Finding Financialization in Satire

Transcription

1 OFFERING David E. Maynard Finding Financialization in Satire 262 Finding Financialization in Satire Popular culture since the turn of the millennium has seen a flourishing, both in number and cultural influence, of satirical works. However, while this satiric renaissance has taken place in the shadow of economic financialization, scholarly work often seeks to evaluate satire s impact, positive or negative, primarily in terms of political engagement; specifically, its tendency to stir citizens to political action or, through humour, to dissipate popular anger that might otherwise lead to revolt. The language used in the titles of much of this critical work is revealing: Satire and Democracy; Is Satire Saving Our Nation?; How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America; and Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate (see Day 2011a; Gournelos and Greene 2011; Gray et al. 2009; McClennan forthcoming; McClennan 2012). Even in their titles, these works figure satire as shaping or intervening into politics or even saving democracy. Amber Day (2011b), in a Huffington Post essay, rehearses the debate, contesting the claim that the blending of the serious and the satiric only serves to cheapen the discourse by insisting that satire opens a space for some of the most interesting, engaged political debate, and that rather than engendering cynicism the newly flowering realm of politicized satire is providing many with a sense of community and purpose notably lacking from organized politics in the twenty-first century (Day, Huffington Post, February 16). In defending satire, Day assumes certain parameters such as the need to view satire as a form of public discourse, and the corresponding rubric of questioning media s relation to democracy, or of the appropriate place for irony, particularly post-9/11. Political critiques of satire, then, arise in the context of financialization (in as much as financialization names the contemporary hegemonic form of capitalism), but do not emerge from an engagement with financialization itself as an economic development. In order to understand the contemporary mutations of capitalist culture as connected to changes in the economic base, rather than remaining on the level of political superstructure, I propose an analysis that

2 considers the material form, broadly understood, of cultural artefacts like satire. Instead of asking how satire is instrumentalized within a financialized society a question that prefigures both satire and its audience as politically active, apathetic, or suppressed this paper examines how financialization manifest itself within the content of satire. What characters, themes and settings does a theory of financialization help us identify within satire? Thus, instead of asking directly what satire can tell us about society, I wish to trace a Marxist analysis of the financialized economy as a way to contextualize certain themes of satire. For the Marxist analysis offered here, I turn to Autonomist theory developed by a number of (primarily) Italian writers indebted to the Workerist movement of the 1970s. The writings of Bifo Berardi (2009), Maurizio Lazzarato (2012), Christian Marazzi (2008, 2010) and others describe modern capitalism as a systematic process of value s production and regulation, while grounding their account in the subjective experiences of work, and of workers constant struggle to change their material conditions in ways that cannot be predicted by a purely economic analysis. Thus, the autonomists are those that recognize the excess of living labour beyond any measurement of economic rationality, the entire metropolis as a productive subject and the spontaneous organization and collective intelligence of new subjectivities (Pasquinelli 2014). A literary critique derived from Autonomist theory, then, would consider not only the production of value, but also the way subjectivities develop and organize economic rationality. I therefore look at the nexus of financial value, work and subjectivity in recent satire, and specifically turn to those popular satirical works that lampoon media representations of economic issues. These works, such as articles in The Onion, skits on The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live, or stand alone episodes of shows like South Park, tend to be relatively short, disconnected from any character arc, and only loosely bounded by the demands of generic narrative conventions. Such conventions limit other comedic genres to representing economic developments that directly affect characters or plot lines within the work, and tend to replicate the basic conflict of industrial capitalism workers as heroes and victims and capitalists as oppressors and villains. Such characterizations can stand in for financialization, for instance the movie Tower Heist (2011) and the CBS series 2 Broke Girls (2011-) cast avatars of Bernie Madoff, one of the few recognizable criminals of the 2008 financial crisis, but cannot demonstrate its operations. When the plotlines of recent character-based comedic narratives focus on the costs of the economic crisis, the stories present classical problems of the worker, employment and wages. For example, a 2012 episode of The Simpsons featured mass unemployment in Springfield when Mr. Burns, owner of the local nuclear power plant, replaced the entire workforce with robots. The problem is solved by a Luddite revolt led by the townspeople. A 2011 South Park episode titled 1%, while clearly a parody of Occupy rhetoric, derives its humour from the outrageous behaviour of Cartman, one of the show s regular cast, and the plot occurs entirely within the show s small 263

