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Abstract
This essay offers convergent critical rhetoric as an approach to critical television studies. Constructed through a combination of rhetoric, ethnography, and documentary filmmaking, the approach encourages critics to utilize the logic of production to illuminate participatory practices in media. We use the “Rally to Restore Sanity,” hosted by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, as an exemplar. Through a combination of an academic essay and a short film, we examine the voice of participants at the rally, who questioned the polarized climate of the modern television industry. Using our approach, we found that attendee participation in the spectacle enacted a critique of “The Media” and the politics of profit-motivated news production. We close the essay with a discussion of limitations and future directions of the approach.
Acknowledgments
The authors, who contributed equally to the writing of this essay, would like to thank the Department of Communication and the Office of Research, Engagement, and Sponsored Programs at IPFW for financial support of this project. They would also like to thank Dr. Michaela D. E. Meyer and the reviewers for their hard work bringing this piece to publication. A special thank you goes to editor, Alix Watson, and field producer, Kristy Hess, for their contributions to the video.
Notes
We will discuss the pair of hosts in tandem; however, the two could be separated out for their individual roles in the rally. Stewart is constructed as the primary protagonist in the drama of the rally, as the voice of reason. Colbert, on the other hand, is better seen as a rhetorical foil, constructed to stand in the place of “The Media,” as we argue later in the essay. An analysis of the separate roles of each host would be interesting but is beyond the scope of this essay. Instead, we focus our energy on Stewart as representative of the overall argumentative thrust of the rally. As seen in the video, Stewart offers the most coherent argument at the rally and finalizes the performance with his “moment of sincerity.”.
The spectacle offered by Stewart and Colbert is reminiscent of Bakhtin's notion of the carnivalesque. While a fuller analysis of the “Rally” via this concept would be fruitful, it is beyond the scope of this essay. For additional theorizing about the connection between the carnivalesque and The Daily Show, see Hess (Citation2011b).
