Reality is a joke: welcome to America’s age of absurdity

In a matric English classroom many moons ago, Mrs Southey taught us about satire using Zapiro’s political cartoons. The idea was simple: use humour, exaggeration and absurdity to expose the flaws in politics and society. These days, I’m fairly sure she could teach the same lesson by switching on the news.

Never was this clearer than last week, when my social media feeds filled with images of the White House. Not the White House as we know it: stately and historic. But a White House complete with flashing lights, giant flags, a UFC octagon and professional dirt bike riders launching themselves through the air, backflipping over the South Fountain on the White House lawn.

I stared at my phone for a good few seconds before arriving at my first conclusion: it had to be AI. Fake News!

Turns out that the pics were very real, and that, increasingly, seems to be the joke.

Make America fight again

The event in question was UFC Freedom 250, held on the White House lawn to celebrate both America’s 250^th birthday and Donald Trump’s 80^th. That’s a sentence I never imagined writing.

For one evening, arguably the world’s most recognisable seat of political power was transformed into a giant arena. Fighters wandered through the White House’s famously gilded halls in shorts and plakkies before stepping into an octagon erected on the South Lawn. Trump made a grand entrance alongside UFC president Dana White, fighter jets roared overhead, and 14 competitors spent the evening punching, kicking and bleeding for the entertainment of the crowd.

The cherry on top of this already absurd sundae? During a post-fight interview with Joe Rogan, UFC fighter Josh Hokit ended his remarks with the observation: “Michelle Obama is a man, am I right America?” By that point, it barely registered as the strangest thing to happen on the White House lawn that evening.

It was part sporting event, part political rally and part reality television spectacle.

Not everyone saw it that way. Jack Osbourne, son of Ozzy Osbourne, dismissed the controversy, arguing that it was simply a sporting occasion. “I literally went to the White House to go see UFC,” he said.

But Trump’s decision to stage a UFC event at the White House was hardly politically neutral. While not every fighting fan is right wing, the UFC has become associated with a particular strand of conservative culture over the past decade. Critics also pointed to the blurred lines between politics, entertainment and commerce. Alongside the spectacle were corporate sponsors, cryptocurrency promotions and branding linked to Trump’s wider business interests.

When ‘Idiocracy’ came to the White House

More than anything else, the whole spectacle reminded me of Idiocracy, which I rewatched a few months ago. Directed by Mike Judge and starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph, the 2006 cult film follows an average man who wakes up 500 years in the future to discover that anti-intellectualism, consumerism and general stupidity have become society’s defining traits. Sound familiar?

Two decades after its release, Idiocracy has earned a reputation for being alarmingly prophetic. Watching footage of octagons and motorbike ramps being assembled on the White House lawn, it was hard not to think of Terry Crews’ unforgettable portrayal of President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Camacho, a former wrestler and porn star who governs through spectacle, chaos and increasingly ridiculous speeches.

But the moment that really struck me was the film’s most popular form of entertainment: Monday Night Rehabilitation. In the dystopian future of Idiocracy, this is a brutal, gladiator-style vehicular competition, complete with corporate sponsors and roaring crowds. Watching UFC Freedom 250 unfold on the South Lawn, the gap between parody and reality suddenly felt significantly smaller.

Then there’s the matter of footwear. Every character in Idiocracy’s future wears Crocs. The costume department chose them because they were cheap, obscure and looked suitably ridiculous for a society in decline. More than 20 years later, Crocs are a global phenomenon. (In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I am writing this while wearing a pair.)

‘South Park’ wasn’t supposed to be this accurate

As American politics becomes ever more performative and bizarre, satire is finding itself in an unusual position: struggling to outdo reality. Nowhere is that more obvious than in South Park, where what once felt like outrageous exaggeration now resembles a cartoon version of the evening news.

I’ve been watching South Park since the start. I remember taping the first episode on VHS in 1998. Four foul-mouthed schoolboys from Colorado and an alien anal probe seemed like peak comedy at the time.

While South Park has always had something to say about politics, culture and the latest moral panic, many critics point to Trump’s first term as the moment it became overtly political, as American politics itself became increasingly polarised.

Trying to explain the latest season is nearly impossible. It is equal parts genius and complete madness. A warning, though: this is not one for the faint-hearted. As The Guardian aptly describes the show, it remains “lewd, crude and politically astute”.

Nobody is safe

This season portrays Trump with an image of his real face attached to an animated body and a comically tiny manhood, a subject the writers return to with remarkable enthusiasm. He is also depicted as being in a relationship with Satan, who is pregnant with his child.

Elsewhere, familiar figures from his orbit appear in bizarre iterations. Former attorney-general Pam Bondi sports a permanent smear of faeces on her nose, Stephen Miller is reimagined as a sinister Riff Raff-like figure from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Melania drifts through scenes like a mysterious apparition in an oversized hat.

My personal favourite, however, is billionaire investor Peter Thiel. South Park transforms him into a gaunt, Frankenstein-esque expert on the Antichrist, wandering the world in search of supernatural conspiracies and signs of the apocalypse. The joke lands because it is only a slight exaggeration of reality. After all, this is the same Thiel who once described climate activist Greta Thunberg as a 21^st-century “legionnaire of the Antichrist”. When your source material already sounds like a rejected South Park script, the writers don’t have to work nearly as hard.

But famous politicians and billionaires are only part of the story. The genius of South Park is that it doesn’t just mock presidents and tech moguls. It also finds comedy in ordinary people. One moment the town is obsessing over a meaningless “six-seven” hand gesture, the next it’s wrestling with capitalism and cryptocurrency schemes. Meanwhile, the ultra-macho PC Principal and his wife, Strong Christian Woman, continue their crusade against the “woke radical left”, all while displaying the same flaws and hypocrisies they claim to oppose.

Nobody is safe in South Park. Left, right, religious, secular, rich or poor, sooner or later everyone becomes the punchline.

The show’s other great advantage is speed. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone work on a remarkably tight schedule, often turning episodes around in less than a week. That allows them to respond to political scandals and breaking news while they are still unfolding.

Needling the White House

How do you measure success for a show like South Park? One indicator might be whether it’s managed to get under Potus’s skin.

The White House dismissed South Park as a “fourth-rate” show that was “hanging on by a thread” and relying on “uninspired ideas in a desperate attempt for attention”.

For a sardonic television show, that is probably about as close to a five-star review as you’re going to get.

The strange thing is that none of this feels particularly shocking anymore. A UFC event on the White House lawn. A president who could have wandered out of Idiocracy. An outlandish cartoon that increasingly resembles current affairs. What once felt like satire now feels uncomfortably close to reportage.

On that note, I suggest you watch Idiocracy, catch up on South Park and maybe avoid the news for a day or two.

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_{Top image collage: Rawpixel; giphy; ebay; crocssa.co.za; Currency.}