common ground between the two approaches. Here, satire and fandom act exactly as forms of such commodities. The term proposes that content and fans can be meaningful and commodified at the same time. This is to highlight the possible significance of content and give audiences credit for their input that is an intrinsic part of the production of media while being aware that they are labourers in and for mass media. In the case of TCR, the Colbert Nation is a productive commodity critiquing as well as reaffirming the status of the satirical intent of the television program as part of a commercial system. Perhaps that is exactly what is required from the audience and the show to be relevant in media. In a capitalist system, fans need to be commodified in order to be a productive component of the program. Engagement by the Nation is partly accomplishable due to its commercial form. Advertising makes possible to raise awareness and for more people to be reached. Without media and the subsequent commodification processes going on, opportunities to act on particular media texts
55 would less likely exist. All the while, this suggest a form of capitalism that serves the fan community rather than solely exploiting it.
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The Colbert Report (Comedy Central, 2005-present) “Stone Phillips.” Season 1, episode 1. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 17 October 2005. “Bill Simmons.” Season 2, episode 114. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 14 September 2006. “George Lucas.” Season 2, episode 129. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 11 October 2006. “Jann Wenner.” Season 3, episode 64. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 10 May 2007. “Susie Orbach.” Season 5, episode 49. The Colbert Report. Comedy central. 14 April 2009. “Nicholas Thompson.” Season 5, episode 139. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 2 November 2009.
64 “Carl Hiaasen.” Season 6, episode 60. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 5 May 2008. “Lisa Birnbach.” Season 6, episode 114. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 13 September 2010. “Lawrence O'Donnell.” Season 6, episode 117. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central 16 September 2010. “Guillermo del Toro.” Season 6, episode 120. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 22 September 2010. “Oscar Goodman.” Season 6, episode 121. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 23 September 2010. “Leon Botstein.” Season 6 episode 127. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 5 October 2010. “Reza Aslan.” Season 7, episode 36. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 10 March 2011. “Steve McQueen.” Season 10, episode 25. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 18 November 2013. “Michael McFaul.” Season 10, episode 95. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 28 April 2014. “Jonah Hill.” Season 10, episode 113. The Colbert Report. Comedy Central. 4 June 2014.
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central, 1996-present) “John O'Hara.” Season 15, episode 54. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy Central. 20 April 2010. “Tim Gunn.” Season 15, episode 111. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy Central. 7 September 2010. “Bill Clinton.” Season 15, episode 117. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy Central. 16 September 2010. “David Rakoff.” Season 15, episode 133. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Comedy Central. 14 October 2010.
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