ABSTRACT
Through using the example of The simpsons , I have shown how, as a critical intertextuality, parody employs a joking, laughing, and hence ‘irrational’ language and tone, but in doing so, still manages to foster a public sphere. The talk that surrounds shows such as The Simpsons includes mockery and discussion of prevalent media genres and of their role in our lives. This at times implicitly acknowledges that much of the media is failing to create a public sphere, but the talk about that failure builds its own public sphere. Albeit in a small, unfinished, and often conflicted form, parody can therefore contribute to that which political economists claim is dying or dead on serious television. The fact that it is not purely rational, following what has been said of kynicism, may actually prove a positive, redeeming, and empowering aspect of parody, rather than a damning one. Comedy, as Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1986) argues, helps make its targets less distant and less intimidating, and as Richard Dyer (1992: 2) states, in general, part of entertainment’s ‘meaning is anti-seriousness, against coming on heavy about things.’ A humorless, totally rational existence may appeal to some, but to many, rationality can often tax too heavily, and parody finds a way to maintain critique while staying ‘light.’ ‘Our established models of the public sphere are deeply rooted in a commitment to rational argument,’ notes Graham Murdock (1999: 14), ‘But images do not walk in straight lines. They do not wait to take turns. They work by association, detonating a collision of connotations. They argue by simultaneity, not sequence.’ To some, this might suggest the inappropriateness of television to fostering a public sphere, but 170we should instead see it as signalling the irrelevance of Habermas’ rationality stipulation. Moreover, since parody works in ways that serious programming cannot, it is not only a viable alternative or ‘substitute’: rather, it also complements serious programming.
