That’s it folks: it seems the orange man may be on his way out of the White House and oh boy, does it feel like a relief. But what has his presence there in the first place meant for comedy, satire, and the clips we love to share on social media? For the sake of being current, this edition of letdown comedy is a collection of thoughts on the comedic image and whether it harms or services powerful figures like Trump. And down you scroll!
Rachel McCartney is probably my favorite comedian on Twitter right now. She recently turned herself into Biden for a while (she’s back to her normal self now), but I took this screenshot because carpe diem.
One day I will write about the uncanny comedy of Instagram food memes, I promise. Until then, marvel at this. [This is not as topical, even though strange food unjustifiably suspended in jelly could be an allegory of American politics, why not.]
This last link is nothing obscure (you may in fact be already familiar with it), but it’s a very intense conversation among two very intense comedians: Marc Maron and Hari Kondabolu. They discuss what they have in common (spoiler: they are both intense), but most importantly they explore Hari’s particular brand of comedy, which delves into the nature of racial stereotypes in popular culture (he made a documentary about Apu from The Simpsons). It’s super interesting.
Back in 2016, when Trump was about to get elected, I was watching Comedy Central on my couch in Manchester. His old 2011 roast was on and (Hillary Clinton being way ahead at the time) it felt like we were all sharing a laugh at his expenses. We would all realize how wrong we were come morning, but as I was watching the comedic celebration of America’s most cartoonish billionaire - “we only roast the ones we love” is the motto - I already had a bittersweet feeling. Any Italian knows the “all publicity is good publicity” mantra applies to politics as well, and we do since the Berlusconi days. If it’s true the “bunga bunga”-happy Silvio was making his fellow benchmates cringe with his jokes at the European Parliament, it’s also true his antics were part of the package and even contributed to cementing his iconic persona deep into the country’s psyche. Not only was his character so magnetic in attracting praise and criticism for every little thing that it hi-jacked debate away from his policies, his charismatic persona even became a template for his opponents (so much so that his centre-left counterpart Matteo Renzi has been compared to a smaller copy of the Cavaliere). I felt the roast of Donald Trump was not unlike a lot of the political satire we had for years in Italy - the weakening call to reason of an agonizing left. There are of course a million differences between Trump and Berlusconi, not least their attitude towards the Internet and mainstream media: Berlusconi was very literally the product, as well as the producer, of a TV-driven cultural transformation; although he gained personal influence by de-centralizing the landscape of Italian television, as soon as he could he enforced top-down control of state media like any old-fashioned conservative strongman. On the other hand, Trump embraced the de-stabilizing forces of the Internet and pushed them into overdrive against mainstream media, even as he was sitting on top of the institutions those media have traditionally legitimated. Part of the reason he was able to do it, some would argue, is the comedic character of his public persona.
Trump’s roast followed a long lineage of popular media built on his questionably successful career and shamelessly narcissistic personality. Beyond his more famous run as a reality show star (The Apprentice and his “You’re fired!” catchphrase are definitely the most widely referenced in pop culture), Trump’s over-the-top, gold-plated, lavish aesthetics were not only familiar to millions, their tackiness was so perfectly in tune with the comedic timing of US television they almost appeared tongue-in-cheek. It doesn’t really matter how deeply sociopathic you might be: after you’ve participated in a wrestling match on TV, nobody would think you take yourself too seriously. Going back to the roast, then, it’s no surprise Trump handled it much better than, say, Chevy Chase, himself a comedian and yet possibly the sourest among the format’s recorded guests.
Trump jokes stopped being funny about as soon as his presidency became realistic. Early warnings started appearing already in 2015, but personally season 20 of South Park represented a landmark disappointment for me. In the build-up to the election, I even wrote an article about the series’ longevity and how smart its creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone were for setting up a story arc that denounced the wannabe president as akin an Internet troll - someone who is essentially frustrated and eager for attention, but doesn’t even really want to run a country. My article referenced this interview in which the two explain how a president is not supposed to have the same freedom of expression as a satirical cartoon, plus this other one where they explicitly say they preferred using the character of Mr Garrison to represent Trump instead of a direct parody, so that they would not give him the satisfaction. The clip above probably represents the season’s most frustratingly literal moment: as he begs the crowd not to vote for him, Mr Garrison’s tourettes-like burst of sincerity crashes against Clinton’s robotic opposition to his habitual lying, in turn urging the public to elect him. This is what ultimately happened, and right after election night the season fizzled out, losing much of its vitality. Personally I lost all interest in it, and even Comedy Central’s most anti-PC satirists had to throw in the sponge: despite all their analogies and metaphors, as well as their repertoir of tried-and-tested dick and shit jokes, season 20 was somehow half a failure. So much so, in fact, that Parker and Stone even decided to all but retire the character in season 21.
The point, really, is simple: how do you shame someone who has no shame? The issue goes way beyond South Park, of course: just consider this clever yet ineffective attempt by John Oliver to deflate the resounding quality of the “Trump” name by resuscitating its clumsy, fart-like ancestor “Drumpf” (hashtagged for the occasion). It didn’t go far, just like the many attempts to fact-check, disprove, counter-inform, and generally out-smart the guy or his voters. This NYT article by Dan Brooks offers an interesting take of why the proliferation (and, in many cases, quick cancellation) of so many left-leaning political comedy shows in the past few years never really had any chance against the rise of Trump-friendly YouTube pundits/trolls à la Milo Yiannopoulos or Gavin McInnes:
Even as liberal comedy has become more explicitly political, it has rejected the possibility that comedy can move politics. That conclusion would seem reasonable were the right wing not presenting strong evidence to the contrary.
The John Oliver example above would seem to counter this statement, but I think what Brooks means is not so much whether or not comedians can have a political impact, but rather that someone can have political impact through comedic techniques. For Brooks, ironic ambiguity is a key element in this, and (as seen in the rare sincerity of the South Park clip above, for example) it has critically been renounced by many on the left.
In order to avoid having their jokes mistaken for dog whistles, the “Daily Show” staff has learned to let the crowd know when it is kidding. Right-wing comedians have made an entire style out of doing the opposite.
While stakes were too high for the left to be ambiguous, then, the right had everything to gain from that. Brooks even highlights Trump’s own comedic talent, as well as a performative confidence we can admire in the many terrible ads and stunts the Donald engaged in across the years.
This miasma of ill-defined but ever-present irony makes Trump virtually impossible to mock, because that job is taken. The real Donald Trump acts as if he’s doing an impression of some normal-looking, occasionally self-aggrandizing president we don’t know about. His supporters know this impression is fake. They don’t think Trump is the guy he pretends to be; they know he is the guy who pretends to be that guy, which is a hilarious thing for the president to do.
While the above may be giving too much credit to many Trump supporters, I think it is interesting to consider that perhaps disputing the factuality of Trump’s claims in terms of policies (which has proven not to affect him or his voters all that much) may be less satirically effective than revealing the reality of the aforementioned persona.
In this respect, I still consider Vic Berger’s work to be one of the most compelling attempts at encapsulating Trump’s worst.
Inspired by his own social anxiety, Berger’s videos isolate elements of body language and magnify them to macroscopic proportions, blowing up physical cues and remixing them into nightmarish narratives of social alienation. The clips above show Trump before he was even the official Republican nominee, as he bullies the other candidates by sheer volume and overconfidence. I think they are especially powerful because they do not isolate Trump as an individualized comedic character, but instead contextualize his body in relation to others. In theory, the fact that Trump’s victims are members of his own party (or his own wife, in this other video) also suggests the possibility for a bipartisan critique (you don’t have to be a liberal to despite an asshole). In practice, Trump’s domineering attitude and imperviousness to critique are a big part of what makes his image almost invincible. Encoded as they are in his persona, perhaps these traits do not need to be highlighted, but rather channeled and repurposed?
This brings us to the many (perhaps too many) Trump impressions out there. We’ve seen some of the best comedians around try to delve deep into the alchemy of Trump’s person, from his face and body to the sound his name makes. While each iteration of the orange man has different merits and shortcomings, we can all agree Trump has been everywhere in the past few years.
