Reading the Gray, Jones and Thompson article made me think about The West Wing, which feels the antithesis of political satire. It opts for a more idealistic and earnest approach to political commentary than Colbert’s speech, Veep, and the TikToks in the Atlantic article. The series focuses on the staff of a fictional American presidential administration, essentially providing a revisionist version of the Clinton administration without all the scandals and triangulation. In the liberal fantasy the show presents, patriotism transcends party allegiance, impassioned speeches pass laws, and a group of self-righteous Ivy League grads re-envision the government as force for good.
Thinking about political satire on television and how it functions within the episode of Veep we watched emphasized the shortcomings of The West Wing. I love The West Wing as a character-driven drama with narrative complexity, as Mittell outlined. But reading the show in conversation with real world politics, which it often explicitly asks for, highlights how satire is a more effective means of expanding and challenging conventional understandings. For example, in one episode, the DNC wants the president to include that line “the era of big government is over” in his State of the Union speech (a direct reference to the 1996 Clinton State of the Union address) and one staffer protests because he disagrees with the sentiment. After a rousing speech, everyone else gets on board and they remove the line from the speech. Clearly, this episode comments on the Democratic party’s embrace of neoliberal rhetoric, but the direct historical revision feels heavy-handed and didactic, instructing viewers what to think rather than raising questions for viewers’ own social analysis. Especially since the structure and demographics of the government in The West Wing look remarkably similar to our own (without parodying them), the show doesn’t defamiliarize or re-contextualize naturalized systems and phenomena in the way that satire and parody can.
I’ve only watched a handful of Veep episodes, but I’ve seen critics compare it to The West Wing, noting how the former captures an exaggerated version of government as it is while the ladder presents a vision of what it could be (in a very Aaron Sorkin, shortsighted way). This distinction results from a difference in genre and form, but in terms of offering meaningful critique and raising questions for viewers to consider, Veep works a lot better for me.
2 replies on “Satire vs Earnestness in Political Commentary”
Hi Maya, this was a really insightful post on the nuances of satire. I certainly prefer satire over earnestness when it comes to political commentary if for no other reason than that I enjoy the humor of it. I do feel, however, that it is easy to get caught up in the wittiness of satire and conflate humor with truth. Satire has a way of “winking” at the audience, making us feel smart because we, like the producers of the show, can acknowledge the absurdity of the farses playing out on the screen. I try to remember, however, that just because a show *thinks* it’s smart, it doesn’t mean the show actually *is* “smart”. I found Veep funny, but I thought its overt cynicism was almost as exhausting–and no more subtle in its intended commentary–as the earnestness of The West Wing. Maybe I’m just sick of political commentary in general, but I think that satire can easily be as heavy-handed as earnestness when it comes to leading the viewer toward certain ways of thinking.
Hey Maya,
I love that you drew the comparison between West Wing and Veep because they really do use their political focus differently. It’s interesting how similar their settings and premises are– focus on the staffers of a top white house official. It’s also interesting how they both can act as escapism TV shows. I see VEEP as validating the audiences’ opinions of politics as absurd and West Wing as providing an alternate universe in which politics is not as absurd as it may be. One ups the absurdity and one downplays it.
Similarly to Theo, I think I might be tired of the VEEP era of political satire. It feels like anything they may have joked about ended up happening so it’s not even absurdist anymore. I would like to see a shift toward more earnest TV in the future as we all need that fuzzy feeling sometimes!