This morning Meade sends me the link to "A Fox News Host’s Strange Backstory Shows How Liberals Lost Comedy/Conservatives now have one of the most popular shows in late night" — and I run into this:
Gutfeld has long demonstrated an obvious knack for garnering attention through what would now be described as trolling. Developing a highly performative, occasionally over-the-top style of comedic presentation....
Speaking of trolling... I don't want to be paranoid... but I feel... summoned. Who does a garner/performative one-two like that?
Anyway, here's a passage from the article, in case you're hankering for the substantive:
Gutfeld’s likely intention is to praise Trump’s disregard for norms and his zeal for destabilizing hierarchies, linguistic or otherwise. Gutfeld here avoids the uglier, hateful elements of Trump’s rhetoric and much right-wing humor. He is, however, quite visibly enthused by the damage Trump does to institutions and traditions. For Gutfeld, his double act with Trump emphasizes what reactionaries can gain when they lose the pretense of seriousness.Gutfeld portrays Trump as a fool, yes. However, he also signals to conservative viewers that they can express their politics through the process of ironic distanciation so often associated with the postmodern left. Whereas most Fox News programming is fueled by anger and fearmongering, Gutfeld’s comedic double act celebrates the right’s self-realization that unseriousness can be wielded by and attractive to a wide array of demographic groups within its ideological coalition.
If that sounds ludicrously professorial, be aware that the authors are professors:
Nick Marx is associate professor of film and media studies in the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.
Matt Sienkiewicz is an associate professor and chair of the Boston College Communication Department.
I especially liked "distanciation." Why would you say "distanciation" rather than "distancing"? Speaking of "ironic distanciation," it is, ironically, distancing to use the word "distanciation." But it is in the OED, and I'm glad I learned it:
And that's enough garnerative performativity from me for now.
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55 comments:
Trump made serious missteps in the 2016, but I don't see that his speech was particularly hateful once he was elected. More of the people it was presumed that he was prejudiced against voted for him in 2020 than in 2016.
Gutfeld’s likely intention is to praise Trump’s disregard for norms and his zeal for destabilizing hierarchies, linguistic or otherwise.
What they don't understand, or don't want to understand, is that Trump's norm-breaking was "performative" in the sense people like to use the word today. He was putting on a show for the public. He wasn't a serious breaker of norms, certainly not compared to the coalition arrayed against him.
Trump didn't know enough about government to do serious norm-breaking, and that wasn't his focus or his intent. "Norms," I suspect is a way of talking about "decorum" or "gravitas" without sounding like a prig. People who like to use the word are never that clear about just what norms are being broken.
Mocking the left will be prohibited.
The Cheney-North Korean Law of performative approval. We regret to inform you, you've been denied.
The authors obviously don't watch Greg regularly. He started out in 2015 as a NeverTrumper as did many of us...but when it came down to actually getting things done, Greg changed into a Trumper as did many others.. Most of us don't care about the woke crap...we want a good economy, good education for our kids (not divisive woke crap), good jobs, ect.ect..ect. We are sick and tired of Climate change activists taking their private planes all over the world to lecture us on our carbon, or the left calling us RACISTS, TRANSPHOBIC, HOMOPHOBIC, ect..ect..ect...because we don't want to talk about that stuff 24/7
https://news.yahoo.com/fox-news-host-greg-gutfeld-161829071.html
Kudos to Gutfeld for achieving dissertation-worthy status.
Gutfeld is funny, but not funny enough for me to pay for cable TV. I catch some of the clips on Youtube and thats enough.
Greg was at his most honest during the summer of 2020 and the NY riots. It think that was an epiphany for him. His neighborhood seemed to be significantly affected and he was almost, or actually was, in tears when he described it. His anger was palpable.
I like that Greg. The more common Greg is a bit too smarmy for my taste. His goal is to sound wise. Not to be wise.
Gutfeld is very funny. I could do without the editorial at the beginning of the show, though.
"Developing a highly performative, occasionally over-the-top style of comedic presentation...."
As opposed to all non-performative, not-over-the-top styles of comedic presentation.
