Satire TV [[electronic resource] ] : politics and comedy in the post-network era / / edited by Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910454564403321
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York, : NYU Press, c2009
• ISBN: 0-8147-3309-3; 0-8147-3216-X; 1-4416-1581-4
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (288 pages)
• Altri autori (Persone): GrayJonathan (Jonathan Alan); JonesJeffrey P. <1963->; ThompsonEthan
• Disciplina: 791.45/6582831
• Soggetti: Television in politics - United States; Television and politics - United States; Television talk shows - United States; Political satire, American; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Includes index.
• Nota di contenuto: Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword -- 1 The State of Satire, the Satire of State -- 2 With All Due Respect -- 3 Tracing the “Fake” Candidate in American Television Comedy -- 4 And Now . . . the News? -- 5 Jon Stewart and The Daily Show -- 6 Stephen Colbert’s Parody of the Postmodern -- 7 Throwing Out the Welcome Mat -- 8 Speaking “Truth” to Power? -- 9 Why Mitt Romney Won’t Debate a Snowman -- 10 Good Demo, Bad Taste -- 11 In the Wake of “The Nigger Pixie” -- 12 Of Niggas and Citizens -- About the Contributors -- Index
• Sommario/riassunto: Satirical TV has become mandatory viewing for citizens wishing to make sense of the bizarre contemporary state of political life. Shifts in industry economics and audience tastes have re-made television comedy, once considered a wasteland of escapist humor, into what is arguably the most popular source of political critique. From fake news ; and pundit shows to animated sitcoms and mash-up videos, satire has become an important avenue for processing politics in informative and entertaining ways, and satire TV is now its own thriving, viable television genre.Satire TV examines what happens when comedy becomes political, and politics become funny. A series of original essays focus on a range of programs, from The Daily Show to South Park, Da Ali G Show to The Colbert Report, The Boondocks to Saturday Night Live, Lil’ Bush to Chappelle’s Show, along with Internet D.I.Y. satire and essays on British and Canadian satire. They all offer insights into what today’s class of satire tells us about the current state of politics, of television, of citizenship, all the while suggesting what satire adds to the political realm that news and documentaries cannot.

The Death of Conrad Unger: Some Conjectures Regarding Parasitosis and Associated Suicide Behavior / Gary J. Shipley

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910140445203321
• Autore: Shipley Gary J.
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Brooklyn, NY, : punctum books, 2012; Baltimore, Maryland : , : Project Muse, , 2020; ©2020
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (35 pages) : illustrations; digital, PDF file(s)
• Soggetti: Insects - Parasites; Insects - Behavior; Authors - Death; Authors - Suicidal behavior; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references.
• Nota di contenuto: Parasitoidal possession -- Four literary felos de se : Nerval, Wallace, Quin, and Woolf -- Conrad Unger : snapshots of a suicide -- Conrad Unger : excerpts and synopses -- Conrad Unger : selected ; underscorings and marginalia.
• Sommario/riassunto: The death by suicide of Gary J Shipley's close friend, Conrad Unger (writer, theorist and amateur entomologist), has prompted him to confront not only the cold machinery of self-erasure, but also its connections to the literary life and notions surrounding psychological bewitchment, to revaluate in both fictional and entomological terms just what it is that drives writers like Unger to take their own lives as a matter of course, as if that end had been there all along, knowing, waiting. Like Gerard de Nerval, David Foster Wallace, Ann Quin and Virginia Woolf before him, Unger was not merely a writer who chose to end his life, but a writer whose work appeared forged from the knowledge of that event's temporary postponement. And while to the uninitiated these literary suicides would most likely appear completely unrelated to the suicide behaviors of insects parasitized by entomopathogenic fungi or nematomorpha, within the pages of this short study we are frequently presented with details that allow us to see the parallels between their terminal choreographies. He investigates what he believes are the essentially binary and contradictory motivations of his suicide case studies: where their self-dispatch becomes an instance of necro-autonomy (death as solution to an external thraldom, or the zombification of everyday life as something requiring the most extreme form of emancipation), while in addition being an instance of necro-equipoise (death as solution to an internal thraldom, or the anguish of no longer being able to slip back comfortably inside that very everydayness). The deadening claustrophobia of human life and achieving a stance outside of it: both barbs on the lines that can only ever detail the sickness, never cure it. Through extracts and synopses of Unger's books, marginalia and underscorings selected from his extensive library, and a brief itinerary of his movements in that last month of exile, a picture of the writer's suicidal obsession begins to form, and it forms at the expense of the man, the idea eating through his brain like a fungal parasite, disinterring the waking corpse to flesh its words.