The Waldo Moment Analysis: A Portrayal of Populist Politics
Black mirrors — these are what people see when technological devices are turned off, allowing them to see their reflections and the reflection of reality. This is how Charlie Brook, the creator of the British television series Black Mirror which debuted in 2011. A satirical anthology series that portrays and scrutinizes the dark aspects of living within a highly modernized society especially with how people interact with technology and how it affects them. However, Brooker (2011), the series’ creator, in his article “Charlie Brooker: The dark side of our gadget addiction,” argued that even though the series deal with futuristic technologies, all episodes are also about the way people live now and not necessarily all about life in the future. This paper aims to vouch for the claim of Brooker by showing how one Black Mirror episode, The Waldo Moment, portray populism with its main character, Waldo. Moreover, Waldo was compared to well-known populists namely Donald Trump, Rodrigo Roa Duterte, and Jair Bolsonaro.
The Waldo Moment, the third episode of the series’ second season stayed true to the said theme of the series, however, it is unique in the way that the episode also evidently focused on portraying politics, particularly populism. Politics as defined by Heywood (2019) in his book entitled Politics, is a social activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live. On the other hand, populism is a political ideology that has been mainly characterized by the claim to support the common people against corrupt economic or political elites, and has the central idea that society is divided into two opposing groups (Heywood, 2019).
In addition, populism was further characterized by Rooduijn (2015), a political sociologist, by arguing that there are four common characteristics that populists in different times and places possess which are their emphasis on the central position of the people, criticizing the elites, perception of the people as a homogeneous entity and their proclamation of a serious crisis.
The aforementioned episode portrayed populism through its main character Jamie Salter, a comedian whose job is being the voice actor of the vulgar and blue animated bear named Waldo in the fictional Stenford district of London, United Kingdom. Jamie as Waldo became popular through a comedy portion of a late-night show where he interviews and ridicules public figures. With the resignation of their unnamed parliamentary representative due to controversial issues he was implicated, their district decided to stage a by-election. An election used to fill an office that has become vacant between general election (Heywood, 2019), which in the episode’s case because of the aforementioned representative’s resignation. Because of the character’s popularity, the producer of the show, Jack Napier, made him run as a candidate in the said by-election while being Waldo.
Jamie through the animated character manifested the said populist characteristics mentioned by Rooduijn (2015) in his election campaign. His campaigning, primarily involved getting the people’s appeal as the newscaster in the episode described his campaign colorful — a typically loud and crowd-pleasing style. It depicts one of the features of populism with how the people are the priority. Populists are said to worship the people, and tend to emphasize the people’s fundamental position at the center of politics. In fact, populism was derived from the Latin term “populus” which means people (Heywood, 2019).
Within the episode, Waldo voiced by Jamie eventually attained the people’s appeal through his jokes and becoming the voice of those who are against the traditional politics. As Napier, the producer of Waldo’s show proclaimed Waldo as an official mascot for protest voters, a mascot for the disenfranchised — a voice of the voiceless.
Moreover, the episode also portrayed the populism is also associated with anti-elitism. Muller (2016), in his book entitled What is Populism?, stated that as a consequence of populism’s anti-elitist nature, populists ostracize all other contenders as illegitimate and immoral elites. The elites are accused of being detached from the people, of being clueless what ordinary people find important, and of only representing their own interests. In The Waldo Moment, Waldo labelled his political rivals who are Liam Monroe and Gwendolyn Harris, both belonging to traditional parties of Conservative Party and Labor Party respectively as corrupted traditional “political elites.” He criticized them as elites who are just the same as the politicians before who were unsympathetic with the people. This was shown in the debate scene of the episode where Waldo called Monroe “an old attitude with a new hair” and exposed Harris as a politician who is just using the election as her career-stepping stone.
Furthermore, populists perceive the people as a homogeneous entity (Rooduijn, 2015). Populists believe that all people oppose against the elites such as Waldo claiming that all are tired of the status quo. Lastly, populists are often said to proclaim a crisis such as how it was depicted in the episode with Napier telling Jaimie that the growing distrust with politicians should be solved through Waldo’s eradication of the status quo.
Towards the end of the episode, Jamie did not want to play as Waldo anymore as he does not really want to be involved in politics in the first place. Furthermore, he does not know what to do in case he wins to the extent of telling the public not to vote for him. These facts within the episode adhere to the liberals’ perspective on populism in power where it consists of populists who have impossible and simplistic prescriptions that make them afraid of actually winning. In reality, populists are clueless about what to do postelection, such as what was exhibited in Nigel Farage’s escaping from political reality after the Brexit referendum (Muller, 2016).
The ending features the election results being viewed by Jamie in a hospital bed where Monroe won, while Waldo who was voiced by Napier came in close as second. Subsequently, in its final scene, Jamie who is now homeless throws a bottle at a screen showing Waldo, presumably still voiced by Napier, but with his speeches translated in varying languages in different channels around, which led him to being tasered and attacked by police. The finale shows that populism can be present in many countries as the twenty first century slowly becomes the age of populism as Mudde and Kaltwasser (2017) in their book Populism: A Very Short Introduction claimed that populism has become a political stance omnipresent almost worldwide with the likes of Donald Trump in the United States of America (USA), Rodrigo Roa Duterte in the Philippines, and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil who are the popular ones among others.
