[Page 3: Billionaires for Bush: Parody as Political Intervention]

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The Problematic Search for Political Truth in Postmodern Society

We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.
- Jean Baudrillard
Simulacra and Simulation

Political activism has perhaps found its greatest antagonist in the culture of postmodernity in postindustrial Western society. The relativity of "truth" becomes all too apparent in a country overly mediated and inundated by images and information extending from endless perspectives. As mass communication and the mass media propagate a world of signs, symbols, and icons, we are left to supplant our sense of reality and history with an amalgamated collection of images and sound bites that present only a manufactured semblance of truth.

One basic principle of postmodernism, then, lies in its acknowledgement of these conditions and its fundamental questioning and skepticism towards all ideological positions and claims to truth. Political activism, when steeped in ideology, consequently encounters its defeat in postmodern culture. Indeed, postmodernity lends itself to a more negativist, deconstructing approach to society and politics than to a utopia-inspired, action-oriented engagement. In her book The Politics of Postmodernism, Linda Hutcheon asserts that while postmodernity offers "no effective theory of agency that enables a move into political action, it does work to turn its inevitable ideological grounding into a site of de-naturalizing critique" (original italics, 2002: 3). The ultimate task of postmodernism, then, is to point out that reality and truth, especially when imposed by authority, are but social constructions determined by our ideologically steeped perspectives; that which is 'natural' is in fact a product of the political and social apparatuses that guide our interpretations of information.

In order to initiate these ideological deconstructions and highlight the connection between "truth" and its context, certain postmodern devices embody the traits of self-consciousness and self-contradiction within the double process of reinforcement and subversion of the past. Parody is but one postmodern device that exemplifies the capabilities of self-reflexivity and ironic juxtaposition. Parody, the self-referential art form that involves the imitation of a style in such an exaggerated way as to make its features more visible, has existed since the premodern era, but has a particular function appropriate to postmodern times. According to Hutcheon, parody "signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference" (2002: 89). That is, parody involves a foreground and background narrative—a surface message embedded in, but set in ironic contrast to, its context. Ironic exaggeration makes obvious the need to acknowledge and interpret the multiple relationships between the two narratives. This exaggeration, whether subtle or obvious, is necessary to prompt the decoding of parody's fundamental intertexuality; otherwise, parody simply becomes plagiarism or a reinforcement of the surface narrative.

The parody of Billionaires for Bush undoubtedly involves the interference and reflexivity of double narratives—for example, the narrative of the protester versus the narrative of the Billionaire. The over-the-top caricaturing of the billionaire persona creates a cognitive dissonance in the mind of the spectator that results in the creation of a number of distancing questions that allow the spectator to immediately begin decoding the performance and to make sense of the social commentary behind it. The spectator is immediately aware that billionaires typically do not participate in street protests. The spectator is also immediately aware that billionaires do not actually wear tiaras or bowler hats on a regular basis. This awareness completes the parody, leaving the spectator critically searching for the point in the scenario where reality ends and exaggeration begins.

One criticism of political parody—whether in the form of websites or street theatre—is that parody ends at commentary and offers no dialectical antithesis to that which is being criticized in order to generate a resolution. However, as previously stated, postmodernism by nature precludes any claim to ultimate truth, thereby limiting the postmodern activist's ability to offer ideological alternatives. Perhaps negativism and deconstruction are the only possible approaches to politics in a culture in which there exists an "unwillingness to make decisions about meaning that would imply singularity or fixity" (Hutcheon 1992: 37). Parody, then, becomes a powerful political tool in prompting resistance to dominant ideologies without necessarily imposing an equally questionable set of dogma. Overall, parody encourages skepticism and the deconstruction of "common sense" as promoted by those in power. While parody bars the creation of disciples united under a single doctrine, it does endorse the creation of critical thinkers whose political power lies in their ability to challenge the authoritarian imposition of "truth."