Throwing our Voices: Ventriloquism as New Media Activism

In the fall of 2010, Chevron released an ad campaign designed to respond to consumer worries about the conduct of oil companies. Each ad depicted “customers” voicing rather nonspecific concerns about oil companies, answered by the “We Agree” slogan and information about something positive the company is doing in particular communities. Just before the campaign’s official roll-out, the anti-corporate activist group known as the Yes Men produced a series of sophisticated parody ads that spoke in more detail about the damage the company has done in specific countries. Designed to be mistaken for the real, the dummy campaign was distributed with a fake press release purporting to be from Chevron. It was indeed picked up by the press, followed by a cascade of confused articles quoting alternately from the company’s real retraction and a subsequent fake retraction. The Yes Men succeeded in temporarily “throwing their voice” into the body of the Chevron corporation, using a savvy form of ventriloquism as a means of directing the public conversation. Although it is normally the powerful (like large corporations) who are heard in public life, often speaking both for themselves and others, the tactic of ventriloquism temporarily reverses that flow. The case study provides a compelling example of a method of capitalizing on the democratic potential of new media, wielding parody and play as a weapon of the crowd

Are They for Real? Activism and Ironic Identities

A new breed of political activist has begun to appear on the streets and in the news. They are no longer trying to out-shout their opponents, but are agreeing with them instead, enthusiastically taking their adversary’s position to exaggerated extremes. It is a practice here termed “identity-nabbing,” in which participants pretend to be someone they are not, appearing in public as exaggerated caricatures of their opponents or ambiguously co-opting some of their power. This paper focuses on three groups in particular: The Billionaires for Bush, Reverend Billy, and the Yes Men. Each group stages elaborate, ironically humorous stunts as a means of attracting public attention to particular political/social issues. The ironic frame not only provides entertainment value, but also contains its own community-building function, as it requires the participation of the audience to actively read it ironically. Banking on the pre-existence of communities that share their assumptions and get the joke, these groups attempt to turn what Linda Hutcheon refers to as “discursive communities” into political communities (or counterpublics), urging people to actively identify with the importance of the issue at hand, and to continue circulating the critique. They rely on the co-participatory workings of irony to spur people into viewing themselves as a collective with collective power. None of these groups are aiming for revolutionary change, but by turning laughter over a shared joke into anger and engagement they work to attract attention, get others involved, and slowly shift debate

Satire and Dissent: A Theoretical Overview

In an age when Jon Stewart tops lists of most-trusted newscasters and Michael Moore becomes a focus of political campaign analysis, the satiric register has attained renewed and urgent prominence in political discourse. Day focuses on three central contemporary forms: the parodic news show, the satiric documentary, and ironic activism. She highlights their shared objective of circumventing the standard conduits of political information and the highly stage-managed nature of current political discourse. In so doing, she argues, they provide fans with a sense of community and purpose notably lacking from organized politics in the twenty-first century

Shifting the Conversation: Colbert\u27s Super PAC and the measurement of satirical efficacy

Stephen Colbert’s announcement in 2011 that he was starting his own Super PAC oneupped The Colbert Report’s already substantial commitment to boundary muddling. By raising real money, producing commercials, and exploring the nuances of campaign finance regulations, Colbert acted out his critique of current law in tangible form. The novelty of the experiment created anticipation amongst fans and commentators that the project would have a direct effect on attitudes about campaign finance, or that Colbert would veer into clear advocacy work. Indeed, expectations matched the standard assumptions about satire: that efficacy should be gauged by measurable influence on individual opinions. In reality, the PAC’s commercials likely did not influence many outside his existent fan group. However, the project as a whole did work to license journalistic attention and to impact the wider debate about campaign finance. The example demonstrates that the more grandiose expectations of political entertainment are often misdirected, as they are premised on the prospect of instant audience malleability. Rather the most interesting possibilities involve more incremental shifts in the public conversation

Live From New York, It\u27s the Fake News! Saturday Night Live and the (Non)Politics of Parody