"Speaking of trolling... I don't want to be paranoid... but I feel... summoned. Who does a garner/performative one-two like that?"
People who don't read Althouse. Not everyone does, yet . . .
"Gutfeld’s likely intention is to praise Trump’s disregard for norms and his zeal for destabilizing hierarchies"
Once upon a time, progs liked disregarding norms and destabilizing hierarchies. Now that their norms prevail and they are on top of the hierarchies, not so much. Even their radicalism is situational.
"the uglier, hateful elements of Trump’s rhetoric and much right-wing humor."
Like what? In his many hours of improv, how often did Trump say anything "hateful"? How does it compare to the hateful elements of lefty rhetoric?
"He is, however, quite visibly enthused by the damage Trump does to institutions and traditions."
Like what? How does it compare to the damage done by the FBI, the CIA, and the MSM to him and the presidency?
I speed read the article. I don't think the authors mentioned The Five. That's where I became acquainted with Gutfeld.....The authors are breaking ranks just by writing the article. The media mostly ignores him. It's an effective tactic. I don't think Gutfeld is part of the zeitgeist. He will not be hosting SNL anytime soon, and neither will there be a segment mocking him...Orwell wrote a book, Homage to Catalonia, that was critical of the Communists during the Spanish Civil War. The book was not reviewed in any publication and went on to sell less than a couple of hundred copies.
I'm hoping hankering is the new garnering.
To make things even worse, the writers were both wearing shorts!
Whew! I'm exhausted by the garnering of all of the performative distanciation surrounding Gutfeld! (for the record, I had to tell Google spell to learn distanciation).
I don't watch Gutfeld! because I don't, as a rule, watch anybody who spells their name with an exclamation point. But I'm glad he's been successful and more so than Jimmy Kimmel.
But one phrase caught me: ..."Gutfeld’s likely intention is to praise Trump’s disregard for norms..." The Left has constantly talked about Trump's disregard for norms. As if (a) our norms, that is, Washington DC continuing to do what it does is a good thing, and (b) as if disregard for norms is a Trump thing.
Because it's not. How much disregard for norms must you have to be OK with, promote, and generally back both financially and vocally, things like: BLM/Anitfa riots that kill people and destroy businesses and neighborhoods while calling it peaceful protests? Or teaching gender muddiness to 3 year olds? Or playing up Trans thinking and people to 3 year olds? Or telling 6 year olds that they are the problem? Or looking to kill Supreme Court Justices? Or censoring everyone at your university because whoever thought universities were places to discuss different ideas and debate them? Or praising social media for doing the censoring for you?
These are the new 'norms' according to the Left, the regressives. One could write entire books on how they have a planned disregard for norms. That is their reason for being. But when talking about Trump they suddenly sound like old men sitting around a country club in Connecticut. "Bawwh. He tramples on the norms of society! Bob, I love that dress you're wearing today."
I'm glad you tried, Althouse. I understand what pulls you out of the discussion, because it is stuff like this from journalist (or in this case professors publishing in a journal) that instantly triggers my anti-Gell-Mann: "damage Trump does to institutions and traditions."
They never say what the damage was done. It is simply stated as accepted fact. And while it is put out there, nobody ever questions, as damage done to institutions and traditions, calls for "defund the police", "pack the court", "end the filibuster", "open the border", "lockdown the country", "shutdown oil production to promote green energy", or "we will pay people not to work to force employers to pay more for them to work". That's real damage and they are all things done or threatened to be done by Democrats in just the past two years. And the reaping of that damage is already being felt as crime rises, attempted assassination of Justices are ignored, tens of thousands of people cross our southern border without documents, travel by Americans across the border is restricted without negative proof of covid, and price of gasoline bust $5/gal.
Didn't the lefts/media's advancement of equity where "all institutions are subsumed and corrupted by white supremacy" cause far more damage than any of trump's trampling of norms?
They bring the big theoretical guns when it's about Gutfeld, but don't address how he is similar to Maher, Stewart, Colbert, Noah, SNL and other comics on the other side and how he may differ. It's hard to turn the microscope on oneself, but not doing so makes analyses like this suspect and faulty.
