Chapter 1: Putting the prankster in context
Chapter 2: Carnival pleasures: The liminal, the ludic, the synthetic, and the spectacular
Chapter 3: Normalization & neutralization vs. rebellion & resistance
Chapter 2: Carnival pleasures: The liminal, the ludic, the synthetic, and the spectacular
Chapter 3: Normalization & neutralization vs. rebellion & resistance
**********
“Pranks challenge all aspects of the social contract which have ossified.”
“The territory signposted by pranks may represent our single supremely tangible freedom.”
“…things are never what they seem…”
- From Re/Search #11: Pranks!
This chapter will be devoted to an analysis of the work of the media pranksters. Methods will include textual analysis as well as a discussion of the way the media have reported upon the phenomenon. The analysis will also include the relationship of aspects of the media prankster phenomenon to existing academic theories which have not yet been touched upon in this essay. In attempting to understand this style of broadcast talk, the literature review section of this dissertation pointed to cultural theories of the liminal, the ludic, the spectacular/narcissistic, and the carnivalesque as relevant to the theoretical positioning of the media prankster. What became clear is that the mission of the media prankster is to test the boundaries of appropriateness, and create room in media discourse for a point of view that contravenes conventional notions of truth, integrity, and consistency. Goffman’s work on identity, interaction, and styles of talk proves to be of particular value in this analysis, as does Tolson’s work in the area of synthetic personalities and its larger implications for the public sphere of broadcasting.
While it is tempting to accept the idea of the inversion of values of the carnival world and transpose it wholesale to the world of the media prankster, additional considerations should be factored in to the equation. The media prankster defies neat categorisation as he does not simply negate or oppose the status quo. Instead, he continually surprises, craftily switching gears and keeping us guessing. He plays against expectations, but it is not always clear when he is being sincere, sarcastic, or sardonic. Often his methods yield more interesting, and arguably superior results to those of his ‘professional’ media colleagues.
To further complicate matters, the media prankster exists both inside and outside the world of the media. By incorporating certain aspects of media and interaction protocol and blatantly ignoring others, the media prankster draws attention to the artificiality and arbitrariness of not just the media encounter, but to notions of media personality, authority, and celebrity as well. Yet, however awkward or uncomfortable it may be to observe the resulting style of communication, it makes for indisputably compelling viewing. Barnes’ (1980) and Bakhtin’s (1968) respective theories of subversion through ‘grotesque parody’ and 'grotesque realism’ provide us with insight into the strategies of the media prankster. It is through the manipulation and satirical overstating of those elements of everyday media presentation that are predictable and unremarkable in themselves that the prankster creates spectacle from the ordinary.
Meet Prankster #1: Ali G
In many ways the Ali G character represents a media manifestation of Baudrillard’s simulacrum. Of the pranksters analyzed in this dissertation, Ali G is probably the most seamless, and therefore the most successful at hoodwinking officialdom and creating intelligent, entertaining satire. Ali G creator Sacha Baron-Cohen has created a comprehensive universe for his character, complete with its own distinctive look, language, taste, sensibilities, and values. The Ali G persona has become so entrenched in British popular culture in 2000 that if we see a 'yellow Fubu track suit, wraparound shades, chunky jewellery, and Hilfiger hat', we automatically conjure up images of the skilled. Ali G’s heart is with the ‘Berkshire massive’, a fictional association based out of a well-to-do suburban London neighbourhood. It is from the untenable point of view of a ghetto boy from Berkshire that the world of Ali G originates. With this alter ego established, Ali’s strategy is to feign ignorance and gain social immunity by virtue of exotic ethnic and subcultural affiliations. In this guise he asks the most fundamental questions of the most respected figures.
Ali G guilefully positions himself as the voice of youth, the host of a television program said to speak to the young people in the ghetto, hence his impressive track record in securing interviews with assorted spokespersons and officials, e.g.:
Ali G to High Court Judge Pickles:
“Is I allowed to kill a man who calls me Mum a slag?”
“Is I allowed to kill a man who calls me Mum a slag?”
Ali G to noted scientist and Professor Heinz Wolff:
Ali G to Major General Ken Perkins (Britain’s most highly decorated soldier):
“Ain’t the army just full of thick blokes? Would it help getting in the army if you’ve already killed someone?”
Ali G creates a protective wall around himself with intentionally bad grammar, naive questions, malapropisms, historical inaccuracies, and vernacular slang. Allegedly serious exchanges, such as the above noted and the following, between Ali G and Lindsey Owen, the Bishop of Horsham, are thus able to take place within the context of what appears to be a straightforward media interaction.
Ali G: What does God look like?
Bishop: He is sort of Jesus-shaped.
A: What has God ever done?
B: Well he made the world. He created.
A: (incredulously) He made the world?
B: Of course.
A: (sounding surprised) Did he?
B: I can only tell you what I believe.
A: So you’re saying God made the world. (pause) And since then he’s just chilled?
