Word: lampooning
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...Giordano Bruno barks, maestro-fashion, at the beginning of this piece, Tragedy taken too seriously becomes Farce, and forced Farce is Tragedy. Real laughter is indiscriminate in its intuitive understanding of the irrational, as well as its recognition of the ubiquity of absurdity. How then can the Lampoon take itself seriously? One might as well ask how a harpoon can harpoon itself...
Jerry Lewis is tragically pathetic--not because he is funny, but precisely because he isn't funny. People who condemn the Lampoon for seeing humor in tragedy insist on their right to see tragedy in humor. These people claim that "Poonies"--like "Moonies"--lack something in their personalities; this is absolutely true, but at least Poonies try to make up for that lack through humor; "serious" people refuse to realize their own weaknesses, and thereby create a new weakness in themselves, a new lack; they lack humor, and the distance entailed in humor, necessary to arrive at fresh perspectives...
...members of the Lampoon are not a collective Abraham; at their best, they are a collective Isaac. The Lampoon cannot, therefore, sacrifice itself in order to affirm the Absurd truth it hopes to represent. The members of the Lampoon should not be expected to take the final step backwards (tripping on the banana peel as they do so), and arrive at a Religious communion with the Absurd. They will continue to reject through humor rather than accept through humor for as long as they need the Law as straight man. This is why the grey agreement reached last week between...
Epps's recent condemnation of a Lampoon parody advertisement (penned by the author), appearing in the Lampoon "Religion" issue, claimed the piece was horrific for its making light of a tragic incident in history (Jewish persecution and annihilation in German Death Camps). He sees the tragic in seeing humor in a tragic event. One might also see humor in his seeing the tragic in seeing humor in a tragic event. (I could do this all day.) The argument has been writhing through history since Aristophanes angered Athens. Epps would have the Lampoon become an institution devoted to the cause...
...Lampoon, in its ideal form, is not a racist institution, but an objectively absurdist organization of anarchists; unfortunately, it fails at this because it is an organization of anarchists--a contradiction in terms. Therefore, its humor tends to be conservative and elitist. The only way to remedy this situation would be to have the organization itself decide to disband, after which the Lampoon, as such, would no longer exist. This might be for the better, since the phrase "Ha Ha" has always seemed pathetic in print--deprived of its active, spontaneous context. But the Lampoon will exist for as long...