From its premiere in 2012, HBO’s Veep offered a clever satire of Washington politics. Julia Louis-Dreyfus brilliantly presided over an ensemble cast who exposed the absurd nature of the political machine and the craven hypocrisy of those in politics. However, its seventh and final season proved to be its darkest, and the absurd comedy of the first six seasons morphed into a much more nihilistic comedic vision. This nihilism reflects a response to the presidency of Donald Trump, as the seventh season was the only one written and filmed after his election.
In this paper, I argue that the shift in the tone of the last season of Veep corresponds to a larger pattern in comedic representations of politics in the Trump era. When a leader as dangerous as Trump is in power, simply mocking the absurdity of the system is no longer sufficient for satire to maintain its bite. In a famous episode of Crossfire, Tucker Carlson asks Jon Stewart if writing for The Daily Show would be more difficult if George W. Bush were to lose the 2004 election. Stewart retorts that he won’t run out of material as long as the system continues to be absurd, because he mocks the absurdity of the system. That satirical logic may have held in 2004, but in the age of Trump, it seems naive. It implies that any politician in the system is basically the same—a cog in an inept machine. For its first six seasons, Veep adhered to logic, and did so splendidly. However, as the Trump era dawned, the show’s satire adopted a different tone and flavor that stared into the dark abyss of contemporary politics and forced the viewer to consider the nihilism at the center of the United States’ mediated political/journalist/entertainment complex.
About the presenterMichael Mario Albrecht
Michael Mario Albrecht is a Visiting Lecturer in English at the University of South Florida with a PhD in Communication and Media Studies from the University of Iowa.