In the world of the media prankster the embarrassing questions are asked, the social codes that govern interactions are tossed aside, and the usual cues and norms are ignored; in other words, a significantly different set of rules than those that apply to the world of the media professional. What we have here, to use Goffman's terminology, is the prankster deftly playing with the guidelines of 'in frame' and 'out of frame' interaction, the latter representing a form of communication that would be scrupulously avoided by the average person for fear of embarrassment or social retribution. Yet, for a reason difficult to pinpoint, ‘out of frame’ communications do not hold this threat for the seemingly humiliation-immune media prankster. Goffman’s work in the area of ‘backstage language’, or the type of speech usually reserved for subordinate spaces or areas without surveillance, is also applicable to the world of the media prankster. Whereas clear distinctions once existed between the backstage world and the onstage world, the dividing line has become increasingly difficult to ascertain, particularly now, and particularly in media culture.
After establishing the Ali G character on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show with the short interview segments cited above, Ali G creator Sacha Baron-Cohen was commissioned to create his own six-part series for Channel 4, and added the character of ‘Borat’ to his repertoire. Posing as a television reporter from Kazakhstan assigned to a story on ‘how to be real English gentleman’, Borat sought out British manners expert Lady Chelsea.
Once inside Lady Chelsea’s home, site of her respected etiquette classes, Borat carefully violated almost every norm of British behaviour, even broaching such taboo topics as sex, death, and bathroom habits at the dinner table. After the Borat segment featuring Lady Chelsea was broadcast in March 2000, the well-mannered Lady was said to be ‘mortified’, and was even considering closing down her etiquette classes altogether.Such anecdotes speak volumes about the circumstances under which norms can be contravened with relative impunity; namely in the face of implicit, societally shared ideas about media integrity and political correctness. The diffusion of the media prankster phenomenon, however, detracts from the public’s faith in the media as an institution. Not too long ago the popularly held assumption was that media presentation in the western world reflected the values inherent in a democratic society: reality, truth, balance, and reason. In the intervening years we have seen a shift away from communication at face value, and movement towards the manipulation and reconfiguration of both media object and subject. By the early 1990s Scannell and Tolson viewed this proliferation of synthesis and simulation in the media as a threat to Habermas’ (1974) conception of the public sphere. While Scannell emphasises the importance of maintaining rationality as a core value in the public sphere, Tolson acknowledges the paradox of a public sphere so diverse and so fragmented that it represents everyone and thus, in essence, no one.
This is the Tom Green Show
So go the intentionally nonsensical lyrics from the theme song of MTV’s The Tom Green Show, a contemporary media phenomenon posing even more of a threat to a broadcasting sphere assumed to be truthful, decent, and reasonable. Various critics have labelled the show using terms such as 'sick, offensive, amateurish, and infantile', and Green himself admits that he does not always know where the line of acceptable prankstering lies. On the weekly television program Green partakes in such activities as surprising his parents in bed at 3 a.m. with the bloody skull of a dead animal, sucking milk from a cow’s udder, and impersonating an injured, blind, or otherwise disabled person, taking repeated pratfalls and causing physical damage to public property and/or himself. All of these events take place with cameras rolling, making a point to emphasise the uncomfortable, awkward moments usually relegated to the cutting room floor. Not unlike the performers in carnival and festive rituals referred to earlier in this essay, Green does not believe in separating the audience from the spectacle, even subjecting himself to violence, scorn, and humiliation along the way.
Clearly, Green’s interest is in creating extreme situations and provoking reactions. MTV executive John Miller sums up the appeal of Tom Green as “a live action hero for the Beavis and Butthead crowd", referring to the irremediable MTV cartoon duo whose public sphere was limited to heavy metal videos and random acts of neighbourhood vandalism. Proving MTV’s Miller right in an episode from the second season of The Tom Green Show, Green took his camera crew to several New York City electronics stores. The alleged object of the exercise was the investigation of product warranties. If an item claimed to have a one-year warranty, Green took that to mean the article was covered for a full year, regardless of the circumstances surrounding its damage. With that logic employed, Green proceeded to demolish clock radios, watches, and even a guitar, in full view of the shopkeepers, and then walk out without paying for the articles, arguing they were covered by warranties. By creating this extreme situation Green provoked extreme reactions, in spite of the presence of video cameras. Whereas some people would defer to the camera’s presence and be more lenient and accommodating under its gaze, the shopkeepers in this segment were uniformly enraged by Green’s behaviour, one even threatening to ‘kick his [expletive] [expletive]’, regardless of whether the camera was on or off. This incident suggests that an unwavering faith and belief in anyone with a camera no longer holds true, and adds fuel to the aforementioned Scannell/Tolson debate on the status of broadcasting in the public sphere in an era of synthetic media personalities and unclear rules. But there are also differences between Tom Green and the uncivilised Beavis and Butthead. Green, for example, invariably attempts to overcompensate for his wrongdoings, often asking for forgiveness or hugs from those he has trespassed against. In the exchange below between Green and a cinema security guard, note Green’s use of manipulative, childlike techniques, in this case asking for friendship from the authority figure he knows he has pushed too far.
