From dramas to nightly television, presence grows
As midterm exam weeks rolled around again, many students found themselves distracted by the second coming of something awesome. Something sublime. No, not far-away spring break plans or anything adventurous like that. Rather, students found themselves bottled up in their dorms and apartments finishing up the recently released second season of Netflix’s “House of Cards.”
The show represents a growing trend among recent American pop culture: politics as a subject matter. Washington, D.C. has never looked more sexy and dazzling.
This new infatuation for the lives of the nation’s leaders is not exclusive to Kevin Spacey’s evil exhibition — it has trickled down into all aspects of pop culture, from nightly TV to popular late-night satires like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are becoming primary sources of news and entertainment, for many. When our political dysfunctions come out of the mouths of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, they become jokes, distanced from our daily lives. One will likely gain far more insight from following the behind-the-scenes scheming in the office of Frank Underwood than nodding off on a couch with C-SPAN on in the background.
Citizens don’t need to understand the ins and outs of proper filibustering to enjoy American politics. One doesn’t even need to have particularly strong ideological convictions to join in “the Big Discussion.” What people do want, however, is a new form of escapism. The irony of combining the biggest fears of a nation with comedy, thrill or even horror creates an enticing sense of surrealism.
Americans want a Washington that does its job and represents what they as citizens believe, but no matter how real this idealized world becomes, the world of politics will continue to be poked, prodded and harassed. The dysfunction of our nation’s capital is laughed at in some new form of dark humor where the inability to solve our problems becomes a theatre.
This turn to arts and culture as a way of escaping the fears of regular life has been going on forever. Placing politics, the forum of those same fears, at the forefront of arts and culture makes for a mesmerizing, if tense, experience. Frankly, it is such an exciting time to be politically active because of this new cultural fascination with our leaders.
Thus, we should continue to enjoy these shows despite the fears that matters in Washington can sometimes be so trivial, reckless and dehumanized. This new pop culture of politics allows us to identify exactly what we as citizens value and to appreciate the mundane and busy, if power-hungry, moralists that these people could very well be.