Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label satire. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Jon Stewart - The Importance of Accountability

The clearest and most sane response to the loopy, hypocritical and dangerous trends in politics and media for this century has come from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show (echoed and amplified by The Colbert Report).

I can barely imagine what our world might have become without it. The awesome weight and power of the satire provided via Stewart's company of comedians and writers was inescapable and palpable. In the stormiest of times, the calm of laughter and the presence of wisdom somehow made such storms endurable.

America has a rich history of sharp and straight shooters who called "bullshit" when it needed to be called - Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Kurt Vonnegut. 

While I hate to see Stewart step away, I know that 16 years of televising the ridiculing of the Abyss must be deeply exhausting and trying. I hope he realizes how incredibly valuable and necessary his show has been. It isn't just a job well done, it's been a vital voice on a global scale. And it's a voice that was a collaboration of writers and producers most of us will never even know.

His first Daily Show broadcast tackled the ongoing lunacy of a President Clinton impeachment hearing, and perhaps, as the Obama presidency winds down, the nation may be entering a new cycle, We all hope for less lunacy, but really, a satirist can only point the way in which we should proceed.

I salute you, sir. I thank you. I hope we remember the importance of accountability.

Thursday, January 08, 2015

Cartoons of War and Murder

via cartoonist Rob Tornoe
How odd is it that we live in a time when terror threats against a low-brow fart-joke movie ("The Interview") and the massacre of cartoonists with Charlie Hebdo in France make worldwide headlines?

Kudos to Pith In The Wind for reprinting a selection of cover cartoons from Charlie Hebdo.

Here is a link to cartoonists responding to the massacre. 

The murders in France will in fact make sure more people will see the works of Charlie Hebdo so despised by delusional extremists. Perhaps that is a victory of sorts.

(NOTE: I;m aware of the irony of this post after my previous post)


Thursday, December 18, 2014

Sony, Korea and Millions of Shoes


Movies can be dangerous things. Comedy and satire too mingle with danger, tyrants and dictators aren't powerful due to their great sense of wit.

Yesterday, fearful of a promise of violent attack on movie theaters showing "The Interview", Sony Pictures pulled the movie from release. The movie's comic misadventures in a silly CIA plot to assassinate an actual, living human dictator in North Korea catapulted it from obscurity to infamy and history in record time.

Immediately too, cries that removal of the movie from distribution was giving terrorists control followed Sony's decision.

Sadly, caving in to demands of supposed terrorists seems more a rule than an exception.

Millions upon millions of shoes being removed at airports seems proof of that. Nation after nation has embraced a grim surveillance society since 2001. Haven't we already caved?

As for the movie -- did North Korean hackers acting on behalf of the state attack Sony? Some say no way:

"It's not possible. It would have taken months, maybe even years, to exfiltrate something like 100 terabytes of data without anyone noticing. ... Look at the bandwidth going into North Korea. I mean, the pipelines, the pipes going in, handling data, they only have one major ISP across their entire nation. That kind of information flowing at one time would have shut down North Korean Internet completely."

"Monsegur thinks it's also possible this was an inside job, that an employee or consultant downloaded all the information from Sony's servers and then sold it to someone else."

The potential of lawsuits against distributors and theater owners seems large, given they had been "warned" ahead of time of an attack on theaters.

The screenwriter of "The Interview" is beyond amazed by all this.

Friday, October 10, 2014

'Gone Girl' - David Fincher's Social Critique



"As a director, film is about how you dole out the information so that the audience stays with you when they're supposed to stay with you, behind you when they're supposed to stay behind you, and ahead of you when they're supposed to stay ahead of you." -- David Fincher

It's so good to see a storyteller like David Fincher achieve popular success without chucking away the thought and artistry that make movies more than just memorable - his films almost haunt you and refuse to dissipate. His newest movie, "Gone Girl", is imminently a marketing dream (best-selling novel, hot topic actors), but troubling, provocative under-currents stream all through the show.

His other films, "The Social Network", "Se7en", "Zodiac", "Fight Club", "Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" and his TV series "House of Cards" - are careful, meticulous compositions that blend the images, words and sounds into something far more than the sum of their parts. It's a hell of a critique on modern times.

There's a panic-filled America on display. Institutions (business, marriage, class structure, school, judicial systems, finance, journalism, politics) are craggy, crumbling and crippled and still must be negotiated, traveled and endured. The only thing more dislocative than being inside these edifices is to be without them. Fincher nails this eroding world expertly:

"Gone Girl explodes marriage,” says Rebecca Traister. “And it explodes precisely the one kind of marriage that is still idealized, between white, urban sophisticated people that meet in mid-life. There are many marriage models out there but this is the one that is still viewed aspirationally:   between white, beautiful, privilege educated New Yorkers. That is the picture of marriage that is sold to us, the one we all must desire. And that is the one the book vandalises. So there is a subversive argument being advanced about marriage in the film, that it's not an institution that can tame women any longer."