Unlike routines that rely on choreographed set-ups and punchlines, Green’s act succeeds regardless of his subjects’ reactions. The mere staging of extreme situations provides viewers with the opportunity to observe the equivalent of a car crash in slow motion, all within a context sanctioned by the masses: the media environment. Despite its many negations of broadcast protocol, The Tom Green Show succeeds in its communicative intentions, making the case for the existence of a new media language, one in which the unspoken is spoken, the off-camera becomes the on-camera, and the repugnant is the norm.
In addition to forging a distinct broadcast discourse in these ways, Green plays with conventional notions of media personality by sending out mixed messages about his identity via his appearance. Of the media pranksters studied in this essay, Green is the only one not to use what amounts to a costume to transmit signals about his persona. On the set of his television show he usually wears a suit and tie, an improbable wardrobe choice for the iconoclastic Green, but the outfit does add an aura of seriousness to the otherwise lawless goings on. And although Green comports himself like most other 20-somethings during his ‘on the street’ segments, there is something slightly suspicious and menacing about his mundane self-presentation. At a time when piercing, tattooing, and unusual hairstyles and hair colours have been adopted and co-opted by the masses, one of the few remaining ways to be different is to be inconspicuous. Dave Laing observed a similar tendency amongst the Mods in the 1960s, and Caroline Evans noticed the affinity for such ‘disappearing tactics’ amongst the rave generation of the 1990s. For Tom Green this has meant the adoption of a very ordinary physical appearance, thus casting himself as less overtly freakish than fellow pranksters such as Dennis Pennis and Nardwuar the Human Serviette, whom we will encounter next.
If the media prankster is a practitioner of the punk equivalent of journalism, then Paul Kaye, creator of the Dennis Pennis character, would be happy to be considered a card-carrying member of the trade. Kaye admits that “…as a kid, I was big on John Lydon/Rotten…I guess that’s evident from the orange hair. I used to be a bedroom punk. Ruffing (sic) up my tie on the way home from school. There’s a lot of that in Pennis.” Coincidentally (or perhaps not), a quote from John Lydon/Rotten used to synopsise the punk movement, proves illustrative in an examination of the media pranksters. Lydon dubbed the efforts of the punks the 'achievements of the deformed. Like their punk brethren, the media pranksters are imbued with the rebellious spirit of the disenfranchised. Not pretty or mellifluous enough for the straight media world, the pranksters, like the punks, cultivate and capitalise on a grotesqueness, or negative charisma. They simultaneously captivate and repel.
With his fluorescent orange hair, tasteless suits, nerdglasses, and a boisterous American accent and manner (oddly, he introduces himself as representing the BBC), Dennis Pennis communicates contempt for conventional media practice and its unwritten rules about appearance, appropriateness, and journalistic decorum. Operating from this dual base as member and mocker of the media, Pennis exploits techniques Goffman (1974) termed ‘deceptive frame’. When Pennis unabashedly insults the celebrities he is ‘interviewing’, and does so in the first few seconds of the encounter, it is clear that what ‘appears’ to be going on, is not really going on at all. Rather than a balanced media encounter, this is an outright attack, a communicative bait and switch.
The longest surviving of the media pranksters examined in this dissertation, the quizzically named Nardwuar the Human Serviette has been performing feats of media trickery since 1987. In the early days he was armed only with a tape recorder on loan from the college radio station with which he was affiliated. Soon the help of friends with parents who owned video cameras was enlisted, and confrontations between Nardwuar and television personalities, pop stars, and heads of state were documented on both audio and video formats. The resulting footage ended up broadcast on CITR, the University of British Columbia radio station, or on occasional specials on the local cable television channel. Alternately, transcriptions of the notorious exchanges ended up in such publications as Discorder (Vancouver), Chart (Toronto), Roctober (Chicago), The Rocket (Seattle), and Flipside and Popsmear (Los Angeles). As tales of his adventures have been confined to small circulation publications and broadcasts with limited zones of transmission, Nardwuar has been able to keep a relatively low profile (especially compared to the other pranksters discussed in this essay) and not have to worry about becoming a household name or face. (Ed. Note: As of the mid 2000s this is no longer the case as Nardwuar has become one of the most popular celebrity interviewers on YouTube, where his channel boasts over 228 millions views and 1.68 million subscribers as of mid July 2020.)
That it is Nardwuar’s habit to use the title ‘Nardwuar versus _____’ in his descriptions and transcriptions of interviews, indicates his framing of the interaction as oppositional and provocative as opposed to promotional and co-operative (the usual tone of the media encounter). Not entirely dissimilar to the style forged by Dennis Pennis, Nardwuar works with a model of the media encounter as obstacle course, the major difference between the two being that the assault is over much more quickly with Pennis. On a note of convergent evolution, also observe the physical similarities between Nardwuar and Pennis, two media pranksters operating concurrently and unbeknownst to each other, on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But in stark contrast to Pennis and his stinging one-liners, Nardwuar torments interviewees with a seemingly endless string of questions, testing both mettle and patience. Often times Nardwuar finds himself under attack from the interviewee. The result of this anomalous method is an upsetting of commonly held ideas about the temper of broadcast discourse and the related role of the media personality.