3 town setting. Many of the program s most directly satirical episodes, in contrast, depart from sitcom conventions, with the main characters either playing a more ancillary role to caricatures of public figures or venturing outside the usual settings into the larger social sphere. 264 The elements of financialization that make up the new logic of capitalism have developed over the past several decades, with the post-lehman crises only cementing finance s hegemony over the industrial regime. For the Autonomist theorists, this shift belies a fundamental change in the process of production from that described in Marx s Capital. As Marazzi (2010) explains, capitalist investment no longer consists, like during the Fordist era, in investing in constant capital and variable capital, but instead investing in the devices of the production and subsumption of value produced outside directly productive processes (41). These devices are neither labour-saving machines nor efficient forms of industrial organization; rather, they consist of affective and immaterial relationships between people. Morini and Fumagalli (2010) identify the foundational nature of this change in capitalism; the shift from a production of money by means of commodity (M-C-M ) to a production of money by means of the commodification of bios [M-C(bios)-M ] has modified the mode of production and the process of exploitation (239). As a result of this shift, value is no longer based solely and exclusively on material production, but it is increasingly based on immaterial elements, namely on intangible raw materials, which are difficult to measure and quantify since they result from the use of the relational, emotional and cognitive faculties of human beings (235). The irruption of bios into the production of value, and the consequent problems with calculating that value, is a recurring theme in contemporary satire. For example, a 2010 Onion article headlined, U.S. Economy Grinds To Halt As Nation Realizes Money Just A Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion, reports that what began as a routine report before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday ended with Bernanke passionately disavowing the entire concept of currency, and negating in an instant the very foundation of the world s largest economy (Onion, February 16, 2010). In a 2009 episode of South Park, Stan s father defaults on payments for a margarita maker resulting in a multi-billion dollar bailout. When Stan investigates further, we learn that the valuation not just of his father s debt but of all the fallout from the crisis is not determined by any sort of calculation, but rather by an absurd ritual at the Federal Reserve involving a kazoo and a sacrificial chicken. Another attempt in The Onion (2012a) to represent the conjunction of finance and bios results in something equally pre-industrial and literally otherworldly. Here Bernanke appears again, this time on a diplomatic mission to the opulent city-state of Econopolis, a modern capitalist utopia where the symbols of finance merge with both the natural world and the simplicity of proto-capitalist markets. Econopolis is filled with so many marvels, from the glittering canals flowing with liquid diamonds to the quaint financial market where locals sell the most elegant handcrafted

