Ali G, Reactionary
By Rob Goodman
“So how come if a guy steal me wallet he go to jail, but if he steal me girlfriend he don’t?”
“Well, your wallet is your property, and your girlfriend is not.”
The problem with being interviewed by Ali G is that there’s really no right answer. If you’re some sort of world leader and the man sitting across from you is a highly intelligent comic playing a buffoon in a yellow tracksuit, you can profess incredulity, try to maintain your dignity, or hope that if you just laugh at him, he’ll vanish like some Germanic hobgoblin. But really, you lost as soon as your press agent signed you up for the interview.
It turns out that none of the interviewees I watched on the Compleet First Seazon DVD did too badly. Former Attorney General Richard Thornborough, who’s quoted above, did an excellent job of remaining calm and providing a sound legal definition of property. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was smiling and relaxed. Even Newt Gingrich managed not to say anything too fatuous. Comedy-wise, it was a bit of a disappointment. But each subject becomes a mockery through the mere act of dignifying Ali G with his presence.
So even if nothing funny happens, the joke on the mark remains, and the mark is presumed to not get it. He has to not get it. As long as that holds, we have the possibility of subversion; without it, we just have a lousy interview.
These two levels—both the intrinsic humor, and the necessity of excluding someone who doesn’t get it—seem to me to define a kind of bifurcated style that’s really popular lately. Think The Daily Show, with straight-faced reporters coaxing stupidity from the self-important. Think Stephen Colbert, Dog Bites Man, Tom Green, The Onion, or Ali G himself. Half the joke is that someone doesn’t get the joke—or at least the possibility that that someone might exist.
The tradition of the fake interview actually goes back a long way. We could trace it all the way to Socratic irony—the philosopher feigning ignorance to expose the ignorance of everyone else. We get the fullest exposition in Plato’s Apology: When Socrates heard the Oracle say that no man is wiser than he:
In its most constructive form, Socratic irony is extremely useful; then, the ignorance isn’t really a pose at all, but mixed with actual humility. In that case, both parties can move toward the truth in dialogue, with what Montaigne called “a healthy ignorance.” At the very least, fake buffoonery is wonderful for exposing buried truths, and that’s the end our modern comic interviewers pursue when they’re at their best. I will always be in sincere awe of “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” The trouble is that the useful kind of Socratic irony is also the really hard kind, and therefore the really rare kind.
What we’re left with is mostly Socrates Lite. There’s still a mark—the idiot who takes the Onion article seriously, the conservative blog that approvingly quotes Stephen Colbert, the politician who sits through an Ali G interview with a straight face—but there’s nothing intrinsic to criticize about him. In most cases, the mark’s only failing is failing to get the joke, and so the mockery is sterile—it only amounts to “Why aren’t you on our rarefied, subtle plane of humor?” The point of Socrates Lite isn’t truth-telling or truth-finding, but merely the construction of a particularly facile in-group. Those Who Get It can be 99 percent of the viewing public—especially when shows like The Colbert Report are explicitly advertised as comedy—but as long as they can confirm the existence of at least one moron, they can consider themselves the elect. This pleasure of election is, I think, the chief attraction of Socrates Lite.
Which points to its biggest political problem. In practice, the Colbert/Daily Show/Ali G style can belong to any side. But in theory it will always carry the whiff of liberalism, because its target is an elite that has to be conceived as entrenched and out-of-touch. As Sacha Baron Cohen, the man behind Ali G, puts it, “It depends on the class….The best targets—the legitimate targets—are successful, powerful white men, who rule the country.” There’s nothing wrong with that, or with liberal humor in general—comedy has always poked holes in elites, and for good reason.
But the kind of comedy practiced by Baron Cohen manufactures its own elitism. As I’ve said, the point is excluding someone who fails to get the joke. And there we have our new elite—based not on political power, but on mere joke-perception. Instead of forcing the audience to do something about the elite he considers corrupt, to make good on the liberalism he professes, the comic simply provides the satisfaction of swapping places. And in building new unmerited elites instead of tearing them down altogether, Socrates Lite internalizes exactly what it aims to mock.
Booyakasha?
P.S. On a mostly unrelated note, I can’t miss the chance to further disseminate a wonderful video. Pause it at 0:12 and 1:18. Recognize our friend on the right, in the Confederate uniform and fake mustache?
“So how come if a guy steal me wallet he go to jail, but if he steal me girlfriend he don’t?”
“Well, your wallet is your property, and your girlfriend is not.”
The problem with being interviewed by Ali G is that there’s really no right answer. If you’re some sort of world leader and the man sitting across from you is a highly intelligent comic playing a buffoon in a yellow tracksuit, you can profess incredulity, try to maintain your dignity, or hope that if you just laugh at him, he’ll vanish like some Germanic hobgoblin. But really, you lost as soon as your press agent signed you up for the interview.
