Bowling for 47

School of Language - 45 (2019)

This might be one of the catchiest pieces of satirical agitprop you might ever come across, but as its subject, the 45th POTUS, returns to the ballots forcefully hoping (to put it mildly) to be recast as the 47th, it also seems to be objective proof of how ineffectual the genre can be, regardless of its artistic merits. 

Regardless, or because of them? I wonder.
Like humor (as Henri Bergson unwittingly proved, trying to come up with an unfunny explanation of how it works), despite millennia of applied ridicule of others, there's hardly a general theory of satire to be had, not least because its social uses are not restricted to the field of art, thereby muddling the criteria used to determine what makes a good piece of satire: one that is aesthetically interesting (whatever the criteria used to determine that as well) or one that effects a desired social change (and how does one measure that)? 

At a first glance, it might not be too unreasonable to pit the modern effectiveness of satire against its very artistic merits. In modern society (though, perhaps, not for long, in a post-modern, social-media escalated world, where people like me can pretend to have informed opinions to legitimize their subjective taste, and publicize them, however ineffectually), with its specialized critics and art history departments exercising authority on what gets to be defined as 'art', and how is it to be socially ranked, to appraise something as art tends to take on a bourgeois bent - privileging distanced forms of judgement, filtered by historical selection and theoretical apparatuses, to upkeep a certain aesthetic status quo, certain standards of (good) taste. 

Contrary to that, the satirical impulse tends to be primary and distasteful, like things you shout at the news on tv (if you're old as me), born out of disgust with a state of affairs, which entails that, for a piece of satire to be welcomed as an artwork, it probably has to sacrifice its immediate emotional urge to object and ridicule, until it becomes something the good society can be comfortable with, something witty rather than blunt, perhaps scathing but self-reflexive, provocative but not too edgy. 

However, that might be too narrow a view of what satire can do; for instance, tying it up to an immediate scale of events, and a single-handed causal effect over them; when it might be much more likely for it to participate in the shaping of wider and longer cultural processes, for which its artistic merits, while not guaranteeing instant instrumental rewards, might grant it more of a lasting influence. 

Furthermore, when the manichaean impulse that first drives satire begins to inform the majority of public discourse; when apparently no one seems to recognize themselves in the status quo anymore; and when the role of democracy in human affairs seems to be increasingly deformed, from being a way to achieve forms of compromise that accommodate the diversity of human prospects and constituencies, to a utilitarian way (among undemocratic others, if need be) for some to achieve supremacy over others, what is there even left for satire to do? 

I wouldn't know, otherwise I'd be paid for it, but one answer might be what this record seems to do. 

First of all, of artistic merits, it seems to have its fair share. The first one lies in the formal device employed to effect said satire; one that circumvents the easy route of simply looking down on the object of its scorn, by avoiding explicit commentary. Not only does it embody verbal discourse in specific, real-life characters, but further draws on their own, all too familiar, public words, to make them recognizable and produce something of a collective portrait in music of Trump's (first?) presidency. 

Of course, the splitting and splicing of that discourse, and the musical choices to soundtrack it, amount to a form of commentary themselves, like montage in a documentary; but by eschewing the equivalent of a voice-over (à la cinéma vérité, so to speak), even while sporting a point of view, you do afford the material some measure of autonomy to speak for itself. So much so, that while the satirical rationale for this might have been the proverbial 'give 'hem enough rope' - for people to call themselves into to question by highlighting their own words and actions -, as Trump's specific appeal is by now proven to be all but immune to that type of social checks and balances, he himself could probably endorse this record as a flattering musical fluff piece on himself (well, minus the "f#&$+=% moron" bit; perhaps).
The other main reason for the artistic success of the album is not only the obvious musical talents of Mr. David Brewis - one half of art-pop savants Field Music, and the whole of School of Language -, who is able to infuse these songs with the exact amount of detail and intelligence just this side of going prog, but also his specific aesthetic choice to adopt a funky r&b aesthetic for this. Surprisingly, that significantly furthers the embedded satire of (specifically) Trump's discourse, as it matches with musical swagger his brash rhetoric, to the point where the satire boldly risks to turn on itself, and make you glimpse some of what might draw in at least part of his acolytes; and while that could make this a self-defeating venture, maybe the end goal of a good satire in these circumstances might no longer be the lost hope of changing the hearts of those it opposes, but to give others insight on them. 
There are too many, too wide-ranging variables, both old and new, converging on the perfect political storm that is making it rain cats and dogs all over Fukuyama's globalized liberal democratic dreams - which makes the compilation of a grand theory impracticable and too sluggish to face a systemic state of political emergency; and the singling out of certain explanatory mechanisms a sitting duck for accusations of simplistic thinking; all of which might easily lull us into being spectators of our real-life rendering of how the world is doomed. 
Obviously, to work that out is not Brewis' or this record's burden, but that doesn't mean it can't contribute to the general figuring out of things - which is all anyone and anything can, to varying degrees -, and it might not be too out of place to argue that this does effectually (however a-theoretically) touch on and enact a critique of the contemporary society of spectacle, with the generalized commodification of human life in a reality tv / social media culture reconfiguring all of existence as an ongoing show, where constantly entertaining and being entertained becomes the primary mechanism of ascribing value to individuals and social interactions - and are we not 'entertained'? 

More than that - even as certain strands of political discourse, however well-meaning, seem to be tentatively pushing the social world to resemble the inside of a catholic boarding school, chastising the public into imposed virtuousness, while signposting their own -, what the spectacle of unconscionable narcissism and unfettered vitriol laid bare in these songs, along with a groovy beat, can bring to light, is how that might actually be perceived as liberating or inspirational by anyone who, in the face of all the frustrating intricacies and moral quandaries of working social and political systems, might increasingly pin for someone, however unfoundedly, to just validate our individual needs and unchecked opinions, to hold them as the things against which all others must be measured, make us believe in the logical impossibility that all social arrangements should and could be made in one's own image, to the detriment of all others.

Someone, simply put, giving us license to listen to the worst angels of our nature - which some's rousseaunean optimism might have been too naive in believing could be simply shooed away, instead of having to be bargained with, in political life, as we do every day in our personal one. 

In that respect, however critical, this record could be the closest anyone with no sympathy for Donald Trump might ever come to understand his mass appeal, without needing to make any apologies for it. Whoever turns out to be 47 (worst case scenario (from where I stand, anyway), in lieu of the Titanic ensemble, we might at least hope for a funky follow-up to soundtrack our drowning in the water from the icebergs we won't be able to crash into anymore), in the certainty that whatever brought us to this stage won't simply go away, maybe what this record ends up doing is what most political and social actors of all kinds increasingly can't or won't, and that is, in a sense, in the very least, to keep your enemies closer. 

Maybe that's the scariest omen of all; that the only relevant role left for satire to fill in the world right now is to be the adult in the room.