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ABSTRACT
This project contributes the comic counterfactual to the critical lexicon of rhetorical studies. Using a range of examples from political comedy, this paper offers six distinguishing features and several temporal functions of this concept. I argue that the comic counterfactual invites audiences to critically reflect upon the political, social, and performative consequences of historical events by bringing affective, sensory weight to alternative visions, moving unaccountable private interests into public culture, targeting the subtle determinisms that can easily creep into communication, and creating plausible ways to reworld the status quo. I discuss the limitations of the comic counterfactual in the political economy of media and offer several conclusions for rhetorical research and practice.
Notes
1 Amber Day, Satire and Dissent (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011).
2 Robert Hariman, “Political Parody and Public Culture,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94 (2008): 249, 253.
3 Jeffrey Jones, “Toward a New Vocabulary for Political Communication Research,” International Journal of Communication 7 (2013): 8.
4 See W. Barnett Pearce, Making Social Worlds (Malden: Blackwell, 2007), 12–25.
5 Gale Biography in Context (Andy Bichlbaum, “Bichlbaum,” par. 1; accessed June 3, 2016).
6 Steve Lambert, 2009, “The Yes Men,” Bomb, 78, 81.
7 Allan G. Johnson, The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 65.
8 Hilary P. Dannenberg, “Counterfactual History,” in Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, eds. David Herman, Manfred Jahn, and Marie-Laure Ryan (New York: Routledge, 2008), 86.
9 Randall Collins, “Turning Points, Bottlenecks, and the Fallacies of Counterfactual History,” Sociological Forum 22 (2007): 249.
10 Richard N. Lebow, “Counterfactual Thought Experiments: A Necessary Teaching Tool,” The History Teacher 40 (2007): 153–76.
11 Roland Wenzlhuemer, “Editorial: Unpredictability, Contingency and Counterfactuals,” Historical Social Research 34 (2009): 9–15.
12 Roland Wenzlhuemer, “Counterfactual Thinking as a Scientific Method,” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 34 (2009): 27–54; Juliane Schiel, “Crossing Paths between East and West. The Use of Counterfactual Thinking for the Concept of ‘Entangled Histories,’” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 34 (2009): 161–83.
13 Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, eds, Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
14 Niall Ferguson, “Virtual History: Toward a Chaotic Theory of the Past,” in Virtual History, ed. Niall Ferguson (New York: Basic, 1999), 1–90.
15 Lebow, “Counterfactual,” 153.
16 Lebow, “Counterfactual,” 161–62; Wenzlhuemer, “Counterfactual.”
17 Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 86.
18 Peter Menzies, “Counterfactual Theories of Causation,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/, “Counterfactual,” par. 1.
19 Mark D. Alicke, Justin Buckingham, Ethan Zell, and Teresa Davis, “Culpable Control and Counterfactual Reasoning in the Psychology of Blame,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34 (2008): 1372.
20 Alison M. Bacon, Clare R. Walsh, and Leanne Martin Bacon, “Fantasy Proneness and Counterfactual Thinking,” Personality and Individual Differences 54 (2012): 469.
21 David R. Mandel, Denis J. Hilton, and Patrizia Catellani, eds, The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking (New York: Routledge, 2005).
22 Heather Ferguson and Anthony J. Sanford, “Anomalies in Real and Counterfactual Worlds: An Eye-Movement Investigation,” Journal of Memory and Language 58 (2008): 609–26.
23 Anthony S. Gillies, “Counterfactual Scorekeeping,” Linguistics and Philosophy 30 (2007): 330.
24 Bacon, Walsh, and Martin, “Fantasy Proneness and Counterfactual Thinking,”, 469–73; Keith Markman, Matthew N. McMullen, and Ronald A. Elizaga, “Counterfactual Thinking, Persistence, and Performance: A Test of the Reflection and Evaluation Model,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44 (2008): 421–28; Laura Kray, Adam D. Galinsky, and Keith D. Markman, “Counterfactual Structure and Learning from Experience in Negotiations,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009): 979–82.
25 Jennifer R. Harding, “Evaluative Stance and Counterfactuals in Language and Literature,” Language and Literature 16 (2007): 263.
26 Harding, “Evaluative,” 277.
27 Xiaoli Nan, X, “The Pursuit of Self-Regulatory Goals: How Counterfactual Thinking Influences Advertising Persuasiveness,” Journal of Advertising 37 (2008): 17.
28 Ferrario, Roberta, “Counterfactual Reasoning,” in International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context (Berlin: Springer, 2001), 170–83.
