I wanted to think about the role allusions play in the information teens get from humor, since many teens do depend on shows like these for their news. Obviously allusions are pretty important to comedy in general - the Simpsons is always packed with them - because they help make the content work on several levels, making it funny to both those "in the know" and those who might not get every detail. But that applies to more than just references to previous events - it also applies to the visual jokes that just don't make sense unless you pay attention to the conventions that surround us in the mass media.
Here's a clip of Jon Stewart looking at some of the standard visual metaphors used in the Super Tuesday coverage last week:
This NY Times article compares the websites of Obama and Clinton to the Mac vs. PC ads:Is Obama a Mac
and Clinton a PC?
By NOAM COHEN
Published: February 4, 2008
That reminded me of this video from LisaNova on YouTube (also on MAD TV), which takes the visual metaphor one step further:
How do the use of visuals and visual allusions in these pieces add or detract from the points being made? Do you need to have a certain level of visual literacy to understand the points being made or are the article or videos themselves a form of visual literacy instruction?
3 comments:
That flying pie chart, oh man. Now THAT is distracting.
At first I was ready to disregard the LisaNova clip as nothing but comedy but then I realized "Oh ... wait ... they're completely staying within the lines of current political dialogue, aren't they?" Until around the 2 minute mark, nearly every line is ripped from an already existent headline, though some are exaggerated for comedic effect. Then it goes into broader strokes about history and stereotyping and quickly brings it back into the present for the end. That was great.
Oh, you might be interested in these somewhat old Democrat/Republican Mac vs. PC parodies. They're spot-on and funny. My particular favorite might be this one about fighting terrorism.
For The Daily Show clip, the viewer needs a certain amount of visual literacy skills. The clip also makes a rather insightful look at visual literacy. In many ways, the elaborate charts don't add a lot. Instead of helping us read the election results, the visuals add confusing color and graphics. I think John Stewart’s point is these types of sensory overloading pictures do not add to our knowledge of current events. The Daily Show does a very good job of lampooning the elements of media construction as well as news items.
When watching this clip and thinking about its construction, I thought about The Daily Show’s book America. For America, they played with conventions of media construction in a similar way. America is made to look like a history textbook. Read a sample of America at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=uLQHz9m0k-IC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22The+Daily+Show%22&sig=FyNBMdGwn4BGaOf_mxG-m4nehOc#PPP1,M1
The text, pictures, and table are laid out like a textbook. There is even a place to sign your name and put your book number on the inside cover! In the same way as in the clip, The Daily Show builds on texts from our popular culture.
The Daily Show seems to assume that people who enjoy their show and read their book have a certain amount of media literacy. A viewer needs to know about the news and the way news, especially cable news, is presented. Without this knowledge the overwhelming, floating, rotating graphs would not seem very funny. With the book, if a viewer had never seen an American history textbook they would not understand those jokes and the lay out would not make as much sense.
John I think you're absolutely right about most of the Daily Show jokes requiring a sort of "insider" perspective, but I think (and the study Carol linked to plays this out too) teens are more likely to want to be 'in' on the joke than to be lectured to about what they're not seeing. And even for more reluctant viewers/readers/whatever, they'd be a great way to start a conversation. Humor is always a good way to get teens involved. And adults too - works for me, anyway. :)
Since your link got cut off with the formatting, here it is:
Google Books View of Jon Stewart's book
To post links in the comments, since Blogger doesn't give you the nice link tool and the formatting cuts off long text, you have to use the HTML script for it, like this:
<a href="linkurl">any title you want to put</a>
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