Now here’s a question worth sitting with over a good cup of coffee.
So does tragedy parody life or life parody tragedy?
The ancient Greeks would say tragedy came first, that we invented it to process the things too painful to look at directly. Parody came along as the release valve. You laugh so you don’t scream.
But right now? Life has gotten so absurd that parody can’t keep up. Saturday Night Live has been struggling for years because reality keeps lapping them. The Onion publishes something ridiculous and two weeks later it’s a press release from the Pentagon.
Mel Brooks said something to the effect that you make something funny to take away its power to frighten you. That’s why he made The Producers — Hitler as a joke defangs him. Brilliant in theory.
The problem we’re running into now is that the subjects of the parody don’t know they’re being parodied. Dark Helmet at least knew he was ridiculous. The current cast seems genuinely unaware — which makes it less Spaceballs and more of something darker that doesn’t have a good genre yet.
Maybe the question isn’t which came first, but whether parody still works when the people being parodied have no shame to pierce.
When the court jester makes fun of the king and the king just… agrees and takes a bow — the jester’s lost his only weapon.
