From Disgust to Delight: Schadenfreude in the Creation of Left-wing Subjectivity

<p><b>The concept of schadenfreude in the Oxford English Dictionary is understood as ‘the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others’, understood in this research as a sensation or “pre-cognitive intensity”, which affords the subject a certain self-satisfaction in an automatic, unconscious process. Left-wing, late-night political comedy news shows validate the use of a ‘justice-based’ schadenfreude, based on the perceived deservingness of the misfortune of conservative figures, as shorthand to inform and confirm their viewers’ subject position as liberal thinkers.</b></p> <p>By focussing on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, this thesis sets out to claim that schadenfreude, both found immediately in Daily Show content and in an extended ‘mood landscape’ fashioned via remediation of the original content, operates to become a key signifier of left-wing subjectivity.</p> <p>Following Benedict Spinoza, this research presents a two-sided vision of schadenfreude as an ‘affect’, positing that it entails an equation of ‘disgust’—based on “trajectories of repulsion” from an external affecting body—and ‘delight’, along an axis of conservative misfortune. This project highlights the intersection between mediated schadenfreude and Judith Butler’s paradoxical elements of subjectivity; subjection, and becoming a subject. To develop this question further, the thesis turns briefly to right-wing spheres of schadenfreude, a secondary location to ascertain theextent of the ‘ephemerality’ of affect as it is placed in media structures.</p> <p>Through analysis of the show’s semiotic and rhetorical techniques of analogy, intertextuality, and vignette across various video clips on YouTube, and their adoption by secondary media institutions such as The Guardian and The New York Times, the thesis isolates the manner in which mediated schadenfreude works to interpellate the audience and craft a left-wing ‘mood’, using the conservative body and its humiliation as a site to articulate liberal political subjectivity.</p>

From Disgust to Delight: Schadenfreude in the Creation of Left-wing Subjectivity

<p><b>The concept of schadenfreude in the Oxford English Dictionary is understood as ‘the pleasure derived from the misfortune of others’, understood in this research as a sensation or “pre-cognitive intensity”, which affords the subject a certain self-satisfaction in an automatic, unconscious process. Left-wing, late-night political comedy news shows validate the use of a ‘justice-based’ schadenfreude, based on the perceived deservingness of the misfortune of conservative figures, as shorthand to inform and confirm their viewers’ subject position as liberal thinkers.</b></p> <p>By focussing on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, this thesis sets out to claim that schadenfreude, both found immediately in Daily Show content and in an extended ‘mood landscape’ fashioned via remediation of the original content, operates to become a key signifier of left-wing subjectivity.</p> <p>Following Benedict Spinoza, this research presents a two-sided vision of schadenfreude as an ‘affect’, positing that it entails an equation of ‘disgust’—based on “trajectories of repulsion” from an external affecting body—and ‘delight’, along an axis of conservative misfortune. This project highlights the intersection between mediated schadenfreude and Judith Butler’s paradoxical elements of subjectivity; subjection, and becoming a subject. To develop this question further, the thesis turns briefly to right-wing spheres of schadenfreude, a secondary location to ascertain theextent of the ‘ephemerality’ of affect as it is placed in media structures.</p> <p>Through analysis of the show’s semiotic and rhetorical techniques of analogy, intertextuality, and vignette across various video clips on YouTube, and their adoption by secondary media institutions such as The Guardian and The New York Times, the thesis isolates the manner in which mediated schadenfreude works to interpellate the audience and craft a left-wing ‘mood’, using the conservative body and its humiliation as a site to articulate liberal political subjectivity.</p>

Journalistic objectivity and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

The press is a constitutive part of our society. It helps create national identities and formulates society's understanding of itself and its place in the world. Moreover, a free press is indispensable for ensuring the vibrancy of a democracy. For these reasons, a close inspection of news, and an evaluation of its performance, is crucial. We must look to the development of the mass press at the turn of the twentieth century to locate the beginnings of journalistic objectivity and the type of news we are familiar with today. The first section of this paper offers a review of accounts of this transformational period, placing opposing theories within the larger framework of the frictions between cultural studies and political economy, and underscores the need for a holistic understanding of the period. The second section chronicles the press's articulation of its new professional tenets, offers a definition of journalistic objectivity, and reveals its intrinsic limitations. The third section details how the modern press's ideal democratic mandate has been compromised, with the influence of the press being used instead to ensconce powerful interests. And the fourth section outlines the calls for a redefinition of journalism in light of the failures covered in the preceding section. Finally, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is offered as an alternative journalistic form that transcends the dangerous dogma of traditional news outlets, allowing it to fulfill the democratic responsibility of the press by encouraging a critical and astute citizenry.

