General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow TV paved America's road to Trump
A brand mascot that jumped off the cereal box: TV critic James Poniewozik explains the multimedia character Trump created.
By Sean Illing @seanilling sean.illing@vox.com Updated Nov 21, 2020, 7:37am EST
Donald Trump is the show we cant turn off, the car crash we cant look away from, the news cycle we cant escape.
There are just too many reasons why we got here to distill into a single explanation. But certainly one reason for Trumps ascendance is television. Its not quite right to say that TV made Trump president, but it is fair to say that TV created the conditions that made Trumps presidency possible.
This, at least, is the thesis of James Poniewoziks new book Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America. Poniewozik is a TV critic for the New York Times, and his book is an attempt to explain how Trump turned himself into the protagonist of his own TV show and then pulled all of us into it. Its also about what TV has done to our political culture and why Trump is the logical fulfillment of all the media trends of the last two decades or so.
According to Poniewozik, Trump is fundamentally a creature of TV. His whole public persona was shaped by TV and he cleverly used the medium, with shows like The Apprentice, to propel his political career. He also knew exactly what TV media craves spectacle, drama, and outrage and capitalized on it throughout his presidential campaign.
Donald Trump is not a person, Poniewozik writes, hes a character that wrote itself, a brand mascot that jumped off the cereal box and entered the world. And, of course, hes now entered the White House.
more
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/7/20920933/donald-trump-television-james-poniewozik
underpants
(182,800 posts)thus the horrendous turnout. He one on a fluke. Michael Steel yesterday said President by accident.
PatSeg
(47,429 posts)A brand mascot that jumped off the cereal box - Roger Ailes' dream come true. He turned politics and news into entertainment and the end result is a President Donald Trump. Idiocracy is no longer a spoof.
gordianot
(15,237 posts)They knew what he was all along and allowed this to happen.
magicarpet
(14,150 posts)dem4decades
(11,288 posts)Bradshaw3
(7,521 posts)That is a cliche from film and tv, like a western star from 50s tv show who starts acting like some big tough sheriff in real life after his career is long over.
I remember Mika and Joe saying they saw drumpf where he was signing something for the suckers and they teased him about it and he winked back, like yeah I know the whole thing is bullshit. They said he changed, where he started to take his bullshit seriously. In other words, a has been reality tv personality who started to think he really did know business and was an important figure in the world instead of the joke he is.
UpInArms
(51,283 posts)With Death Valley days and bonzo goes to Washington
frazzled
(18,402 posts)The Ant Farm collective's famous 1975 Media Burn video-performance.
Original version of Ant Farm's classic video art piece examining and satirizing the media, particularly the impact of television. On July 4, Independence Day, 1975, what a TV newscaster described as a "media circus" assembles at San Francisco's Cow Palace Stadium. A pyramid of television sets are stacked, doused with kerosene, and set ablaze. Then a modified 1959 Cadillac El Dorado Biarritz, piloted by two drivers who are guided only by a video monitor between their bucket seats, smashes through the pyramid destroying the TV sets.
Actual crash footage begins around 16:30, after "fake Kennedy" speech, but watch the whole thing: it's a classic
https://vimeo.com/217061929
2naSalit
(86,600 posts)So did Alan Watts...
Nay
(12,051 posts)also read an older book called "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television" by Jerry Mander.
abqtommy
(14,118 posts)been encouraged to think he's anything but what he is. He's a con man and grifter and has no socially
redeeming value. The number of votes against tRUMP in our recent election is one indicator of how
powerful any media is in supporting him. He lost! Put the blame on him, which is where it belongs.
DFW
(54,378 posts)We live in Germany, but we spend every July on the outer tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. In every airport, in every waiting room, there was usually CNN on (Fox Noise is not the channel of choice in Boston). There was nothing but Trump this, Trump that, one hour shows with 45 seconds of Hillary speaking and 35 minutes of Trump speaking.
My wife, who is German, warned me then: "all your media is showing is Trump, Trump, Trump. He could be speaking Armenian, and it wouldn't matter. If all your media shows is Trump, then when the election comes, he is all many people will have in their minds, and will thus be the one they vote for. Your media has become his enabler. Just because YOU know better doesn't mean the masses do. Just remember what I'm telling you when the election comes."