4 rates, Bernanke is reported as having said. I even caught a glimpse of the last herd of wild accountants grazing on a patch of receipts (Onion, August 24). It is not coincidental that Bernanke figures prominently in these satirical stories, since he is the most recognizable avatar of those people who, for better or worse, supposedly had the ability to guide the world economy of pre-financialized models of capitalism. But under financialization, the commanding heights of the economy are always vulnerable to the judgment of the market. While, financial markets may act as the pulsing heart of cognitive capitalism, there is no single market acting as a single heart that can be isolate and controlled, even hidden somewhere in lower Manhattan or The City of London (Fumagalli and Mezzadra 2010: 237). Rather, the financial market organizes the confrontation between the personal opinions of investors in such a way as to produce a collective judgment that has the status of a reference value (Marazzi 2008: 24). While there are privileged nodes, there is no central point-of-command of finance; no single screen and no single user can affect all the others. Since an institutional governance of the processes of accumulation and distribution founded on finance is not possible (Fumagalli and Mezzadra 2010: 242), even the heads of institutions like the Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank cannot operate directly, and instead can only try to sway the markets indirectly. 1 The shift from an economy subject to Keynesian regulation to the current, unregulatable financialized economy becomes evident when we contrast the headlines from The Onion s coverage of Alan Greenspan, pre-crisis chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, to his post-crisis successor, Ben Bernanke. Greenspan is consistently portrayed as a rock star hyper-confident, beloved, and the master of his realm (for example, Screaming Japanese Schoolgirls Overturn Greenspan s Bus (Onion, October 10, 2001); and World Gets First-Ever Look Inside Greenspan Fantasy Ranch (Onion, February 16, 2000)). Meanwhile Bernanke whose policies and personality hardly represent a major break from Greenspan s appears as desperate and ineffectual, subject to the whims of a market beyond anyone s control, inspiring headlines like Drunken Ben Bernanke Tells Everyone At Neighborhood Bar How Screwed U.S. Economy Really Is (Onion, August 3, 2011c) and saying things like, If jobs are meant to be with us, they ll come back on their own (Onion, August 3, 2012c). Saturday Night Live has also satirized the unique knowledge of financial experts. In a skit airing shortly after Dominique Strauss-Kahn s arrest in 2011 for sexual assault, the former IMF chief is approached by a pair of intimidating cellmates. However, instead of threatening him, they launch into a nuanced but ultimately fruitless debate of the ongoing Eurozone crisis that includes taunts about the weakness of the Greek export sector ( What are they gonna do? Export a billion dollars worth of feta? ) and German intractability ( Germans be good at being austere ). Throughout the inmates dialogue, Strauss-Kahn remains silent, seemingly having 265

5 nothing to add. The skit plays off two suspicions: (a) the crises are beyond anyone s direct control; and (b) even someone in a privileged position has no more real insight or information than what is already in the public discourse. The bathos of the situation is driven home as the skit ends with the two men telling Strauss-Kahn, You know we re gonna rape you now (2011). 266 However, claiming that the forces of finance are beyond any individual s control does not imply that the traditional real economy is any more predictable. This is because the production of value can no longer be located solely within the process of commodity production, nor can it be associated with worker and capitalist as pre-formed categories of identity. Instead, in the current economy, the production of subjectivity reveals itself to be the primary and most important form of production, the commodity that goes into the production of all other commodities (Lazzarato 2012: 34). However, if subjectivity itself is a commodity, then the subjects (worker and capitalists) that produce commodities become fundamentally distorted in a complex feedback loop. In satire, this appears in accounts of the subject at work, particularly when the work is a form of cognitive labour. This is evident, for example, in The Onion headline, Man Who Cried Himself To Sleep Last Night Has Some Great Ideas For Growing Company s Brand (Onion, October 7, 2012b), where there is a pointed disjuncture between the quiet desperation of the individual worker and his affective labour of crafting a brand with integrity and depth. This theme also appears in the story of a marketing associate whose life is riddled with continuity errors. At one point, he s in college studying anthropology and you think his life is going to be about that, but next thing you know, he s working full-time as a waiter, observer Richard Siegal said. Then out of the blue you find out that what he really wants to do is get into marketing, and suddenly he s back in college again. It makes no sense (Onion, May 21, 2011a). Here we find that an easily relatable, coherent account of the worker s life is irreconcilable with the very same sort of educational and career choices demanded by post-fordist labour markets and encouraged by lifestyle consumerism. And while affective workers are fractured, industrial workers and factory labourers are completely unthinkable, since the fundamental transactions that define such work are losing their importance as a model for labour relations. As Berardi notes, When we move into the sphere of info-labor, Capital no longer recruits people, it buys packets of time, separated from their interchangeable and contingent bearers (2009: 192). Thus, satire treats the very process of an individual worker selling a discrete period of time as labour power as archaic. For instance, a 2011 Onion article headlined, Remains Of Ancient Race Of Job Creators Found In Rust Belt contains a typical line; It s truly fascinating after spending a certain number of hours performing assigned tasks, the so-called employees at such facilities would receive monetary compensation that allowed them to support themselves and their families, said archaeologist Alan H. Mueller, citing old ledgers and time-keeping devices unearthed at excavation sites in the region (Onion, October 31, 2011b).

