Political Communication Concept Topic

in this presentation, I'm going to explain Edelman

to HBO's hit comedy show, VEep

veep is a political satire show starring Julia Louis Dreyfus

who plays Selina Meyer,

a politician who goes to the stages of the vice presidency

and later

the presidency.

I find this show a great way

to explain the concepts in Edelman's political spectacle

because the several concepts that make up almost look spectacle

can be found throughout the shows different scenes and clips

these elements consist of, for example, construction of problems,

construction of leaders in construction of enemies.

Now I will explain what a spectacle is.

According to Edelman, a spectacle constructs social problems,

crisis is enemies and leaders in order to

achieve a certain political cause or political policy.

However,

a key element of the spectacle is how these spectacles are viewed

are based on how people or the public themselves view the spectacles

hysterical will not be effective if the public does not buy it.

In other words,

the public has to be able to see how this spectacle affects them and buy it.

An example of a political spectacle not working could be seen in Bush's attempt

to privatize Social Security

In the mid 2000s

because people themselves did not view Social Security insolvency as

a threat to them or an enemy to them.

Bush was not able to effectively sell his

presentation plan and therefore the Democrats were able

to use it against him and therefore contributes to their big win in the 2006,

midterm elections.

Okay,

an important part of the political spectacle is the construction of problems.

Now, Problems in crisis is our powerful political tools.

Calling something a crisis or problem is an intentional political act and

is often framed as a threat to a person's well being.

Examples of these in our world for example,

could be the Iraq war and the threat of WMDS or

even poverty and therefore the response for the war on poverty.

Now in veep

problems are construction all the time and a great example

of this can be seen in a somewhat comedic example.

The President Selina Meyer is planning to blame the chinese

for a series of tweets that she accidentally sent herself.

We can see how the elements of problems play into this.

First off the chinese hacking the president's twitter account would

of course being seen as a threat to american's well being

and the safety of America as a whole.

Second,

the threat of china will likely strike the public

is largely correct because as we see now,

americans tend to view china is a huge foreign policy threat.

Therefore

the problem that Selina Meyer is quite literally creating

will be seen as plausible towards the public.

Additionally, in the scene,

we can see how the solutions to these problems tend towards hard power.

Political leaders elites and the government tend to lean towards

hard power when trying to solve these political problems.

Uh huh

Now we will move on to construction of leaders.

Construction of leaders is a very important element of the political spectacle.

The strength of leaders is often the most

important part of leadership within a political spectacle.

Leaders construct different threats and then capitalize

on the people's fear from those threats

and therefore they look strong and become more popular

when they attempt to solve these so called threats.

As you can see here.

Perfect example as explained before the Iraq war where

Bush was able to capitalize it at least for a

short period of time and make himself look strong

as we see his appearance as a mission accomplished.

Now in veep former President Meyer is able to exploit this.

Um in the scene she earns applause from the audience for

telling her opponent to man up in a political debate.

Okay,

we can see several important elements of

leadership within the political spectacle in this example

for example we can see Selina Meyer capitalizing and

the audience is insecurity in this case Will culture supposedly

and learning

the applause for seemingly combating it.

The statement of man up also serves as sort of an unambiguous promise

to help defeat what the audience perceives as an enemy towards themselves.

I. E. Woke culture.

This is effective because people who are fearful or anxious tend

to respond to such claims from leaders according to Edelman.

Therefore making

this scene a perfect example of how elements construction of leaders works.

Now.

The final element of Edelman's public spectacle is the construction of enemies.

The construction of enemies is an extremely important part

as part of the spectacle,

enemies are usually portrayed as evil or immoral and

aggressive recruit language is often used against them.

Enemies are important because they are able

to frame whatever political goal or political

policy opponents as someone that needs to be defeated and

therefore make their arguments for the spectacle extremely effective.

Additionally,

elite cues are extremely important within

the construction of enemies because people tend

to respond to elites making claims about enemies no more effective manner.

We can see the construction of enemies in a variety of places in view but

perhaps the most striking example of this can

be seen by presidential candidate Jonah my Ryan

taking aim at a threat he calls muslim math to cheers from his audience.

Now of course in the show it is definitely a satire that shed

to shed light on perhaps some elements of bigotry within the american element.

But we can also see how the construction of enemies

is a very powerful political tool within the show itself.

In the show, Ryan use aggressive language to against the so called enemy

and also is very effective in being able to cast this so called

enemy is inherently immoral and evil in order to achieve his political,

improve his political standing.

Additionally,

we can see the importance of elite cues

in the construction of enemies as the audience is

mainly responding because Jonah Ryan as an elite is

making these statements against the threat of muslim math

and all. We can see how

effective veep is able to show elements

different elements of his political spectacle.

The political spectacle is certainly an interesting political theory

and something that does have some plausibility throughout the real

world examples we have seen throughout american political modern history.

Political Communication Concept Topic

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