The left news does soap opera, the right news reports the crazy thing the left just said. Gutfeld is just doing that old format. I haven't ever found him funny, from the daily clips youtube offers anyway. It's in the form of jokes but they're just the same reporting on the crazy left.
I thought the word was hankerin’.
The professors' time would be better spent analyzing why Colbert, Kimmel etc. are NOT funny any more, and I bet it has something to do with being extremely compliant with norms instead of breaking them. If I was grading their essay I would have to mark it down for inserting assertions about "Trump's hateful rhetoric" without providing examples. It's not very academic to just mimic libspeak in an allegedly scholarly format. Especially if you load it with jargon and obscure terms.
Not even professors read Elements of Style any more, I guess.
My goodness, there's a lot of question-begging* going on there.... I haven't read the whole piece (and have little interest in taking time to do so), but just in your excerpt:
...Trump’s disregard for norms ... the uglier, hateful elements of Trump’s rhetoric ... the damage Trump does to institutions and traditions. ... when they lose the pretense of seriousness. ... Whereas most Fox News programming is fueled by anger and fearmongering, ... that unseriousness can be wielded by and attractive to....
* when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it.
Each of the italicized negative choices of words, phrases, and implications assumes a Gutfeld, Trump, or conservative/Republican ideological attitude or position that lacks foundation. [As in, objection, Your Honor, assumes facts not in evidence!]
"Unserious"? Gutfeld is serious as all get-out. Anyone who claims that Gutfeld and his audience and"unserious" is not listening to his words, only his wry, sarcastic tone. That's his style, his "schtick" and it's proven quite effective, looking at his audience numbers.
Reading "garnerative performativity" I'm picturing a spree of nativity scenes thefts.
audience ARE "unserious"
[I swear I previewed that sentence! Swear!]
I don't find Gutfeld all that funny. I'm not sure why Mark Stein doesn't have more exposure. The man is incredibly funny, smart, and him blasting House Reps during global warming hearings is a thing of beauty.
[Edit: Mark Steyn]
Clearly you’re being pandered to.
Gutfeld’s likely intention is to praise Trump’s disregard for norms and his zeal for destabilizing hierarchies, linguistic or otherwise.
Gutfeld could not be reached for comment, lest it undermine the entire premise of the article.
The left has lost its sense of humor. I see a bit of Gutfield because my wife watches it. He seems to point out the absurdities of the left. That's a lot of material. The obsession with Trump by the left, which is busy destroying the US economy, is evidence of their lack of ideas. We are heading for a hard crash and they would like to distract us from seeing it coming.
Ah William--maybe Orwell's Homage to Catalonia sold only a couple of hundred copies back in the day. But I've read it a couple of different times--starting in the 1990s. It's good to read it about once every ten years. Orwell recognized that the Communism which inspired a significant number of people in the mid 1930s was ultimately a God that failed.
Gutfeld is funny. You couldn’t pay me to watch Kimmel/Dude with Bent Ear/Fallon/Noah…
I like to laugh, it’s good for the soul and much more.
Omg, that's what tic tock is; a garnering of performativity for the world. Where those who won't make a tick tock can play Simon Cowell, looking for that elusive most precious thing today. Authenticity.
So early in the day and I feel like my day is done... 😉
Who does a garner/performative one-two like that?
An idiot.
Next question.
How did you know I was a hankerin"?
Anthony: "I don't find Gutfeld all that funny. I'm not sure why Mark Stein doesn't have more exposure."
Stein moves very quickly, ties multiple topics together, uses alot of word play and many of his sub-references are not widely known.
He is hilarious but not in a mass market sort of way.
He's the classical education version of Dennis Miller.
Gutfeld portrays Trump as a fool, yes. However, he also signals to conservative viewers that they can express their politics through the process of ironic distanciation so often associated with the postmodern left.
