30 Rock’s complicity in corporate synergy enables its satire of that very synergy

Evidence

30 Rock enacts its own “adverlingus” and “pos-mens” of NBCUniversal properties and other products. In anthropological terms, these parodic buzzwords are examples of “emic” statements: they derive from a point of view where the analysis of cultural systems is defined in terms meaningful to the individual who is a participant within that culture. With its industrial self-theorizing both ironic and lucrative, 30 Rock develops a critical space for the examination of synergy, conglomeration, and financialization, while also participating in these corporate demands. The complicity with which it engages in these practices is integral to how it can simultaneously satirize them; its mise-en-synergy is both the threat and the opportunity, the obstacle and the insight, the product and the text. — Andrew deWaard, Derivative Media, 385

Categorization

• SEED: The complicity-enables-satire mechanism is a broadly portable argument for any article on how owned media criticize their owners.