From Gillian Flynn's novel, "Gone Girl": 

"It seemed to me that there was nothing new to be discovered ever again. Our society was utterly, ruinously derivative (although the word derivative as criticism is itself derivative). We were the first human beings who would never see anything for the first time. We stare at the wonders of the world, dull-eyed, underwhelmed. Mona Lisa, the Pyramids, the Empire State Building. Jungle animals on attack, ancient icebergs collapsing, volcanoes erupting. I can't recall a single amazing thing I have seen firsthand that I didn't immediately reference to a movie or TV show. . . . You know the awful singsong of the blase: Seeeen it. I've literally seen it all, and the worst thing, the thing that makes me want to blow my brains out, is: the secondhand experience is always better. The image is crisper, the view is keener, the camera angle and the soundtrack manipulate my emotions in a way reality can't anymore. I don't know that we are actually human at this point, those of us who are like most of us, who grew up with TV and movies and now the Internet. If we are betrayed, we know the words to say; when a loved one dies, we know the words to say. If we want to play the stud or the smart-ass or the fool, we know the words to say. We are all working from the same dog-eared script."

And there's still enormous amounts of wit and satire, a sense of the playful amid the horror show of the current age. "Gone Girl" likewise challenges perceptions - and makes box office bucks too. 

His approach to "Gone Girl". Another recent interview here.

"Anybody looking outside themselves to make themselves whole is delusional and probably sick." - David Fincher

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Dear White People


"There are some knee jerk reactions to the phrase 'Dear White People' and I get it. No one wants to be called racist, and some folks are still waking up from the fantasy that having a Black president means America has somehow become 'Post-Racial.' 

"The truth is, my film isn't about 'white racism' or racism at all. My film is about identity. It's about the difference between how the mass culture responds to a person because of their race and who that person understands themselves to truly be. All explored through the microcosm of a success oriented Ivy League college." -- writer and director Justin Simien

Friday, August 31, 2012

Clint Eastwood, American Icon, Learns The President Might Be A Democrat, Gets Riled Up

I've been trying to puzzle out just what Clint Eastwood said last night at the GOP convention -- he had a semi-angry argument with an empty chair, which he claimed an invisible President Obama was sitting in. 

"You see, back in those days, rich men would ride around in Zeppelins, dropping coins on people, and one day I seen J.D. Rockefeller flying by. So I run of the house with a big washtub and... hey! Where are you going? Anyway, about my washtub. I'd just used it that morning to wash my turkey, which in those days was known as a walking-bird. We'd always have walking-bird on Thanksgiving, with all the trimmings: cranberries, injun eyes, yams stuffed with gunpowder. Then we'd all watch football, which in those days was called baseball...

I'm thirsty! Ew, what smells like mustard? There sure are a lot of ugly people in your neighborhood. Ooh, look at that one. Ow, my glaucoma just got worse. The president is a Democrat??!!!

"Hello? I can't unbuckle my seat belt. Hello?  There are too many leaves in your walkway...

"We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.

"Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...

"Then after World War Two, it got kinda quiet, 'til Superman challenged FDR to a race around the world. FDR beat him by a furlong, or so the comic books would have you believe. The truth lies somewhere in between."

Oops, sorry, that was from Abe Simpson, not Clint Eastwood, though it's easy to get the two confused ...



Monday, August 20, 2012

Great Moments In Banana Slicing History

Apparently everything real or imagined is for sale on Amazon.

But as entertaining as the products might be - like the UFO Detector or the Uranium Ore or Tuscan Whole Milk - it's the comments/reviews which are the most entertaining.

For example, take the Banana Slicer for sale.

- "For decades I have been trying to come up with an ideal way to slice a banana. "Use a knife!" they say. Well...my parole officer won't allow me to be around knives. "Shoot it with a gun!" Background check...HELLO! I had to resort to carefully attempt to slice those bananas with my bare hands. 99.9% of the time, I would get so frustrated that I just ended up squishing the fruit in my hands and throwing it against the wall in anger. Then, after a fit of banana-induced rage, my parole officer introduced me to this kitchen marvel and my life was changed."

- "I always struggled with cutting bananas. Should I use my holiday cookie cutter set? My spoon? My laser pointer? My chainsaw? Sometimes the options were so overwhelming that I'd just throw caution to the wind and eat the banana skin-on. This tool has really taken the complexity out of a task that had left me in tears time and time again. Thank you Vittorio Banana Slicer."