Yeah, I doubt very much he's trying to send signals to people. He's just doing his thing, which is more about Gen X humor than postmodernism. Jon Stewart was and is a Gen Xer who takes a Boomer approach and embraces Boomer concerns. This is true of an awful lot of left-leaning Gen X comedians (and of younger generations of comedians as well). But Gutfeld is an unrepentant Gen Xer. That upsets a lot of people. He refuses to take himself and his political concerns all that seriously.
Also, his show is not just funny, it's fun. The panelists seem to enjoy being there. There's a structure to it but it's not as regimented as Maher's show, which often gets dragged down by its own weight. Maher takes himself and his issues very, very seriously. In contrast, Gutfeld ends every other sentence with a seemingly spontaneous, often self-deprecating wisecrack that usually undermines the point he just made. Gutfeld's show seems like a free-flowing conversation at a dinner party with funny and interesting guests who aren't worried the things they say will be used against them later. Obviously it's all structured to come off that way, but it's so effective you don't really notice all the planning and effort it must take.
I appreciate you've been annoyed with "performative". It is such an affectation or at least seems so to me in recent usage. "Distanciation" is in the same class.
Wikipedia has a rather long article on "performativity" and traces the word to one J L Austin in the 1950's. Presumably, in terms of human history, it is a "new word" which accords its users an aura of insightfulness.
I don't share your disdain for "garner". Compared to "performative" it has a long and respectable pedigree and given the number of synonyms seems like a decent way to add occasional color to speech. Maybe it's over-usage that bothers you?
I haven't had cable for ages, and I've never seen Gutfeld's show. But it's funny how Slate refers to (arguably) the most-watched person on late-night TV like he's an obscure podcaster they somehow just discovered. Imagine if the headline about an article on Kimmel or Colbert were headlined "An ABC [or CBS] Host's Strange Backstory." It would sound ridiculous, and rightly so.
Gutfeld! works because, as Farmer says, the guests are usually happy campers.
Steyn won't attract a mass audience because he's too international and intellectual for American tastes. Gutfeld is SoCal demotic, performatively the runty class clown, fairly smart but too lazy to study things deeply.
His show is well-produced and directed usually, and has some great (seeming) adlibs once in a while, but it's not riveting entertainment.
In contrast, Gutfeld ends every other sentence with a seemingly spontaneous, often self-deprecating wisecrack that usually undermines the point he just made.
I want to echo & expand on this point that Farmer makes above.
One very important aspect of the humor of Gutfeld's show is the heavy use of self-deprecation by not only Gutfeld, but by the other regulars such as Tyrus & Kat Timpf (who will one day probably have a breakout series featuring Dirtbag Deb).
It's not a show where someone can come on and be a standard Acela corridor pompous dick. Not only do other cable hosts get lampooned, but the Fox News staff, too. Poor Brian Kilmeade is the butt of a long running joke, and it seems that the phrase "Evil Shannon Bream" has stuck, in spite of the fact that Shannon Bream is probably the sweetest Christian girl on the planet.
In spite of all this, Gutfeld appears to have no problem booking guests from the strangest places. And the successful guests aren't who you think they'd be, e.g. who knew Larry Kudlow had a goodly dose of Jewish Comic in his veins?
"Distanciation" is a sociologists' word that they use to show that they are being "serious" and "scientific." It's also a way to talk about Brecht's "alienation effect" in English. It does have a bit of relevance here. I feel a distance from Mark Steyn. I can appreciate him, but there's no sense of closeness or real rapport. I don't feel that alienated or distant from Gutfeld. Yes, sometimes I think he's going too far or talking too long or pushing his sidekicks too far with his barbs, but I do feel like we're on similar wavelengths. The authors of the article apparently don't feel the same way.
Oxford Reference says:
distanciation
QUICK REFERENCE
1. A synonym for aesthetic distance.
2. A synonym for the Brechtian alienation effect.
3. (sociology) A concept with both spatial and emotional dimensions, in which for individuals in modern society there is increasingly less connection between psychological distance or closeness and physical distance or proximity in regular social relations. This is in part related to the affordances of modern media of interpersonal communication, which can help to sustain what might otherwise be weak ties. It is also a feature of disembedding.
Affordances? Disembedding?
