Imaginary critics in my head are inveighing about my misuse of the word “nihilism.” Yes, I know it’s a frequently meaningless word in the plethora of contexts that it’s used. Just so we’re on the same page, or at least in the same book, here’s how The Sender defines nihilism in TV terms:
An artifact of writers’ attitudes toward the subject, expressed in plot, character and humor suppositions; sensed most immediately as an aspect of setting. You could describe it as a “malevolence principle.”
In comedy, particularly this means nihilistic irony: the view that it’s funny because it sucks, funny because it hurts someone, funny because people are shit, funny because the media is hypocritical, funny because the government are incompetent, funny because manners are a rigged game, etc.
Nihilism provokes strong feelings and divides audiences. Nice people don’t like it. Nihilistic comedies often come off like they’re trying to force bitterness on you. Other times, they seem to forgive what viewers find unforgivable. Nihilistic storytelling has a long and respectable history with the English (who prefer naturalism and lean pessimist), but many Americans see no reason why they should be shown this sort of thing at all.
Except in TV comedy, anyway, where thanks to TV’s screaming feedback bombs of catastrophic self-destruct (directed, last time, at anodyne comedy), it’s been the unchallenged norm for at least ten years. The Simpsons was so shocking to 1990 eyes precisely because nihilistic irony in cartoons was unheard of. Seinfeld was criticized for extremes of negativity (hard to imagine now). Some shows sneak negativity in under other guises, like ironic endorsement (All In The Family, Married With Children), deadpan (King of the Hill), moralizing (Arrested Development), zany cartoon shit (Family Guy), cozy aspiration (Friends), mock anodyne (Venture Brothers), mock naturalism (House, M.D.), reactionary know-it-all-ism (That 70’s Show). Since 2000, though, most nihilistic comedies are out about it, and simply write off the portion of the audience who’d rather see something sweet.
Speaking of which, because irony is so de rigueur in comedy, plenty of shows work the opposite gimmick, sneaking in serious messages beneath faux-nihilism. This is an inherently inferior approach, though, as it weakens any point to bracket it between declarations of indifference. One show definitely hurt by its patina of false negativity is South Park. For a comedy essentially about morality, South Park does its best to conceal having any – hedging all bets with the golden mean fallacy and following with a fart joke, as though half the time, the central characters weren’t voicing authorial arbitrage anyway. But there have been plenty of comedies that, one suspects, would be happy to drop the irony.
Unfortunately for them, the way mass, one-to-many media seems to work is: much too slowly to avoid incubating an enormous backlash that destroys everything standing when it occurs. As for us, the timeframe is about right; no doubt the economic news is already making people self-importantly reconsider themselves (all of which they will type on the New York Times website in any available comment page). This is the sort of thing that tends to change during such windows. All things considered, the ironic kitsch is probably doomed.
