Should I take insulin pic.twitter.com/ALEYQqzJir
— Sarah Cooper (@sarahcpr) May 27, 2020
.@MonicaHesse takes a look at the women who are skewering Trump: “I’m taking that setting away and putting those words into the mouth of someone who is much more low status and low power,” @sarahcpr tells her. https://t.co/VXp4AQJ7kb
— Elahe Izadi (@ElaheIzadi) May 22, 2020
TikTok takes a ton of abuse (and not without reason), but it can also be a weapon for the relatively powerless — “Women on TikTok have cracked the code on how to satirize Trump”:
Kylie Scott, a social worker turned film student, was dutifully obeying stay-at-home orders in California when she caught a clip of the president riffing on antibiotics and coronavirus. On TikTok, where lip-syncing is a popular pastime, somebody had mimed the president’s monologue as if he were a clueless substitute teacher, forced to lecture on a subject he knew nothing about. But to Scott, the president’s speech seemed like something much more basic: the 3 a.m. ramblings of a drunk girl in a club.
So that’s what she turned it into. Scott threw on a sparkly top, grabbed a bar glass, and spent 30 minutes learning to lip-sync the president’s address — “The germ has gotten so brilliant” — before recording her reinterpretation and throwing it on TikTok, where it promptly gained more than a million views.
If you’ve had an extra hour or 90 to stare at a screen in the past two months, you might have seen one of Scott’s videos. The settings change, from bar crawl to birthday toast to Uber ride, but her character remains the same: Scott is a runny-mascara’d hot mess who is definitely going to borrow your purse and then puke in it. She just happens to be delivering the monologues of the president of the United States. “I’m not splicing anything together,” Scott says. “They’re all full sound bites that he’s said directly.”…
… Comedians have long complained that Trump is difficult to parody: He says things that are weirder than what any writers’ room could come up with, with a delivery that’s practically beyond exaggeration. Lip-sync remixers like Scott have found a way to revive presidential satire by simply keeping the word vomit and changing everything else.
Sarah Cooper is another master of this method. Wearing her own street clothes and in her own Brooklyn apartment, she’s filmed a whole series, including “How to Medical” — using Trump’s comments about injecting disinfectant to kill the virus — and “How to Obamagate.” Already an author and working comedian, her Twitter following has grown from 60,000 to 600,000; when I talked with her on the phone this week, she said she’d been “taking meetings,” one of those Hollywood terms that often means somebody powerful wants to make you into somebody famous…
Cooper’s performance isn’t only about Donald Trump. It’s also about how context and pageantry play a role in how authority is vested. When she points out the president’s preposterous statements, she’s also making the point that certain kinds of people’s preposterous statements are assumed to be smart — a twist on Nixon’s infamous claim, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”
When an aging man in a suit says it from behind a presidential seal, and an entourage of high-powered officials react with stoic deference, that means it is not crazy.
I don’t think it’s coincidence that Cooper and Scott are both women (Cooper doesn’t either: “This doesn’t work as well when men do it,” she says). Some of the sharpest political commentary on TikTok involves women impersonating male politicians — witness Maria DeCotis as New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — a trend carried over from television. “Saturday Night Live’s” smartest casting decision after the 2016 election wasn’t Baldwin as Trump. It was Melissa McCarthy as former press secretary Sean Spicer, throwing red-faced tantrums and plowing her motorized lectern through the White House pressroom.
The skits reportedly made the president furious, as did the ones featuring Kate McKinnon as then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “Trump doesn’t like his people to look weak,” a top donor anonymously told Politico, and the president felt that casting women had done just that.
Of course, that was backward. Melissa McCarthy behaving like Sean Spicer didn’t make Spicer ridiculous. Spicer behaving like Spicer made Spicer ridiculous…
“The more I get into impersonation, the less funny it becomes.” Stripped of the podium, presidential seal, and the people nodding behind him, “you focus more on the words. And focus just on how ridiculous those words are,” @sarahcpr https://t.co/mcYdK85bLg
— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) May 22, 2020
zhena gogolia
smrt means “death” in Czech
I love Sarah Cooper.
Chief Oshkosh
No shit, Laura. That’s the fucking point the satirists are making.
Could we get better allies in the press? Our current ones suck.
Martin
And let’s not forget Tina Fey who built an SNL skit around just saying Sarah Palin’s words verbatim.
Baud
Biden/Cooper 2020!
