{"id":12116,"date":"2018-05-11T03:05:56","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T03:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=12116"},"modified":"2018-05-12T03:08:54","modified_gmt":"2018-05-12T03:08:54","slug":"mad-magazines-clout-may-have-faded-but-its-ethos-matters-more-than-ever-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/mad-magazines-clout-may-have-faded-but-its-ethos-matters-more-than-ever-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Mad Magazine’s clout may have faded, but its ethos matters more than ever before"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael J. Socolow<\/a>, University of Maine<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Mad Magazine is still hanging on. In April, it launched a reboot<\/a>, jokingly calling it its \u201cfirst issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in terms of cultural resonance and mass popularity, it\u2019s largely lost its clout. <\/p>\n

At its apex in the early 1970s, Mad\u2019s circulation surpassed 2 million<\/a>. As of 2017, it was 140,000.<\/p>\n

As strange as it sounds, I believe the \u201cusual gang of idiots\u201d that produced Mad was performing a vital public service, teaching American adolescents that they shouldn\u2019t believe everything they read in their textbooks or saw on TV.<\/p>\n

Mad preached subversion and unadulterated truth-telling when so-called objective journalism remained deferential to authority. While newscasters regularly parroted questionable government claims, Mad was calling politicians liars when they lied<\/a>. Long before responsible organs of public opinion like The New York Times and the CBS Evening News discovered it, Mad told its readers all about the credibility gap<\/a>. The periodical\u2019s skeptical approach to advertisers and authority figures helped raise a less credulous and more critical generation in the 1960s and 1970s.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s media environment differs considerably from the era in which Mad flourished. But it could be argued that consumers are dealing with many of the same issues, from devious advertising to mendacious propaganda. <\/p>\n

While Mad\u2019s satiric legacy endures, the question of whether its educational ethos – – its implicit media literacy efforts \u2013 remains part of our youth culture is less clear. <\/p>\n

A merry-go-round of media panics<\/h2>\n

In my research<\/a> on media, broadcasting and advertising history, I\u2019ve noted the cyclical nature of media panics and media reform movements throughout American history.<\/p>\n

The pattern goes something like this: A new medium gains popularity. Chagrined politicians and outraged citizens demand new restraints, claiming that opportunists are too easily able to exploit its persuasive power and dupe consumers, rendering their critical faculties useless. But the outrage is overblown. Eventually, audience members become more savvy and educated, rendering such criticism quaint and anachronistic. <\/p>\n

During the penny press era of the 1830s, periodicals often fabricated sensational stories like the \u201cGreat Moon Hoax<\/a>\u201d to sell more copies. For a while, it worked, until accurate reporting became more valuable to readers. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n During the \u2018Great Moon Hoax,\u2019 the New York Sun claimed to have discovered a colony of creatures on the moon.<\/span>
\n Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When radios became more prevalent in the 1930s, Orson Welles perpetrated a similar extraterrestrial hoax with his infamous \u201cWar of the Worlds\u201d program. This broadcast didn\u2019t actually cause widespread fear of an alien invasion<\/a> among listeners, as some have claimed. But it did spark a national conversation about radio\u2019s power and audience gullibility. <\/p>\n

Aside from the penny newspapers and radio, we\u2019ve witnessed moral panics about dime novels, muckraking magazines, telephones, comic books<\/a>, television, the VCR, and now the internet. Just as Congress went after Orson Welles<\/a>, we see Mark Zuckerberg testifying<\/a> about Facebook\u2019s facilitation of Russian bots. <\/p>\n

Holding up a mirror to our gullibility<\/h2>\n

But there\u2019s another theme in the country\u2019s media history that\u2019s often overlooked. In response to each new medium\u2019s persuasive power, a healthy popular response ridiculing the rubes falling for the spectacle has arisen. <\/p>\n

For example, in \u201cThe Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,\u201d Mark Twain gave us the duke and the dauphin, two con artists traveling from town to town exploiting ignorance with ridiculous theatrical performances and fabricated tall tales. <\/p>\n

They were proto-purveyors of fake news, and Twain, the former journalist, knew all about selling buncombe. His classic short story \u201cJournalism in Tennessee<\/a>\u201d excoriates crackpot editors and the ridiculous fiction often published as fact in American newspapers. <\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the great P.T. Barnum<\/a>, who ripped people off in marvelously inventive ways. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis way to the egress,\u201d read a series of signs<\/a> inside his famous museum. Ignorant customers, assuming the egress was some sort of exotic animal, soon found themselves passing through the exit door and locked out.<\/p>\n

