Yoo Doo Right with VICTIME and We Owe, Théâtre Plaza, 6 December 2024

“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” —Karl Marx, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.” (1852)

David Letterman, the longest-serving late-night talk show host in television history retired on 20 May 2015 after 33 years hosting three programmes, across two networks, and 6,080 shows on the tube.

On 16 June of that same year, America’s favourite billionaire blowhard, Donald Trump, announced his candidacy as the Republican party nominee. Less than five months later, more than half of the American public would elect Trump as their 45^th president.

Trump was among Letterman’s most frequent guests, first appearing on Late Night in a videotaped on-the-street-style segment which aired 1 October 1986. At the time, Letterman was a much bigger celebrity than was Trump, reaching an average of 3,610,000 viewers who tuned in on any given minute of his nightly broadcast.

But gauging by monetary accumulation, arguably the more consequential modern metric, Trump was by far the larger success. In Trump’s second appearance later that year, on 22 December, and his first in Letterman’s hotseat, Letterman jokes to rapturous applause that Trump could afford to give each of his audience members one million dollars.

Later in the interview, Letterman needles Trump for potentially being drafted to run for president.

“Well, I guess a lot of people want to see this country…” Trump trails off. “It’s a shame what’s happening. Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait — they’re all taking advantage of the United States. People know that if certain people are running the country, that it won’t happen.”

Amidst a packed audience in Studio 8H, a twinkle manifests in Trump’s eye, perhaps for the first time foreseeing himself in the White House. “I think that people look at certain people — maybe me. If I were in a position,” he brags, naturally, “this country, believe me, would not be ripped off like it is.”

Cindy Hill with Jessie Myfanwy and Francis (fdg.), Centre CLARK, 5 December 2024

“Mr. Trump was the political-cultural equivalent of Poochie from The Simpsons: Whenever he was not onscreen, all the other characters were asking where he was.” —James Poniewozik, The New York Times, 14 December 2024.

Letterman made Trump a star.

Previous to his Late Night appearances, Trump was just another big-mouthed New York City real-estate developer. But Letterman saw a certain something in Trump, something unique, something special, something in his sly grin, his tsunami hairdo.

It’s possible that Letterman didn’t have the faintest inkling that he was making a monster that night. Nonetheless, it’s clear that, like a cheetah or a vampire acquires the taste for blood, Trump at 1am on 22 December developed an immediate hankering for the spotlight. Trump would proceed to appear on Letterman’s shows dozens of times over the course of decades, and start his own reality TV series, The Apprentice, on Letterman’s old network, in 2004.

Projet Cage with Geneviève Ackermann and Alina Herta, Mai/son, 1 December 2024

“In conditions of third (and fourth-order) simulacra, the giddy vertigo of hyperreality banalizes a coolly hallucinogenic ambience, absorbing all reality into simulation. Fiction is everywhere — and therefore, in a certain sense, eliminated as a specific category.” —Mark Fisher, “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan.” (2004)

When Trump first took office in 2016, a palpable sense pervaded Western society that fiction had irreversibly crossed a line into reality. No longer was Trump just another character on TV; rather, Trump had become interchangeable with the medium itself. It was impossible to turn on the television and not see him, because not only was he a celebrity, and the president; he was America’s president-as-celebrity.

More than Ronald Reagan, who was America’s first movie star commander-in-chief, Trump was ubiquitous as a personality, a logo, a brand. Trump had transcended his function as a common media object and become a thing. His materiality jumped valence into the ethereal realm. He was everywhere.

Kirill Gerstein, Salle Bourgie, 7 December 2024

“Saturday Night Live, Paul, when did they tape that show?” —David Letterman

On Saturday Night Live, the veteran actor Alec Baldwin portrayed Trump in sketch after spot-on sketch. Yet, unlike Phil Hartman impersonating Reagan, or Dana Carvey doing his George H.W. Bush caricature — sendups that skewered these respective presidents’ personalities — Baldwin’s Trump rendition only seemed to strengthen Trump’s character. Because hypercapitalism seeks not to suppress but rather to absorb and compress and even preordain subversive acts. In this operative mode, Trump became impervious to satire.

Elon Musk at around the same time achieved a similar bullet-proof veneer. The more criticism he received, the more his stock rose, especially on Musk’s preferred medium, Twitter, until, like some Victor Kiam doppelgänger, he bought the company. Just as Trump became television, Musk transformed Twitter into ‘X,’ the Ur variable, and likewise transubstantiated a once useful object into pure thingness.

The Pit launch, Studio of Sophia Perras, 14 December 2024

When the Best is gone — I know that other things are not of consequence — The Heart wants what it wants — or else it does not care. —Emily Dickinson

If subversion and satire have been neutralized, and force is inadequate because there is always an equal and opposing energy, and fear is hopeless, and moreover, hope is fearless in its anachronistic naïveté, and denial precipitates obliviousness, and hatred only multiplies wickedness, what weapons have we left?

Two key 20^th century texts illustrate the path out of the labyrinthine Backrooms of an exponentially diminishing present. One is Back to the Future, in which Marty and Doc must constantly travel ever-further back in time to correct the errors of decaying immanence. And the second is The Shining, which concludes with Danny Torrance retracing his steps in a snow-covered maze in order to trap his murderous father.

It bears repeating a third time: the only way forward is back.◼︎

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_{Cover image: Justin Cober of Yoo Doo Right performs at Théâtre Plaza, 6 December 2024. Photographed for NicheMTL.}