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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 10, 2007 / 26 Menachem-Av, 5767

Woohoo! Satire seeing a revival

By Jonathan V. Last


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | On the weekend of July 27-29, The Simpsons Movie grossed $74 million, the fifth-largest opening weekend of 2007. It was also the most surprising hit of the year. Industry analysts had expected more in the range of $40 million. (Disclosure: My other employer, the Weekly Standard, is owned by News Corp., which also owns Fox, where The Simpsons airs.) Why the big surprise?


Surely part of the explanation is nostalgia. The Simpsons has been part of the cultural landscape for 18 years, and while the show isn't what it used to be, the movie promised, and delivered, a return to some approximation of its golden years. But more important, perhaps, is what The Simpsons represents: a high-water mark during a fine era of American satire.


After a long period of waning, satire is back in American culture. It has not just arrived, of course, but in the last dozen or so years, it has flowered, finding both high achievement and popular success.


On television, cartoons were the major energizers, with The Simpsons and South Park. Old standbys such as Saturday Night Live and Mad TV have chugged along, if unevenly. For what they are, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report are probably smarter than they need to be. Perhaps the best TV satire in recent times has come from Ricky Gervais, whose BBC shows The Office and Extras were wonderfully, darkly jaundiced looks at the modern workplace.


Satire has done well at the movies, too, even if the high-mindedness of Dr. Strangelove and Woody Allen's early work has dissipated. But in its place we've had more middle-brow perfections. Mike Judge gave us Idiocracy and Office Space - the latter of which may be the funniest movie ever made about suburban America. Christopher Guest created an entire series of satires about some of our more bizarre subcultures, from dog fancy (Best in Show) to the '60s folk scene (A Mighty Wind) to the world of amateur theater (Waiting for Guffman). And don't forget Trey Parker and Matt Stone who, in addition to their TV work, managed a parody of the Hollywood action movie done entirely with puppets (Team America: World Police) and a satire of American nationalism, wrapped in a satire of low-brow comedy, wrapped in a satire of the movie musical (the ingenious South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut).


The printed word has seen the least impressive flourishing of satire. Certainly, there are no literary giants such as Twain, Mencken, or Waugh. But we do have strivers such as Christopher Buckley (whose Thank You for Smoking remains the single funniest thing ever written about Washington), Andy Borowitz, and even Steve Martin.


And let's not forget the greatest satirical achievement of the last 30 years: The Onion. Founded in 1988, the newspaper parody is often brilliant and consistently excellent, taking aim at anything and everything around us. (My personal favorite was its 2004 headline: "Jacques Derrida 'Dies.' ")


What's to account for this miniature golden age? Surely many factors. One of them may be that since the 1980s, it seems to have become more socially acceptable to make a living writing in Hollywood, which opened that career path to the type of elite university students who otherwise might have headed off to the fascinating world of hedge funds. Harvard, in particular, has grown a reputation for being the birthplace of a comedy mafia, churning out humorists and satirists who have swamped the TV and film world. (The Harvard Crimson reports that at one point, 10 of the 12 writers on The Simpsons were Harvard grads.) Education isn't everything of course, but all things being equal, smarter is often funnier.


It's also possible that American life has become more suited to satire as, with each passing day, humankind tiptoes deeper and deeper into farce. That's essentially the conservative motto, of course: Never discount the probability that matters will get worse.


I suspect that what's at work is actually something more systemic: The dissolution of America's common culture.


Thirty years ago, we had three television channels and two national newspapers. We watched the same shows, went to the same movies, and read the same books. There's a lot to be said for having a common culture. Witness how exciting the release of the final Harry Potter book was. But that rarely happens anymore. We have hundreds of television channels, blogs, Web sites. Our culture has broken into a thousand tiny niches, each carefully sectioned off from the wider whole.


One might have thought this segmentation would be the death of satire, that to flourish, satire needed a common culture to host it. But the reverse has been true. What do the great satires listed above have in common? Very little. They traffic in politics, popular culture, academia, dog shows, the working world - you name it. As our culture fractures, the many shards reflect and refract one another - and, individually and all together, they create a funhouse reflection of modern life.


No matter what part of the culture you inhabit, these little worlds we've built around ourselves all call out for satire. As Mr. Burns would say: Release the hounds.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Jonathan V. Last is a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Comment by clicking here.


Previously:

07/31/07 Historical model: For Obama, it's Carter
07/26/07 Baseball, apple pie, a 2nd chance
07/24/07 Harry Potter and the alchemy theory
07/06/07 Life is hard — and often short. The perils of professional wrestling
06/21/07 After Bush: Gingrich and others worry that his shortcomings could have a far-reaching effect on the GOP
03/09/07 Why the British outclass us in acting
01/23/07 Romney: Seriously great, but with baggage
12/23/06 When truth is transpicuous
12/05/06 A realistic plan: Split the country in two
11/08/06 We could easily pull out of Korea and let China have regional hegemony. But would it be the right thing?
10/24/06 The decline of revolution
10/18/06 Why the free market is king
08/07/06 Democracy, of itself, not solution to all problems
08/01/06 We get the movies we deserve
07/27/06 How long will U.S. empire last?


© 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

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