They might have felt ripped off, but, in fact, Barnum had done them a great \u2013 and intended \u2013 service. His museum made its customers more wary of hyperbole. It employed humor and irony to teach skepticism. Like Twain, Barnum held up a funhouse mirror to America\u2019s emerging mass culture in order to make people reflect on the excesses of commercial communication.<\/p>\n

\u2018Think for yourself. Question authority\u2019<\/h2>\n

Mad Magazine embodies this same spirit. Begun originally as a horror comic, the periodical evolved into a satirical humor outlet that skewered Madison Avenue, hypocritical politicians and mindless consumption. <\/p>\n

Teaching its adolescent readers that governments lie \u2013 and only suckers fall for hucksters \u2013 Mad implicitly and explicitly subverted the sunny optimism of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years. Its writers and artists poked fun at everyone and everything that claimed a monopoly on truth and virtue. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe editorial mission statement has always been the same: \u2018Everyone is lying to you, including magazines. Think for yourself. Question authority,\u2019\u201d according to longtime editor John Ficarra<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That was a subversive message, especially in an era when the profusion of advertising and Cold War propaganda infected everything in American culture. At a time when American television only relayed three networks and consolidation limited alternative media options, Mad\u2019s message stood out. <\/p>\n

Just as intellectuals Daniel Boorstin<\/a>, Marshall McLuhan<\/a> and Guy Debord<\/a> were starting to level critiques against this media environment, Mad was doing the same \u2013 but in a way that was widely accessible, proudly idiotic and surprisingly sophisticated.<\/p>\n

For example, the implicit existentialism hidden beneath the chaos in every \u201cSpy v. Spy\u201d panel spoke directly to the insanity of Cold War brinksmanship. Conceived and drawn by Cuban exile Antonio Proh\u00edas, \u201cSpy v. Spy\u201d featured two spies who, like the United States and the Soviet Union, both observed the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction<\/a>. Each spy was pledged to no one ideology, but rather the complete obliteration of the other \u2013 and every plan ultimately backfired in their arms race to nowhere.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"
\n Mad skewered those who mindlessly supported the people who controlled the levers of power.<\/span>
\n Jasperdo<\/a>, CC BY-NC-SA<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The cartoon highlighted the irrationality of mindless hatred and senseless violence. In an essay on the plight of the Vietnam War soldier<\/a>, literary critic Paul Fussell once wrote that U.S. soldiers were \u201ccondemned to sadistic lunacy\u201d by the monotony of violence without end. So too the \u201cSpy v. Spy\u201d guys.<\/p>\n

As the credibility gap widened from the Johnson to Nixon administrations, the logic of Mad\u2018s Cold War critique became more relevant. Circulation soared. Sociologist Todd Gitlin \u2013 who had been a leader of the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s \u2013 credited Mad with serving an important educational function for his generation. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn junior high and high school,\u201d he wrote<\/a>, \u201cI devoured it.\u201d <\/p>\n

A step backward?<\/h2>\n

And yet that healthy skepticism seems to have evaporated in the ensuing decades. Both the run-up to the Iraq War<\/a> and the acquiescence to the carnival-like coverage<\/a> of our first reality TV star president seem to be evidence of a widespread failure of media literacy.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still grappling with how to deal with the internet and the way it facilitates information overload, filter bubbles, propaganda and, yes, fake news. <\/p>\n

But history has shown that while we can be stupid and credulous, we can also learn to identify irony, recognize hypocrisy and laugh at ourselves. And we\u2019ll learn far more about employing our critical faculties when we\u2019re disarmed by humor than when we\u2019re lectured at by pedants. A direct thread skewering the gullibility of media consumers can be traced from Barnum to Twain to Mad to \u201cSouth Park\u201d to The Onion.<\/p>\n

While Mad\u2019s legacy lives on, today\u2019s media environment is more polarized and diffuse. It also tends to be far more cynical and nihilistic. Mad humorously taught kids that adults hid truths from them, not that in a world of fake news, the very notion of truth was meaningless. Paradox informed the Mad ethos; at its best, Mad could be biting and gentle, humorous and tragic, and ruthless and endearing \u2013 all at the same time. <\/p>\n

\"TheThat\u2019s the sensibility we\u2019ve lost. And it\u2019s why we need an outlet like Mad more than ever.<\/p>\n

Michael J. Socolow<\/a>, Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of Maine<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael J. Socolow, University of Maine Mad Magazine is still hanging on. In April, it launched a reboot, jokingly calling it its \u201cfirst issue.\u201d But in terms of cultural resonance and mass popularity, it\u2019s largely lost its clout. At its apex in the early 1970s, Mad\u2019s circulation surpassed 2 million. As of 2017, it was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":12117,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293],"tags":[4469,535,308,2338,3013,4468,3012],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12118,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12116\/revisions\/12118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}