September 26, 2008
Even Better than the Real Thing
What Can SNL Tell us About the Candidates?
After Tina Fey's wins at the Emmys, I was already thinking about her SNL return the week before last. Given my preoccupation with election coverage, I hadn't been concentrating on SNL of late. But as I found out from a friend, SNL's politics are generating some buzz. Washington Post writer Chris Cillizza recently noted that the last two shows have opened with political bits (first the Fey-Poehler skit, then a skit mocking McCain's ads), thus ensuring the largest possible audience for any political messages. Cillizza also speculated about the impact that SNL's mockery could have on the candidates.
The McCain bit, authored by satirist-turned-politician Al Franken, was a basic attack on false logic--the sort of examples that you'd read in a Logic 101 textbook, but in skit form. The conceit was that McCain was being asked to approve the messages personally, and his staff had to explain their reasoning behind certain statements. For example, the fact that if one interprets the "universal" in "universal health care" to mean "affecting everyone in the universe," then this means Osama bin Laden will get health care. Or that if you give tax cuts to a large group of people, there are bound to be some pedophiles included. Therefore, McCain is persuaded, it is "true" to say that Obama will give health care to Osama, or tax cuts to pedophiles.
It was an interesting skit because it attacked the ad technique rather than the politician. Sure, there was a dig at McCain's technophobia and age when he worried that the pre-recorded tapes had gotten scratched, then didn't understand the concept of digital recording. But the real target was the rhetorical and logical method used when creating negative political ads. Both candidates have been accused of going negative lately, but McCain's ads are the more extreme. If the skit causes anyone to think critically about such ads, then kudos to SNL. I've been trying to teach critical thinking for years and it's an uphill battle. And if SNL is indeed to trying to influence independent voters--which, given its wide appeal, it may well be able to do--then it is a particularly smart move to avoid direct attacks on McCain's character. Verbally assaulting McCain in a skit parodying negative ads could easily be seen as hypocritical.
While we were discussing the McCain skit, my friend also asked me what I thought of the difference between Poehler's and Fey's comic approaches in SNL's previous opener. I hadn't really thought about it, but there are some interesting implications from the different techniques used by Fey and by Poehler. Some have already noted that Poelher's Clinton was more "interpretive" than Fey's Palin. That's true, but it's only the tip of the iceberg.
There was general agreement that Tina Fey nailed Sarah Palin's accent and mannerisms. But interestingly, the script itself was not over-the-top. Most of what she said was material culled or summarized from previous news clips, though some aspects were exaggerated slightly. Fey/Palin's claim that "I can see Russia from my house!" was rooted in Republican rhetoric about her foreign policy experience, and her claim that global warming was "just God hugging us closer" was a reference to both her religion and the conservative religious stance to environmentalism.
Aside from these jokes, Fey didn't exaggerate her performance very much. Then again, she didn't have to. Palin's accent and absolute certainty in her beliefs (not always a good thing, as at least one analyst argues) are already pretty extreme. The sharpest jab, moreover, was based on the truth and nothing but the truth. When Poehler's "Hillary" noted that she disagreed with the Bush doctrine, Fey's "Palin" giggled, "I don't know what that is!" This should have been a joke exaggerating claims of her ignorance, but sadly it was a reflection of what had actually happened two nights before, during Palin's first real interview on ABC. The point being that the comedy of Fey's performance as Palin was based less on exaggeration, and more on the undeniable skill of Fey's mimicry.
