How Katt Williams Broke The Culture War

earlier this month comedian Cat Williams broke the internet in an interview with Shannon sharp that's already amassed 50 million views he called Steve Harvey a Mr Potato Head Cedric the Entertainer a walrus and Kevin Hart an industry plant concerned his contemporaries were spreading false stories about him cat was hellbent on reclaiming The Narrative of his success in Hollywood getting a Netflix special is easy I have 12 specials guess how many F I got zero well on one level this event appeals because it's a rare moment of honesty in an artificial predominated media space I think there's also something deeper at play in a way Cat Williams taking to the airwaves to abrasively establish his identity speaks to the essence of being a person in the age of social media and how the BS were all dealing with the culture War ever widening political sectarianism and the looming potential of a 2024 political disaster is inherent to the ideology and embedded in the very fabric of digital media let me explain let's start with an Insight from the patron saints of smart comedy Monty Python the 15th episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus features a sketch called the semaphore version of weaing heights in which the tragic lovers from Emily bronte's classic long for each other via semaphor or a system of hand flag telegraphy it's a joke in the spirit of pioneering media theorist Marshall mcluen one that reflects his Central proposition that the medium of communication dictates the meaning of the content even if the literal meaning of the gestures indicate passion passion itself is absent from the interaction you may be able to communicate the abstract concept of Love via hand Flags but you can't experience love the form excludes the content you can't have a political debate via smoke signals even if you could it wouldn't be a heated argument that ends in you never speaking to your father-in-law again the medium excludes the potential for bitter divisiveness you could in theory experience the script of the Matrix via Morse code but it wouldn't be a thrill the medium excludes the potential for mind-bending suspense the point is the primary medium of communication in a given time radically changes our symbolic and cultural landscape dictating how we perceive and interact with the world in his book amusing ourselves to death author Neil Postman writing in the tradition of mcclan explores this phenomenon writing in the 80s he argued that with the Advent of Television our entire culture transformed into Show Business politics Religion News Athletics and even education had all been reduced to entertainment his point was largely that forms of media favor particular kinds of content that are capable of taking command of a culture even before mcluen Postman points out that Marx made this observation in the German ideology Marx asked is The Iliad possible when the printing press and even printing machine exist The Iliad traditionally conveyed through communal singing is a form of Storytelling that relies on a collective auditory experience however the printing press ushered in an era of individualized content consumption rendering the shared experience of listening to sung Tales obsolete Marx highlighted how the printing press as a structure for discourse makes these social conditions necessary for epic poet disappear the impact of emerging media extends Beyond content it fundamentally Alters our perception of ourselves and the world for example the news of the day is a concept we all understand we wake up read our news source of choice and go about our day with a sense of awareness of what's happening in the world and our role in it according to postman this idea that there's a global narrative we can track from yesterday to today was entirely conceived by the telegraph which enabled the rapid widespread dissemination of decontextualized information in postman's words without a medium to create its form the news of the day does not exist so what seems like a Timeless truth is actually more a reflection of our technological context thus the telegraph not only introduced a new kind of content but also reshaped our Collective cultural imagination and our lives are recast in the terms most suitable to the primary medium of the day so in the spirit of Postman I want to posit that without the medium of social media to create its form the culture War would not exist today digital media via the Internet and smartphones is indisputably the primary medium of communication profoundly reshaping our self-perception and interaction with the world the groundbreaking novelty of the digital age is the fusion of user with content we now curate digital versions of ourselves profiles that exist in the same sphere as the media we consume our interactions choices and even passive browsing habits feed into a continuous cycle of content creation and consumption the line between consumer and producer blurs as every individual becomes a node in a vast network of shared experiences and perspectives with the erosion of anonymity in this age all the cultural evolutions of the television age take on a much more dire character for example advertising in the text age advertisements extensively described the functions and merits of a product however with the Advent of Television advertising became less about the nature of the products and more about the character of the person who buys the products modern commercials now seldom discuss the product directly instead they appealed to the aspirations fears and fantasies of the Target demographic the screen became a mirror as it was no longer important to buy valuable products but to feel valuable by buying the product here's another way to think about it in his work the consumer Society philosopher Jean board recounts a fable about a tribe of melanesian natives who are enchanted by planes passing overhead they notied that the planes only land at airports where other airplanes are parked so in an effort to hail the fascinating objects to their Community the natives build model planes out of sticks thinking that if they Adorn their environment with these same symbols as the airport the planes will come to them Bard's point is that just as the natives Adorn themselves with symbols in an effort to hail down a desired object of Fascination we Adorn our lives with products and media in an effort to hail the happiness we see in the idealized image of life in commercials in the digital media age this Dynamic is way more intense as there's an implicit expectation on us to not only Chase these fantasies but to project the Fulfillment of them them what was once a private psychological phenomenon has turned into a public one it used to be that not living up to the impossible standard of consumer ideals was something we get privately depressed about but now that we've become active participants in the production and dissemination of the very symbols we consume we must