{"id":42687,"date":"2019-07-09T06:00:28","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T10:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=42687"},"modified":"2019-07-07T18:39:18","modified_gmt":"2019-07-07T22:39:18","slug":"the-end-of-mad-magazine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2019\/07\/the-end-of-mad-magazine\/","title":{"rendered":"The End of Mad Magazine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mad Magazine<\/a> is ceasing publication<\/a> after a 67-year run.\u00a0 The satirical magazine\u2013which was a formative influence on young Baby Boomers like me\u2013will still be available (sort of) using reprinted material and in special end-of-the-year editions, but as an on-going, regular periodical, it will come to an end this Fall.<\/p>\n

Mad<\/em> started as a comic book making fun of other comic books, eventually moving on to parodies of just about everything.\u00a0 It then morphed into a magazine, complete with fake ads making fun of products, fake news making fun of current events, fake features making fun of everything else, and cartoons that lacked redeeming social value but were just funny.<\/p>\n

\n

When we think of satire, today we immediately think of politics.\u00a0 Mad<\/em> would target politicians in an equal-opportunity way\u2013of the two brains behind the magazine, Bill Gaines was a conservative Republican and Al Feldstein was a liberal Democrat<\/a>\u2013but the broader subject of mockery was the culture itself.<\/p>\n

Mad<\/em> parodied movies, TV shows, commercials, and pop culture as a whole.\u00a0 It also mocked fashions, trends, and what popular kids considered \u201ccool,\u201d including hippies, drugs, and rock music.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t remember it ever being mean-spirited, much less racist or antagonistic to any group a person couldn\u2019t help belonging to.\u00a0 Also it made fun of the worst aspects of school and the teenage social scene, all of which endeared the magazine to young misfits like myself.<\/p>\n

The magazine declined from its glory days in the 1960s.\u00a0 Some say it jumped the shark in 2001 when it moved from New York City to beautiful downtown Burbank. Whereupon it started taking actual advertising\u2013as opposed to the hilarious parodies of advertisements that it had become known for\u2013and concentrating on politics.\u00a0 Recently, under new ownership, it has been piling on Donald Trump like the rest of the media, oblivious that this was making it seem more conformist and less funny.<\/p>\n

In my day, many parents, teachers, and other authority figures worried that Mad<\/em> was having a bad influence on the young, encouraging a spirit of rebellion.\u00a0 Well, it did in my case, but it was a good kind of rebellion.\u00a0 Its satire of American culture\u2013including the pop culture and youth culture of the 1960s\u2013made it easier to resist.\u00a0 I learned how not to take it so seriously.\u00a0 It turned me into a cultural critic at a young age.<\/p>\n

As classical literary theorists have pointed out for centuries, comedy\u2013particularly satire\u2013is intrinsically conservative.\u00a0 It pre-supposes a standard against which its subject and finding it wanting.\u00a0 The purpose of comedy, according to the ancients, is to ridicule vice.\u00a0 That means a classical comedy may have lots of vice in it, but the vice is presented as foolish and contemptible, presented in such a way that the audience does not want to imitate it.\u00a0 Thus, comedy has a moral purpose and structure.<\/p>\n

This is why comedy is so terrible today, and why it is failing even in Hollywood<\/a>.\u00a0 Instead of ridiculing vice, most comedians today ridicule virtue.\u00a0 \u00a0Instead of satirizing the evils of society, satirists\u2013lacking a moral framework\u2013resort to mere mockery.\u00a0 This can be funny.\u00a0 Just as vulgarity and obscenity, also the stock and trade of today\u2019s comics, can be funny for its violation of social expectations.\u00a0 But when the social expectations have lowered so much that there are no more traditional taboos and nothing seems shocking, that approach to comedy will no longer have an effect.\u00a0 In the meantime, new taboos are being erected and are taken so seriously that laughing is not allowed.\u00a0 Already, old-school comedians like Jerry Seinfeld are saying that political correctness will destroy comedy.<\/a><\/p>\n

When President Trump gave the Democratic Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg the nickname \u201cAlfred E. Neuman,\u201d<\/a> after the Mad<\/em>\u00a0icon and cover boy, the standard bearer of the Millennials said that he had to google the reference.<\/p>\n

What, me worry?<\/p>\n

Yes, me worry.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illustration:\u00a0 Mad Magazine\u2019s Alfred E. Neuman, Baris@rio via Flickr, Creative Commons License<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mad Magazine is ceasing publication after a 67-year run.\u00a0 The satirical magazine\u2013which was a formative influence on young Baby Boomers like me\u2013will still be available (sort of) using reprinted material and in special end-of-the-year editions, but as an on-going, regular periodical, it will come to an end this Fall. Mad started as a comic book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":42771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,28,29,34],"tags":[527,5982,8517,1962],"class_list":["post-42687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humor","category-literature","category-media","category-personal","tag-comedy","tag-gene-veith-biography","tag-mad-magazine","tag-satire"],"yoast_head":"\nThe End of Mad Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mad Magazine is shutting down after 67 years. 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