Lately, Twitter has come to resemble the final scene of Spartacus; with untold legions of opinion-havers claiming to be the same person. Rather than the Thracian gladiator, however, these folks are posing as Ron Howard’s narrator from the recently revived Arrested Development.
https://twitter.com/darth/status/844300223778177024
What was once a trope of the shockingly joke-dense sitcom, has now become perhaps the signature political meme of these uncertain times. Ron Howard, a producer on the show who also lent his distinctive pipes to its narration, would occasionally step in and contradict whatever a character had just said. Kind of like this:
Michael: Okay, that would be disgusting if you’d actually slept with her, but I don’t think you did.
GOB.: I did. And it was disgusting.
Narrator: They didn’t, but it would have been.
Since Donald Trump became president, though–plunging the country into a post-truth era of alternative facts and outright lies–Twitter users and CNN chyron writers have taken to calling out falsehoods in this familiar fashion.
https://twitter.com/JacobPierce015/status/859618680572923904
https://twitter.com/varshaoforange/status/864517711430246400
https://twitter.com/russbengtson/status/859809248569679873
The meme has hit critical mass partly on the strength of a strong reaction to hearing blatant lies all the time, and partly because of the extent to which comedy lovers cherish all things Arrested Development. It’s also probably become popular at least somewhat because of its all-purpose utility. This last point is why one of the writers on the show recently suggested Twitter should maybe let this gag rest its case.
Always an option, but let's keep pitching on things the narrator can say other than directly contradicting people. https://t.co/wiNVPntJDU
— John Levenstein (@johnlevenstein) March 29, 2017
Comedy nerds might recognize journeyman writer John Levenstein from one of the many shows he’s cameoed on in recent years, often as a judge. The Emmy Award winner (for Arrested Development) has lately held writer/producer gigs on hits like Portlandia, Silicon Valley, and Kroll Show, when he’s not crafting awesomely droll jokes on Twitter. He comes by his mild distaste for the “No, he didn’t” meme honestly, though, having lived through the joke’s inception from the inside of the illustrious AD writers’ room.
Whether or not this joke directly paved the way for the eventual recurring contradiction, once “He didn’t” first cropped up, it quickly became a popular gag. Levenstein soon noticed the writers wanted Ron Howard to flex his omniscience more thoroughly and often.
I argued at Arrested Development that the narrator contradicting someone was easy and should be used sparingly. Now I'm arguing with a meme.
— John Levenstein (@johnlevenstein) March 8, 2017
“As a writer I never really leaned on the narrator contradicting characters, but it did start to creep into the show,” he says. “I’ve always argued in favor of holding self-referential moments to a higher standard and using them sparingly. Personally I feel like the device of the narrator contradicting characters has become almost impossible to use in the show–[a fifth season is in the works]–now that it’s a meme.”
https://twitter.com/adefillo/status/862149914347921408
Even before the inauguration–in fact, even before the election–the joke galvanized online in the form of “Trump-rested Development.” It was a nifty bit of editing that combined footage from the 2016 presidential debates with a cascading chorus of Ron Howard corrections, backed by the Arrested Development score.
This video might have been the moment an occasional Twitter form crystallized into a full-blown political meme. And as the Trumpian untruths have piled up month after month, the momentum has showed no signs of slowing down.
Narrator: He didn't. https://t.co/4BsNEJboQA
— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) May 8, 2017
So perhaps the next time you spot an obvious Trump lie and want to call it out on Twitter, take another second to try a different tack. There are millions of methods for doing so–if mocking Trump were a stock, it would be splitting right now–and many of them don’t rely on a beloved formula that has been driven into or around the ground. According to Levenstein, though, it’s not only this meme that should be put out to pasture, but all of them.
“I don’t tend to enjoy memes on Twitter or joke templates on TV,” he says. “I don’t understand why people find security in them. When you recognize the format, it’s time to move on.”
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