The Lessons I’ve Learned Teaching Entertainment, Media, & Politics This Semester
In the Spring of 2016, my colleague Celia Paris and I sat down to gather our thoughts on co-teaching a new course at Loyola University Maryland that would mix perspectives from the disciplines of communication and political science. The course title: Entertainment, Media, and Politics.
The objective: engage upper-level undergraduates in the study of the exciting, often curious intersection of entertainment and politics by critically examining a whole range of media content: late-night comedy, political satire, sitcoms, national security melodramas, film, dystopian fiction, and even the wonderful world of Harry Potter.
Over the course of a 15 week semester, we’d work with students so they would walk away with an understanding of the effects of consuming this politically entertaining media content on knowledge and learning, civic and political engagement, and the health of our American democracy more broadly. We’d also take a closer look at how entertainment influences our perceptions of the political process and our resulting attitudes toward politicians.
In between our proposal for the joint course and the semester we were slated to teach it (Spring 2018), a little thing called the 2016 general election and the first year of the Trump presidency happened.
We weren’t necessarily expecting to be teaching in such a fast-paced and ultimately uncivil media environment — one driven by Presidential attacks on Twitter, a seemingly endless discussion of alternate facts vs. fake news, and hyper partisan cable news and late night political comedy content.
As Brian Stelter so aptly noted in his CNN Special Report: Late Night in the Age of Trump, the Trump presidency quickly turned the world of late night comedy upside down and made teaching about entertainment, media, and politics in this new era an interesting, fast-paced, and dynamic challenge.
We are midway through the semester at this point, and we’ve already learned so much from our students. I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to deeply engage with their thoughts on the intersection of entertainment, media, and politics. I’ve also taken note of the varying outlooks of students and professors from two related yet distinctly different academic disciplines: communication vs. political science.
There are a few takeaways that have been so significant and so striking this semester that they’re useful to all who are thinking about the ways that comedy and entertainment can spur engagement and activism.
- First, while our students enjoy political comedy because it can make them laugh and teach them a little bit about what’s going on in the world, much like research by Danna Young has suggested, they see comedy as entertainment, first and foremost, not news. Comedy is color commentary, not fact. For some, the proliferation of anti-Trump comedy is promising because they see it as a tool that helps keep the administration in check. For others, it’s just too much of a constant attack on the President and his authority. Not surprisingly, these students tend to be in the minority in our class and seem to have a harder time speaking up. But it’s important that we really continue to hear their voices and take their perspectives into account.
- Just because our students see comedy as comedy, doesn’t mean that they are happy with what they classify as traditional news content. In class, we asked students to list the news sources they trust and rely upon and those that they don’t trust and try to avoid. The size of the two lists, separated by a thin line on the chalkboard were about the same. In many respects, they are mapping news outlets in the same way that Vanessa Otero did in her now viral Media Bias Chart. Interestingly, we have some students who actively avoid networks like Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN given their perceived partisanship and the hyperreality that’s emphasized in their coverage of political events. Other students make a conscious effort to consume this cable news content as a way to be exposed to varying, often personally contrary points-of-view. Students who have spent a semester or more studying abroad are more likely to select BBC News and other international outposts as their top news outlets.
- While most students are okay with the fact that late night comedy has gotten more political in the Trump era, it is not always okay when events that are traditionally entertainment-oriented get political. While one student shared Hillary’s Clinton’s cameo at the Grammy Awards with the class and there was a lot of discussion of Oprah’s speech at the Golden Globes, there’s a general consensus that some areas of everyday entertainment life — like professional sports — have just gotten too political.
- While we are reading a text called Political TV by Chuck Tryon (a great primer for undergraduates in a course like ours), students have recognized that classifying what counts as “political TV” is a tricky business. These days dramas like Grey’s Anatomy tackle the political with a recent episode about police and gun violence and one about domestic abuse and the political themes in cartoons like Family Guy abound. While a lot of what our students watch doesn’t fall into the explicit category of “political TV,” almost everyone in the class notes that it’s increasingly difficult to find entertainment programming that doesn’t at least touch on or occasionally address political issues and themes.
Underlying all of our discussions is the reality and presence of social media. So much of the content these students are consuming comes to them in the form of short clips that their friends share on Facebook and other social media platforms. In a class of about 30, everyone has a Netflix account.
While there is cable in the dorms, they are effectively cord cutters at heart. In truth, what they consume is often as important as how they consume it. While many are certainly up during the late night comedy live window, they are not tuning into Stephen Colbert or Seth Meyers in real-time, except perhaps when it’s assigned for that week’s out-of-class watching.
Oh and that funny political science vs. communications divide? It seems that communication students are more likely to see social media as a mostly positive addition to our political life in that it enables connections and opportunities that weren’t there before in a truly offline world. Political science students are a bit more skeptical, concerned about the ramifications and implications of all this online (as opposed to offline) engagement for our democracy.
All in all, it’s been a really wild time to co-teach this course. It’s by far the most exciting part of my time on campus each week. And it’s not just because we are looking at some really cool stuff. Though, I mean who doesn’t want to go to a class where we talk about Saturday Night Live, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, The Circle, Homeland, and Parks and Recreation as part of the regular rotation? It certainly beats Cicero (though I loved when Loyola’s common text was How to Win an Election and was honored to help lead that university-wide discussion).
Overall, the best part of this course is not the content for me, but rather learning from my students. I like hearing their media likes and dislikes, their fresh perspective on our national political conversation, and their experiences with social and entertainment media.
After all, they are the heart or core of the late night comedy audience, and even more importantly, they are the newly enfranchised citizens that represent our country’s political future. A few years from now they will be the ones making media content, running for political office, or working to fix our broken democracy. From where I stand at the lectern, rest assured America, we are in good hands. And this new generation of skeptical, critical thinkers might just get us to laugh along the way.
Amy Bree Becker, Ph.D. is an associate professor of communication at Loyola University Maryland. She is a lover of television and researches the effects of entertainment television and political comedy on attitudes, behavior, and engagement.