The following barrage of questions posed to rock musician Rob Zombie typifies Nardwuar’s interviewing style. For the most part, the incessant questions elicited either a non-verbal or monosyllabic response from Zombie. The non-verbal responses ranged from nervous laughter to sighs of frustration, silence, and even yawns. The overt yawn, meant to be read as a cue of the interviewee’s diminishing patience and increasing agitation, is superficially addressed by Nardwuar with “you seem a bit tired, Rob”, but ultimately ignored as social cue.
Exchanges such as the above violate many tenets of media and communications theory, thus prompting questions related to sense-making and the media prankster encounter. Insight into the decoding of multiply inflected interactions may be obtained from Hartley’s (1999) work on ‘DIY’ (i.e.do-it-yourself) citizenship, a thesis informed by McKay’s (1998) definition of ‘DIY’ as a distinctive cultural force. Because of mutual ‘DIY’ cultural affiliations and bases of knowledge, there are those who implicitly know how to translate the unique language of the media prankster. In addressing the burgeoning of microcultures and the associated plethora of reinscribed meanings, Hartley identifies ’DIY’ as a fifth possible form of citizenship, following civic, political, social and cultural. In so doing, Hartley validates the efforts and activities of those operating outside and/or around the usual centres of power, such as the pranksters considered here. According to Hartley, “while cultural identity has classically been perceived as proceeding from natural or territorial authenticity…more recent identities arise from the private…world of individual lifestyle, choice, and preference…and subcultural identities based on youth, taste, or fanship of various kinds. Now we are moving…towards…citizenship based not on an authenticist notion of cultural identity, but on a radically deontextualised network of meanings which locate identity in the mediasphere, not in the public sphere.”
The exchange between Nardwuar and Graham Coxon of the British pop band Blur that follows serves as an excellent example of the media prankster as DiY culturalist and of the implicit, successful interpretation of the prankster’s cultural activity by someone inhabiting a similar universe of sensibility, taste, and information. Coxon shows his ability to recontextualise the decontextualised meanings (as referenced above by Hartley), indicating a successful transmission of meaning from the mediasphere. In this case the meaning came from Coxon’s exposure to the already discussed British media prankster Dennis Pennis. Able to read the appearance and combative style of Nardwuar as a media prankster in the Pennis tradition, Coxon implicitly understands the context of the tete a tete, and does not get flustered. He is therefore able to turn the exchange with the media prankster into an amusing volley. Those who do not understand the cheekiness, sarcasm, and simultaneously self-mocking and media-mocking nature of the prankster are unable to do so.
Tolson’s (1991) account of the ‘dialogic improvisation’ characteristic of television chat show talk is also helpful in this analysis. He likens this type of broadcast talk to a “…jazz performance, not only because it is apparently unrehearsed, but also in so far as it involves a play of thematic repetition and variation…A form of wit is demonstrated by interweaving these various topics, so that each is inflected in terms of the other…Two or three topics in the air at once and the skill of the participants consists in their ability to manipulate the dialogue to ensure that the verbal juggling act continues.”
To conclude the methods and analysis chapter, I would like to recap some of the main points. The media prankster is creating a new form of media discourse by parodying aspects of broadcast talk and mixing in elements of what Goffman has termed “informal talk”, the site where shifts in identity and topic are allowed. As opposed to being a straight inversion of the institutional language of broadcasting, this new form of discourse mixes genres in jest and in seriousness, turning media communication into a puzzle for which clues may be found in theshared networks of meaning of ‘DIY’ citizenship. In these ways the language of the media prankster demonstrates its ludic playfulness, its carnivalesque unpredictability, its punkish rebelliousness, and its ‘betwixt and between’ liminality.
Ali G creates a protective wall around himself with intentionally bad grammar, naive questions, malapropisms, historical inaccuracies, and vernacular slang. Allegedly serious exchanges, such as the above noted and the following, between Ali G and Lindsey Owen, the Bishop of Horsham, are thus able to take place within the context of what appears to be a straightforward media interaction.
Ali G: What does God look like?
Bishop: He is sort of Jesus-shaped.
A: What has God ever done?
B: Well he made the world. He created.
A: (incredulously) He made the world?
B: Of course.
A: (sounding surprised) Did he?
B: I can only tell you what I believe.
A: So you’re saying God made the world. (pause) And since then he’s just chilled?
After establishing the Ali G character on Channel 4’s The 11 O’Clock Show with the short interview segments cited above, Ali G creator Sacha Baron-Cohen was commissioned to create his own six-part series for Channel 4, and added the character of ‘Borat’ to his repertoire. Posing as a television reporter from Kazakhstan assigned to a story on ‘how to be real English gentleman’, Borat sought out British manners expert Lady Chelsea.
