“Sometimes when reading Goethe I have the paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.”
-Guy Davenport
Over all these years I still haven’t decided if Niccolò Machiavelli was serious with ‘The Prince’. What do you think was the best Whoosh?
The Bible?
Ulysses. I remember a few bits that pointed to this and thinking, ‘Dammit, Joyce, are you daring me to read on?’
Jackson Pollock?
It’s my understanding that Machiavelli was quite scrupulous in his public life and did not follow the advice he gave in The Prince. He was writing it to ingratiate himself to the Medici (sorry, I can’t remember which one at the moment). I’m not sure he was exactly serious, but I think he wasn’t just making it up either.
Seconded. And ditto for Finnegans Wake. Seconded so much so, that I’m wary of anyone who claims either is their favorite book.
Be wary of me!
Didn’t Joyce say something to the effect of “That’ll keep 'em busy for the next hundred years” after finishing Finnegan’s Wake?
I know T.S. Eliot amused himself with “The Waste-land” and the related footnotes. Much as I love that poem, parts of it make me think that he was deliberately trying to cause future literature students as much frustration as possible.
I agree that Machiavelli didn’t follow his own advice, but I seem to recall that he was also very clear that he felt there was a great divide between what a Prince could and should do, and what a private citizen could and should do. Certainly, whatever else, he never deserved the broad brush that many (wasn’t this mostly an English reaction?) gave him after his book came out.
For the OP, I don’t think we can ignore Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” If a satire is accepted as serious that’s just as much of a whoosh as if a serious work is accepted as a satire, I think.
I’d also like to nominate Jefferson’s Declaration of Independance. It’s a great, stirring document, but the dichotomy between it’s ideals, and the life that he lived… Oy, vey. Sometimes I do wonder just how serious he was about Freedom, vs. getting them damned Lobsterbacks out.
Timbuk3’s “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades” was a satirical song about getting a job building nuclear weapons during the cold war- and everyone thought it was a smug graduation theme.
Also, I just mentioned this in another thread, but hardly anybody seems to realize that Paul Verhoven’s Starship Troopers is a parody of American and Nazi war films. The bastardization of Heinlein’s work was deliberate satire, not hollywood hamfistedness.
John Lennon’s “I am the Walrus” was largely a whoosh on fans who over-analyzed his lyrics for symbolism and hidden messages. He continued it with “Glass Onion” when he said “Here’s another clue for you all / the walrus was Paul.”
At the risk of starting this all over again…the two aren’t mutually exclusive, and “bastardization” is right. Verhoeven is a hack. His mother has pulled off the biggest Whoosh of the last century.
Silenus, I take it there is already an insightful thread on the satiricalness of Starship Troopers somewhere down in the archive? Could you point me to it? I’d love to hear the movie being discussed and not just lambasted. Thank you in advance.
A taste of the past “discussions” can be found here. 
Leonardo da Vinci. Painter, sculptor, scientist, engineer, inventor, architect, and visionary. His talent in all these fields and more is undeniable. But all this pales into insignificance beside his greatest gift: he was the greatest bullshit artist of any era. He successfully snookered the most ruthless families in Italy into bankrolling his hobbies.
Leonardo’s notebooks offer clear insight into the nature of his problem: the man wanted the freedom to satisfy his innumerable interests-- his artistic endeavors, his explorations of natural science-- in peace and comfort. Yet his homeland was a hopeless morass of constantly warring, oft-invaded petty fiefdoms. His brilliant solution was to convince his patrons that he was primarily a military engineer, then distract them with his other skills so that he was never actually called upon to produce any practical armaments.
Occasionally Leonardo’s employers would remember why they’d hired him in the first place, and wander downstairs to find out what he was up to. Of course he was prepared for that. He’d dazzle them with plans for ridiculously convoluted yet extremely deadly-sounding war machines-- science-fictiony stuff that he’d sketched out as intellectual exercises, using his knack for invention and engineering to make it all sound plausible: “See, this bomb, you shoot it into the enemy’s camp-- but it’s spring-loaded, and spins around like a top, shooting out all these little bombs! Cool, eh? Say, did I show you my design for a completely armored battle chariot with rotating scythes?”
If anyone actually ever tried to build any of this stuff, history does not record it; and I have no doubt that this was all according to Leonardo’s design. This was a guy who was reportedly so gentle that he bought up songbirds to release because he couldn’t stand to see them caged.
Terrifel, I did not know that. It’s very pleasing to read this, and you did a good job explaining it.
I was whooshed by the writer Trevanian. I didn’t know for many years that his ultra-violent espionage thrillers weren’t to be taken seriously, that they were written – not quite as spoofs or parodies – but whatever the word is for adding humor to something that’s supposed to be deadly serious, going a bit over the top with it. Shouldn’t The Loo Sanction as a title have tipped me off?
The only intended satire in Starship Troopers was the costume design, and I doubt Verhoeven realized even that (he has shown no penchant for satire, and very little sense of humor). The rest was straight adventure. The “satire” rationalization came long after the film came out as a way to fight back against the general (and generally correct) impression that it was a godawful movie.
The conversation probably went like this:
Studio executive 1: That was awful. What can we do to make it seem like it was done deliberately?
<Long pause>
Studio executive 2: I know! Let’s call it satire!
Studio executive 1: Great idea. It’s a satire.
Paul Verhoevan: What’s a satire?
Getting back on track, my choice is Woody Allen’s A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, which wasn’t actually a comedy at all, but a rather dire musing on the impermanence of relationships. The final scene showing what happens to Jose Ferrer is often criticized for being absurd and ridiculously silly (and not in a good way), but that was the point – it was as absurd and silly, but then, so were all the other relationships in the film. The clear point was that love can never last and we are forced into desperately looking for sexual connections as a way to compensate.
Can you provide any evidence of this? A quick run-though of the lyrics with annotations would be enough.
I lived in Austin at the time that the song was released. There was a strong “anti-Greek” attitude around at the time and Timbuk3 tapped into it. The joke was that the guy in the song had a great future as a nuclear physicist or engineer but didn’t know or care about the externalities of his profession. He was more interested in the beer that he could buy with his paycheck than he was with the fact that he might be partly responsible for a nuclear holocaust or another Three Mile Island.
Personally, I thought at the time that Timbuk 3 really needed to lighten up, but I think I’m giving an accurate assessment of what they meant when they wrote the song.
I can’tbelieve that no-one’s mentioned Orson Welles and The War Of The Worlds.