Remediating the Celebrity Roast: The Place of Mean Tweets on Late-Night Television

Abstract

This article uses the “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” segment on late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! as a case study in how television can remediate social media to maintain its dominant position in entertainment. The incorporation of tweets into television appears to demonstrate the power social media has over broadcast media, but a careful study reveals that television and film celebrities use television appearances to denounce “mean tweets” as an example of frenzied and cacophonous social media. Drawing on the history of the televised celebrity roast, I argue that contemporary roasts resemble Internet trolling while segments like “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets” embody the spirit of historical roasts by granting celebrities the opportunity to laugh at jokes about themselves. Thus, the segment reiterates the hierarchical position of “old media”: television as a source of comfort and clarity, and the Hollywood celebrity as the epicenter of culture.