Sunday, February 27, 2011

Television's take on Politics

In this week's episode of Community, an NBC intelligent, comedy show, the Dean of the college announces to a group of students that Vice President Joe Biden will be coming to visit the college that day. The Dean realizes that he does not have a representative of the student body to meet the Vice President. Therefore he decides to run an election for the President of the student government, which the college did not have. Jeff Winger, one of the main characters, is a lawyer back in college as a result of his law degree being revoked, decides to run for President simply to prove the point that politics are stupid. In his first speech to the public, Jeff says absolutely nothing. In fact the words that come out of his mouth are, "I think beer should be cold and boots should be dusty." However, his mannerisms, good looks and simply the way he speaks manages to persuade people to vote for him. I think this is an interesting way for the media and popular culture to comment on politics. The end of the episode ends with nobody winning the election, however, the episode portrays a. the pettiness and lack of substance in politics and b. how easily people can be persuaded. 


Here's the link to the episode:
http://www.nbc.com/community/video/intro-to-political-science/1302550

5 comments:

  1. I definitely agree with the points that it makes about the nature of politics, and it reminds me of what we learned about the Nixon-Kennedy debate, in which people didn't see the candidates they seemed to care more about the issues. In this case, Jeff comes off to the people who are there as this charismatic guy and they care more about that than the issues which Annie tries to put on the table.

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  2. That’s a funny story, and it kind of confirms one of my favorite sayings: it is not what you say; it’s how you say it. That being said, our modern politicians actually hire speech writers and speech coaches in order to ace their public appearances. This is a shame because we are no longer voting for a real person and his/her ideas; we don’t even know what politicians really think anymore. And the way they speak in front a camera is obviously different from the way they interact in their real life. Today, we choose representatives based on the image they project. There are two clans, democrats and republicans, and from a political perspective nothing else matters; social skills, image, and the way it is communicated across the media outlets allow us to differentiate between candidates within political parties.

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  3. This is interesting - I've been meaning to watch this show. Thanks for posting it.

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  4. This episode was brilliant, and there were so many nuances that reflected the political climate we live in. For example, Troy and Abed's news coverage of the debate reflected the way TV anchors hype politics and try to turn everything into a dramatic race to the finish, The way Annie caved in and reduced her platform to a rhyming slogan. Also, I thought the debate between the old guy, Leonard, and the charismatic black kid, Magnitude, may have been a satire of McCain-Obama.

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  5. I agree with you that there was a lot more to write about - I had originally written more but my post somehow got deleted as I was writing it so I became frustrated and posted a shorter one the second time. But, yes, I really liked when Annie just focused on the black mold and had one slogan instead of talking about all the other issues she wanted to address. Also the fact that (I can't remember his name, because he's not a regular character) but the candidate that just made some noise and said absolutely nothing, really not even a word, gained a lot of popularity I think also was a clever way of portraying politics and that many people vote based on charisma. I'm not American and I don't know all that much about American politics, but when Obama was running a few years ago, I was still in Canada and I knew nothing about what he stood for, but I liked him (not that it mattered because I can't vote) because of his "yes we can" slogan. I wouldn't be surprised if other people like him for that very same reason along with his charisma. Maybe more Americans are more interested in politics, but I just wouldn't be surprised if some people really based their decision on little things like slogans.

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