Entertainment and Politics: A diminishing barrier

In the article "Imagining the Fan Democracy" Liesbet van Zoonen discusses how television and politics have typically been described as being separate spheres that rarely interact with one another and when they do it is usually leads to only unsuccessful programs like the Argentinean reality show that allowed viewers to choose a political candidate for the 2003 congressional elections. She focuses particularly on reality shows in her discussion since they seem to imply that public participation in active political processes like voting and discussing issues can be revived among the public because the fans of these reality shows enthusiastically participate in these processes every week. However, every attempt to translate these active fan communities into a more political space has failed. But this does not mean that entertainment and political spheres are going to remain separated forever.

Mike Judge's 2006 film, Idiocracy, indicates that at least in this particular dystopian vision of the future politics and entertainment will merge into one another and no longer be separate spheres. As Catherine's post has already discussed this issue I will just say that the collapsing of the two separate spheres does not necessarily have to lead towards such a dismal and horrific outcome. 

For example, in the world of comedy, entertainment and politics have already been colliding for decades. Comedians frequently use political material in order to make their audiences laugh, but also think. The most obvious example of this occurring today would be on the Comedy Central programs The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Although these shows do not necessarily encourage active participation in political processes like voting, they both do encourage thinking about our country's politics in a critical way. In the clip below Jon Stewart leads a fake game show that is intended to disprove Judge Andrew Napolitano's ideas about President Lincoln, slavery, and the Civil War.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-11-2014/the-weakest-lincoln?xrs=share_copy

The viewers of programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have to at least have some working knowledge of current political issues in order to understand the humor of these shows. So although they may not encourage direct participation in political events they do encourage critical thinking about those political events which in turn could encourage participation.

Politicians are increasingly deciding to appear on comedic shows like Colbert and Stewart's programs, possibly because they hope to reach a younger audience like President Obama attempted to do by appearing on the Funny or Die show "Between Two Ferns."

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/18e820ec3f/between-two-ferns-with-zach-galifianakis-president-barack-obama

Politicians have also made frequent appearances on sketch comedy shows like SNL and talk shows of both the morning and late-night variety. To me these appearances certainly seem to be attempting to remove the barrier between entertainment and politics although in a different way than the reality shows that van Zoonen discusses, and hopefully will result in a more positive outcome than the one depicted in Idiocracy.