Political Culture Jamming: The Dissident Humour of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart

This blog is about the article of Political Culture Jamming: The Dissident Humour of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart by Jamie Warner. The reading was based upon politics and their ideas of influencing to the masses. A popular example from the text was “political branding.” Politicians used this idea to market themselves just like how advertising corporations brand themselves. The idea was to gain unreflected and automatic trust. In addition, a reason why political branding would work is because citizens are “busy people”, thus allowing them to quickly brand themselves within a political affiliation without understanding or questioning their political affiliated ideas. Furthermore, politicians also use emotional appeal to gain their audience. This is where “Culture jamming” and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart comes in.



“Culture jamming” is the rise against mainstream advertisement and corporations, in this case political branding. A group committed to culture jamming is Adbusters who are the loose collection of media activists rebelling against the hegemony of messages promoted by global capitalism (Warner, 2007) According to the article, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is a great example of culture jamming. The reading shows that The Daily Show with Jon Stewart promoted three ways of cultural jamming.

1. Parody Format: A parody allows the receivers to engage in laughter and take the show as a comedy. Even if the cast is speaking upon political affairs.
2. Strategic Use of Video: Intervenes within actual news footage to share the idea. Nothing like this happens within actual news performances.
3. Stewart’s Socratic Interview Style: John Stewart uses “Socratic Irony” as a rhetorical tactic to point out incongruities, inconsistencies, and internal contradictions in the interviewee’s argument without directly offering his own opinion as well as without being confrontational (Warner, 2007).

Finally, one of the main points stated in the reading was the power of laughter. “Literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1981) agrees: “Laughter demolishes fear and piety before an object, before a world, making of it an object of familiar contact and thus clearing the ground for an absolutely free investigation of it.” (p. 23). If we can laugh at it, we can examine it, evaluate it, and even critique it. Laughter has the power to disrupt any analytical paralysis engendered by fear. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart demonstrates that we overlook this powerful and interesting phenomenon at our peril” (Warner, 2007).

Thanks for reading.