i’m glad you posted on this. i think you point to a larger current, a transformed sensibility (if i may use that term) which john leland in the NY times referred to as the “split gaze”. it’s an article from the fall of 2000 that i still have, as at that time, i was writing a thesis on media pranksters…ali G and dennis pennis in the UK, tom green and nardwuar the human serviette in north america. the whole idea of the split gaze is fascinating, as leland draws on the example of initial screenings of ‘this is spinal tap’ (1984) when, apparently, “test audiences could not recognize the movie’s knowing wink; the pretensions of the heavy rock experience were still sacrosanct…but now even the pomp of the presidency is wrapped in quotation marks….all the gears become visible.” his point is that spinal tap asked audiences to split their gaze (to see the ‘real’ and the ‘parodic’ at the same time) when it was perhaps too fine a line. in the 20 years that have intervened we have seen such a simpsons-ization of the popular…so that 5 year olds know the parodic before they know the real (and it’s hilarious to them usually) and later on may have the two come together. on the other hand my mother, born in the 1930′s seems unable to tell the difference between an sctv sketch and a ‘real’ talk show. (ok so she’s no genius, but still…)

it seems that the ‘guts’ of the joke are now visible and thoroughly enjoyable to us all. as if though we’ve taken gray’s anatomy to comedy.

as you know i have an enduring interest in the rule-breaking quasi/supra-journalistic work of nardwuar (seen in canada on much music, our MTV…for the uninititated see http://www.nardwuar.com). what’s most interesting in his work is the rapid back and forth between accepted notions of broadcast talk, completely unacceptable forms of interaction, celebrity takedown, celebrity prop up, and astonishing savant knowledge. i’m thinking maybe this is a re-intermediation? (following on your post from yesterday)…a necessary intervention into the manufactured that we ‘so know’ (as the kids say) is manufactured.

ps since i wrote his post (a couple of wks ago, during the great c cultureby.com blogstorm of 2004) i see that mo rocca, formerly of the daily show is now covering the democratic convention for CNN. to me this signals a need on the viewer’s part to see how the parodic is threaded into and co-exists with so much of what is reportage…and happily calls into question the implicit claims to legitimacy made by the “serious” broadcasers.