6 While contemporary capitalism disrupts the integrity of individual workers and weakens the efficacy of those attempting to operate the levers of power, it finds an increasingly important role for a different sort of participant within the process of production. Marazzi argues that language and communication are structurally and contemporaneously present throughout both the sphere of the production and distribution of goods and services and the sphere of finance (2008: 14, emphasis in the original). This is not just any sort of language, but particularly that which shapes our understanding of states, economic conventions and, of course, markets. Discourse about a market speculations as to its impulses, whims, or decisions operates as an agent within the process of production itself, and is irreducible either to the opinions of key interlocutors, like journalists and financial analysts, or to some computable sum of beliefs of the participants within that market. Instead, the elements of political economy follow an exogenous logic of conventions, [a] convention (for example, in the 1990s an average return of 15% on capital invested in securities became an outright convention) is not right or wrong by virtue of its being a good or bad representation of an objective reality, but by virtue of its public force (Marazzi 2008: 28). This is a reversal of the classical account of an individual homo economicus, driven by his or her private desires, unwittingly creating dispassionate markets that can then be regulated by sovereign governments. Instead The leading role in today s global economy is played not by nation states but by their financial markets, which in turn are driven by mechanisms, such as the operation of public convention, which can easily function outside the boundaries of nationstates (Marazzi 2008: 78). Markets, driven by conventions, assume some of the functions of individual actors in the process of producing value, and, to an extent, markets also take on subjective characteristics: [t]he post-crisis financial market is a market that, in newspapers and television reports, is capable of emotions like fear, anxiety, and panic, that trusts or doesn t trust, and that, put synthetically, reacts like a single body to the signals that come from economic indexes, political statements and consumer behaviors (Terranova 2010: 162). 267 Thus, while satirical narratives of individual workers may show those workers to be disjointed and incoherent, the subjects of the new economy, states and markets, are uniquely personified and animated. In The Onion, these entities of contemporary capitalism suffer the economic indignities normally attributed to individuals (for example, Illinois Does A Few Adult Movies To Make Ends Meet (Onion, August 7, 2010b)), and are also driven by personal passions. In an Onion article titled, The Thrill of Constantly Collapsing Gets Me Off, (Onion, February 28, 2013) the economy, in the role of a guest commentator, admits its own perverse desires: The truth is I get off sexually on the prospect of my collapse. Does that make you uncomfortable? Maybe turn you on a little? See, the very real potential of both a negative GDP and an overall decrease in the consumption of my goods and resources drives me wild. Right now, my transportation and warehousing components are hot. And wet. Very wet (2013).

7 These satires parody those forms of media, especially television news, newspapers and punditry, that mediate social reality, and whose function is to establish what qualifies as a generally accepted fact, shaping popular opinion in alignment with those facts. By satirizing news directly, rather than events or people in the news, these works skewer the construction of social itself. If, as the Autonomists claim, the social plays a unique economic role in contemporary capitalism, then it should come as no surprise that we can trace the cultural effects of financialization through satire. To return to the frequently asked question, how can satire be political? maybe we can now propose an answer. The fact that the themes and content of popular satire align with an explicitly Marxist analysis may indicate a desire on the part of a broad audience for an alternative theorization of contemporary capitalism; one that is non-dogmatic, culturally-based and, of course, funny. Indeed, perhaps some elements of a critical theory of financialization are already present in popular culture. We just need to know how to see them. Note 1. Examples include Bernanke s promise to continue Quantitative Easing indefinitely, where his open-ended assurance is seen as more effective than the actual benefits of QE itself. Similarly, ECB chief Mario Draghi was able to calm the markets with a proposed plan to stabilize national bond markets in Europe, without having to actually implement the plan at all. 268 References 2 Broke Girls. Created by Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cummings. CBS Berardi, Franco The Soul at Work. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Day, Amber. 2011a. Satire and Dissent: Interventions in Contemporary Political Debate. Bloomington: Indiana University Press b. Why More Americans Are Being Informed and Entertained by Satire Than Ever Before. Huffington Post. 16 February. Accessed 14 February huffingtonpost.com/amber-day/why-more-americans-are-be_b_ html. Fumagalli, Andrea and Sandro Mezzadra Nothing Will Ever Be the Same: Ten Theses on the Financial Crisis. In Crisis in the Global Economy: Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios. Edited by Andrea Fumagalli and Sandro Mezzadra, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Gournelos, Ted and Viveca Greene A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America. Oxford, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Gray, Jonathan, Jeffrey Jones, and Ethan Thompson, eds Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. New York: NYU Press. Lazzarato, Maurizio The Making of the Indebted Man. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). Marazzi, Christian Capital and Language: From the New Economy to the War Economy. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).

