The Reykjavík Mayoral Election as Political Carnival

Seattle.
The next speaker at AoIR 2011 is Bjarki Valtysson, whose focus is on an Icelandic comedian who established the Best Party to contest the mayoral elections in Reykjavík, and won. After the 2008 financial crash in Iceland, there was a widespread mistrust of the political establishment, enabling comedians to successfully make the argument that Icelanders might as well elect clowns to political positions – and the party received 35% of the vote by doing so.

The Best Party successfully used cross-media platforms for promoting its subversive, carnivalesque election campaign, and thereby to perform democracy. It promoted values of positivity, honesty, trust, love, and equality, but in a sarcastic way – honesty is planned to be achieved by lying openly, for example. The now elected mayor’s Facebook page has some 35,000 likes – that’s around 10% of the entire population of Iceland.

After the election of the Best Party’s candidate to the position of mayor, however, things turned out to be less funny; some of the successful subversive values promoted by the party are now also turned against it. Bjarki points to the differences between theatrical performance (controlled by the performer, fun, absurd, and appealing in its absurdity) and ritualistic efficacy (co-controlled by performer and audience, with performers in a trance and unable to control the situation).

As the new mayor begins to have to confront the realities of political life, he becomes locked into the role of politician, and he is being treated as a politician rather than as a comedian – his own election slogans are now being turned against him, and the absurd promises made by the party during the election are obviously unable to be kept. Responses to his messages on Facebook have turned from hopeful and supportive to critical very quickly.

So, during the election, the Best Party was in charge of performing democracy, and did so very well – but performances are always temporary, and after the carnival comes the hangover; the model is not sustainable, and political realities have soured relations between party and electorate.