Academic

Jon Stewart and Lear's Fool

By Jacqueline Lipton

Two broadcasts I saw/heard last Thursday gave me something to think about.  Like many others, I had eagerly (?) awaited Jon Stewart's much hyped interview with Jim Cramer on The Daily Show which aired on Thursday night.  This was the culmination of a week long media fest between the two men, with Jon Stewart making fun of CNBC in genreal and Cramer's Mad Money show in particular.  Stewart was comedically attacking the CNBC network for its apparent complicity in the financial meltdown - and for giving everyday folks dangerously bad financial advice, knowing that the bubble was going to burst eventually.

The Monday to Wednesday episodes of the Daily Show that carried Stewart's comedic commentary were cutting and funny.  However, the Thursday episode where Cramer himself appeared, was more like a Congressional hearing than a comedy show - according to yesterday's New York Times at least.  As Alessandra Stanley of the NY Times pointed out, Stewart has always had a "messianic streak".  And it surely surfaced on Thursday night - the episode less funny than angry and sad, with a contrite Jim Cramer uncomfortably apologizing for bad calls on CNBC.

People have been blogging about this since Thursday night - some applauding Stewart for taking a stand, and some suggesting that everyone get real and realize that much of what CNBC does is entertainment rather than news, and sensible folks would take their financial advice from trained professionals and not from TV shows sponsored in large part by financial corporations.

Regardless of what side of the line one falls on, the interview with Cramer left me pondering the roll of the satirical comedian in modern times - and here's where the other broadcast comes in.  Earlier that day, I had heard an interview on NPR with author Christopher Moore who has just completed a new satirical novel, Fool.

Fool  is a reimagining of Shakespeare's King Lear from the point of view of King Lear's fool - the sad and sorry character played by John Hurt in at least one movie version if  memory serves, the character who "speaks truth to power".  This character is designed to make you feel uncomfortable as he illustrates the tragic flaws of those in power.  In the NPR interview, Moore pointed out that a key reason he was drawn to the Lear story (on the advice of his editor) was that he felt over the last 8 years, that the only reliable information he could get - the only "truth" - was from comedians.  Thus, Moore's interview suggests that people like Jon Stewart play an important role in contemporary media and culture as "truth tellers", and that we now rely to some extent on their "messianic tendencies".   I'm obviously not the first to make the Lear connection with Jon Stewart - and I'm sure I won't be the last.  But the Thursday night Daily Show did make me feel uncomfortable, and when I really thought about it, I realized that I suppose somewhere in the dim dark recesses of my mind, at least part of me likes my fool to be a "Comedy of Errors" type fool - playful and concerned as much with mayhem as anything else.  At 11.00pm I like an escape from the truth, not a reality check.  But Stewart is obviously performing an important function as Moore implicitly points out - so maybe I should just watch the re-runs at 8pm (?) the next day when I'm better able to cope with cold, hard truth.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 14, 2009 (boomark / email).