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Me too. Also Maria DeCotis does a funny Cuomo.
debbie
I think they’re all brilliant. The more, the merrier; the sharper, the better. And the bonus is that it infuriates Trump.
schrodingers_cat
OT: BTW I am thinking of reviewing Maqbool (Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of Macbeth). Tabu is Lady Macbeth and Macbeth is none other than the late great Irrfan Khan. It was his breakout role. In addition to those two Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri are in it too, they are stand-in for the witches . It is set in Mumbai’s underworld. What do you guys think? Would that be something that would be interesting to you?
MattF
There’s been some recent talk about Trump’s ‘unmanly’ physical qualities… e.g., wig, makeup, girdle, etc.— I think this is a major reason that lip-syncing by adult women works so well as satire and is so revealing. It wouldn’t work with Biden, for example.
schrodingers_cat
@MattF: I am not so sure. Maria DeCotis does a mean Andrew Cuomo and it works for me.
MagdaInBlack
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes, please. ?
MattF
@schrodingers_cat: Yeah, that’s funny, but in a different way, IMO.
schrodingers_cat
@MagdaInBlack: It is streaming on Google Play, if you are interested.
schrodingers_cat
@MattF: True.
Roger Moore
@Chief Oshkosh:
I think that was a direct quote from the article, not Rozen spin on things. At least that’s what I assume when I see something in quotes like that.
MagdaInBlack
@schrodingers_cat:
i just looked it up, I see that, thank you. I have it on Prime as well ?
pluky
@zhena gogolia: What? No vowels?
Immanentize
@pluky:
That is why “Wheel of Fortune” failed in the Czech Republic. Nothing to buy.
trollhattan
Obliged to give Melissa McCarthy her due credit for drawing first Trump Admin blood. See ya later, Sean.
Am just sad to never get our Rosie O’Donnell Trump imitation. It’s never too late.
Hoodie
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think the Cuomo lipsync has the effect referred to in the piece. When Cuomo does stuff like talking about his daughter or talking with his brother on CNN about who mom loves the most, I don’t think Cuomo is intending them to be anything serious or meaningful, in contrast with Trump’s idiotic utterances, which his lickspittles try to explain away or even try to make into something profound. Cuomo’s stuff also does not fit the drunk/psycho stereotypes that work so well in the lipsyncs of Trump. Cuomo’s stuff is just corny, embarassing, out of touch dad stuff.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
smrt means “death” in Czech
Wasn’t there an organization, Smersh, in the James Bond novels. I think it was supposed to be related to a phrase that meant “death to spies.”
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, yes. I love adaptations of Shakespeare by foreign directors. And I need to catch up with this movie. I would love to compare it to Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood.”
JMG
Should be noted that the Onion created an imaginary (if somewhat rooted in truth) Biden for the entire Obama Presidency and the character was wildly popular, because it was somewhat rooted in the truth of Biden’s personality, just taken to comic excess. Also, that excess showed the personality to be wholly harmless.
Omnes Omnibus
@JMG: Encouraging Whitesnake fandom is not harmless.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@JMG: I think Onion Biden probably gave a huge boost to Biden’s popularity. He might have been just one more invisible VP without Onion Joe.
H.E.Wolf
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes, please! I’d love to read it!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Headline for an Atlantic story:
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Sure.
zhena gogolia
@pluky:
The consonants r and l can be syllabic. They have a kind of half-vowel quality to them.
In Russian it would be smert.
debbie
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Great! That’s what he gets for picking on them.
pluky
@Brachiator: and uMabatha
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMabatha
Josie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Oh, come on. Uncle Joe has his own special panache. We all have our secret Whitesnakes.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator:
It was Stalin’s military counterintelligence — Smersh for Smert’ shpionam, Death to Spies.
Brachiator
OT. I have to step out, but I wanted to post this long read about how totalitarianism can slowly seep into a country.
Silence is Health: How Totalitarianism Arrives
Hope the link works. The original story is from the online site for the New York Review of Books. The author focuses on how totalitarianism took root in Argentina.
I think the site permits a limited number of free reads.
An alternate link here.
A brief selection:
Trump promises easy solutions. And his base eat up the idea that democracy and all its attendant checks and balances are bad because it prevents them from getting what they want.
pluky
@zhena gogolia: The problem with transliterating languages with character sets not designed for them! I didn’t think written Czech would be an abjab like Semitic languages.
lafcolleen
its really stupid but the “only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” retreat is really maki g me angry.
considering how President Obama and other democrats were repeatedly forced to apologize for people they were associated with or publicly distance themselves, i think national Republicans should be asked to distance themselves from Trump. obviously that takes a real grassroots effort. (God knows no media is going g.to.ask).
anyone know of how to get hooked into such an effort?
geg6
@trollhattan:
I’d give my entire Cheetolini check to see that.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
Yep. That’s it. Smersh was based on a real organization, while SPECTRE was, presumably, imaginary.
geg6
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ok, alright, you got me to LOL with that one.
