The Unknown Candidate: Brooksie's "Era of Mass Condescention"

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Brooksie's "Era of Mass Condescention"

Oy vay. At the risk of proving his point, I must condescend to David Brooks. The guy evidently still can't distinguish "entertainment" from "life."

Comedy, my dear Davey, always involves some kind of snobbery; we laugh at human foibles, our own and those of others. Through humor, we often come to realize truths about ourselves that we would otherwise reject if delivered more heavy-handedly.

I know you graduated from the University of Chicago, Davey. Years ago, I took a great grad level Shakespearean comedy course there. I highly recommend you do the same. You just might discover that Shakespeare's humor was mighty condescending in his day, too.

The Heyday of Snobbery
By David Brooks
The New York Times

And so we enter the era of mass condescension. Thanks to the creativity of our cultural entrepreneurs, we enter a time when we can gather in large groups and look down at our mental, social and spiritual inferiors.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see how this cultural moment crept up on us. There is “American Idol,” which allows the millions to watch Simon Cowell ridicule people who don’t realize how talentless they are. There is the middle segment of “The Daily Show,” during which correspondents sometimes go out and use postmodern interviewing techniques to humiliate rural goobers who think they were abducted by aliens or some such.

Then there is the rise of culture-war comedians whose jokes heap scorn on the sorts of people who are guaranteed not to be in the audience. (“Megachurches,” Bill Maher joked recently on HBO, “are presided over by the same skeevy door-to-door Bible salesmen that we’ve always had, just in an age of better technology. But they’re selling the same thing: fear. Fear to keep you in line.”

One could list other precursors and signs of the times: network magazine shows that taught TV professionals to use the power of ambush and editing to dominate their non-media-savvy prey; the “Jackass” movies, which acclimatized audiences to the mixture of suffering and laughter. But, of course, the crowning glory of the current moment is the “Borat” movie, an explosively funny rube-baiting session orchestrated by a hilarious bully.

The genius of Sacha Baron Cohen’s performance is his sycophantic reverence for his audience, his refusal to challenge the sacred cows of the educated bourgeoisie. During the movie, Borat ridicules Pentecostals, gun owners, car dealers, hicks, humorless feminists, the Southern gentry, Southern frat boys, and rodeo cowboys. A safer list it is impossible to imagine.

Cohen understands that when you are telling socially insecure audiences they are superior to their fellow citizens there is no need to be subtle. He also understands that any hint of actually questioning the cultural suppositions of his ticket-buyers — say by ridiculing the pretensions of somebody at a Starbucks or a Whole Foods Market — would fatally mar the self-congratulatory aura of the enterprise.

Cohen also knows how to rig an unfair fight, and to then ring maximum humiliation and humor out of each situation. The core of his movie is that he and his audience know he is playing a role, and this gives him, and them, power over the less sophisticated stooges who don’t. The world becomes divided between the club of those who are in on the joke, and the excluded rubes who aren’t. The more tolerant the simpletons try to be toward Borat, the more he drags them into the realm of anti-Semitism and vileness. The more hospitable they try to be, the dumber they appear for not understanding the situation.

In a society as fluid as ours, snobbery is constantly changing form, and in the latest wave of condescension media, various strains come together. We Jews know all about Borat’s Jewish snobbery — based on the assumption that Middle America’s acceptance of Jews must be a mirage, and that underneath every Rotarian there must be a Cossack about to unleash a continental pogrom.

There’s also that distinct style of young person’s snobbery. Young people haven’t accomplished much yet so they can only elevate themselves by endlessly celebrating their own superior sensibilities. Finally, there’s blue America snobbery, as people on the coasts try to fathom those who would vote for George W. Bush. The only logical explanation is that they are racist, anti-Semitic idiots who can be blamelessly ridiculed.

I suspect this wave of condescension media will repel as many people as it thrills. But it does illustrate an interesting shift in the culture.

Eighty years ago, H. L. Mencken’s magazines, The Smart Set and The American Mercury, ridiculed exactly the same targets as today’s condescension mavens: evangelicals, Middle American boobs, etc. (I actually think today’s comedians are funnier than Mencken, though that may be a matter of taste.)

Then, the condescending Menckenites were a small, educated sect, much less popular than the romantics who celebrated the Middle American common man in novels, movies and fanfares. Now, however, the Mencken sensibility is a mass phenomenon, found on networks and in multiplexes all across the country. We’ve democratized snobbery and turned it into a consumption item for the vast educated class. Popular culture has traveled from “The Grapes of Wrath” to Borat the magnificent.

Photo credit: David Brooks. (The New York Times)