The Best Show Ever: Whale Wars

Reading Geoffrey Baym’s article made me think about myself, how much I watch the news, and if I really even like it at all. I thought about it, and I realized that I rarely watch the news or read the newspaper, but for some reason I always know what is going on in the world or on reality television. Baym’s article made me realize that I get my information from all the other television shows I watch, such as the Daily Show, Jay Leno, South Park, and other shows like them who make fun of and tell the news in a funnier and more enjoyable way. South Park has always been one of my favorite television shows to watch and over the past few years they have been getting ideas from what is happening presently in the world. Now, not all of it is always true, but I can get just enough information from it that either is enough for me, or it will make me go look it up on the Internet. Here is a video of one of the South Park episodes that is a parody of the show Whale Wars. It not only informed me about the actually television show, but it also informed me about people killing whales.

Humor vs. Monotone

While reading the article about The Daily Show by Geoffrey Baym it became apparent that young audiences in this day of age are no longer affected by “serious” media. Often something may be important, but if not introduced in an interesting way it will be overlooked. This made me think of a related example that many young adults have experienced being “preached” to in school and health class surrounding the importance of having safe sex. Usually it was the authoritative manner in which it was presented and the seriousness that caused these talks to go in one ear and out the other. However, for example, in this condom commercial young people are more apt to listen to important information if it is introduced through the use of humor, as is true with The Daily Show. This aspect of humor keeps the audience interested and able to reflect upon the actual information instead of letting the overall message be swept away in a haze of monotone speeches.

Political Figures and "Fake" News

In Geoffrey Baym's essay, he forges a connection between young people getting their news from "late-night talk shows such as NBC's Tonight Show with Jay Leno and CBS's Late Show with David Letterman" (Baym, 260) and also Saturday Night Live. He further proves this connection by pointing out John Edwards chose to announce his candidacy for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination on The Daily Show. The clip I attached below is an excerpt from Barack Obama's appearance on The Daily Show in which he addresses current political issues such as the healthcare reforms. This relates to Baym's essay because political figures are trying to reach out to a younger demographic through appearing on media outlets that appeal to this younger audience.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Barack Obama Pt. 3
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor The Daily Show on Facebook

"Fake News" shows

The article by Geoffrey Baym focused on the comedic “fake news” show, The Daily Show with John Stewart. Although the article discussed many aspects of the show and it’s relation to political journalism, one point in particular really stood out to me. In the first pages Baym gave statistics illustrating audiences of real news shows vs. audiences of comedy news shows. The figures supported the idea that more people watch shows like The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and The Late Show with David Lettermen. It then went on to discuss The Daily show in more detail. I find myself to fit in among these statistics. I am semi ashamed to say that I tune to SNL, Leno, and lettermen more then I tune into the major news stations. My reasoning was not really mentioned in the article though. I do this simply because of entertainment. Sometimes I feel as if real news shows don’t really teach me anything I don’t already know of. Either that or it’s hard to voluntarily watch something boring in the hopes that something of value might be mentioned. So I choose to watch shows I find enjoyable and slightly informative. Sure these might be “Fake News” shows, but I find the content to usually relate to important issues of the time. I have attached a link to a video of clips of Amy Poehler in SNL’s Weekend Update. Weekend Update is real “Fake News” created for comedy, though there is sometimes a bit of truth to the stories. I feel like it is a lighthearted clip that relates to this readings message. There is a link because the Embedding was disabled. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cJ2cfTEkT0

This article was about the abstraction of a base idea. It reminded me a lot of a movie we watched in my film class. The movie was titled the Andalusian Dog. It was a paradigm of the Surrealist movement. Surrealism, like the article, was about obscuring meaning. the article referenced obscuring the original meaning. In the case of the map, it becomes so detailed that it conceals the original intention or meaning. Surrealism was all about obscuring any and all meaning and leaving it open to the viewer. Surrealism and the map are puzzles of narratives.

The Desert of the Real Itself

One of the big concepts that I got from Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulations is the idea that map is not territory. It's funny to think that on a map the lines are so distinct, though in real life there is no actual line at all. Wars break out over who own what because there are no actual "lines." One example would be the Sino-Indian war and another example would be the redistricting of countries in Africa.

Putting a modern twist on this concept that there is no "black and white" in the real, I thought of the division of person items after divorce. When someone gets half of everything, what is half? You have to negotiate the terms, which is similar to when countries negotiate the borders of countries.



In regards to the quote "The desert of the real itself," I asked myself "What exactly is real?" Zizek comments on this exact quote. He discusses the fact that because media allows us to imagine tragedy, we cannot fully grasp tragedy when it actually happens. The example he used was the terrible event of 9/11. He explains that because there are so many similar images on film of building collapsing and people panicking, that we can't fully grasp the gravity of the situation.