Not an easy feat after my work day.
Omnes Omnibus
@Josie: Hey, I didn’t really think that Obama should be sneaking cigs out behind the Oval Office, but that wasn’t Whitesnake. One has to have limits.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: Hell, a lot of people on the left are uncomfortable with the messiness of democracy.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Should I use leaches?
Should I be bloodletting?
Emma from FL
@schrodingers_cat: Yes! the Scottish play is my favorite of all of Shakespeare’s works. Please do!
NotMax
I don’t find the lip synching to be the least bit funny.
/out of step
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I found the first couple of Sarah Cooper’s to be amusing, but it’s still Trump’s voice saying stupid shit.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
True enough. But right now, Trump’s supporters cheer his executive power over-reach. They love that he supposedly is giving them what Congress was unable or unwilling to do.
The lie of running America like a business dovetails nicely with their lazy vision of Trump as CEO-in-chief. The Congress and the Supreme Court are not co-equal branches of government, they are pesky branch offices of Trump, Inc, that need to be brought under control.
Cameron
@Brachiator: I got a kick out of “Scotland, PA,” too.
NotMax
@schrodingers_cat
Nearly all the way through Paatal Lok.
Remind me never to get picked up by the Delhi police.
NotMax
@Cameron
Stay 6 feet away from the deep fat fryer!
:)
zhena gogolia
@pluky:
Czech uses the Latin alphabet.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: Indian police still use the “procedures” they learned during the colonial era. The gora sahebs were replaced by the brown sahebs for India’s have nots.
I like the lead actor Jaideep Ahlawat.
ETA: Did you see it with subtitles or the dubbed version?
schrodingers_cat
Has anyone seen Mindy Kaling’s Netflix teen rom-com? Trailer felt cringy to me.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@schrodingers_cat: Yesyesysyesyes. Please?
NotMax
@schrodingers_cat
Subtitles.
The name Swastika Mukherjee in the credits is a mini-shock to these Western eyes each time.
Salty Sam
@Brachiator: “For many Argentines, then, the military represented not a subjugation to arbitrary rule, but a release from the frustrations, complexity, and compromises of representative government.”
This ( https://popula.com/2019/02/24/about-face/ ) was posted over at LGM a few weeks ago- it’s referenced to a different subject, but there’s a piece in there about the lure of giving up one’s exercise of free will in exchange for not having to bother with all the “work” involved. It’s much easier to just follow orders…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: Another thing that feeds this is cynicism and both-siderism, if you see all politicians as crooks it’s very easy to drift into totalitarianism. What difference does it make who is in charge, they’re all crooks at least with one guy in charge, stuff will get done.
catclub
Just another reminder to go read “The Authoritarians”… again.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: Here is Ahlawat in Raazi, as Alia Bhatt’s mentor who recruits her as a spy who goes deep undercover in Pakistan before the Bangladesh war.
schrodingers_cat
@NotMax: swastha == health in Sanskrit.
prostratedragon
@Brachiator:
Not that I don’t love tango music, but there’s a method …
I recall when the fascists really took over there, what a shock it appeared to be for many around the world. Later when I happened to meet some Argentines I confirmed that it was a shock to them too, and that they saw some troubling signs here.
prostratedragon
@schrodingers_cat: Sounds good. Just found it on Prime, will probably watch by the time you write the article.
Kathleen
@Brachiator: That was terrifying. And I’ll trump your OT with a complementary OT article from Bloomberg:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-26/american-politics-is-now-democrats-vs-authoritarians
dopey-o
What else is Ms Cooper going to lip-sync? Trump’s voice saying smart shit? Tell me how that works……
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: sounds very interesting.
Brachiator
@Kathleen:
I will definitely take a look. Thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@dopey-o: I don’t have to find it funny.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: I appreciate her efforts at parody. But that requires me to listen to his voice. I try to do that in as limited doses as possible.
Chris T.
Yes, but with značky přízvuku.
(*I cheated with google translate so “accent marks” might not have come out as the right phrase here. Still, it’s illustrative! Two háčky and an accent acute.)