29 Chang-Hee Christine Bae and Myung-Jin Jun, “Counterfactual Planning: What if there had been No Greenbelt in Seoul?” Journal of Planning Education and Research 22 (2003): 374–83; Damarys Canache, Jeffery J. Mondak, and Ernesto Cabrera, “Voters and the Personal Vote: A Counterfactual Simulation,” Political Research Quarterly 53 (2000): 663–76.
30 Gary King and Langche Zeng, “When can History be our Guide? The Pitfalls of Counterfactual Inference,” International Studies Quarterly 51 (2007): 184.
31 Helmut Weber, “The ‘But For’ Test and Other Devices —The Role of Hypothetical Events in the Law,” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung 34 (2009): 118–28; Barbara Spellman and Alexandra Kincannon, “The Relation between Counterfactual (‘But For’) and Causal Reasoning: Experimental Findings and Implications for Jurors’ Decisions,” Law and Contemporary Problems 64 (2001): 241–64.
32 Debra Hawhee, “Rhetoric’s Sensorium,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101 (2015): 2–17.
33 Anna Silman, 2016, “Samantha Bee and Fellow ‘Nasty Woman’ Madeleine Albright Skewer Trump’s Misogyny,” The Cut, October 25, http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/10/sam-bee-talks-trump-with-nasty-woman-madeleine-albright.html, 0:47–2:49.
34 Kelly Happe, “The Body of Race: Toward a Rhetorical Understanding of Racial Ideology,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 99 (2013): 149.
35 Jelle Mast, “New Directions in Hybrid Popular Television: A Reassessment of Television Mock-Documentary,” Media, Culture & Society 31 (2009): 232.
36 “No Pants Subway Ride 2016,” 2016, YouTube, January 10, www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O3B7m7244o
37 Andy Borowitz, 2016, “Trump Economic Plan Calls for Every American to Inherit Millions from Father,” The New Yorker, August 8, www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-economic-plan-calls-for-every-american-to-inherit-millions-from-father
38 Billionaires for Wealthcare. 2016, www.billionairesforwealthcare.com
39 Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 133.
40 “We Support Your War of Terror – Excerpt from Borat,” 2009, YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=amFRTRMBk1A, 0:00-2:02.
41 Sine N. Just and Tanja J. Christiansen, “Doing Diversity: Text–Audience Agency and Rhetorical Alternatives,” Communication Theory 22 (2012): 321.
42 As cited in Just and Christiansen, “Doing,” 321.
43 Mel Helitzer, Comedy Writing Secrets (Cincinnati: F + W Publications, 2005), 170.
44 Mark Boukes, Hajo G. Boomgaarden, Marjolein Moorman, and Claes H. de Vreese, “At Odds: Laughing and Thinking? The Appreciation, Processing, and Persuasiveness of Political Satire,” Journal of Communication 65 (2015): 19.
45 Beth Innocenti and Elizabeth Miller, “The Persuasive Force of Political Humor,” Journal of Communication 66 (2016): 366–85.
46 Don J. Waisanen, “Crafting Hyperreal Spaces for comic insights: The Onion News Network's ironic iconicity,” Communication Quarterly 59 (2011): 508–28.
47 Jerry Palmer, The Logic of the Absurd (Bury St Edmunds: BFI, 1987), 203, 70.
48 George Carstocea, 2016, “Satire and Conspiracy,” Medium, November 7, https://medium.com/@uncertainblume/this-week-a-conspiracy-theory-emerged-in-the-fever-swamps-of-the-internet-linking-hillary-clinton-d25bb0e8ccbc#.qwj0kw2xd
49 Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption, 2015, www.ourladyofperpectualexemption.com
50 Kevin Marinelli, “Revisiting Edwin Black: Exhortation as a Prelude to Emotional–Material Rhetoric,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46 (2016): 465.
51 Davi Johnson Thornton, “Neuroscience, Affect, and the Entrepreneurialization of Motherhood,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 8 (2011): 404.
52 Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 546, 99–100.
53 Hariman, “Political,” 256. Doonesbury’s use of bathos to bring war rhetoric “down to earth” has similar overtones. Christopher J. Gilbert and John Louis Lucaites, “Bringing War Down to Earth: The Dialectic of Pity and Compassion in Doonesbury’s View of Combat Trauma,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101 (2015): 382. On the revolting and revolutionary potential in gross-out comedy movies, see also William Paul, Laughing Screaming (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
54 Brian L. Ott and Gordana Lazić, “The Pedagogy and Politics of Art in Postmodernity: Cognitive Mapping and The Bothersome Man,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 99 (2013): 275.