Once inside Lady Chelsea’s home, site of her respected etiquette classes, Borat carefully violated almost every norm of British behaviour, even broaching such taboo topics as sex, death, and bathroom habits at the dinner table. After the Borat segment featuring Lady Chelsea was broadcast in March 2000, the well-mannered Lady was said to be ‘mortified’, and was even considering closing down her etiquette classes altogether.Such anecdotes speak volumes about the circumstances under which norms can be contravened with relative impunity; namely in the face of implicit, societally shared ideas about media integrity and political correctness. The diffusion of the media prankster phenomenon, however, detracts from the public’s faith in the media as an institution. Not too long ago the popularly held assumption was that media presentation in the western world reflected the values inherent in a democratic society: reality, truth, balance, and reason. In the intervening years we have seen a shift away from communication at face value, and movement towards the manipulation and reconfiguration of both media object and subject. By the early 1990s Scannell and Tolson viewed this proliferation of synthesis and simulation in the media as a threat to Habermas’ (1974) conception of the public sphere. While Scannell emphasises the importance of maintaining rationality as a core value in the public sphere, Tolson acknowledges the paradox of a public sphere so diverse and so fragmented that it represents everyone and thus, in essence, no one.
Meet Prankster #2: Tom Green
This is the Tom Green Show
It’s not the Green Tom Show
This is my favourite show
Because it is my show
So go the intentionally nonsensical lyrics from the theme song of MTV’s The Tom Green Show, a contemporary media phenomenon posing even more of a threat to a broadcasting sphere assumed to be truthful, decent, and reasonable. Various critics have labelled the show using terms such as 'sick, offensive, amateurish, and infantile', and Green himself admits that he does not always know where the line of acceptable prankstering lies. On the weekly television program Green partakes in such activities as surprising his parents in bed at 3 a.m. with the bloody skull of a dead animal, sucking milk from a cow’s udder, and impersonating an injured, blind, or otherwise disabled person, taking repeated pratfalls and causing physical damage to public property and/or himself. All of these events take place with cameras rolling, making a point to emphasise the uncomfortable, awkward moments usually relegated to the cutting room floor. Not unlike the performers in carnival and festive rituals referred to earlier in this essay, Green does not believe in separating the audience from the spectacle, even subjecting himself to violence, scorn, and humiliation along the way.
Clearly, Green’s interest is in creating extreme situations and provoking reactions. MTV executive John Miller sums up the appeal of Tom Green as “a live action hero for the Beavis and Butthead crowd", referring to the irremediable MTV cartoon duo whose public sphere was limited to heavy metal videos and random acts of neighbourhood vandalism. Proving MTV’s Miller right in an episode from the second season of The Tom Green Show, Green took his camera crew to several New York City electronics stores. The alleged object of the exercise was the investigation of product warranties. If an item claimed to have a one-year warranty, Green took that to mean the article was covered for a full year, regardless of the circumstances surrounding its damage. With that logic employed, Green proceeded to demolish clock radios, watches, and even a guitar, in full view of the shopkeepers, and then walk out without paying for the articles, arguing they were covered by warranties. By creating this extreme situation Green provoked extreme reactions, in spite of the presence of video cameras. Whereas some people would defer to the camera’s presence and be more lenient and accommodating under its gaze, the shopkeepers in this segment were uniformly enraged by Green’s behaviour, one even threatening to ‘kick his [expletive] [expletive]’, regardless of whether the camera was on or off. This incident suggests that an unwavering faith and belief in anyone with a camera no longer holds true, and adds fuel to the aforementioned Scannell/Tolson debate on the status of broadcasting in the public sphere in an era of synthetic media personalities and unclear rules. But there are also differences between Tom Green and the uncivilised Beavis and Butthead. Green, for example, invariably attempts to overcompensate for his wrongdoings, often asking for forgiveness or hugs from those he has trespassed against. In the exchange below between Green and a cinema security guard, note Green’s use of manipulative, childlike techniques, in this case asking for friendship from the authority figure he knows he has pushed too far.
Tom and cameraman brazenly walk in to cinema without buying tickets, with camera rolling.
Tom (to camera, while walking): We're going to sneak in to the movie now...we've slipped around the side...(he whistles to himself nonchalantly)
Tom (upon encountering the security guard): You're tall! You're fantastically tall.
Guard: I'm not taller than you. Now I'm asking you to leave or I'm going to throw you out.
Tom: You've got good security here.
(TG to camera): Of course they're a business and if everyone snuck in they wouldn't make any money.
(TG to guard): So we're friends again?
Guard: We were never friends to begin with. I have no stake in what you're doing; you have no stake in what I'm doing.
Tom: We talked a long time though. That's the beginning of a friendship, possibly. (Guard begins to break a slight smile)
Tom: Unfortunately I live on the other side of the country so it would be a long distance relationship. (pause) Maybe we just better part company now before we get too attached.
