Mad Magazine is a satirical look at politics, popular culture and human vanity. In an illustrated format Mad creates parodies of TV shows, commercials, books, situations from the news, websites, artwork and even themselves. Some of the humour is funny, some of it is clever, and some of it is just plain insulting to those being mocked. Mad started publishing in 1952 (Mad Timeline, nd, para.2.and is self proclaimed as “America's longest-running humor magazine, besides Time”(Mad, nd, para.2).
I think the humour in Mad would be most appealing to boys, because it can be rude and crude and sometimes it may be classified as potty humour. Some of the humour and illustrations can be sexually suggestive in nature and they might appear to condone drug use, smoking, violence, racism, and telling falsehoods. These topics are fodder for any humorist and Mad tells its fair share off-colour jokes. To read Mad and understand all of the nuances of the humour takes a relatively high reading level, so I think some of Mad’s readers don’t understand all the humour in the magazine. On the other hand Mad may serve to elevate the critical thoughts about our culture and the highly massages message we receive from other forms of media.
About Mad Magazine (nd) Retrieved from http://www.dccomics.com/mad/?action=about
Mad Magazine. (2008). New York: E. C. Publications
The Mad Timeline (nd) Retrieved from http://www.dccomics.com/mad/?action=timeline
No comments:
Post a Comment