Freddie Gets Fingered, or, When Parody Is Realer Than the "Real"
Two things around the web that made me laugh:
1) This comparison from AmericaBlog.com. Oh, if only he were as silent as the Gentlemen! It might spare us these pearls of wisdom.
2) Via IMDb:
In both of these examples, the parody of the original source material somehow feels more "authentic" than the original (the Simpsons parody is funnier than either the recent Star Wars trilogy or the relatively disappointing Simpsons Movie). The "Gentlemen" of Buffy were played by an L.A. mime troupe: Joss Whedon knew that in an episode cloaked in silence, the gesture becomes more important than the word. Thompson just mimes Reagan, Arthur Branch and other icons from Chris Matthews' fantasies. Is irony the new sincerity? And in building your text/critque around the image (a facial comparison, a mimicking of visual tropes) do you reveal more than you might in a lengthy blog post?
1) This comparison from AmericaBlog.com. Oh, if only he were as silent as the Gentlemen! It might spare us these pearls of wisdom.
2) Via IMDb:
In both of these examples, the parody of the original source material somehow feels more "authentic" than the original (the Simpsons parody is funnier than either the recent Star Wars trilogy or the relatively disappointing Simpsons Movie). The "Gentlemen" of Buffy were played by an L.A. mime troupe: Joss Whedon knew that in an episode cloaked in silence, the gesture becomes more important than the word. Thompson just mimes Reagan, Arthur Branch and other icons from Chris Matthews' fantasies. Is irony the new sincerity? And in building your text/critque around the image (a facial comparison, a mimicking of visual tropes) do you reveal more than you might in a lengthy blog post?
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