Unlike routines that rely on choreographed set-ups and punchlines, Green’s act succeeds regardless of his subjects’ reactions. The mere staging of extreme situations provides viewers with the opportunity to observe the equivalent of a car crash in slow motion, all within a context sanctioned by the masses: the media environment. Despite its many negations of broadcast protocol, The Tom Green Show succeeds in its communicative intentions, making the case for the existence of a new media language, one in which the unspoken is spoken, the off-camera becomes the on-camera, and the repugnant is the norm.
In addition to forging a distinct broadcast discourse in these ways, Green plays with conventional notions of media personality by sending out mixed messages about his identity via his appearance. Of the media pranksters studied in this essay, Green is the only one not to use what amounts to a costume to transmit signals about his persona. On the set of his television show he usually wears a suit and tie, an improbable wardrobe choice for the iconoclastic Green, but the outfit does add an aura of seriousness to the otherwise lawless goings on. And although Green comports himself like most other 20-somethings during his ‘on the street’ segments, there is something slightly suspicious and menacing about his mundane self-presentation. At a time when piercing, tattooing, and unusual hairstyles and hair colours have been adopted and co-opted by the masses, one of the few remaining ways to be different is to be inconspicuous. Dave Laing observed a similar tendency amongst the Mods in the 1960s, and Caroline Evans noticed the affinity for such ‘disappearing tactics’ amongst the rave generation of the 1990s. For Tom Green this has meant the adoption of a very ordinary physical appearance, thus casting himself as less overtly freakish than fellow pranksters such as Dennis Pennis and Nardwuar the Human Serviette, whom we will encounter next.
Meet Prankster #3: Dennis Pennis
With his fluorescent orange hair, tasteless suits, nerdglasses, and a boisterous American accent and manner (oddly, he introduces himself as representing the BBC), Dennis Pennis communicates contempt for conventional media practice and its unwritten rules about appearance, appropriateness, and journalistic decorum. Operating from this dual base as member and mocker of the media, Pennis exploits techniques Goffman (1974) termed ‘deceptive frame’. When Pennis unabashedly insults the celebrities he is ‘interviewing’, and does so in the first few seconds of the encounter, it is clear that what ‘appears’ to be going on, is not really going on at all. Rather than a balanced media encounter, this is an outright attack, a communicative bait and switch.
It is significant that Pennis, unlike fellow media pranksters Ali G, Tom Green, and Nardwuar, deals exclusively with superstar celebrities. By accosting the likes of Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Cindy Crawford, Mel Gibson, and Cher at awards ceremonies and other superstar meeting places, Pennis stages assaults on the most highly media-trained personnel. His technique is the surprise attack, essentially carpet-bombing the stars with insulting one-liners. With an arsenal filled with corny wordplay and bad puns, there is little room for interviewee rebuttal or redemption. Pennis’ pranksterism is primarily about his performance, with a large part of the appeal being celebrity schadenfreude.
Examples of Pennis’ ‘hit and run’ interviewing technique include:
Demi Moore, if it was done tastefully and they paid you enough, would you ever consider keeping your clothes on in a film?
Pierce Brosnan, I was glued to my seat during your last movie. Otherwise I would have left.
Elton John, do you know what they call you in Germany? Herr Piece!
Mel Gibson, your film did wonders for my sex life. When I went to the cinema, I slept with the whole audience.
Tom Hanks, I loved your new film “Apollo 13”… but it was completely lacking in atmosphere!
A feature unique to Pennis as media prankster is the inversion of the focus of attention in media encounters. Whereas the conventional model usually features a brief question from the interviewer, followed by an explanatory and/or anecdotal response from the interviewee, Pennis rejects this mode of interaction in favour of one which shamelessly focuses the attention on the interviewer. This scenario would be one result of the violation of broadcast protocol initiated by the media pranksters. Part of what Pennis’s act is about, then, is the repositioning of the celebrity spotlight. By brazenly disrespecting those usually surrounded by sycophants and disproportionate praise, he invokes a pleasure Fiske (1987) associates with the spectacle of wrestling, namely the “exaggeration of the pleasure of looking.”
Exaggerated pleasures notwithstanding, even Kaye tired of his celebrity-assaulting alter ego, laying the pesky Pennis to rest in 1998. “I was bored [expletive] of the whole [expletive] thing”, admitted Kaye, “…Dennis…was becoming a fat, bloated, parody of himself…falling into every cliché in the book…Killing him was important to me.” Ali G creator Sacha Baron-Cohen is reported to have similarly hung up the trademark yellow track suit earlier this year, and rumours are circulating in North America that it’s only a matter of time before everyone in North America will be able to recognise Tom Green, effectively nullifying his act. For the media prankster there is an inverse relationship between success and efficacy, and he therefore must be viewed as having a ‘best before’ date. With these parameters for the media prankster established, we are poised to meet the final protocol-defying character under consideration in this essay. It should come as no surprise that he breaks the rules set out above.
Examples of Pennis’ ‘hit and run’ interviewing technique include:
Demi Moore, if it was done tastefully and they paid you enough, would you ever consider keeping your clothes on in a film?