55 Chris Cillizza, 2015, “This is the Most Controversial Correspondents’ Dinner Speech Ever. But Nobody Knew it at the Time,” The Washington Post, April 25, www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/04/24/this-is-the-most-controversial-speech-ever-at-the-correspondents-dinner-and-i-was-there/
56 Matthew R. Meier, “I am Super PAC and so can You! Stephen Colbert and the Citizen-Fool,” Western Journal of Communication 81 (2016): 1–2.
57 Chris O. Lundberg, “Revisiting the Future of Meaning,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 101 (2015): 178, 180–81.
58 Lundberg, “Revisiting,” 182.
59 Chaim Perelman and Lucille Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 116.
60 Debate night, 2016, YouTube, October 6, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLYHu0AG8GI
61 Christine Harold, OurSpace: Resisting the Corporate Control of Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 53.
62 Harold, OurSpace, xxi, 107.
63 Kerry K. Riley, Everyday Subversion (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2008), 69.
64 See Pearce, Making, 212.
65 Frequently Asked Questions, 2013, The Yes Men, http://theyesmen.org/faq. In response to a fan’s question asking what change they think they have effected, The Yes Men referred to the book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, a title that exemplifies The Yes Men’s comic counterfactuals. IAmA: We are the Yes Men AMA, 2012, Reddit, November 11, www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/133som/table_iama_we_are_the_yes_men_ama/, “What Change,” par. 5.
66 Chris Smith and Sarah Price, prods., The Yes Men (Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, 2004); Doro Bachrach, Ruth Charny, and Laura Nix, prods., The Yes Men Fix the World (New Video, 2009); Adam McKay, Alex Cooke, and Alan Hayling, prods., The Yes Men are Revolting (The Orchard, 2015). Since interviews, media coverage, and supplementary materials about The Yes Men can also be found online and in print, I conducted further searches through YouTube archives, periodicals, and other materials about the group.
67 Richard Morris, Sinners, Lovers, and Heroes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), 26.
68 Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian L. Ott, Places of Public Memory (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2010).
69 McKay, Cooke, and Hayling, The Yes, 1:16:57-1:25:43.
70 On the other hand, this choice may unfortunately reify stereotypes about Native Americans.
71 Bachrach, Charny, and Nix, The Yes, 17:20.
72 Bachrach, Charny, and Nix, The Yes, 19:30–33:15.
73 Sara Ahmed, Cultural Politics of Emotion (New York: Routledge, 2014), 25.
74 Erin J. Rand, “Bad Feelings in Public: Rhetoric, Affect, and Emotion,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 18 (2015): 161.
75 Ferguson, “Virtual,” 88.
76 Ferguson, “Virtual,” 88–89.
77 Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 430–40.
78 Bachrach, Charny, and Nix, The Yes, 55:00–59:00.
79 Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 141.
80 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill & Wang, 1972), 9.
81 New York Post Tells the Truth, n.d., The Yes Men, http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/newyorkpost, par. 2.
82 Leah Ceccarelli, “Manufactured Scientific Controversy: Science, Rhetoric, and Public Debate,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 14 (2011): 195–228.
83 Lambert, “The Yes,” 82.
84 Dave Maass, 2012, “How Laura Duffy Exacerbated the Prank Against Her,” San Diego City Beat, August 8, http://sdcitybeat.com/culture/seen-local/laura-duffy-exacerbated-prank/, par. 2.
85 Henri Bergson, Laughter, trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (Mineola: Dover, 2005), 5.
86 Rand, “Bad,” 174.
87 Smith and Price, The Yes, 6:58, 40:26, 34:18.
88 Happe, “The Body,” 133, 135.
89 See Don J. Waisanen, “Comedian-in-Chief: Presidential Jokes as Enthymematic Crisis Rhetoric,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 45 (2015): 335–60.
90 Smith and Price, The Yes, 54:03-1:04:50, 1:01:50-1:04:50.
91 Jenell Johnson, “‘A Man’s Mouth is his Castle’: The Midcentury Fluoridation Controversy and the Visceral Public,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 102 (2016): 1.
92 Kendall R. Phillips, “Spaces of Invention: Dissension, Freedom, and Thought in Foucault,” Philosophy and Rhetoric, 35 (2002): 329.