broadcast the attainment of that idealized happiness that perfect self- knowledge as a good successful desirable person every dissenting opinion is an affront to that assured self- knowledge every tribe with contrary values is a threat to the validity of our own when Bard spoke of humanity living in the hyper real world of advertising He was largely speaking about a mental phenomenon but with the digital age it's become much more literal and as a result it's not just our consumer achievements on display it's also our beliefs I'm reminded of one of the greatest scenes from ingar bergman's existentialist classic the seventh seal a theater troop is in the midst of entertaining A captivated crowd when all of a sudden the performance is interrupted by a band of religious zealots chanting about doom and plague the audience's attention is diverted to what is essentially the better show the thespians fire was stolen by the superior entertainment of fire and brimstone bergman's point was that religion or for the sake of our discussion our most deeply held convictions have an aesthetic Dimension to them that our beliefs are not held due to their alignment with some apparent truth but because they resonate they stimulate us that belief on some level is a form of social entertainment Bergman might have said that Postman was wrong that belief was entertainment long before television while in the typographic age the arena for such entertainment was restricted to the stage the text or the altar in the digital age it's completely Unleashed on the internet belief is an essential acuta we must confidently broadcast in order to Curry favor for our digital selves being passionate about your values at a family Thanksgiving has always been a fraud scenario now imagine being at a Thanksgiving dinner with the entire world where everyone has a microphone and a camera pointed at them with a sign saying adopt the right beliefs and happiness can be yours that's the pressure cooker of culture in the digital age this Exodus into the Realm of the symbolic is vividly captured in the Showtime series The Curse starring Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder which I think is a freaking Masterpiece except for the ending the show is a brutal critique of elite liberals following the Journey of affluent nepotist who used their parents' wealth to produce an HGTV show their project superficially aimed at the philanthropic Revival of a struggling Native American Community thinly veils their true intent to buy all the land that then gentrify the area to bolster their material superiority all while performing symbolic guilt rituals we gratefully acknowledge the native peoples on Whose ancestral homelands We Gather We Gather today on occupied and unseated land and insincerely prizing about sustainability the curse is not just a critique of the superficiality of social justice efforts devoid of class Consciousness it also paints a striking portrait of our image obsessed era Stone and Fielder's characters are preoccupied with symbolic gestures of Justice prioritizing having good moral hygiene over substantive change they're constantly Googling themselves forming cringy fake friendships with Noble victims and bribing reporters to kill negative stories about them there's one scene where Emma Stone is infuriated about the prospect of selling one of their homes to a nice guy who does genuine charity work because he has a blue lives matter batter sticker on his car associating with him could be bad for their brand and thus she hates him this is a microcosmic example of the culture war pathologies that the digital age has inevitably birthed long before the internet mclan prophesized the emergence of a vast interconnected Network which he termed the global village he observed that this Global Village would not be a harmonious Community but rather a Savage place he said Ordinary People find the need for violence as they lose their identities it's only the threat to people's identity that makes them violent whether or not you're active in curating an online identity in the digital age our understanding of ourselves is embedded in the context of this global village where we're all like Cat Williams stuck in an interactive globally broadcasted Rat Race to establish a desirable understanding of ourselves and our place in the world the inevitable omnipresence of challenges to that self-standing makes our current cultural moment perhaps unavoidable obly well a culture War one of the key concerns in culture War discourse is an anxiety about the nihilism of our secular liberal culture that absence some kind of transcendental figure our lives become meaningless but maybe nihilism is the wrong word because I think there's very little concern that we believe in nothing the real concern is we're all zealots praying at the altar of the narratives we tell ourselves about ourselves these narratives shouted through the megaphones of social media add an element of desperation to validating our beliefs and demonizing opposition so what is to be done well it's not an easy answer mclan once likened Humanity's relationship to Media to a fish's relation to water he said I don't know who discovered water but it was definitely not a fish his point was that our subjectivity is so immersed in media that trying to study it is like trying to smell our own nose but if media is ideology and our cultural lives are dictated by the new newest Tech bro invention is there no recourse for our sanity well I'm a bit more optimistic postman's book ends with him asserting the value of learning that only through critical media education can we demythologize our relationship with media Postman citing aldus Huxley says we find ourselves in a crucial race between education and disaster it's a race that's imperative to win not just for preserving our mental health but also the Integrity of our Collective societal understanding the solution lies not in retreating from digital media but in equipping ourselves with the tools to navigate understand and critically engage with our media saturated environment and even if the Intrigue of potential 2024 disaster turns out to be a big nothing Burger we've still got a lot of progress to make towards establishing healthy forms of social discourse and that should be the goal right hey thanks for watching y'all if you enjoy the content and want to help the Channel continue don't forget to check out my coffee page where you can donate or sign up for monthly contributions be sure to check out my twitch page as well join the Discord follow me on letterbox which I'm kind of obsessed with all that good stuff is in the description below so click on them links hope yall are having a great start to 2024 and I'll catch youall next time peace

Channel: Jared Bauer

Views: 54,509

Keywords: Katt Williams, Club Shay Shay, Shannon Sharpe, Elon Musk, Culture war, Jordan Peterson, iilluminaughtii

Id: nGJ8nFEQ2JQ

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2024