A short horror joke

Crazy magazine continues. In April this year, it began to restart, jokingly calling it the "first stage."

The related content was finally laughed off: MAD magazine will soon disappear from the newsstand, but in terms of cultural resonance and popularity, it has basically lost its influence.

At its peak in the early 1970s, the circulation of Crazy exceeded 2 million copies. As of 20 17, this figure is140,000.

Although it sounds strange, I believe that the "ordinary gangs" that make Mad are performing an important public service, that is, educating American teenagers not to believe everything they read in textbooks or see on TV.

When the so-called objective news still respects authority, Mad advocates subversion and pure truth-telling. Although newscasters often avoid saying that there is something wrong with * * *, Mad claims that politicians are lying. As early as * * * * (new york Times) and CBS Evening News and other responsible public opinion organizations discovered this point, and Mad told readers everything about the lack of credit. The Wall Street Journal's suspicion of advertisers and pundits helped cultivate a generation of less credulous and more critical people in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today's media environment is very different from the era when Mad prevailed. But it can be said that consumers are dealing with many of the same problems, from unfair advertisements to false propaganda.

Although Mad's satirical tradition continues, it is not clear whether its educational atmosphere-its implied media literacy efforts-is still a part of our youth culture.

This is a carousel. In my research on the history of media, broadcasting and advertising, I have noticed the periodic characteristics of media panic and media reform movement in American history. Angry politicians and angry citizens demand new restrictions, claiming that opportunists are too easy to use their persuasiveness and deceive consumers, making their key abilities useless. But this anger is exaggerated. In the end, the audience became more savvy and educated, which made this criticism quaint and outdated. In the era of penny publishing house from 65438 to 30, periodicals often fabricated sensational stories, such as "big moon scam" to sell more copies. For a while, this method worked well until accurate reporting became more valuable to readers.

During the "big moon scam", the New York Sun claimed to have found a group of creatures on the moon. In 1930s, when radio became more and more popular, orson welles used his notorious "World War II" plan to create a similar alien scam. This broadcast did not arouse the general fear of alien invasion among the audience, as some people claimed. But it did trigger a national discussion about the power of broadcasting and the gullibility of viewers.

Besides cheap papers and radio, we also witnessed the moral panic caused by cheap novels, exposure magazines, telephones, comic books, television, video recorders and now the Internet. When Congress sued orson welles, we saw mark zuckerberg prove that Facebook helped the Russian robot project.

It provides a mirror for our gullible "KDSP", but there is another theme that is often neglected in the media history of China. In response to the persuasiveness of every new media, a healthy and popular response appeared, laughing at the dumping miracle of the ruble. For example, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain gave us a duke and a prince, two swindlers who walked from town to town, and used ignorance to stage absurd plays and fabricate high-profile stories.

They are the original providers of fake news, and former journalist Twain knows everything about selling Bangkangbi. His classic short story "Journalism in Tennessee" severely criticizes those crazy editors and those absurd novels that are often published. These novels can be seen in American newspapers.

Then came the great P.T. barnum, who tore people apart in an amazing creative way.

"This road leads to the exit." He saw a series of signs in his famous museum. Ignorant customers, assuming that the exit was an exotic animal, soon found themselves through the exit door and locked it. His museum makes customers more wary of exaggeration. It teaches skepticism with humor and irony. Like Twain, barnum erected a funny mirror for the rising American pop culture, which made people reflect on the excessive business communication.

Think for yourself. Magazines that question authority also embody this spirit. This magazine started in horror comics, but later it became an outlet of satire and humor, distorting Madison Avenue, hypocritical politicians and unconscious consumption.

Teaching young readers lies-only fools fall in love with hawkers-subverts the sunny optimism of Eisenhower and Kennedy's era crazily, implicitly and explicitly. Its writers and artists laugh at all those who claim to monopolize truth and virtue.

Our editorial mission statement has always been the same: "Everyone is lying to you, including magazines. Think for yourself. " Questioning authority, "said John Figala, a senior editor.

This is a subversive message, especially in an era when advertising and cold war propaganda have affected everything in American culture. When American TV stations broadcast only three TV networks and integrate limited media choices, Mad's message is particularly prominent.

Just as intellectuals daniel Boorstin, marshall mcluhan and guy debord began to criticize this media environment, Mad was doing the same thing, but its way was widely spread as approachable, proud, stupid and amazingly complicated. Taking KDSP and KDSP as examples, the existentialism hidden under the chaos of every "spy-to-spy" group directly illustrates the madness of cold war brinkmanship. The "spy V spy" conceived by Antonio PrHyias, a Cuban exile, has two spies, who, like the United States and the Soviet Union, abide by the principle of mutual assured destruction. Every spy is promised not to accept any ideology, but to completely eliminate another ideology, and every plan is finally wasted in their arms race. The "Democratic Revolutionary Party" crazily distorts those who blindly support the control of power leverage. (Jasper, CC BY-NC-SA)

Comics highlight the irrationality of unconscious hatred and unconscious violence. Paul fussell, a literary critic, wrote in an article about the plight of soldiers in Vietnam that American soldiers were "condemned as sadists" by endless monotonous violence. The same is true for spies,

As the credibility gap between Johnson and Nixon widened, Mad's logic of cold war criticism became more relevant. The circulation has soared. Sociologist Todd gitlin was a student leader in a democratic society in 1960s. He believes that Mad has provided an important educational function for his generation.

"In junior high school and high school," he wrote, "I swallowed it."

However, in the next few decades, healthy skepticism seems to have disappeared. The outbreak of the Iraq war and the acquiescence to the carnival report of our first reality TV star president seem to prove the general failure of media literacy. We are still trying to figure out how to deal with the Internet, and how it can promote information overload, filter bubbles, publicize and, yes, falsify news.

But history shows that although we can be stupid and credulous, we can also learn to recognize irony, hypocrisy and ridicule ourselves. When we are disarmed by humor, we will learn to use our critical ability more than when we are scolded by nerds. From barnum to Twain, from madness to South Park, to onions.

The crazy legacy continues, which is a direct clue to distort the vulnerability of media consumers. Today's media environment is more polarized and diffused. It also tends to be cynical and nihilistic. Mad tells children humorously that adults hide the truth from them, not that the concept of truth is meaningless in a world of false news. Public opinion affects the crazy atmosphere; In the best case, madness can be bitter, gentle, humorous, tragic, cold and pleasing-at the same time,

It's our lost emotion. This is why the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Maine in the United States needs an associate professor like Mad more than ever before.