Pierce Brosnan, I was glued to my seat during your last movie. Otherwise I would have left.
Elton John, do you know what they call you in Germany? Herr Piece!
Mel Gibson, your film did wonders for my sex life. When I went to the cinema, I slept with the whole audience.
Tom Hanks, I loved your new film “Apollo 13”… but it was completely lacking in atmosphere!
Exaggerated pleasures notwithstanding, even Kaye tired of his celebrity-assaulting alter ego, laying the pesky Pennis to rest in 1998. “I was bored [expletive] of the whole [expletive] thing”, admitted Kaye, “…Dennis…was becoming a fat, bloated, parody of himself…falling into every cliché in the book…Killing him was important to me.” Ali G creator Sacha Baron-Cohen is reported to have similarly hung up the trademark yellow track suit earlier this year, and rumours are circulating in North America that it’s only a matter of time before everyone in North America will be able to recognise Tom Green, effectively nullifying his act. For the media prankster there is an inverse relationship between success and efficacy, and he therefore must be viewed as having a ‘best before’ date. With these parameters for the media prankster established, we are poised to meet the final protocol-defying character under consideration in this essay. It should come as no surprise that he breaks the rules set out above.
Meet Prankster #4: Nardwuar The Human Serviette
The longest surviving of the media pranksters examined in this dissertation, the quizzically named Nardwuar the Human Serviette has been performing feats of media trickery since 1987. In the early days he was armed only with a tape recorder on loan from the college radio station with which he was affiliated. Soon the help of friends with parents who owned video cameras was enlisted, and confrontations between Nardwuar and television personalities, pop stars, and heads of state were documented on both audio and video formats. The resulting footage ended up broadcast on CITR, the University of British Columbia radio station, or on occasional specials on the local cable television channel. Alternately, transcriptions of the notorious exchanges ended up in such publications as Discorder (Vancouver), Chart (Toronto), Roctober (Chicago), The Rocket (Seattle), and Flipside and Popsmear (Los Angeles). As tales of his adventures have been confined to small circulation publications and broadcasts with limited zones of transmission, Nardwuar has been able to keep a relatively low profile (especially compared to the other pranksters discussed in this essay) and not have to worry about becoming a household name or face. (Ed. Note: As of the mid 2000s this is no longer the case as Nardwuar has become one of the most popular celebrity interviewers on YouTube, where his channel boasts over 228 millions views and 1.68 million subscribers as of mid July 2020.)
That it is Nardwuar’s habit to use the title ‘Nardwuar versus _____’ in his descriptions and transcriptions of interviews, indicates his framing of the interaction as oppositional and provocative as opposed to promotional and co-operative (the usual tone of the media encounter). Not entirely dissimilar to the style forged by Dennis Pennis, Nardwuar works with a model of the media encounter as obstacle course, the major difference between the two being that the assault is over much more quickly with Pennis. On a note of convergent evolution, also observe the physical similarities between Nardwuar and Pennis, two media pranksters operating concurrently and unbeknownst to each other, on opposite sides of the Atlantic. But in stark contrast to Pennis and his stinging one-liners, Nardwuar torments interviewees with a seemingly endless string of questions, testing both mettle and patience. Often times Nardwuar finds himself under attack from the interviewee. The result of this anomalous method is an upsetting of commonly held ideas about the temper of broadcast discourse and the related role of the media personality.
The following barrage of questions posed to rock musician Rob Zombie typifies Nardwuar’s interviewing style. For the most part, the incessant questions elicited either a non-verbal or monosyllabic response from Zombie. The non-verbal responses ranged from nervous laughter to sighs of frustration, silence, and even yawns. The overt yawn, meant to be read as a cue of the interviewee’s diminishing patience and increasing agitation, is superficially addressed by Nardwuar with “you seem a bit tired, Rob”, but ultimately ignored as social cue.
Are you a fan of those true-life crime books that are put out by Time-Life Books?
Have you ever tried absinthe?
Do you know exactly where in Los Angeles that Alfalfa from the Little Rascals was shot in the head over a bad drug deal?
Have you been to a graveyard at midnight?
What do you know about human sacrifices, Rob Zombie? The Aztecs were into human sacrifices.
Have you ever been to a mortuary?
Are you into necrophilia at all, studying the history of it?
Do you own any shrunken heads?
What kind of lenses do you use to get that effect in your eyes?
The interview continued for quite some time, complete with Nardwuar’s inexplicably formal, perhaps grotesquely parodic, use of the interviewee’s full name in almost every question. In addition, note a politeness that defies reason (statements such as ‘thanks for the interview’, and ‘really appreciate your time’ repeatedly appear in the full transcript), considering the fact that Zombie has been subjected to a line of questioning resembling a mutant form of cross-examination more than an interview. As Zombie grew increasingly weary with the proceedings and it was clear the interview was drawing to a close, Nardwuar’s method takes a Dadaesque turn, as he attempts to cajole the interviewee into participating in a childlike call and response (‘doot doola doot doo’) which has become the customary grand finale of his interviews.
