La Claque

Honore Daumier, Intermission at the Comedie-Francaise

In reading the biographies off Georges Sand, I first became aware of the tradition of La Claque in French Theater. It most simply was a form of theatrical artistic intimidation. An artist, playwright, promoter hired professional spectators to "demonstrate" during a performance. There would be opposing Claques that in many case would drown out the performance and there are many recorded anecdotes of performances dissolving into heated battles between opposing Claques.

Georges Sand was a young playwright, a woman and fairly a novice in the world of theater and she found the experience, exciting and intimidating and suffered a few humiliations at the hands of the hired audience.

In many cases, it was the power of the war of the Claques which could make or break a production.

I tend to see the presentation of the ongoing series of Republican Debates not as debates in any formal sense, but as an entertainment phenomena hyped as a political event. It is theater, albeit fairly boring fair.

It seems to me in the clips I have viewed, most of the entertainment is provided by the audience and their reactions. The audience is obviously very controlled and vetted by the promoters of the event.

The moderators asking the questions are seen as the antagonists here. The claque expresses their approval or disapproval of a subject very vocally, applauding or booing. Quite often, it is the audience reaction which pushes the direction of the questioning. 

If these were debates, then why do we need to have to the live studio audience reaction to obscure the presentation of ideas? This is our modern Comedie-Republican Americain...The live studio audience is a selected claque which is allowed to influence the ensuing reporting and analysis by their reactions.

Bomb Iran, Hate Gay Armed Forces Members, We Love Waterboarding...
Stop asking Herman Cain about sexual harassment...hell, we're Amureecans, what 's the big deal about abusing them feminazis? They wuz askin fer it!
BOO HISSS BOOO WE'RE SO OUTRAGED! BOOOOO!
The noise of La Claque becomes all we read about the next day.

The Power of La Claque-Conservative Americain!
From what I understand, there are at least 15 more episodes of this season's series of The Dance of Death with The Republican Starz scheduled. Maybe Obama will simply be re elected due to utter viewer fatigue.