Representation and the Politics of Play: Stephen Colbert's<i>Better Know a District</i>

Abstract

This study examines Stephen Colbert's Better Know a District, the enigmatic segment on Comedy Central's Colbert Report in which the comedian interviews sitting members of the House of Representatives. Offering a textual analysis of the segment from its debut in October 2005 until the midterm elections of 2006, complemented by an analysis of the popular discourse surrounding the segment, this article explores Better Know a District from both instrumental and cultural perspectives. It argues that the segment interjects a measure of political content into a late-night landscape generally characterized by banal entertainment, while offering rank-in-file representatives an alternative televisual venue in which to craft affective ties with a constituency that pays less and less attention to traditional forms of political communication. In so doing, it represents politics as a form of postmodern play, manipulating elements of the real to create a spectacle that calls into question the very logic of representation. Ultimately, though, this study argues that as parody, Better Know a District indulges in the techniques of postmodern spectacle as a way of critically confronting the “aesthetic totalitarianism” of right-wing political communication that privileges affective spectacle over rational argument and actively seeks to undermine the deliberative process.