I had the Sundance plague, so please excuse my not posting for a week. I have to write a wrap and publish a few more reviews from Park City… hopefully this week. In the meantime, coming out from a haze (perhaps it has been longer than a week?) has re-introduced me to politics. I haven’t been keeping up with the primaries because I was not willing to expend the energy it would require to pay attention. The political season feels like a marathon as these elections hold more at stake, but I tuned into Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report tonight and am reminded about those stakes.

These shows are some kind of show biz interpretation of the world we are living in by posing as news, and also showing clips from Nightly News that display the same cavalier regard for the problems of the world. I realize how funny they are because they seem to be at once reporting and satirizing others who take war, famine, hurricanes, so lightly. But at the end of it, it still feels like white, upper-class folks poking fun at other white, upper-class folks. I’m not really sure why I posted this here, except to wonder about this gaze? Some documentaries cut through or beyond this myopic world view of American television, while others try to mimic this aesthetic (can we call it that?) or at least hope to deliver their alternate message in disguise. I’d be curious to hear my friends’ thoughts on that.

This feels so SNL, yet people are watching these shows for news!