30 ROCK- Irreverently Incentivizing Curiosity

 

                        Layered Comedy in 30 Rock

A wickedly clever cut away gag with some distantly remembered Saturday Night Live Alumni catches your eye as you scroll through your preferred social media app. This is how 30 Rock, named after Thirty Rockefeller Plaza in New York City continues to live on in the popular culture. Thirty Rock maintains a strange semi-ubiquity ten years past it’s finale. Much of the fondness people have for the show can no doubt be traced to the fact that it’s initial run transpired during the end of Network Television’s dominance, giving way to internet content narrowcasting, a shifting media landscape that was formative to our current crop of media tastemakers with prominent voices on social media. 

The insular narrowcasting of the program, driven by obscure and meta references is in many ways a precursor to much of the popular streaming and internet content of today. The spontaneity of the out of the blue cutaway gags have much in common with present day internet humour.  It goes out of it’s way to incentivize and reward cultivating a knowledge base of media content and industry practices that puts often considered transient and inconsequential media on a pedestal while acknowledging the cynical profit driven nature of the industry that produced it.  The spirit of the program is summed up well with the takeaway “Thirty Rock consistently points out that television is both the best and the worst”. Acting as a precursor to this sort of engagement, Monty Python’s Flying Circus eschewed casting a wide net by dealing in the sort of references and absurdity that the creators themselves were steeped in, in the process presenting “a challenge to critical and savvy viewers to consider the layered meanings inherent to different programs”, in the words of Philip Scepanski in his essay “Layered Comedy in Monty Python’s Flying Circus”.

Taking place in the titular Thirty Rockefeller Center, a Television Studio in New York city affiliated with NBC, the show follows Liz Lemon, played by Tina Fey, as she goes about performing her duties as showrunner for The Tracy Morgan Show, and interacting with the cast of the show. She answers directly to Jack Donaghy, memorably played by Alec Baldwin, the head executive of NBC. Many of the actors play characters who draw close parallels to real life individuals especially Tina Fey,  the first female head writer on SNL, is not dissimilar from her character as showrunner. This sets the viewer up to perceive the program on a metatextual level. Early on in the program a picture of a GM Oven, GM being NBC’s parent company, is set up in at the center of Jack Doanghy office, showing how to the executives, television is just another corporate asset in a vast portfolio. 

   

The program’s depiction of the short lived nature of media ephemera is showcased in it’s most indelible image, Steve Buscemmi as an undercover cop passing himself off as a high school student, strutting in and proclaiming “How do you do, fellow kids”. On his shirt is a band logo in the font of the ACDC band logo, on his head a backwards cap, shouldering a skateboard. These are all trends and intellectual property that will come and go, made with somewhat cynical intentions, but there is still something endearing and of value to be had. 

Political climate/media is another target of the show. Jack Donaghy is an avatar of the American right, a dye in the wool Reaganite and a cut throat businessman. The more one knows the broad strokes of American politics over the last half century the harder his manifestations of Reaganism and Austerity politics will land. His total immersion in the cult of personality of Ronald Reagan is what causes many of the show's best jokes to land and resonate. His total belief in individualism and boot-straps prosperity gospel is perfectly encapsulated in him holding a copy of an Ayn Rand novel while reading Liz Lemon’s marriage vows. In this fashion many of the show’s references help develop and add to the characters.

   
 

Corporate satire is the subject of many of the show references. General Electric Products are often ham fistedly integrated into the business operations of 30 Rockefeller Center. There’s a constant push for “product integration” from the top brass at GM, primarily Jack Donaghy. A whole episode of the series in the first season straight away establishes this by entirely revolving around ham fisted product placement. Throughout the series the show will often turn into a full television spot for various products to satirize the over abundance of product placement in contemporary television, with characters turning to the camera to wax on about the merits of a currently available product. For instance, Liz states that diet Snapple “tastes just like the real thing”. This incentivizes the viewer to be less passive and more engaged when viewing. The show doesn’t encourage viewing media in a fan-like consumer mindset, instead suggesting that television should be appreciated for all of its merits and glaring commercial compromises. The entirety of the show culminates in fan favorite character Kenneth completing his character arc by taking over NBC and rejecting Liz Lemon’s pitch of a Thirty Rock like series because it contains “women, quality, and writers”.

Debuting in 2006 to mediocre ratings but performing consistently across it’s entire run, Thirty Rock would come to perhaps knowingly embody changing industrial practices in Network Television better than any other show of it’s era. Compared to competition such as Aaron Sorkin’s more prestige, leaden, and self serious program,  Studio 60, which takes on the same subject matter, Thirty Rock has aged far better. The irreverent sensibility of Thirty Rock is far more prescient than Sorkin’s fawning over the decades old practices and institution of television. “By assuming its viewers are steeped in knowledge of particular texts and rewarding them for this knowledge” Thirty Rock has amassed a considerable cult following and influence that only grows with every passing year.