Dear New Yorker Magazine,
I made your stupid cartoon a little funnier.
It’s still not amusing or sly or clever, but at least here the cartoon and the object the cartoon is supposed to be “satirizing” have been co-located within the same fucking time zone.
So since you obviously don't know "funny", sit back for a moment and take a lesson from the master in how to use humor with very sharp teeth to shock Wal-Martians out of their somnolence.
See, the reason this movie
is so damned-near-perfect, transcendentally hilarious is not that Mel Brooks used the vilest language over and over and over again -- which is essentially what you have done -- but that he was genius enough to realize that only by first firmly embedding the most vicious kind of racism in a broad, clear and unambiguous comedic c-o-n-t-e-x-t would he then be free to co-opt racism’s own imbecilic, unabashed virulence to belittle and humiliate its practitioners.
Your thing? It fails for the simplest reason of all: because its all setup and no punch-line. Which not only leaves your viewers stranded in midair, but also leaves the impression that the New Yorker editorial board believes that the only difference between a hatecrime and a scrap of ironic, performance art that we poor mundanes just don’t “get” is one snicker and a pair of air quotes.
So by all means, softly patronize the observer for essentially being too dense to see its subtle meaning, because that's usually a good plan.
But should one of you – God forbid -- come home some fine, clear evening to find a Star of David spray painted on your door, or a cross burning on your lawn, I hope you will pause a moment appreciate that -- by your standards -- you have ceded your right to judge whether those are genuine expressions of rank bigotry...or merely arch, postmodern commentaries on the follies of rank bigotry that you're just too unhip to understand.
Because shorn of any frame of reference, how in the world could you ever tell?
12 comments:
I'm linking that, reproducing that, crediting that, and tipping my hat to that.
Thank you for expressing EXACTLY what this argument is about.
If you have heartburn about us posting your work, lemme know and I'll take it down. But that should be on every blog everywhere now.
Funniest. Movie. Ever.
perfect
Man, Blazing Saddles is the grand poobah-gold standard of racial satire. Nothing else comes close.
Hands down, the BEST summary I've read regarding "the cover". The fact the editor has had to repeatedly try to 'explain' it proves it bombed.
"Cartoons are like gossamer and one doesn't dissect gossamer."
-The New Yorker editor on 'Seinfeld'
What Archangel said. The New Yorker staff showed they live an entire "world" made of "air-quotes."
Very very well done Sir.
yes, perfect.
As usual, DG, you nailed the central problem. ART puts a frame around life and invites a special kind of contemplation--like Blazing Saddles does. Lacking the frame, the New Yorker is the passive aggressive spewing hurtful language followed by, "Gosh, I was just joking," or--even worse--"thin skinned aren't you? Can't you take a joke?"
Damn, you sure nailed this post. Logic is A, tempo A+.
When you're as trancendentally hip as The New Yorker, you don't NEED no stinkin' context!
Was just reading someone's comment about pulling the magazine out of his mailbox and finding the cover very funny and right to the point.
That's context. Pulling the next issue of your New Yorker Subscription out of your mailbox. No possibility of not seeing what's intended. Silly editors didn't quite figure out that that would not be the context for all the people who'd see it, or for very many.
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