Journalistic objectivity and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

The press is a constitutive part of our society. It helps create national identities and formulates society's understanding of itself and its place in the world. Moreover, a free press is indispensable for ensuring the vibrancy of a democracy. For these reasons, a close inspection of news, and an evaluation of its performance, is crucial. We must look to the development of the mass press at the turn of the twentieth century to locate the beginnings of journalistic objectivity and the type of news we are familiar with today. The first section of this paper offers a review of accounts of this transformational period, placing opposing theories within the larger framework of the frictions between cultural studies and political economy, and underscores the need for a holistic understanding of the period. The second section chronicles the press's articulation of its new professional tenets, offers a definition of journalistic objectivity, and reveals its intrinsic limitations. The third section details how the modern press's ideal democratic mandate has been compromised, with the influence of the press being used instead to ensconce powerful interests. And the fourth section outlines the calls for a redefinition of journalism in light of the failures covered in the preceding section. Finally, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is offered as an alternative journalistic form that transcends the dangerous dogma of traditional news outlets, allowing it to fulfill the democratic responsibility of the press by encouraging a critical and astute citizenry.

Tell Me Something Funny

My grandmother always opens our conversations with “So, tell me something!” When I was a teenager, I often felt paralyzed, thinking, “What do you want to know?” But then I discovered a trick: I loved watching late-night parodies of the news like Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, and I would repurpose their jokes to make her laugh. That motivated me to watch more carefully, so I could remember the details to share later—and even to consult other news sources for context. Although some might consider watching comedy shows to be “wasting time,” recent research shows their value: humor helps people remember information and makes them want to talk about it. When shown policy-related news with a punchline, young adults recalled the facts better and were more interested in sharing the information compared to those presented with straight news.

Hypernormalization, Collaborative Analytics, and the Making of “American Stiob”

This chapter reviews a collaboration that chronicles how an article project comes into being. It provides an analysis of how a collaborative process impacts the conceptual tools and analytical process that have been developed. It also mentions anthropological insight that often has meager beginnings — a hunch, a slight puzzling, an observation or moment of recognition that happens to ramify. The chapter cites that Jon Stewart's The Daily Show had emerged as a rare channel of political insight and sincerity despite being broadcast on the Comedy Central channel and was becoming a go-to news source, especially for many younger Americans. It discusses academic scholarship on The Colbert Report, which revealed that viewers from across the political spectrum found the show funny and thought that Colbert's political sympathies corresponded to their own.

Satirical news from left to right: Discursive integration in written online satire

Previous research suggests that a defining characteristic of satirical news shows (e.g. The Daily Show) is discursive integration: a creative blend of genre conventions of regular news and fiction. This study aimed to extend the concept of discursive integration to another popular form of satirical news: written satirical news. We focused on both liberal (e.g. The Onion) and conservative (e.g. The Babylon Bee) online outlets of satire. We collected texts published in 2018 by a total of 36 satirical news, regular news and fiction websites (65,530,647 words). Discursive integration was measured by means of linguistic register, because genres can be effectively identified through patterns of linguistic features. Four linguistic register dimensions were identified. Findings showed that written satirical news is indeed characterised by discursive integration because written satirical news’ register scored in between the registers of written regular news and written fiction. No differences in discursive integration levels were found between liberal and conservative satirical news. This study demonstrates the value of discursive integration for understanding the genre of satirical news across partisan lines.

Performing and Experiencing Anger (through Humor)

Turning to one final entertainment genre, Chapter Three studies the rise in popularity of parodic infotainment news shows following the September 11th attacks. Drawing upon humor relief theory, as well as theories concerning affect mimicry and imagined communities, this essay argues that news parodies, such as Comedy Central's The Daily Show, satisfied various emotional needs for viewers during this traumatic time period. While critics often worry that therapeutic laughter diffuses fear and anger and quells rebellious impulses, this essay argues that the humor provided by these programs have the potential to help viewers transform their negative emotions into action.