On one hand, this has led to a complete saturation of the shared global mediascape that arguably favored the former Apprentice star, helping to project his figure beyond the realm of “true” or “false”. Cultural critic Carleigh Morgan wrote this very vivid passage about Trump and his “image without body”, highlighting in particular how it relates to the real:
Trump’s carefully curated, commodified image is a simulation, but a simulation that occupies a position of so much power that the image’s artificiality is (im)material. T R U M P the copyright, trademarked, licensed image is more real than the man himself. And, like “fakenews”, Trump has a vested commercial and now political interest in circulating his image, spreading his brand and colonizing new territories of financial opportunity that leverage and license the attention that the TRUMP exploits for profit.
How much of the simulation is carefully curated or the expression of the Internet beast is of course up for debate. In any case, in the lead-up to the election we witnessed Trump’s image attach itself to formerly innocent comic characters like Pepe the Frog (whose creator Matt Furie is still trying to redeem), pushing them way out of context and luring liberal media in uncomfortable territory for his benefit. Nonetheless, social media have also offered some of the more convincing parodies of the Donald: Sarah Cooper’s appropriation of the (former!) president’s voice, ironically channeled by a black woman, has been widely praised, while more recently James Austin Johnson’s “Rally Trump” captured his unbridled expression of “confidence without substance”, focusing on how it is ultimately “all about love”.
The ongoing negotiation of Donald Trump’s features and voice, carried by people taping themselves while walking or in their own homes, reminds me of an essay by media theorist Jodie Dean, whose take on the selfie as a form of collective communication is one of the most provocative takes I’ve read on the phenomenon. While taking a selfie is often associated with building a personal online brand, Dean suggests the format is not so much an expression of individuality, but rather of commonality.
A selfie is not a portrait; it’s not an image of the unique and irreplaceable. It’s an instance of how one is like many, equal to any other. […] To be common and reproducible is no longer a primary characteristic of the commodity – especially in a context where commodities are inscribed with individuality (personalized sneakers, designer this and that). To be common and reproducible is a characteristic of each of us, a realization we enact with every selfie and hashtag, even when we may not be fully aware that we are doing it.
Perhaps the people channeling Trump on social media are collectively reclaiming his image away from his personal brand, redistributing his imaginary currency across the political body. In this respect, Dean’s thesis about the face as a common resonates in particular with the most recent hi-jacking of Trump’s visage, ironically operated by the South Park folks.
Launched a couple weeks ago, Sassy Justice represents a definite U-turn from Parker and Stone’s early statements about not using Trump’s image directly. This time, however, the stunt is not so much a jab at Trump the character, but rather a wider mockery of the deepfake scare you’re probably already familiar with. In case you are not, a brief recap: deepfakes are a form of “synthetic media” that use a machine learning algorithm to map somebody’s image (usually someone famous) onto an actor’s movements, generating a very realistic video impersonation. On a serious note, the most apocalyptic speculations about this technology are concerned with its potential impact on democracy (e.g. fake declarations by heads of state), privacy (e.g. fake porn with your face on), and reality itself; on a more frivolous note, comedic experiments with deepfakes have also started popping up pretty much all over the place. Sassy Justice is no exception, and it uses the usual South Park-esque lightness to educate people on an otherwise socially scary topic.
In terms of Trump’s image, what Parker and Stone do this time is mostly just borrow it to animate a slightly campy reporter with white, curly hair, as he investigates the rise of deepfakes. There are of course a couple deepfake scenes with president Trump having a stroke and doing other things, but they feel more like casual gags they just could not resist doing, rather than the main focus of the project. There are in fact several other deepfakes in the video (including Al Gore and Mark Zuckerberg), but it is definitely the fake fake Trump - reporter Fred Sassy - that is the actual star of the show. In this sense, I think the format might be even better than a simple Trump impression: by literally stealing his likeness as if it were a bit of open-source code, Parker and Stone create an entirely different persona and personality for the world to share. I like to think that, in a perfect world where the series develops into a stable format and the character becomes famous, Fred Sassy could virtually become so popular we will be able to forget what originally inspired it. In a world where Trump refuses to give up the news cycle, and his words and followers are pretty much still out there, that would be the ultimate victory over him.