Rush Limbaugh's commentary on today's politics would be a delight to hear, as would that of George Carlin. Both could legitimately start with, "I TOLD YOU SO!" and just proceed from there.
For those who are referencing Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, I heartily recommend Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks.
It's an interesting comparison of how each man's experiences led to the development of their political philosophies, vis-Ã -vis communism, esp.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32301946-churchill-and-orwell
Not-the-real-Marx and his colleague back a lot of concerns into a few lines. Conservatives are supposed to respect tradition; so why do some Trumpists seem to be both conservative and disrespectful? Well, maybe they're not just conservative but reactionary. Very bad, apparently. Having lost the conservative vs. liberal fight, or having seen they are losing to history, they become reactionary--actually trying to turn the clock back, or something like that. Pre-Trump, liberals could afford to be nice and comply with some kind of extremely flexible norms insofar as they were confident of winning. Conservatives often agreed about what history was teaching. Nixon's first term was notably liberal in policies. The Bushes were always huffing and puffing to keep up with the liberals on domestic issues.
Trump seems to have shown that Washington has become a swamp, only somewhat indirectly trying to make life better for actual Americans. His saying this seemed to prove that he was mean, nasty, racist, etc.; so his enemies responded by cranking up the mean and nasty to a thousand. And through it all, Trump actually tends to be funny. There are jokes in the new manifesto.
Gutfield has an audience because he is the only different thing on corporate media.
The corporate media is owned by about 10 people and they all want you to see and think the same thing.
There is a reason the Regime wants to censor thoughts outside their control.
Well, had they shoe horned a statement about him wearing shorts you wouldn’t suspect it was a summons, you would know.
Wit, wit and more wit is his forte. He is fearless. That’s all it takes.
Headline: Greg garners audience.
I always used to read about how Mao and Pol Pot took all the professors from the universities and sent them to the country and made them work in the fields, and like, I thought that was a bad thing.
Greg Gutfeld rallied to President Donald Trump’s defense on 12/19/2019, claiming the president suggesting deceased Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) was in Hell was nothing more than a “joke” and the president doesn’t see the difference between dead and living people.
Trump also took aim at Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI), the widow of John Dingell, for supporting impeachment. Claiming he gave the late Dingell “A-plus treatment” after he passed, he said the congresswoman told him “John would be so thrilled” as he looked down from heaven. “Maybe he’s looking up, I don’t know,” Trump added, to groans from the pro-Trump crowd.
It’s funny, you see, because, according to Gutfeld, “Trump doesn’t see live, dead, black, white, male, female.”
Maybe crusty old dingell was looking up, gadfly.
I suspect few, if any, politicians ascend to Heaven upon their demise.
@gadfly
You know what? You're right. Those are some pretty offensive remarks. Are they the worst a politician has ever made? Nope. For every offensive statement you can post made by Trump, I can post two by Democrats as bad or worse.
What you cannot argue with is reality. Under Biden and the Democrats, the United States and the rest of the world, have collapsed in any and every way possible. People have been warning of a recession, I'm predicting a depression. How bad depends upon if the Republicans win in November, and if they have the balls and the will to do what is necessary.
I have mentioned several times about how eerily the beginning of 21st Century American history resembles the beginning of early 20th Century American history. Whoever is running this sim is getting lazy.
Your 'garner' obsession is really trivial, silly and boring. Get a new act.
I am putting 'performative' now in the same mental bin as 'lived experience.' A trendy word/phrase that isn't necessary.
"Owning Performativity as Lived Experience: Garnering Distantiation or Disembedding Affordances? Toward a New Contextualization of Existinctualism."
Your 'garner' obsession is really trivial, silly and boring. Get a new act.
You just don't understand the thread that our host has developed. It's not about the word, per se. but the people using the word.
It's simple. The rest of the late night performers go for applause not laughs. They lost comedy when they developed TDS
I'm reading your blog more frequently these days. It is well written. I learn something new by reading it. I never knew about garnering. Does it require Jennifer Garner? Jim Garner? John Nance Garner? If I don't understand the basics of garnering, I'll never get to advance perfomative garnering.
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