N: Well, thanks very much for your time, Rob. I really do appreciate it. Keep on rockin' in the free world. And doot doola doot doo...
RZ: Okay.
N: Rob Zombie? Doot doola doot doo…
RZ: (silence)
N: Hello Rob Zombie? Just to end the interview? Goodbye, thanks for your time, Rob, and doot doola doot doo...
RZ: See you later.
N: Thanks again for your time. Would you be able to finish off with that at all? Could I ask you please? Please?
RZ: A couple more times.
N: A couple more times? Okay. Doot doola doot doo...
RZ: I almost got it down.
N: Okay. Doot doola doot doo...
RZ: Keep going, it's almost funny.
N: Rob Zombie! Doot doola doot doo... Are you there on the speaker phone? Are you still there?
RZ: I'm still here.
N: Thanks very much for the interview. I do appreciate it. And doot doola doot doo...
RZ: (Silence)
(After an extended silence, it is clear Mr. Zombie has left the premises. He did not utter the meaningless linguistic units ‘doo doo’ and consummate the interaction as desired.)
Exchanges such as the above violate many tenets of media and communications theory, thus prompting questions related to sense-making and the media prankster encounter. Insight into the decoding of multiply inflected interactions may be obtained from Hartley’s (1999) work on ‘DIY’ (i.e.do-it-yourself) citizenship, a thesis informed by McKay’s (1998) definition of ‘DIY’ as a distinctive cultural force. Because of mutual ‘DIY’ cultural affiliations and bases of knowledge, there are those who implicitly know how to translate the unique language of the media prankster. In addressing the burgeoning of microcultures and the associated plethora of reinscribed meanings, Hartley identifies ’DIY’ as a fifth possible form of citizenship, following civic, political, social and cultural. In so doing, Hartley validates the efforts and activities of those operating outside and/or around the usual centres of power, such as the pranksters considered here. According to Hartley, “while cultural identity has classically been perceived as proceeding from natural or territorial authenticity…more recent identities arise from the private…world of individual lifestyle, choice, and preference…and subcultural identities based on youth, taste, or fanship of various kinds. Now we are moving…towards…citizenship based not on an authenticist notion of cultural identity, but on a radically deontextualised network of meanings which locate identity in the mediasphere, not in the public sphere.”
The exchange between Nardwuar and Graham Coxon of the British pop band Blur that follows serves as an excellent example of the media prankster as DiY culturalist and of the implicit, successful interpretation of the prankster’s cultural activity by someone inhabiting a similar universe of sensibility, taste, and information. Coxon shows his ability to recontextualise the decontextualised meanings (as referenced above by Hartley), indicating a successful transmission of meaning from the mediasphere. In this case the meaning came from Coxon’s exposure to the already discussed British media prankster Dennis Pennis. Able to read the appearance and combative style of Nardwuar as a media prankster in the Pennis tradition, Coxon implicitly understands the context of the tete a tete, and does not get flustered. He is therefore able to turn the exchange with the media prankster into an amusing volley. Those who do not understand the cheekiness, sarcasm, and simultaneously self-mocking and media-mocking nature of the prankster are unable to do so.
Nardwuar: Everybody thinks, ‘oh Blur are Mods’. You guys are not mods, are you?
Graham Coxon: No.
N: ‘Cause I always think of Mods like '65 Who, R&B, all that stuff. Mods wouldn't wear Converse. You're not Mods, are you?
GC: No, we're not Mods.
N: Like you're not Mod. You're not Mod. Like Blur are not Mod! You guys have effects pedals. What are all those effects pedals you have Graham?
GC: They're Mod pedals.
N: Yeah, ‘Mod’-ulation pedals, but I mean...
GC: (interrupting) You press one of them and a parka suddenly appears.
Tolson’s (1991) account of the ‘dialogic improvisation’ characteristic of television chat show talk is also helpful in this analysis. He likens this type of broadcast talk to a “…jazz performance, not only because it is apparently unrehearsed, but also in so far as it involves a play of thematic repetition and variation…A form of wit is demonstrated by interweaving these various topics, so that each is inflected in terms of the other…Two or three topics in the air at once and the skill of the participants consists in their ability to manipulate the dialogue to ensure that the verbal juggling act continues.”
To conclude the methods and analysis chapter, I would like to recap some of the main points. The media prankster is creating a new form of media discourse by parodying aspects of broadcast talk and mixing in elements of what Goffman has termed “informal talk”, the site where shifts in identity and topic are allowed. As opposed to being a straight inversion of the institutional language of broadcasting, this new form of discourse mixes genres in jest and in seriousness, turning media communication into a puzzle for which clues may be found in theshared networks of meaning of ‘DIY’ citizenship. In these ways the language of the media prankster demonstrates its ludic playfulness, its carnivalesque unpredictability, its punkish rebelliousness, and its ‘betwixt and between’ liminality.
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