93 Ferguson, Virtual, 64.
94 Ferguson, Virtual, 73–74, 76–78.
95 Janet Landman, Elizabeth Vandewater, Abigail Stewart, and Janet Malley, “Missed Opportunities: Psychological Ramifications of Counterfactual Thought in Midlife Women,” Journal of Adult Development 2 (1995): 87.
96 Michele Hannoosh, “The Reflexive Function of Parody,” Comparative Literature 41 (1989): 117.
97 Lynn M. Berk, English Syntax (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 149–50.
98 George E. Yoos, “An Analysis of some Rhetorical Uses of Subjunctive Conditionals,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 8 (1975): 211.
99 Smith and Price, The Yes, 1:09:51–1:14:00, 1:14:20–1:17:32, 1:16:20.
100 John Morreall, Comic Relief (Malden: Wiley, 2009).
101 IAmA, “Has there,” par. 1.
102 Smith and Price, The Yes, 41:47.
103 Ferguson, Virtual, 85.
104 McKay, Cooke, and Hayling, The Yes.
105 Jane Arthurs and Sylvia Shaw, “Celebrity Capital in the Political Field: Russell Brand’s Migration from Stand-Up Comedy to Newsnight,” Media, Culture & Society 38 (2016): 1–17.
106 Palmer, The Logic, 224.
107 Mina Ivanova, “The Bulgarian Monument to the Soviet Army: Visual Burlesque, Epic, and the Emergence of Comic Subjectivity,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 100 (2014): 289.
108 Lisa Gring-Pemble and Martha Watson, “The Rhetorical Limits of Satire: An Analysis of James Finn Garner’s Politically Correct Bedtime Stories,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 89 (2003): 132.
109 Ben Schwartz, 2015, “Satirized for your Consumption,” The Baffler, March, http://thebaffler.com/salvos/satirized-consumption
110 Sloterdijk, Critique, 34, 14.
111 Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is there No Alternative? (Hants: John Hunt, 2009), 1.
112 Brian L. Ott, “The Visceral Politics of V for Vendetta: On Political Affect in Cinema,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 27 (2010): 49.
113 Brian L. Ott, Hamilton Bean, and Kellie Marin, “On the Aesthetic Production of Atmospheres: The Rhetorical Workings of Biopower at The CELL,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 13 (2016): 346.
114 Jeffrey P. Jones, “The Authenticity of Play,” in The Power of Satire, eds Marijke M. Drees and Sonja de Leeuw (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2015), 35–36.
115 Lilie Chouliaraki, The Ironic Spectator (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), 205.
116 Malcolm Gladwell, 2016, “The Satire Paradox,” Revisionist History, http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/10-the-satire-paradox
117 Day, Satire.
118 Bill Moyers Talks with The Yes Men, 2007, Bill Moyers Journal, July 13, www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07202007/transcript1.html?print, par. 95.
119 IAmA, “What Change,” 2013, par. 4.
120 Bachrach, Charny, and Nix, The Yes, 1:17:00.
121 Charles Altieri, The Particulars of Rapture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 2.
122 Ott, “The Visceral,” 42.
123 Shui-yin Sharon Yam, “Affective Economies and Alienizing Discourse: Citizenship and Maternity Tourism in Hong Kong,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 46 (2016): 410.
124 Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
125 Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric (Malden: Blackwell, 2004), 17.
126 Randall A. Lake, “Between Myth and History: Enacting Time in Native American Protest Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 77 (1991): 123–51.
127 Wenzlhuemer, “Counterfactual,” 43.
128 Kevin Casper, “I Didn’t Do it, Man, I Only Said It: The Asignifying Force of the Lenny Bruce Performance Film,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 44 (2014): 343.
129 Erin J. Rand, “An Inflammatory Fag and a Queer Form: Larry Kramer, Polemics, and Rhetorical Agency,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94 (2008): 299.
130 Ien Ang, Watching Dallas (London: Methuen, 1985), 134.
131 Agnes Heller, Immortal Comedy (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005), 202, 212.
132 Catherine Palczewski, “Argument in an Off Key,” in Arguing Communication & Culture, ed. Gerald. T. Goodnight, (Washington: National Communication Association, 2002); Robert Asen, “A Discourse Theory of Citizenship,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (2004): 189–211.
133 Ferguson, Virtual, 84.
134 Thomas Prasch, “Between What is and What if: Kevin Willmott’s CSA, in Too Bold for the Box Office, ed. Cynthia J. Miller (Lanham: Scarecrow, 2012), 175.