The Dissent of Man: Stephen Colbert and the Evolution of Recursive Parody

Abstract

The interactive character-driven television performances of late night political parodist Stephen Colbert, and the similarly interactive, similarly character-based performances of alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos have much in common stylistically, but are worlds apart in their goals and effects. Colbert deployed his parodic character to interrogate and reveal the ways those in power use public performance to distract and deceive the citizenry, while Yiannopoulos and others have adopted and adapted Colbert’s tactics, using them to perpetuate those deceptions and to weaken public trust in any political claims. Through an examination of these two figures, this dissertation tracks the evolution of a discursive tactic it terms “recursive parody”: a satire that results from the sustained interactions between a parodic character and a non-fictional person. As a rhetorical and theatrical tool, recursive parody is simultaneously a response to and an accelerant of a widespread social anxiety over the legibility of political intentions. Twenty-first century American citizens, constantly surrounded by performative speech acts, regularly experience this sociopolitical anxiety, which manifests as a grave uncertainty about the reliability of any claimed or perceived intention from any public figure. Consequently, American discursive spheres and publics have become fertile ground for parodies (and other speech acts) that make political intentionality a key part of the performance. This is because both the anxiety and the parody have developed in an environment in which intention is always in question. Ultimately, no matter whether a particular act of recursive parody is meant to illuminate or to obfuscate, the cumulative effect of the form itself is societally destabilizing. Recursive parody responds to uncertainty and instability by replicating them, and can thereby create a negative feedback loop: exacerbating intentionality anxieties, weakening the public trust in discourse, delegitimizing discourse, and eventually eroding the possibility of meaning itself.