- "As you may or may not know, I have 27 trained monkeys I use to do my evil bidding. Well, the younger monkeys teeth have not fully developed and so slicing a banana to feed them is a necessary chore. The adult monkeys used to have to chew up bananas and feed their young but not anymore with the Victorio Kitchen Products 571B Banana Slicer."

Pages of comments/reviews begin here.




Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Tennessee Senate Wants To Ban Teaching Gravity

(NOTE:  Satire follows below ... at least I hope it is satire.)

Speaking from outside the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville, Weinger said the bill would protect teachers who chose to criticize gravity and other scientific theories in their classrooms.

“The aim of all education is to teach students to think for themselves and we plan to do this by allowing children to be indoctrinated with whatever loosely founded views their teachers may hold.”

He added “there is strong evidence in the Bible that the Law of Gravity is a fallacy. For example, Hebrew 1:3 explicitly states that Christ upholds all things by the word of his power – seems like a pretty solid argument to me”.

“If you compare this against what’s currently taught – that matter ‘emits gravitational waves’ which ‘effect the curvature of the space time continuum’…well gravity starts to look pretty unlikely doesn’t it? I’m pretty sure most of those aren’t even real words. Unlike Christ’s.”

Ms. Jenny Fuller, an elementary school teacher from Gatlinburg TN who has been campaigning against the inclusion of gravity in the school curriculum for several years, said she was “delighted” with the outcome.

“I have long felt uncomfortable teaching gra…gra….this theory” she said. “It is clearly a dangerous idea to teach our children – Newton ‘discovered’ gravity by an apple falling on his head, Adam and Eve fell from the Garden of Eden for eating one. Then Newton calls gravity an ‘attractive force between all objects’ – such a mentality is clearly a gateway for temptation and sexual promiscuity”.

More here, and for those who need even more assistance:
SATIRE:  Noun: 1. The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Palin Mangles History, Laughs and Hijinks Ensue


Though I am reluctant to offer any more mention of the Endless Publicity Machine which toils on behalf of half-term Governor Quitter, aka, The Palinator, aka The Deluded Alaskan, aka Sarah Palin, her recent bizarro world account of the 'ride of Paul Revere' has prompted a revision of Revere's legend via the Atlantic Monthly and it is mighty funny.

Written by Jeffery Goldberg, it's a spot-on satire of the Huckster from Wasilla.

LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the early evening ride of Paul Revere,
On the twentieth, or twenty-first, of May, or possibly June, in Seventy-six, or maybe Seventy-seven;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who refudiates that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, while ringing those bells, 'We must see the French a-coming
By land or sea or some other way, maybe by air, from the town to-night,
And tell our British friends, and our British enemies,
And warn them of bears, the big majestic polar bears, that lurk amid the French a-strumming
Their mandolins, and other French instruments, that make a patriot so squirmish.
Shoot a flare up at Lexington and Concord,
Those fabled towns of New Hampshire and Vermont
Where General Lee made his valiant stands;.
And no one will take that flare gun away from me,
Not from my cold, dead hands.
Of that church, you know the one, with the name, whatever it's called, up in the tower as a signal light,--
One, if by land, and two, if by air;
And I on the opposite shore will be, in a very large bus;
That is painted so patriotically;
And I will ride my white steed so fair.
Then I will ride a Harley, that I was pulling on a trailer behind the bus, and spread the alarm,
Man, I love the smell of that emissions
That smell is freedom, carried by horse,
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
Not horse emissions, chopper emissions.
But horse emissions are very patriotic.
And I will warn the British that the British are coming.
Which should confuse them very much.

Then he said, 'Good-night!' and with shotgun in hand
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, that Last Frontier,
We were rowing because the outboard motor didn't work, thanks to the EPA;
Just as the sun rose over the Mighty Mississippi,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
Which sounds a little gay;
A phantom ship, part of our hollowed-out Democrat Navy
Across the moon like a prison bar, where we should lock up all the French,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified, by Fox,
And by its own reflection in the tide, not the detergent, but the water that comes in from the sea in waves, I'm not sure how exactly.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Ralph Wiggum - The Not Unpossible Candidate in 08


A fine bit of satire of the presidential race was delivered via young Ralph Wiggum on this week's episode of The Simpsons.

It's really worth watching this clip, as both the GOP and the Democrats, pundits like Limbaugh and Huffington and our media-maddened culture all get nicely skewered.

The Ralph '08 Official Campaign Site is prepped and ready, America.