Fun With Fanatics
It’s the age of the Web, where everybody with a keyboard and an internet connection gets to voice their opinions, and in fact seem to think they are obligated to. One of the interesting things about doing parodies (i.e. “making fun of”) things in MAD and elsewhere is listening to all the griping and complaining people who are enamored of your target do online. I don’t go looking for it, but I do happen across it now and then. Some people have a very weak sense of humor, and can’t stand hearing something they like get ridiculed. That’s natural enough, but it’s equally funny to hear them declare the source of the ridicule as totally without merit, even if what they object to is only a small part of the overall content. Whenever MAD does a piece bashing republicans, right-wingers scream that the entire magazine is a liberal rag . . . even though that same issue might have a piece in it skewering the democrats which cause the left-wingers to accuse MAD of being a biased, conservative hack-job.
Politics aside, nothing compares to riling up the scariest, least stable, and most obsessive of fan-bases: tween girls. Look out if you take on Justin Bieber, Twilight, or, in this recent case, The Hunger Games. This recent comment from the Entertainment Weekly website, who ran a sneak peek of the film’s parody last week, made me laugh:
Hunger Games has some obvious plot holes & some less-than-perfect parts to it, but making fun of it really doesn’t make sense to me. I’d prefer to make fun of crap like Twilight instead.
Translation: “Please only make fun of stuff I don’t like. Thanks.”
Actually I am surprised there hasn’t been a bigger uprising (Hunger Games pun intended) over this on HG fan sites like this one. Only a few comments vilifying MAD for being generally unfunny and worthless…doubtless made by those who have never seen a copy of MAD before looking at this sneak peek.
I actually prefer to make fun of stuff I like, as opposed to stuff I dislike. There are always ridiculous things to find in anything, regardless if you like or enjoy it overall. Part of loving something is being able to smile about the absurdities of it. That lesson is typically lost on certain obsessive fans bases, however.
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Where’s my Embiggen button?
I used to LOVE reading the MAD parodies of all the Star Trek movies–and I was a huge trekkie! As was my best friend! We got such a thrill out of seeing our favorite (or not-so-favorite) characters drawn and mocked in dialogue boxes that hit spot-on. Maybe I & my friends were unusual as tween girls go, but being a rabid fan of something just made us MORE eager to read the professional send-up of it.
It’s been my experience that some people are, quite literally, born without a sense of humor. Most people enjoy the whimsical moments of life, but there is a small percentage that seems perplexed or even annoyed by humor in any form. I think some of these gripers you noted fall into that category. I encountered something like this myself just the other day. I occasionally submit re-interpretations of comic book covers to a site called “Covered” (just for fun), and I usually take a comical angle on my submissions. Well, there’s one guy (“Anonymous”, of course) who gets incredibly bent out of shape whenever someone submits a humorous or parody version of a cover, his thinking is that it somehow violates the original or the people that created it. Of course, the guy who RUNS the site has no problem with my stuff, but somehow this dolt can never resist letting the world know HE IS NOT AMUSED!
A sad, pathetic way to live your life…but there you go.
This subject reminded me of the movie “Good Morning, Viet Nam!”. There was a young, green officer in charge of humor for the base radio station. He was dictating to Robin Williams’ character what constituted “acceptable humor”, and ended by saying “Reader’s Digest is considering publishing one of my jokes.”. I laugh all over again just thinking about that scene!
Like beauty, humor is also in the eye of the beholder. Some got it, some don’t.
I remember being a dedicated “Lord of the Rings” fan when I was in high school. I must’ve read those books ten times at least. But when I read National Lampoon’s “Bored of the Rings” I laughed until I cried and nearly peed my pants a few times. People do need to lighten up!