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For those like me who like to have more context and enjoy learning about things, there is a Snopes article describing this cartoon (and many others) from the 1969 issue of Mad Magazine. I found it an interesting read.
oh god some of those caricatures didn’t age the best
Yep, you get it pretty clearly that the creator was an edgy centrist.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Next you'll be calling out 'Blazing Saddles' for it's offensive language and sexism.
Blazing saddles isn't really centrist, more just anti-rightwing from my memory of it.
Let's talk about the chapters shown in the snopes article above.
Chapter 3 is making fun of (an) American Student(s). This was 1969, in the middle of the Vietnam war. He's saying they were idiots and that they shouldn't have been protesting the Vietnam war.
Chapter six - The Yippies. The action they are doing is the fighting against two things. The first would be gentrification which is always an issue driving the poor into homelessness. The other was the bulldozing of entire neighborhoods to make way for the highways from 1957 to 1977, an act which displaced 1 million people.
Chapter seven - the Black Militants. This would include Malcolm X and the Black Panthers along with the Philadelphia organization MOVE. Hell, this was a year after MLK Jr was assassinated, and the white general public probably still saw him as an agitator. These were a movement in opposition to very overtly racist cops supported by a largely pro-apartheid populace. And the Author completely misrepresents every view they had from a brief skim over.
We could talk about the looters but I don't think we're ready for that convo.
First, it's funny to me that you care so much about a comic book that's over 50 years old.
Second, the magazine had a long history of attacking everyone and everything, including themselves.
You cared enough to challenge 'centrist' as a bad thing, so I explained why I viewed it as bad.
Comedy is always used as a political tool, and that was the case then too. Being critical of all media, including comedy (even when satirical). We have the
MAD was highly influential back then and no doubt formed in part the current centrist white liberals who are now opposing anything outside the status quo given its large teen audience back then.
Blazing saddles isn’t really centrist, more just anti-rightwing from my memory of it.
There's the problem right there.
There are plenty of books and articles about the making of the movie. I've read a few and don't remember anyone involved talking about trying to carry a political message. Plenty of people thought it was offensive, but no one thought it was going to change minds.
What I'm challenging is you trying to put things into history that just weren't there.
The people at MAD weren't trying to influence a generation's politics, they were trying to make a buck. If yippee jokes were popular they'd print them.
Why would anyone deny something like that?