CMNS220 - News parody

Transcript

1. understanding television 220
2. The show’s host, comedian Jon Stewart, and his co-producers label their work as “fake news,” and insist that their agenda simply is “to make people laugh” THE DAILY SHOW 01 220
3. • The program has won a Peabody Award and also was nominated as one of television’s best newscasts by the TV Critics Association • At the start of the 2004 presidential campaign, Newsday named Stewart as the single most important newscaster in the country • The show’s nightly interview segment regularly features members of the national political, legislative, and journalistic establishment. FAKE NEWS? 01 220
4. Fake news necessitates assumptions about some kind of authentic or legitimate set of news practices, ideals that one rarely hears articu- lated or necessarily sees as evident today. In the absence of any codified set of profes- sional guidelines, a standardized entrance examination, or a supervisory guild, news instead is defined and constrained by a set of cultural practices, informal and often implicit agreements about proper conduct, style, and form that today are in flux, increasingly multiple, debatable, and open for reconsideration HOW IT CAN BE FAKE, IF THERE’S NO REAL? 01 220
5. Discourses of news, politics, entertainment, and marketing have grown deeply inseparable; the languages and practices of each have lost their distinctiveness and are being melded into previously unimagined combinations. Although some may see this as a dangerous turn in the realm of political communication, it also can be seen as a rethinking of discursive styles and standards that may be opening spaces for significant innovation. DISCOURSIVE INTEGRATION 01 220
6. • The Daily Show routinely violates journalistic conventions in important ways. For one, while it covers the same raw material as does the mainstream news, its choices of soundbites turn contemporary conventions on their head. • In rejecting the standard conventions of quote selection, The Daily Show achieves a critical distance that cannot be said of the networks. • The Daily Show’s refusal to abide by standard practices may offer a measure of resistance to manipulation, a counterbalance to the mutual embrace between press and politics BREAKING THE RULES 01 220
7. Unlike traditional news, which claims an epistemological certainty, satire is a discourse of inquiry, a rhetoric of challenge that seeks through the asking of unanswered questions to clarify the underlying morality of a situation THE DIALOGIC NATURE OF SATIRE 01 220
8. It is a dialogical notion of democracy, one that “requires citizens to go beyond private self-interest of the ‘market’ and orient themselves to public interests of the ‘fo- rum’ ” DIALOGICAL SATIRE AND DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY 01 220
9. Parody is a self reflective textual manoeuvre. Is asks the viewer to decode multiple texts in dialogic relation. Parody is a discourse on texts. Satire is a commentary not on text, but on the social world. Satire is a discourse on things. SATIRE AND PARODY 01 220
10. Zero degree deviation from the norm: Parody transgression ultimately remains authorized. Authorized by the very norm it seeks to subvert. Even in mocking, parody reinforces; it inscribes the mocked conventions onto itself. PARODY AND SOCIAL NORMS 01 220
11. If you want to discuss your ideas or review your Short/Term paper with me , send an email asking to schedule an appointment during office hours. You can find me in Room K-8661 on Monday, from 13,30 to 14.20 OFFICE HOURS 01 220
12. K-8661 on Monday, from 13,30 to 14.20 alusoli@sfu.ca Alberto Lusoli twitter.com/albertolusoli #CMNS220 You can also find me at: * See you next week