Postmodern style often addresses its viewers as sophisticated media readers and consumers. Referring to Sturken and Cartwright's chapter "Postmodernism and Popular Culture," and the Onion News Network clip posted above, describe how the text operates on the level of satire. In particular, how does the clip make use of parody and irony?
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Blog #8
Postmodern style often addresses its viewers as sophisticated media readers and consumers. Referring to Sturken and Cartwright's chapter "Postmodernism and Popular Culture," and the Onion News Network clip posted above, describe how the text operates on the level of satire. In particular, how does the clip make use of parody and irony?
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This news reel is extremely post modern in that it has no real point besides the emotion it evokes: laughter, comedy, fun. There is no real news. As a matter of fact, they take advantage of the look of a news broadcast in order to poke fun at it. The reason this is humorous is because it’s a parody of an actual news reel. News broadcasts actually do spend a great deal of time talking about lists of influential people and other stuff that doesn’t pertain to real world events, or real news for that matter. The only reason that this is acceptable among viewers is because it’s entertaining. Therein lies the irony. All The Onion had to do was talk about non-influential people in order to not captivate the audience with these people’s accomplishments, and all of the sudden it brings to light how idiotic it is that news teams actually do these stories. And if you hadn’t gathered that by the end of the least influential people list, you will by the end of the clip when the guy says, “President Bush claims he can handle negotiations with North Korea without a translator.” One, obviously, someone would be foolish to try and negotiate with someone who doesn’t speak they’re language. But two, if America and Korea are negotiating about something I think it would be far more important to talk about the major world issue they would be negotiating than the details of the actual conversation. This is clearly both a parody of Bush and news in general.
Danny D'Acquisto
Lucy Derickson
802
Sturken and Cartwright mention “postmodern entails a crisis of cultural authority, that is, a profound questioning of the very foundations of social structure and the means of theorizing social relations and culture.” It is clear that the Onion news clip is touching on this idea by using parody and irony in their segment. The onion encourages the viewer to question what topics are presented in a real news environment, by using a standard recognizable news format and presenting a topic that is not informative or important. When watching the news on any ordinary day it is typical for newscasters to spend time informing the viewer of insignificant issues or general gossip in the world today, and pander to and audience who fiends for mindless entertainment. They also call into question what is news worthy, and why is this segment any different from a normal everyday broadcast. The ironic thing is that even though they are implying that this segment that is not news worthy, it is not much different form topics that are considered news worthy. It is obvious that this clip is false, however it is not unbelievable. This could easily be actual news whether it is important or not. What the Onion does is humorous because it takes it to an extreme. People have heard of the Times Most Influential People, so by parodying that well known topic the viewer can make associations and draw conclusion about what the point is that the Onion is getting across. That point being, if the news is going to be any thing other then a venue for non biased worldly affairs and current events that gives the viewer factual information from which to draw conclusions, then it is only another form of mindless entertainment and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
This clip from the Onion news show uses has many different aspects of postmodern media, most noticeably intertextuality and parody. S&C tell us that "postmodernism is also about acknowledging overlap between the categories of art, commerce, news, and advertising (276-77)," which the clip does in several ways: it is a parody of CNN with an intertextual reference to Time magazine, all portrayed in a sober fashion. This straight-faced delivery is meant to be ironic, because the viewer (being media-savvy) knows it is a joke. This clip is also an example of the cynical type of humor that the Onion, and postmodern humor in general, employ. It mocks the idea that you can have a list of the “Most Influential People,” and laughs at how seriously the world sometimes takes itself. In fact, I find it funny that I’m sitting here trying to analyze and find concrete meaning behind the clip.
In this clip from the Onion News Network they are using parody in order to make fun of more serious newscasts. They are doing this by keeping some elements of the clip in the same vein as more serious situations. This is done by having the same setting as normal newscasts, as well as having the actors present the news as though they believe what they are telling the viewer is important and legitimate. They then change the set up by having the news presented be completely ridiculous. No one is interested in the world’s least influential people and the creators of the clip are depending on the fact that people are familiar with lists of the words most influential people. If people are not aware of the connection they may have a harder time realizing that they are using irony to create humor. In the clip appearance and reality are conflicting. The clip has the appearance of a reliable newscast, when in reality they are simply relaying unimportant stories. As Sturken and Cartwright state, “A parody assumes a viewer who is familiar with many different texts, and who will enjoy the activity of guessing references and getting the joke.” Another way the clip depends on this is through its scrolling text newsreel at the bottom of the screen. The newsreel mentions the recall of “fat Barbie”. It is crucial that the viewer be familiar with the fact that Barbie is disproportionately skinny, and that Mattel would most likely never market a fat Barbie. Without that information the joke would become lost on the viewer. Ultimately the clip is making a mockery of the news that is presented to us.
Alyssa Holly
802
This video is a good example of a parody, “A parody assumes a viewer who is familiar with many different texts, and who will enjoy the activity of guessing references and getting the joke,” (S&C 269). The video consists of an image of a real news channel such as CNN, NBC, or Fox, with an anchor man, the label of the news channel on the lower right hand corner of the screen, the topic that will be addressed on the bottom of the screen, and the moving streamer on the far bottom of the screen. The whole video plays on the Time Magazine yearly issue “Person of the Year” which is the individual(s) who have most influenced the events of the year. This “newscast” states that Time Magazine has come out with their annual “Least Influential People” list with someone named Jim Stutts as number one. Continuing with the satire, they interview friends and colleagues of the Jim Stutts character, most of whom respond in an absolute deadpan fashion. “The simplicity of the ad acts as a kind of deadpan statement, underscoring its message.” (S&C 268). The video can appeal to those news-savy viewers who know all about Time Magazine’s annual event and appreciate the parody as well as to individuals who have no idea that there is such an event. For those few viewers, they can be entertained by the irony of the video which pokes fun at the sometimes pompous newscasts evident on nearly all the major networks. Finally, just in case the irony and parody of the piece is lost on the viewer, an outrageous announcement is made at the end that President Bush feels he doesn’t need an interpreter to talk with the North Koreans.
"In advertising, intertextuality is a means to tap into consumers' memories of other ads, and to speak to consumers as savvy viewers," (Sturken and Cartwright, 266). And that is exactly what I think the Onion clip does here. It is assumes you are an average American who is somewhat familiar with watching the news on T.V. and then parodies that by making fun of it in several ways. Mainly, it takes a not-so-serious topic, which is reported in the news regularly, and mocks that by reversing the order of that report. Instead of the "Most Influential People" list, it is now a list of "Least Influential People" and it is reported in a such a serious manner that would never be realistic (this is when irony come into play in the ad). The clip is making fun of our society's obsession with big and powerful people, because the makers of it know that our society wouldn't want to know and/or doesn't care about those people that are at the exact opposite end of that spectrum: worthless and unimportant people.
Travis Torok
Sturken and Cartwright's chapter on "Postmodernism and Popular Culture" carries a certain level of satire with it, as does The Onion News clip. In the chapter they talk about how in today's "Postmodern" world, our culture is obsessed with technology and often times the idea of a fantasy world, "We live in a culture dominated by the dull flickering screens of our computers and television sets, a culture in which America has become the paradigm for global looking practices ruled by the simulacra of virtual media images." (237) Society today is propelling us towards more reality shows and less interaction with real people. In the never-ending quest to create technology that makes our lives easier, we are alienating ourselves from the real world more and more.
The Onion News clip is the perfect example of "Postmodernism." It is a completely fake and satirical news station that is simply there to entertain us. This particular show is so satirical and unreal that it is practically the norm at this point. For instance S&C talk about a French philosopher named Jean Baudrillard who believes that "Postmodernism" is overtaking reality, "Within Baudrillard's terms, the hyperreal overtakes the real, and simulacra rise, partly through new media forms, as the new forms of postmodern existence." (237) This describes a show such as The Onion News Network perfectly. Comparable shows to this one (although maybe not as fake) such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are so common that they are practically overtaking real news programs.
This clip makes fun of the real and infamous Time Magazine article which highlights the 50 or 100 most influential people often times of the last decade or 50 years. The Onion News Network does this by creating a scenario in which Time Magazine does an article on the entire world of people who work ordinary jobs that we never hear about. Thus, the irony is that for some reason very ordinary people throughout the world would be recognized for that very reason. The parody is that The ONN flipped the script and pretends that a world renowned magazine would do an article on people for the exact opposite reason that they should.
Connor Murray
Section 802
“Appropriation, parody, nostalgic play and reconfiguration of historical forms and images are just some of the approaches used by some artists and critics of the 1980s and 1990s…” (S & C 254) Sturken and Cartwright define that works, like the Onion Clip, are to be put in the category of postmodernism which is basically relating to art, architecture, literature, media or thinking developed after and in reaction to modernism, returning to more classical or traditional elements and techniques and how the clip of the Onion News Network uses these approaches is quite funny and clever. Appropriation is when you borrow or essentially steal images, commodities and other cultural products and the Onion clip borrows the look of a real news show. Not just the look but the feel as well, all the “news people” deliver their lines with complete seriousness when they know it is indeed a joke, hence the funniness. After borrowing all the looks and feel of it they end up becoming a parody and the specific parody of the “Most Influential People of the Year” brings the irony factor that we actually have that and pokes fun at how society can take itself so seriously sometimes.
Douglas Mellon
802
Chris Schasse
The onion news clip is obviously creating a parody of the popular news show, CNN (The "O"NN in the lower right corner points to that fact). According to the text, a parody "assumes a viewer who is familiar with many different texts." (S&C, 269) The viewer would have to be familiar with the news show CNN to fully understand the humor in this clip.
The onion clip is a satire on not only CNN, but journalism in general. It’s making fun of what news networks and magazines say is “important news.” The showing of this "important" news clip about the least influential people in the world is a perfect example of irony in our postmodern culture. The use of the flashy text, background, and lights sets the viewer up for something "grand" to catch his/her attention and instead is given a story about a man who makes no impact on those around him. The man, Jim Stutts, is not even the least influencial person, but is number 9,604 on the list (adding to the humor, since he’s not even that important according to his level of unimportance). This is much like the Cinema of Attractions, except instead of using effects in order to impress the audience, the effects are being used in order to create irony; to set the viewer up to be disappointed. That what’s humorous about this clip.
According to Sturken and Cartwright, a parody assumes a viewer who is familiar with many different texts, and who will enjoy the activity of guessing references and getting the joke. This onion clip assumes the that viewer is familiar with Time Magazine’s practice of covering the most influential people and will understand the irony and humor in the idea that a news organization would cover the least influential of society, as we would normally only consider influential or significant people to be newsworthy. It is a parody in that in that it is a reference to a real magazine that has a significant prominence in our culture. Also the onion would not have an excuse to poke fun at a fictional non-influential person and the joke would not be as funny without the irony inherent in connecting it to the magazine. And the fact that the onion uses realistic appearing news anchors who emanate legitimate news organizations is a another form of parody, as they are referencing a prominent aspect of culture and turning it upside down by blatantly reporting false news, which is meant to be seen as ironic. Finally, the fact that they humorously façade as real news journalists can be seen by viewers as a way of poking fun at the inconsistencies and absurdities that might be seen in the real world of news reporting, which is also a form of irony, satire, and parody.
Joe Steigerwald
802
Gina Waggoner
Section 802
According to Sturken and Cartwright, postmodern art is “… not concerned with representing reality but with rethinking the function of art and emphasizing the role of institutional context in producing meaning,” (p. 263). The Onion News Network clip is a prime example of this. The clip operates on the level of satire because it is trying to play off this report as a serious news report, but it obviously is not; no one would broadcast a real news report about the least influential person. What makes it the most satirical is the straight faces the actors hold throughout the clip. It’s ironic because the topic, in real life, would usually be about the most influential people and sometimes the news does report information that people don’t necessarily need to know. The Onion News Network is trying to parody CNN. They do this by putting the ONN in the corner of the screen and having the reel of fictional news headlines on the bottom of the screen. They also set up fake interviews, such as phone and personal interviews, with people who “know” Jim. They have the last interview set up with the split screen, showing the news reporter and the author of the piece, just like CNN does.
