Merrie Snell, Lipsynching (Study of Sound Series)
2020; Oxford University Press; Volume: 61; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/screen/hjaa061
ISSN1460-2474
Autores Tópico(s)Contemporary Literature and Criticism
ResumoIn April 2020, following US president Donald Trump’s misguided remarks about consuming disinfectant as a treatment for coronavirus, comedian Sarah Cooper began to post short videos of herself lipsynching to Trump’s COVID-19 briefings on social media. On Twitter, her ‘How to medical’ (sic) video currently has some 17.5 million views and half a million ‘likes’.1 Another video, one based on a Trump statement that the USA had so many positive cases of coronavirus because they were so good at testing, has led to celebrity Twitter endorsements of Cooper’s performance.2 Bette Midler singles out one moment in particular – ‘And when she sniffs the sharpie, I just about fall down, every time’3 – implying in the process that she has watched Cooper’s video many times and that its brilliance remains. But precisely what makes Cooper’s lipsynchs so effective and popular? And what might they reveal about the performative practice, one described by Merrie Snell in Lipsynching as ‘a site of projection, introjection and inhabitation […] a means of personal and collective creativity’ (p. 3)? Cooper’s videos, wherein she ventriloquizes Trump’s nonsensical remarks, channel the absurd into the comedic. And while these videos are technically rather poor from a production perspective, Cooper’s technical lipsynching skills are strong. Not only has she memorized Trump’s rambling sentences and his odd pauses and inflections, she has also developed a rich body language of gestures and expressions to reanimate his voice. No doubt part of the appeal of Cooper’s videos is that she also plays other characters; those people listening silently in the room while Trump says these things, with their expressions revealing their discomfort that this is the man whose inarticulate, and often inaccurate, ideas are broadcast to the world.
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