Thoughts, reviews, rants, laments, and general chatting about the wonderful world(s) of comic books.
Mar 31, 2019
The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1496: National Lampoon v.1 #76, July 1976
This one was really, really hard to read. The whole thing is a parody of Southern U.S. culture, skewering the Rebels and everything that their side of the Civil War stood for. So there's a lot (A LOT) of racist writing, a lot of horrendous social ideas, all presented under the shiny veneer of satire. The trouble is, seeing how the United States is currently deporting itself with regard to race, class, gender, everything, makes this satire distasteful. They may have thought they were making fun of a dying culture, but sometimes, in this case and in the case of facists/nazis, cultures should simply be left to die. Remember them, historically, sure, but let's stop using them as sites of entertainment. When we do this, we de-fang what is really a very brutal, destructive way of thinking. While satire in some ways connotes superiority in the presumed reader, that superiority, the ironic stance, can also obscure the danger of destructive cultures. If we get so used to laughing at it, how can we be ready to stop it when it rears its head again. To me, this is what's happening with the growth of white supremacy in North America - we spent so much time laughing at it that when it ran for president, we thought it was a joke.
"Remember, don't be fooled by ecology, environmentalism, or any of the rest of that crap!"
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