Back when SNL was actually making new episodes, there was a “Weekend Update” joke about how if Dick Cheney died, Bush would become President.
A few days ago, Doonesbury ran a cartoon in which two guys debated who would take over if Cheney died. Bush, of course, was rejected as a possibility.
In this week’s New Yorker, there’s a cartoon in which a kid asks his dad who will become President if Cheney dies.
And in the most recent Tom the Dancing Bug, Cheney is described as “the most powerful man in the world.”
Actually, this was going to be a Pit thread, inspired by an ad for a WB comedy in which the clip shows a woman asking, “Who’s the shiksa?” (accompanied, of course, by a riotous laughtrack.) Yes, that’s right- nothing funnier than the mere use of a word in Yiddish. I had a few other good examples at the time, but I forgot them, so I decided to take it to IMHO and canvas you guys for your own examples of a total lack of creativity.
(Come to think of it, the most recent issue of Vogue has an article on how traditional, blonde-hair-and-high-cheekbones beauty is passe, and that’s why the brilliantly imaginative cocarati have been giving us all those ugly models with grease smeared on their faces. Not women who are beautiful in a different way, because that would require imagination and talent- they just give us ugly women who are made to look like they don’t bathe. But I think that’s beyond a lack of creativity, slipping into sickly decadence.)
None of these, however, could hold a candle to the infamous Demi Moore pregnancy cover. I saw so many ripoffs and parodys of that stupid photo I thought I would barf. The Energizer Bunny and Elian Gonzales also came pretty close.
It’s astonishing how much supposed “satirists” can endlessly copy an idea that wasn’t even all that funny to begin with.
Ah, I love Tom Tommorrow, I discovered him when I lived in SF, and he was published in a cheap local 'zine mostly targeted at bike messengers. His early work in “Processed World” was groundbreaking. Check it out at:
All the “Cheney is old” jokes (additionally, four years ago, there were all the “Dole is old” jokes).
All the “Jennifer Lopez has a big butt” jokes.
All the “Puff Daddy changed his name to P. Diddy” jokes.
All the “Bush is stupid” jokes (not saying their innaccurate… they’re just uncreative).
All the “Microsoft is evil” jokes.
I consider all these to be piss-poor examples of creativity because, A: they’re so painfully overused, and B: they’re accepted as undeniable fact. It’s like someone espousing the reasons for a chicken crossing as gospel.
Got Milk?
Got Jesus?
Got This? Got That?
GOT ORIGINAL FUCKING IDEA FOR AN AD?!
All the "Got… " ads/parodies are getting to me.
So easy to rip off. Yet, so sad.
C’mon people. At least try.
And sad to say, being the 4 star hypocrite I am, I’ve personally contributed to the problem. Was assigned, and dutifully completed an (illustration) job for a “Got Kids” greeting card where you see a dad wiped out on a couch in a devastated living room. A guy’s gotta pay rent.
And let me just add…
IMHO satire isn’t really doing it’s job if it’s too obvious.
Ideally, satire should expose something you take for granted and expose it for what it really is.
If you just say “Bush is stupid”, that isn’t really clever or thought provoking. You might as well mention “the sky is blue”.
Yeah thanks, we know.
Of course this is harder, and it’s why it doesn’t happen nearly as often.
Reuben Bolling did a very funny cartoon on “How to Draw an Editorial Cartoon,” taught by (of all people) the Lucky Charms Leprechaun. The 3-step process:
Take a big issue in the news,
Juxtapose it with a big movie (more broadly, you can use any pop-culture artifact, so long as it is completely ephemeral.)
Add lots of labels.
So to take an example, suppose that fellow who crashed his plane into the White House had done so during the release of “Pearl Harbor.” Draw dozens of Cessnas flying over the White House, and oh, I almost forgot- write “GOP” on each plane. Or you can combine the impeachment hearings with Independence Day: a saucer labelled “Kenneth Starr” blows up the White House.
Or take this example from the Elian era: Elian Gonzales meets with Castro, and cries “Whazzzaaaaap?” Castro replies, “Is it too late to send him back?” What’s the point? What political insight does this provide? None! But it juxtaposes political culture with popular culture, and that’s all it needs to do!
Incidentally, I remember a nice article in one of the last issues of Spy on an odd phenomenon: recent graduates from Ivy League Schools, nearly all female (Dinesh D’Souza seems to be the big exception) who write self-indulgent memoirs which are then hailed as the voice of Generation X speaking out on some big social issue. (For example, Katie Roiphe’s book on date rape.) Sometimes the authors even prove their intellectual seriousness by posing nude on the cover of their book. Typically, after picking an antagonistic topic on a hot-button issue and posing nude on the cover flipping a bird to the camera, they compain that no one takes them seriously as intellectuals, and bemoan the fact that U.S. intellectual culture is so shallow.
The reason I bring this up (other than the obvious fact that these people are rather lacking in creativity) is that it’s an example of good satire. When Spy was going through financial difficulties, I read an interview with the editor, who said that back in the 1980’s Spy had plenty of bloated targets to shoot at, like Donald Trump or Ronald Reagan. Later, the targets had become less obvious, so they were trying to adjust to going after people like the aforementioned authors. I liked the last few issues of Spy, but unfortunately it didn’t happen in time to save the magazine.