Though Saturday Night Live\u27s “Weekend Update” has become one of the most iconic of fake news programs, it is remarkably unfocused on either satiric critique or parody of particular news conventions. Instead, the segment has been shaped by a series of hosts who made a name for themselves by developing distinctive comic personalities. In contrast to more politically invested contemporary programs, the genre of fake news on Saturday Night Live has been largely emptied to serve the needs of the larger show, maintaining its status as just topical, hip, and unthreatening enough to attract celebrities and politicians, as well as a mass audience

Mr. Stewart and Mr. Colbert Go to Washington: Television Satirists Outside the Box

The political satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are largely celebrated for their nightly television programs, which use humor to offer useful political information, provide important forums for deliberation and debate, and serve as sites for alternative interpretations of political reality. Yet, when the two satirists more directly intervene in the field of politics—which they increasingly do—they are often met by a chorus of criticism that suggests they have improperly crossed normative boundaries. This article explores Stewart and Colbert’s “out of the box” political performances, which include, among others, the 2010 Rally to Restore Sanity, Colbert’s testimony before Congress in the same year, and his on-going efforts to run an actual Super PAC that raises and spends money to influence (and critique) the political process. Examining these and other examples of non-traditional, and clearly border-crossing political satire, we consider the ways in which such multi-modal performances--in and off the television screen--work together to provide information, critique, and commentary, as well as a significant form of moral voice and ethical imperative. In turn, we examine the responses from the political and journalistic establishment, which more often than not, constitutes a form of boundary maintenance that seeks to delegitimize such alternative modes of political engagement. Finally, we discuss the significance of the developing relationship between television entertainment and political performance for our understanding of contemporary political practice

Clemson University Libraries 2014 Annual Report

This report details the 2013-2014 fiscal year for the Clemson University Libraries. Although the Libraries were met with great changes during the year, there were many important achievements and highlights as well, such as the establishment of TigerPrints, Clemson’s institutional repository, the construction of the Cooper Digital Studio, and the reorganization of the Libraries’ units and naming of new unit heads

Asking for It: Rape Myths, Satire, and Feminist Lacunae

Although the outpouring of discussion about sexual violence following the allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein caught many by surprise, the topic has been brewing as a cultural battleground for decades, particularly in the world of comedy. Today there are more high-profile female performers than ever before, bringing new perspectives to mainstream audiences and a heightened interest in exposing rape culture. Concurrently, rape culture has become a flash point for conservatives, leading to vitriolic online attacks. Just as rape jokes are constitutive of rape culture, we contend that satire that addresses dimensions of that culture is vital to challenging it. This article examines the works of Samantha Bee, Amy Schumer, and Lena Weissbrot: three satirists who are participating in the cultural battle over sexual violence. As we note, however, these three performers do not always evince an understanding of the centuries-old relationship between rape culture and racism. Through critical contextual analysis, we explore their work, with particular attention to lacunae within mainstream feminism

Magnetic field dependence of the internal quality factor and noise performance of lumped-element kinetic inductance detectors

We present a technique for increasing the internal quality factor of kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs) by nulling ambient magnetic fields with a properly applied magnetic field. The KIDs used in this study are made from thin-film aluminum, they are mounted inside a light-tight package made from bulk aluminum, and they are operated near $150 \, \mathrm{mK}$. Since the thin-film aluminum has a slightly elevated critical temperature ($T_\mathrm{c} = 1.4 \, \mathrm{K}$), it therefore transitions before the package ($T_\mathrm{c} = 1.2 \, \mathrm{K}$), which also serves as a magnetic shield. On cooldown, ambient magnetic fields as small as approximately $30 \, \mathrm{\mu T}$ can produce vortices in the thin-film aluminum as it transitions because the bulk aluminum package has not yet transitioned and therefore is not yet shielding. These vortices become trapped inside the aluminum package below $1.2 \, \mathrm{K}$ and ultimately produce low internal quality factors in the thin-film superconducting resonators. We show that by controlling the strength of the magnetic field present when the thin film transitions, we can control the internal quality factor of the resonators. We also compare the noise performance with and without vortices present, and find no evidence for excess noise beyond the increase in amplifier noise, which is expected with increasing loss.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure