Mad Magazine to mostly stop publishing new material
comicbook.com
comicbook.com
RIP, Alfred E. Neumann! May you live forever in our minds and memories!
I think Homer's were as good as any:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vb3aDRoO8Sw
...I guess I'm a downer. Did you know Chevy Chase wrote gags for MAD? They had a lot of outside writers like that. Even Don Martin (whose cartoons seemed pretty straightforward, even if he was the "maddest") used writers for jokes.
MAD inspired all types of comedy from many greats today. Terry Gilliam called MAD's Harvey Kurtzman his mentor [1]. Judd Apatow says similar. It inspired Cracked, National Lampoon and many other comedy media. MAD was even partially responsible for the counter culture [2].
The re-launch I think wasn't truly the MAD spirit but I was hopeful for it continuing, always a subscriber. MAD didn't transition well after the internet, even though they were like a pre-internet must see destination. After 2000 they held under 250k subscribers [3].
I'll miss dearly new content from Alfred E. Neuman and the 'usual gang of idiots' for sure, but we'll always have MAD history.
MAD will forever have changed the world and comedy for the better. The world could use more MAD satire today so it is sad to see it go.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5756899/My-MAD-men...
[2] https://groovyhistory.com/mad-magazine-covers-1960s
[3] https://blog.comichron.com/2019/07/the-complete-mad-magazine...
Looking at the cover in the link, it already feels 30 years old. (The characteristic MAD face evokes old-timey Americana in a way that feels nostalgic more than current.)
He is still considered one of the biggest thinkers of philosophy in the 20th century, personal warts and all.
Plus, as a European, I wouldn't trust people with analytical/anglo-saxon philosophical tendencies to know philosophy when they see it (e.g. re D/G and Lacan).
But you know what? Life is not meant to be serious all the time
By 5th grade, I had a small portable TV I had hooked up to cable, so I could watch A&E’s ‘An Evening at the Improv’ after official bedtime.
By 12, Saturday Night Live was also a go-to.
https://gothamist.com/2016/05/18/mad_magazine_video_tour.php
Al Jaffee interview:
Of course, it ain't what it used to be and hasn't been for a long time, so I guess I'm not that sad to see it go. It was a different era.
> At age 19, Dr. Knuth published his first technical paper, “The Potrzebie System of Weights and Measures,” in Mad magazine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-comp...
I shudder to think where computer science would be today were it not for the sage foresight and mature discrimination of Mad magazine.
Just yesterday I recalled an old joke in an old copy of Mad. It was a top ten list of songs that are about violence. One of the songs listed was Sting and the Police, "Don't stab so close to me". Still laughing about that now.
Satire can no longer compete with reality.
https://www.tomrichmond.com/the-end-of-the-madness/04/07/201...
That said, I think it's good that they're packing it in. All good things must end some day, and Mad Magazine has been past its prime for some time now. As other commenters suggest, the context in which Mad was revolutionary & cutting has long past & its style of irreverence is now almost ubiquitous.
But I can't say I won't miss the furshlugginer thing!
I remember them as a teen in the 90’s and they still had a captive audience in my peers and I. After the mobile computing revolution had taken hold I don’t think teens even were aware they existed.
I can't actually think of one.
This seems to suggest "not really": https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NYT/new-york-times...
That chart suggested that the times revenue has seen YOY increases every year since 2016.
Also, it really depends on your definition of success.
https://www.statista.com/chart/3755/digital-subscribers-of-t...
(of course, take this as you will: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/business/media/new-york-t...)
This is so sad to see. The fact that they took the easy road of Trump jokes, is far from the magazine I once knew. They used to have witty images and commentary that would appeal to many...
Mad was built on parodying a Middle American mindset that largely doesn't exist anymore. Thanks in small part to counterculture such as it self. In a way its a victim of its own success. It tore down the enemy too well and the counterculture is 'the Man' now. You can see the same thing happening with the Simpsons. Its lost its purpose.
On another note, I'm not going to pretend that simply being left leaning doomed Mad but there are already a gajillion places simply making fun of Drumpf and Republicans. Gotta stand out somehow.
I’m not saying this as a partisan or political argument, but I’m genuinely curious about the sociological implications. It’s a very... strange puzzle to me, and I’d welcome some fresh perspectives.
SNL's Palin parodies? Not sure whether that actually mattered or the Republicans just, for unrelated reasons, failed to GOTV. I'm pretty sure most self-identified Republicans still think she's great and weren't turned away from the polls over her, but maybe it swayed some moderate/no-party-affiliation folks?
Beyond that, humor's kinda a sustaining force for the left, in the same way... whatever you'd call Talk Radio style entertainment-news is for the right (AM radio, various web shows and podcasts, Fox News). Its efficacy may be more in group cohesion than converting "others".
[EDIT] incidentally, SNL probably played a large part in painting the (fairly negative) pop-culture image of Hillary that was such an important part of the 2016 election, overshadowing the whole race. Think mid- to late-Clinton-presidency SNL. So there's that.
With the republicans now, I think they've positioned themselves to be immune from mockery - they saw how effective Jon Stewart was during the Bush years, and the solution now seems to be to fill the air with as much as possible so that it all turns to static.
I remember when Trump got elected, the biggest question everyone had as a comedian was "how do you mock this person, he's already too ridiculous"? Ditto Boris Johnson happening now. Some are trying to start countering this from trying to draw a line by defining values (that they clearly don't seem to share) - the Pete Buttigieg strategy, the Joe Biden strategy. It just seems like a fascinating turn of events that suddenly mockery as a political tool can be nullified.
Nothing SNL has ever done on Trump has ever seemed to dent him. Sean Spicer though - that definitely got through. And now he's gone, replaced by Sarah Sanders who manages to soak up all sorts of sympathy despite lying all the time. I guess the other poster is right - the progressives really have become the social establishment, and that comes with a lot of really interesting concequences.
Also theres the new dynamic which has emerged within the past decade or 2 but has ramped up considerably where Progressives are the new establishment. They of course have dominated certain areas for a long time but its at the point now where every major sector of society (with a current trivial exception of a tenuous hold on a few offices in the federal government) is controlled by people who are fanatics for or at least bow to what would have been considered ridiculous political correctness/social justice only a few short years earlier. Parody walks hand in hand with fighting against something larger. So does self actualization. Hence the desperate attempts for people to convince themselves that Google/MS/Facebook/Amazon/CNN/HuffPo/NYT et al is 'The Resistance'.
I think mainstreaming is an interesting point - a similar strain to what people are calling the "rise of populism" which ends up being more direct. In some ways its empowering the unwashed masses, and in others its being more genuine/less filtered.
I had another paragraph here that went into how progressives aren't the establishment economically by any means and was about to disagree, but after re-reading and scoping your argument to just having command of the social landscape I think you're probably correct. The lines of attack brought on by some in the social justice world can be patently ridiculous, and are ripe for parody. Its difficult to come around to being empathetic to that fact when most of my upbringing was during the culture wars against the "prudes", who had all the power and were using it to gatekeep everyone. I'm certainly more comfortable living in this social environment myself, but I remember the feelings of empowerment when we got to call out something in society that was obviously bullshit bullshit.
I suppose I have some fear around that as a natural backlash on some issues can turn into a general backlash against the entire thing - are we heading for another Disco Demolition? Or will a more middle ground maturing of language happen? One thing does seem almost certain - the corporations will make a lot of money any way the wind blows.
I think we're well past that and into the indiscriminate murder. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/28/charlottesvi...
There have been a few attempts to start mass destruction of consumer products in response to companies getting involved in the culture war, such as Nike supporting the "take a knee" protests. The only reason nobody's done this with music is that it's dematerialised.
I remember Bill Maher’s standup in the 80s and 90s, and was completely disinterested. It was simply not amusing.
Political humor is one of the lowest forms of comedy to me, and unfortunately has become a quite popular genre.
Before social media, most people were consuming similar media, so counterpoints could make a difference.
Nowadays algorithms decide what you would like to see/hear so only people that are already against trump are seeing those.
And this is not just websites. Metric and tracking got so much better that even traditional media, can target their viewership better.
Then Trump comes in, and somehow wins with a secret weapon - if he acts like a crazy person all the time, the mocking will get so loud, AND be so ubiquitous it'll just turn to static in everyone's minds. Suddenly the biggest political weapon the left has to win over independents isn't very useful.
I'm not concerned with the "base" of both parties - Trump hasn't dropped below 40% in a while, partly out of polarization, but also partly that there is a base he has, and that base is opposition to the left, who soundly beat them from Clinton to Obama culturally. This might be why despite having the house, senate, and white house the republicans could keep telling themselves they were the underdogs - culturally they are, and continue to be. So there will still be independents who are on the side of fighting the "progressive hegemony", and they by default go to trump. Instead of the skater punk in high school cussing and spitting in front of the nuns, its the kid on the computer intentionally calling someone the wrong pronouns.
Today this, tomorrow goading someone (such as a trans person) into suicide, the next day egging on the person who says they're going to shoot up a synagogue.
The punk confronting nuns is doing so from the bottom of the power hierarchy, and achieving their freedom not at the expense of anyone else. The modern alt-right culture is looking for targets and hostile to anyone who asks for respect. A big difference.
I don’t think, and we should all hope, that most people uncomfortable with pronouns are also those that egg on a synagogue shooter. There are levels here. Who’s going to give them a place to belong first?
Interesting way to phrase it. Taken literally it's absurd - obviously people aren't allergic to saying "he" and "she". Presumably you mean chosen pronouns. Where it comes down to a matter of someone asking for a tiny bit of respect. Some respond to that graciously, a lot of people go along with it indifferently, but a few regard it as a massive outrage to be asked to be respectful towards a stranger. They escalate it; they raise it to a "me or them" issue, and are surprised that some people choose to exclude them so that they can include trans people instead.
> Who’s going to give them a place to belong first?
What does this mean? Does it mean a place where necessarily trans people can't belong?
Certainly in the UK it's not a question of "belonging", most of the newspapers and large sections of all political parties have joined in the panic over trans people. Being anti-trans is tragically mainstream.
Interesting (and very icy) way to respond. I think you’re making assumptions about me here :)
I can think of more examples than those you’ve given. It can be people afraid to address people at all, because they’ve been hammered for getting it wrong in the past. Some figure it out, and some respond emotionally, reactively. It digs them a bigger hole. They decide that trans people and their allies are assholes, or bullies, and are holding the gun of social estrangement to their head. This isn’t the fault of the person who just wants to be respected as themselves - they’ve almost certainly experienced a metric fuckton of discrimination, lack of understanding, and hey maybe they’re just having a bad day and tired of fucking explaining it all the time, and then some ally who absolutely wants to have an argument right now starts brandishing a quote tweet.
All this shit can happen without them ever even knowing each other’s name. There are a lot of people (I’m thinking small town high school here) who have never even interacted with a trans person irl (IE - none of them are out). I just would want people to recognize - chosen pronouns just went from being a not even aware of in public thing to aware. It’s natural for people to be confused, or lack empathy at first. I get frustrated and say fuck a lot when I have to relearn hotkeys when I switch IDEs at work. If someone didn’t get the memo, assume goodwill, just like you are in this conversation.
I know all about TERFs. Thankfully I’ve yet to experience one irl.
> What does this mean? Does it mean a place where necessarily trans people can't belong?
It means it’s better for people to get better understanding than be welcomed with open arms by nazis. To the latter question - no.
I think you're incorrect about who holds the power culturally. Calling a person with XY chromosomes a man who prefers to be called a woman will result in firing, ejection from conferences and projects, or shunning — while on the other hand believing oneself to be a 'yellow-scaled wingless dragonkin' is allegedly no hindrance to working for Google.
I'm not taking a position here on whether it's right or wrong, just noting that right now it seems to me that the cultural Left has overwhelmingly won.
Most of the time it doesn't. Most of the time absolutely nothing happens. Certainly the traditional power hierarchy is unlikely to do much. It can also get you a position on a national newspaper. It's just that in a relatively few cases it's reached viral outrage level and something has actually been done.
This is the problem with the culture war: everything is fought over the highest-level most visible cases. All the low stakes of thousands of people are placed on a single case as an incredibly high stake. And the people are fired/deplatformed over it are very rarely innocents who have made a mistake on the first instance - it's nearly always people who knew what they were doing and chose to pick that fight, who happened to lose this time.
So in most situations the balance of power favours the traditional side; it's just that in a few cases the internet mob can focus the outrage laser and achieve dominant power. That's an unstable situation, certainly.
The right has largely stopped trying to engage neutrals on any kind of intellectual, rational basis, and has instead gone for leaning heavily on the emotional buttons of fear and power. Especially power: the cruelty of family separation at the border is deliberate. The right tells you who to hate and encourages you to watch their humiliation, but picks targets by their vulnerability. Hence it has to lie about their power and big up children into "threats to national security".
The tank parade is yet another symbol of this, nicely timed for just after the 30th anniversary of Tianamen.