Sunday, September 21, 2008
Opinion, A+E, In this Issue...

Flipping the script

Politics has not just eclipsed but replaced traditional entertainment as our primary source of pop-cultural obsession.

By Kevin Forest Moreau

Millions of viewers tuned in to the 34th-season opener of “Saturday Night Live” last weekend, hoping for front-row seats as the late-night institution attempted to catch political lightning in a bottle once again. The show regained some if its pop-cultural cachet last season, thanks to a sketch in which moderators at a Democratic debate fawn over Sen. Barack Obama while barely tolerating his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, and it started the current season early to cash in on the presidential election.

Sure enough, the opening sketch cut right to the chase, with “SNL” alumna Tina Fey portraying Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin as a grinning, not entirely savvy beauty queen, and Amy Poehler reprising her cackling, one-note impersonation of Clinton as a power-hungry shrew. The five-minute bit was satisfying, but slightly disappointing, kind of like a fast-food burger that doesn’t quiet live up to one’s drunken anticipation. It brought the funny (a little bit, anyway), but it felt …incomplete, as if something just wasn’t quite right, somehow.

Blame Fey, or Poehler, or the show’s writers, if you want, but the truth is that with this election, the script has been flipped. Presidential contests are always rich sources of raw material for stand-up comics and talk-show hosts. But this race is different. It can’t be easily categorized by broad caricatures about this candidate’s sexual appetites or that one’s mangled syntax; it can’t be explained, the way the primaries were, by wisecracks about John Edwards’ (or Mitt Romney’s) hair, or Clinton’s sense of entitlement. It can’t be digested by the entertainment-industrial complex and neatly repackaged into reductive stereotypes.

Part of that has to do with its historic nature: With a mixed-race front runner, a septuagenarian challenger and a female vice-presidential candidate in the mix, the usual smear tactics leave the candidates more vulnerable than ever to charges of racism, sexism and ageism. The perception of Obama’s candidacy as a milestone of the civil rights movement complicates things, as well. It’s one thing to lob rhetorical hand grenades at ineffectual candidates like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton; it’s quite another to be seen as the person or party slinging mud at the cultural and spiritual heir to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

That’s not to say that our popular culture can’t offer fresh ways of looking at the current election. Over the last few months, I’ve found it handy to examine it through the prism of one of my favorite pastimes: summer action films. Obama, the early golden boy, is Robert Downey Jr. in “Iron Man,” grabbing a head start on both adulation and donations (or box office receipts); Sen. John McCain is the hot-tempered “Incredible Hulk,” a sequel no one was clamoring for—or aging hero Indiana Jones, bereft of his mojo and forced to enlist an untested young sidekick; Sen. Joe Biden is “Speed Racer,” having disappeared from the spotlight almost as soon as it was trained on him. And Palin's meteoric rise perfectly mirrors the success of “The Dark Knight”: A beyond-all-expectations blockbuster whose sudden popularity masks a host of disturbing issues concerning civil liberties, from banning library books to spying on the citizens of Gotham.

Entertainment and politics have been bedfellows, albeit occasionally uneasy ones, for decades, even before Richard Nixon implored America to “sock it to me” on “Laugh-In.” Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s cameos on “SNL” last season were echoes of the show’s long tradition of political guests: Republicans John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Steve Forbes have all hosted the show, as did Al Gore. Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jesse Ventura, Sonny Bono and Clint Eastwood all made the jump from entertainer to politician.

But we’ve reached a moment in which politics has not just eclipsed but replaced traditional entertainment as our primary source of pop-cultural obsession. We’ve raised these potential leaders of the free world to an even higher pedestal than the Oval Office, because that’s what mankind has often done with powerful beings on the cusp of things it doesn’t yet understand—made them into gods.

Not since JFK palled around with the Rat Pack have politicians enjoyed this level of rock-star status. Stars like Scarlett Johansson vie for face-time and even reportedly trade e-mails with Obama, while Palin has elbowed the likes of Nicole Richie, Katie Holmes and Lindsay Lohan off the magazine racks.

And we may have already passed the point of no return. Although the reliably fluffy US Weekly recently suffered a drop in subscribers after publishing a Palin cover with the sensationalist headline “Babies, Lies & Scandal,” celebrity weeklies continue to zero in on her and Obama with the same fervor they usually reserve for eating disorders, kidnapped children and Jennifer Aniston bikini pictures.

Our current fixation with Obama and Palin raises a host of troubling questions about our relationship with our political leaders. Does the media’s infatuation with Obama portend a great fall when the honeymoon ultimately ends and we find out he is, after all, merely human? Is Palin no different than Paris Hilton, a tabloid fixture whose personal e-mail account is fair game for hackers? Does fixating on her looks trivialize the democratic process?

More importantly: When she inevitably hosts “Saturday Night Live,” will she bring the funny? SP

Kevin Forest Moreau is Editor in Chief of The Sunday Paper.