This clip is entirely based on irony and parody because that’s how the onion works. It acts as a SNL, a critique on our society that you can read as a fake newspaper or watch as a fake news show. The basis of the parody of the onion news is that it pretends to be a news show delivering real information but the viewer knows from previous experience or by just how ridiculous what they’re saying is that it’s all a big joke. The irony of the show is based on their jokes which pertain to real events or possibly real events, either way they have some link back to reality. The jokes exaggerate and play off existing things like George Bush’s stupidity for example. In the clip they parody Time magazine’s most influential people with least influential people. They take an existing aspect of our culture and turn it around and make fun of it which makes us look at the real thing in a different light.
Struken and Cartwright explains the differences between modernism and our postmodern world. With modernism, there was a strong opposition towards mass culture as it flooded the world with images. Now, in postmodernism, we recognize ourselfs within mass culture and are able to point out the irony and not take it quite as seriously. Parody aims for those who are well versed in many texts, thus being able to understand the joke where it is made. Parody fits right into the postmodernist style because those individuals are seen as knowledgeable consumers of the culture.
The Onion news reel is a perfect example of this new frame of mind. They parody a news cast, such as CNN, pointing out how dramatic and serious similar shows can take themselves, even with stories similar to something as ridiculous as a "Least Influential People" list. On a "real" broadcast of some high-powered news channel, they can be talking about the economy crisis for one minute and the go on for hours about the newest Britany Spears saga. It is ironic because the show takes itself so seriously but often times the stories they air are just as ridiculous as the "fake" ones on the Onion channel.
They also create a satire with the story about President Bush, saying he believes he could handle negotiations with North Korea without a translator. It is funny because it blows up the well know fact of his stupidity so much to emphasize their criticism.
Postmodernism allows people to laugh at the bizarre habits of mass culture and also analyze it in an intelligent manner.
S&C says that “a parody assumes a viewer who is familiar with many different texts, and who will enjoy the activity of guessing references and getting the joke”. Onion News Network clip refers to these different level of text both by visualization and reference. We can list these texts as; making fun of time magazine’s annual listings, by suggesting that out of 300 million people living in the states only a million of them making an influence on somebody’s life, by having fake interviews with one of these “least influential people” criticizing the pop culture and mass media (the wife being proud of her husband going on a listing by accomplishing nothing), etcetera…
Although parody requires having the knowledge of references at hand, the viewer does not have to have the full knowledge to understand the sarcasm. In this clip, it’s obvious to the viewer, the sub-text and the criticism on the impact of life is to be taken seriously as the acting and the setting (suggest a news environment which represents (or questions) the actuality of “the news” that also creates the ironic derision of the clip.
As far from a sub-texting point of view; Onion New’s Clip is as post-modern as Trinh T. Minh-ha’s post-colonial filmmaking.
The Onion News is a stellar example of satire and parody. The program parodies news programs such as CNN or Fox News and uses their style of journalism to report on stories of ludicrous subject matter. Instead of trying to broadcast real news and events to the public, the Onion’s goal is to be humorous and amusing by poking fun at the media. Their broadcasts are portrayed very seriously as though they are real stories, which is critical to maintaining the satirical concept. “A parody assumes a viewer who is familiar with many different texts, and who will enjoy the activity of guessing references and getting the joke.” In the clip provided, the news anchor reports on Time Magazine’s least influential people list. This is a direct parody of Time Magazine’s most influential people list. They assume that the audience know about the magazine’s list and will understand their humorous take on the idea.
Nelson Schneider
The clip shown is a great example of parody . A parody is based on the assumption that the viewer has seen a real news cast. The news cast shown here is obviously a fake, and we know this because the news is a relatively normal part of our television viewing culture. IF this report was shown back when tv news was newer, people may have responded to it as if it was a real newscast. But the fact that we are so familiar with this type of media gives us the ability to recognize (usually) when something is being staged or mocked.
In this news cast the report is on a TIME magazine article about the top non-influential people. Most of us know that TIME does run these types of articles but usually on the opposite end of the spectrum with the MOST influential people. Most of us know that TIME would never release such an article and the Onion news is playing off the humor in this. Our culture is not interested in people who have been non-influential to others this would not be news and it would never make it on the air. In essence this bit is poking fun at both americans and their fascination with popular or influencial people and also the news and how it can try and take even the most boring and uninteresting story and glamorize and back it up with '"facts" to make it appeal to the american people.
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