Ah satire...where would the world be without it? I love satire and I think satirists are usually the most brilliant people on the planet. They are able to take apart serious subject matter and put it into intelligent, funny discourse. That takes a lot of brainpower.
So what’s the difference between things like Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, the South Park guys doing a parody on Star Wars, and the NIN/Star Trek homoerotic mash-up? All of these are satires on cultural phenomenon and subjects. Some also happen to be parodies. But people call Kurt Vonnegut a genius, the South Park guys crude, and the NIN/Start Trek mash-up a copyright violation.
So what’s the difference between satire and parodies? I think a parody is a form of satire and when a negative parody is made of something that is copyrighted, that is when people get their panties in a twist. It was okay for South Park to do a parody on Star Wars because ultimately, it brings up the name of Star Wars in a somewhat positive light. If you had never seen Star Wars before watching that South Park clip, you would not know what is going on and would therefore want to see Star Wars in order to understand South Park. However, if you make something like the Star Trek/NIN music video that claims that Kirk and Spock are gay lovers, it brings a negative light to Star Trek. Because of our societal standards, people are not going to want to see a TV show that has homoerotic undertones in it, whether it was created just by fans or the writers actually put that in there. Think of all of the hooplah that happened when J.K. Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay (p.s. Microsoft Word recognizes Dumbledore as an actual word!)? A lot of negative light was brought to the Harry Potter series. I would be interested to see if book sales dropped after she announced that.
I don’t think any society can function without satire. Satire is a great way of bringing out the negatives of a culture in a way that is acceptable. But when parodies are thrown into it and they violate copyright laws, people start to attack the parodies via the law in order to keep their image/product/whatever in a good light.
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1 comment:
do you think satire is the same as jenkins participatory culture?
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