20190318.0430

To make some kind of return to normalcy, my wife and I have been watching a particular television show through a streaming video service (I'm avoiding names so that I can work on an idea I have about it in another venue), one that is clearly working as a satire of a couple of genres. As she and I were talking about it--because we do talk about what we take in, which I hope does something to make our media consumption more active and engaging for us and for Ms. 8--I made the comment that such shows might not be able to last much longer. She asked me why, and I replied that a send-up of a given genre demands that straight examples of the genre continue, and there seem to be few if any such still being produced. (For the record, she agreed with me that the straight takes are fewer, but she was not entirely convinced of the comment about satire demanding them; I still hold that the jokes are funnier if the references are understood, even if they work decently without them. Of course, that might be part of how we know a joke's good...)
There is a tendency to look at earnest productions of one sort or another and think them hokey--and with good reason; they often are. Quite a few things come off as stilted or saccharine now that probably did not register as such when they emerged, or they read as overly sentimental now as was likely not the case when they were released. And there are issues of personal tastes changing between childhood and adulthood; I know that many of the things I enjoyed as a child now cause me to cringe, and not only because they reflect attitudes that were less objectionable thirty years ago than they are today--and I do not think I am alone in doing so. But even with such changes, there is value in the earnestness; there is something delightful in seeing commitment to a thing meant to bring happiness, even if it ends up being poorly done. How else to explain such things as appreciation for The Room or other B- (or worse) movies in themselves, and not merely as vehicles for ridicule?
And there is this, too: I still hold that the occasional straight take is necessary, if only to provide a frame of reference. It's part of the value of such characters as Superman and Captain America--normally "good guys" who, by their attitudes and conduct, provide rubrics against which to measure the others in their respective universes. It's part of why Shakespeare at the Globe remains important; one theater, at least, needs to run "standard" productions to provide a touchstone for the others. It's why I have some thought that satire may be soon to diminish in prominence--because there are fewer straight takes, more ironic takes advanced as the commonplace. (I am put in mind of Bell's "The Ballad of Derpy Hooves.") I do not know how the things already satirical or attempting to be satirical would be satirized; it seems recursive, in that doing so only generates much the same thing being lampooned, such that which one is the joke about what becomes occluded.
That may only be my ignorance, I will admit. I am arrogant in many ways, but not so much as to believe I have nothing left to learn.