parody

[Stavros]

Just wondering how y'all felt about the topic of using humor as a critique of politics?

William Shakespeare often uses parody, for example in King Lear where the fool objectifies in his eccentric appearance and in his rhymes the 'serious purpose' of the King, which become accentuated as Lear actually loses his kingly powers; in As You Like It Phebe and Silvius offer a parody of Rosalind and Orlando: the inverted love between Rosalind and Orlando in which the female (Rosalind) masquerades as a male to get physically close to her male love interest (Orlando), the attempts by the female Phebe infatuated with the Male/Female Rosalind/Ganymede trying to get away from the male shepherd Silvius. It may be that in Shakespeare parodies are an internal critique of power and relationships; one could argue that the the society of the Sicilian Court in The Winter's Tale is not just contrasted to that of Bohemia, but that the latter is a parody of the former, and thus becomes a critique of it. There are parallels throughout Shakespeare, notably in Hamlet, where Young Hamlet and Old Hamlet are contrasted with Young Fortibras and Old Fortinbras, and the third father-son relationship with Leontes and Polonius.

In recent years comedy has not been able to mount much of an intelligent response to politics, preferring satire as a cheap form of substitute, and I think that is true on both sides of the Atlantic. But parody need not necessarily be comedic; and surely the most powerful parody in politics, in literary terms anyway, is Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Even in our present day Laputa, our scientists are unable to extract sunbeams from cucumbers...I wonder why....

[trish]

I though politics WAS comedy. Every day while I read the paper I laugh 'til I cry.