8 The Violence of Finance Capitalism. Translated by Kristina Lebedeva. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). McClennen, Sophia A Colbert s America: Satire and Democracy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.. Forthcoming. Is Satire Saving Our Nation? Mockery and American Politics. Morini, Cristina and Andrea Fumagalli Life Put to Work: Towards a Life Theory of Value. Translated by Emanuele Leonardi. Ephemera 10(3-4): The Onion World Gets First-Ever Look Inside Greenspan Fantasy Ranch February. Accessed 16 February world-gets-firstever-look-inside-greenspan-fantasy,3654/ Screaming Japanese Schoolgirls Overturn Greenspan s Bus October. Accessed 16 February screaming-japanese-schoolgirls-overturn-greenspans,3289/ a. U.S. Economy Grinds to a Halt as Nation Realizes Money just a Symbolic, Mutually Shared Illusion February. Accessed 14 February us-economy-grinds-to-halt-as-nation-realizes-money,2912/ b. Illinois Does A Few Adult Movies To Make Ends Meet August. Accessed 16 February illinois-does-a-few-adult-films-to-make-ends-meet,17823/ a. Area Man s Life Riddled with Continuity Errors May 21. Accessed 14 February mans-life-riddled-with-continuity-errors,20492/ b. Remains of Ancient Race of Job Creators Found in Rust Belt October. Accessed 14 February remains-of-ancient-race-of-job-creators-found-in-r,26490/ c. Drunken Ben Bernanke Tells Everyone At Neighborhood Bar How Screwed U.S. Economy Really Is August. Accessed 16 February drunken-ben-bernanke-tells-everyone-at-neighborhoo,21059/ a. Fed Chief Makes Diplomatic Visit to Econopolis August. Accessed 14 February fed-chief-makes-diplomatic-visit-to-econopolis,29299/ b. Man Who Cried Himself to Sleep Last Night Has Some Great Ideas for Growing Company s Brand October. Accessed 14 February theonion.com/articles/man-who-cried-himself-to-sleep-last-night-has-some,29834/ c. Fed: If Jobs are Meant to Be with Us They ll Come Back on Their Own August. Accessed 16 February fed-if-jobs-are-meant-to-be-with-us-theyll-come-ba,29036/ The Thrill of Constantly Collapsing Gets Me Off February. Accessed 14 February the-thrill-of-constantly-collapsing-gets-me-off,31475/. 269

9 Pasquinelli, Matteo The Number of the Collective Beast: On the Substance of Value in the Age of the Institutions of Ranking and Rating. Paper delivered at New Industries Conference: Money and Debt in the Post-Industrial World, Dortmund Germany. 19 January. Accessed 16 February number-of-the-collective-beast/. Saturday Night Live Cold open. Season 36, episode May. The Simpsons Them, Robot. Season 23, episode March. South Park %. Season 15, episode November. South Park Margaritaville. Season 13, episode March. Tower Heist. Directed by Brett Ratner Universal Pictures. Terranova, Tiziana New Economy, Financialization and Social Production in the Web 2.0. In Crisis in the Global Economy: Financial Markets, Social Struggles, and New Political Scenarios. Edited by Andrea Fumagalli and Sandro Mezzadra, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). 270