It turns out that none of the interviewees I watched on the Compleet First Seazon DVD did too badly. Former Attorney General Richard Thornborough, who’s quoted above, did an excellent job of remaining calm and providing a sound legal definition of property. Boutros Boutros-Ghali was smiling and relaxed. Even Newt Gingrich managed not to say anything too fatuous. Comedy-wise, it was a bit of a disappointment. But each subject becomes a mockery through the mere act of dignifying Ali G with his presence.
So even if nothing funny happens, the joke on the mark remains, and the mark is presumed to not get it. He has to not get it. As long as that holds, we have the possibility of subversion; without it, we just have a lousy interview.
These two levels—both the intrinsic humor, and the necessity of excluding someone who doesn’t get it—seem to me to define a kind of bifurcated style that’s really popular lately. Think The Daily Show, with straight-faced reporters coaxing stupidity from the self-important. Think Stephen Colbert, Dog Bites Man, Tom Green, The Onion, or Ali G himself. Half the joke is that someone doesn’t get the joke—or at least the possibility that that someone might exist.
The tradition of the fake interview actually goes back a long way. We could trace it all the way to Socratic irony—the philosopher feigning ignorance to expose the ignorance of everyone else. We get the fullest exposition in Plato’s Apology: When Socrates heard the Oracle say that no man is wiser than he:
I said to myself, What can the god mean? and what is the interpretation of this riddle? for I know that I have no wisdom, small or great….After a long consideration, I at last thought of a method of trying the question. I reflected that if I could only find a man wiser than myself, then I might go to the god with a refutation in my hand. I should say to him, “Here is a man who is wiser than I am; but you said that I was the wisest.” Accordingly I went to one who had the reputation of wisdom, and observed to him—his name I need not mention; he was a politician whom I selected for examination—and the result was as follows: When I began to talk with him, I could not help thinking that he was not really wise, although he was thought wise by many, and wiser still by himself; and I went and tried to explain to him that he thought himself wise, but was not really wise; and the consequence was that he hated me, and his enmity was shared by several who were present and heard me.Take that at face value, and Socrates is on a pious mission to prove his own inadequacy. But read between the lines as so many have done, and you see an extremely intelligent man humiliating his mark and then claiming the whole thing was a misunderstanding. Then as now, the target of choice is a politician.
In its most constructive form, Socratic irony is extremely useful; then, the ignorance isn’t really a pose at all, but mixed with actual humility. In that case, both parties can move toward the truth in dialogue, with what Montaigne called “a healthy ignorance.” At the very least, fake buffoonery is wonderful for exposing buried truths, and that’s the end our modern comic interviewers pursue when they’re at their best. I will always be in sincere awe of “Throw the Jew Down the Well.” The trouble is that the useful kind of Socratic irony is also the really hard kind, and therefore the really rare kind.
What we’re left with is mostly Socrates Lite. There’s still a mark—the idiot who takes the Onion article seriously, the conservative blog that approvingly quotes Stephen Colbert, the politician who sits through an Ali G interview with a straight face—but there’s nothing intrinsic to criticize about him. In most cases, the mark’s only failing is failing to get the joke, and so the mockery is sterile—it only amounts to “Why aren’t you on our rarefied, subtle plane of humor?” The point of Socrates Lite isn’t truth-telling or truth-finding, but merely the construction of a particularly facile in-group. Those Who Get It can be 99 percent of the viewing public—especially when shows like The Colbert Report are explicitly advertised as comedy—but as long as they can confirm the existence of at least one moron, they can consider themselves the elect. This pleasure of election is, I think, the chief attraction of Socrates Lite.
Which points to its biggest political problem. In practice, the Colbert/Daily Show/Ali G style can belong to any side. But in theory it will always carry the whiff of liberalism, because its target is an elite that has to be conceived as entrenched and out-of-touch. As Sacha Baron Cohen, the man behind Ali G, puts it, “It depends on the class….The best targets—the legitimate targets—are successful, powerful white men, who rule the country.” There’s nothing wrong with that, or with liberal humor in general—comedy has always poked holes in elites, and for good reason.
But the kind of comedy practiced by Baron Cohen manufactures its own elitism. As I’ve said, the point is excluding someone who fails to get the joke. And there we have our new elite—based not on political power, but on mere joke-perception. Instead of forcing the audience to do something about the elite he considers corrupt, to make good on the liberalism he professes, the comic simply provides the satisfaction of swapping places. And in building new unmerited elites instead of tearing them down altogether, Socrates Lite internalizes exactly what it aims to mock.
Booyakasha?
P.S. On a mostly unrelated note, I can’t miss the chance to further disseminate a wonderful video. Pause it at 0:12 and 1:18. Recognize our friend on the right, in the Confederate uniform and fake mustache?
posted by Rob Goodman at 8:11 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home