Waldo can be most compared to Donald Trump of USA who has been considered to be the archetypal example of what a populist leader is (Heywood, 2019). According to Smith (2016) in his article “How Trump won the election: Volatility and a common touch,” Trump, won the election in the United States of America last November 08, 2016 through gaining appeal to people’s heart through copying Ronald Reagan’s promise to make America great again and becoming the voice of the sentiments against old immigration policies. The said strategies which were of the influence of Steve Bannon, his election strategist to make him “a vehicle for the people” (Heywood, 2019).
In the same manner, Waldo, in his campaign, gained appeal to people’s hearts through implying he can make a greater Stenford and voicing sentiments against old policies of the traditional politicians which as aforementioned, Napier called “becoming the mascot of the disenfranchised.” Moreover, Trump like Waldo, ostracize his political rivals, Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton. Cruz, his rival from within his party, the Republican Party, was labelled by him as “lyin’ Ted” (Heywood, 2019), while Hillary Clinton, his opponent from the Democratic Party was portrayed as a corrupt elite by nicknaming her “crooked Hillary” (Muller, 2016).
Furthermore, Waldo and Trump were similar by being different from their opponents. Trump set-apart himself from his opponents as he portrayed himself as a “political outsider” capitalizing on him being a cartoonish persona he established as a celebrity businessman without a political career as a foundation so he can be trusted and genuine, because he was presumably not yet corrupted by seating in a political office (Heywood, 2019). Meanwhile, Waldo is a literal cartoon character who was first voiced by Salter who was a comedian and with Napier who was a producer succeeding him, who were both without former political experience. The experience used as criticism to Monroe and Harris, who were portrayed as old traditional politician and career-advancing protégé politician, respectively.
. Another comparable populist leader to Waldo is Rodrigo Roa Duterte of the Philippines, the vulgar-talking lawyer and former mayor of Davao City. Like the two aforementioned, he attained appeal to people’s hearts through his promise of change to come with his tagline “Change is coming” achieved through his brand of politics — strongman politics. A style of politics which is a manifestation of populist central idea of dividing a society in two warring groups, strongman politics involves creating an image of an atrocious enemy out of people’s fears and hatred (Heywood, 2019).
In Duterte’s case, his enemies are the rich elites that are not his allies and the drug culprits, endlessly criticizing the former and jailing thousands and even killing approximately 30,000 — 40,000 of the latter as claimed by human rights groups, despite most were not proven guilty by the court (Maitem, 2019). Where as to his treatment of opponents, like Waldo and Trump, he often criticizes his political enemies, instead of just encouraging hatred and taunts of taunting opponents like Trump against Clinton, Duterte went to the extent of jailing his staunch critic, Senator Leila de Lima, on drug charges were allegedly trumped-up (Jazeera, 2017). Although a member of Davao city’s oldest political dynasty and became its former mayor, again, similar to the aforementioned two, Duterte was seen as a “political outsider,” simply because he did not come from Luzon nor “Imperial Manila” but from Mindanao (Reed, 2018).
Jair Bolsonaro, on the other hand, is known as the “Donald Trump of Brazil.” Bolsonaro, similarly to the aforementioned three, won the hearts of the people, but this time to the extent of claiming to be the allegedly personification of the feelings of the Brazilian people who claim they are tired of traditional politics, particularly of the then ruling party which he was against (Finchelstein, 2019). The Brazilian president painted homosexuals, migrants and political opponents as enemies of the state. As to Duterte’s war on drugs, Bolsonaro wants to fight “gender ideology” and like Trump, vilified the migrants. On the other hand, consistent with how the aforementioned populists are with their political opponents, he ostracized the members of the party he was against as “crooks” and threatened to make them rot in jails (Phillips, 2018). Indeed, Bolsonaro became different and outsider like the aforementioned populists, he had no political background compared to his opponents like Trump and Waldo, he was a retired Army captain who has no executive experience being “anti- politics” (Stewart, 2019).
It can be clearly seen that The Waldo Moment episode of Black Mirror portrayed the present-day phenomenon of populism, proving what Brooker (2011) claimed about his series not being solely about the possible events in the future with highly modernized technologies, but also reflect what is happening in the world in the present. Waldo exhibited the four characteristics that populists have in common which are emphasis on the central position of the people, criticizing the elites, perception of the people as a homogeneous entity and their proclamation of a serious crisis (Rooduijn, 2015). The features that the likes of the populists Donald Trump, Rodrigo Roa Duterte and Jair Bolsonaro exhibited similar to Waldo. With them following the same formula towards power — gaining appeal through people’s heart, attacking opponents and being outsiders. In the end, one question will be left hanging, will populism be like The Waldo Moment too, in return? Will it only last for a moment or an episode of series and not for an era?
References:
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