On Political Comedy Shows

I’ve been watching these late night show political shows, like the ones from Hasan Minhaj, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and John Oliver. Although they are quite fun to watch, I find it, as always, a bit problematic. To cut to the chase, I think it is rather symbolic of how our generation deals with things. The Wall Street Journal and a survey by Deloitte (https://deloitte.wsj.com/cmo/2019/07/14/a-generation-disrupted-2019-global-millennial-survey/) `defines’ millenials and Gen Zs (born in 1981 and above) by the following trends:

1. Economic, social/political optimism are at record lows

2. Disillusioned - unsatisfied with their lives, jobs, business/government leaders etc.

3. Value experience

4. Skeptical to businesses’ motives

5. Patronize / support companies that align with their values.

As one myself, I do agree that I align myself with a lot of these traits, and that is why I find theses `political shows’ a bit dangerous. 

Most of these shows follow such a format: they mention the problem, make a joke from it, or a funny metaphor about it, and they end with some sort of emotional finale. The interviews with actual professionals are sometimes derailed with unrelated jokes.

Take the student loan episode from the Patriot Act for example. He explains that Navient, a loan management company, has been exploiting veterans and different able-bodied persons. Then, out of the blue, he says ``Navient is so shitty, I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out they invented nail teeth.’’ All of a sudden, the focus is shifted to a completely unrelated photo of nails made to look like teeth. Then it continues with an interview of an individual who was not able to make his rent payments due to his student loan payments, that he was now advised by Navient to live in his truck. He bashes Navient about their poor customer service, but he also makes fun of the interviewee that he ``can’t live in his truck, he is already selling kombucha out of it in Williamsburg. There’s not enough space’’. Then there’s the interview with Seth Frotman, a former student loan ombudsman. He explains that the financial loan companies exploit the students for their gains, and that students do not have the choice to choose their providers. Minhaj replies that with a parallel to only having the option to fly with Spirit arlines, and mocks Spirit airlines. Frotman explains that Navient lies on their website and does not have the responsibility to help students pay off their loans, that it’s `all puffery’. Minhaj says that `it’s all puffery is the meanest thing you can say in the Great British Bake Show’. Then Minhaj asks for advice for incoming freshman. Frotman avidly and rather gravely explains the current situation, the disastrous situation we are in. Instead of listening and letting that gravity settle in, or processing this information and calling for change or action, Minhaj imitates a caricature of a `college freshman in UC Santa Cruz’ with vapes, a beanie and headphones.

Watching it, you’re in a rollercoaster of emotions, you become angry at the atrocities of the big companies, immediately followed by a sadness of the inevitable doom of the nation, and ends with a light joke that relieves us from all the negative feelings, free to live on with our privileged lives.

The aggregated message flow seems like this: We are fucked, and you should blame all these people about all these bad issues, but lets try to laugh it off because there’s little we can do about these issues. There is little mention of a solution, or a call to a serious, sustained action.
Sometimes there is a call to action, but the action is rather comedic (prank call the FCC for robocalls), or a short burst of feel-good compassion - like purchasing a t-shirt or making a donation somewhere. 

Personally, it gave me the illusion of being educated, and that I am doing my moral part as a global citizen to spend my time learning about these issues like the censorship in China, Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the middle east, etc. However, knowing all that didn’t really do much for me, except to deepen my pessimism towards the world. I was sitting in my room, watching netflix, and I was just more angry and hopeless, but at the same time was laughing at how fucked up we are as a society. 

I have been in the `social justice warrior’ space for quite some time, and I know that being `woke’ is better than not being woke, but being `woke’ comes with costs - we get stiffer. I have always had the feeling that the `woke’ community was very reluctant to new information, and they will fiercely fight against the opposing opinion. I don’t think this is a good thing. 

It is hard not to see a glaring resemblance with the meme culture. As an older person, I used to enjoy memes like Good Guy Greg and Bad Luck Brian, but now memes really encompass the entirety of our culture and attitude. I see a lot of memes humorizing situations that probably should be taken seriously, such as sleep deprivation, poor financial decisions, or mental health issues. It seems like we are just in such a flood of problems that we cannot take time to seriously consider them, so we make memes and make fun of it, thereby normalizing it. I think it is a symptom of millenial fatigue. It is much easier to make these:

Than actually processing one’s emotions, and facing them, and finding a sustainable solution.

And you find assurance in the fact that most of your friends are `liking’ it, meaning that they are also in similar situations, thereby you are not an anomaly, so there’s nothing wrong with you. But you should get help. It is clear that you are not happy with your situation. The relative way of viewing one’s situation has gotten too extreme.

On top of that, we are so addicted to this positivity bullshit that we can’t just stop and say this is messed up, and that we have to start fixing things. This is directly reflected in these political tv shows - and yes, I know that they are comedy shows, but it seems like mixing world politics, socioeconomic issues with comedy is a bad idea. Some things, I believe, should just be taken seriously, but it seems like we cannot do it any more. Maybe these shows are news for millenials, because no millenial actually watches the news, because it’s too serious.

Where are we driving each other? Why can’t we say that this is messed up and that we should probably get our shits together? Is it offensive to tell someone to get our shits together? Is it awful for me to tell this person to seek professional help? To stop eating out so much if you can’t afford it? To have a conversation to solve your problems with your boyfriend rather than just breaking up with him?

This might be a bad tangent but I was in the Korean army. Korean men who’ve been to the army tend to talk about their experiences in the army, all the terrible things they had to go through, the injustice and the poor treatment, and render them humorous. I myself was part of this, and looking back I feel like it might have been a response to a trauma - a group response to a shared trauma, perhaps. My army buddies and I would gather around over soju and laugh about these episodes of someone getting beaten, or someone being harrassed, and laugh it out as if it was a `fucked up time that just happened. We all know it was wrong, but probably deep inside we don’t want it to be wrong, because that means that we have had bad experiences. It is a form of denial and a coping mechanism. Maybe this way we felt better about ourselves, but nothing eventually changes, nor there was any processed closure. There is no systematic change, and the status quo persists. People still suffer.

We have all these problems, we vaguely know about these issues, and we hate that they are there. We all agree that the world is messed up and that we are in this shitstorm that is going to be bad, but instead of avoiding these problems and using humor as an anesthetic, we should process our feelings and start actually addressing these issues.

Like Hasan Manaj said in his show, Convenience is the commodity that is of most importance to our generation. But to be convenient about inconvenient truths is a privilege and unsustainable. Don’t act all woke and shit.