Editor | Paul Krassner |
---|---|
Categories | Satirical Magazine, Yippies |
Frequency | Monthly |
Publisher | Realist Association |
First issue | Spring 1958 |
Final issue Number | Spring 2001 146 |
Country | USA |
Based in | New York City, New York |
Language | English |
OCLC | 1105249849 |
The Realist was a magazine of "social-political-religious criticism and satire", [1] intended as a hybrid of a grown-ups version of Mad and Lyle Stuart's anti-censorship monthly The Independent. Edited and published by Paul Krassner, and often regarded as a milestone in the American underground or countercultural press of the mid-20th century, it was a nationally-distributed newsstand publication as early as 1958. Publication was discontinued in 2001. [2]
First published in the spring of 1958 in New York City in the offices of Mad , [3] The Realist appeared on a fairly regular schedule during the 1960s and then on an irregular schedule after the early 1970s. In 1984, it was revived as a much smaller newsletter. Articles and cartoons from the magazine were collected in a book, The Best of the Realist (Running Press, 1984). The final issue of The Realist was #146 (Spring 2001).
The Realist provided a format for extreme satire in its articles, cartoons and Krassner's editorials, but it also carried more traditionally serious material in articles and interviews. The magazine also published political commentary from Norman Mailer, Ken Kesey and Joseph Heller. [3]
The first hoax directed toward mainstream culture involved the 1960 edition of the NBC show Masquerade Party . [4] [5] [6] Typically, television network executives would react swiftly and fearfully to viewer complaints, no matter how small or unjustified the viewer response. Testing this premise, angry letters containing no specific complaints at all were sent in response to a particular episode of the innocuous game show.
Among the more successful productions issued by Krassner was a red, white, and blue automobile bumper sticker, decorated with stars, which proclaimed "Fuck Communism". In advertising this item, Krassner advised that if anyone displaying the sticker received criticism, the critic should be told, "Go back to Russia, you Commie lover."
His Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster, illustrated by Wally Wood and published in the May 1967 issue, was a highlight of the magazine, so successful that Krassner printed it as a poster that was widely pirated. The poster has been upgraded by Krassner into a new, digitally-colored version. [7]
A section of the image on the left shows Snow White being sexually assaulted by five of the seven dwarfs whilst the other two engage in anal sex nearby. This scene has been printed (often modified to be more explicit) on t-shirts and worn by punks with the title Snow White and the Sir Punks, which have caused some offence. [8]
Other cartoonists featured in The Realist included Howard Shoemaker, Dick Guindon, Mort Gerberg, Bhob Stewart, Jonathan Richards and Lou Myers.
Krassner's most successful prank was The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book, a grotesque article following the censorship of William Manchester's book on the Kennedy assassination, The Death of a President . [9] At the climax of the short story, Lyndon B. Johnson is on Air Force One sexually penetrating the bullet-hole wound in the throat of JFK's corpse. [9] Krassner acknowledged Marvin Garson, editor of the San Francisco Express Times and husband of Barbara Garson (author of the notorious anti-Johnson play MacBird! ), for coming up with that surreal image. [10] According to Elliot Feldman, "Some members of the mainstream press and other Washington political wonks, including Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, actually believed this incident to be true." [11] In a 1995 interview for the magazine Adbusters , Krassner commented: "People across the country believed – if only for a moment – that an act of presidential necrophilia had taken place. It worked because Jackie Kennedy had created so much curiosity by censoring the book she authorized – William Manchester's The Death of a President – because what I wrote was a metaphorical truth about LBJ's personality presented in a literary context, and because the imagery was so shocking, it broke through the notion that the war in Vietnam was being conducted by sane men." [12]
In 1967, the Canadian campus newspaper The McGill Daily published an excerpt from Krassner's story. The Montreal police confiscated the issue and Rocke Robertson, principal of McGill University, charged student John Fekete, the supplement editor responsible for the publication, before the Senate Discipline Committee. [13]
The Realist was the first satirical magazine to publish conspiracy theories. [3] It was the first magazine to carry Mae Brussell's work on conspiracies, [3] which covered the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, the Watergate scandal, the assassination of JFK and other conspiracy theories.
When the magazine ran into financial difficulties in the 1970s, it was the conspiracy theory element that attracted ex-Beatle John Lennon [3] to donate; saying, "If anything ever happens to me...it won't be an accident." [3]
In 2003, Italian satirist Daniele Luttazzi, whose production company is called "Krassner Entertainment", wrote the short story Stanotte e per sempre (Eng.: Tonight and forever) about the assassination of Italian politician Aldo Moro. In the climax scene, Giulio Andreotti penetrates the bullet wounds in Aldo Moro's corpse. [14] [15]
Lewis Black included an excerpt, precisely the final part, from Krassner's story in his 2005 book Nothing's Sacred .
Notable contributors include:
Robert Anton Wilson was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson helped publicize Discordianism through his writings and interviews. In 1999 he described his work as an "attempt to break down conditioned associations, to look at the world in a new way, with many models recognized as models or maps, and no one model elevated to the truth". Wilson's goal was "to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone but agnosticism about everything."
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society.
Aldo Moro was an Italian statesman and prominent member of Christian Democracy (DC) and its centre-left wing. He served as prime minister of Italy in five terms from December 1963 to June 1968 and from November 1974 to July 1976.
Black comedy, also known as black humor, bleak comedy, dark comedy, dark humor, gallows humor or morbid humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discuss. Writers and comedians often use it as a tool for exploring vulgar issues by provoking discomfort, serious thought, and amusement for their audience. Thus, in fiction, for example, the term black comedy can also refer to a genre in which dark humor is a core component. Cartoonist Charles Addams was famous for such humor, e.g. depicting a boy decorating his bedroom with stolen warning signs including "NO DIVING – POOL EMPTY", "STOP – BRIDGE OUT" and "SPRING CONDEMNED."
Joey Skaggs is an American multi-media artist, activist, satirist, educator and prankster. Skaggs is one of the originators of the phenomenon known as culture jamming. In a career spanning six decades, he has produced paintings, sculptures, guerrilla theater, performance art, socially revealing hoaxes, media pranks, and films.
Ludovico Maria Sforza, also known as Ludovico il Moro, and called the "arbiter of Italy" by historian Francesco Guicciardini, was an Italian nobleman who ruled as the Duke of Milan from 1494 to 1499.
The Youth International Party (YIP), whose members were commonly called Yippies, was an American youth-oriented radical and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the late 1960s. It was founded on December 31, 1967. They employed theatrical gestures to mock the social status quo, such as advancing a pig called "Pigasus the Immortal" as a candidate for President of the United States in 1968. They have been described as a highly theatrical, anti-authoritarian, and anarchist youth movement of "symbolic politics".
Paul Krassner was an American writer and satirist. He was the founder, editor, and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958. Krassner became a key figure in the counterculture of the 1960s as a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters and a founding member of the Yippies, a term he is credited with coining.
Wallace Allan Wood was an American comic book writer, artist and independent publisher, widely known for his work on EC Comics's titles such as Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and MAD Magazine from its inception in 1952 until 1964, as well as for T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, and work for Warren Publishing's Creepy. He drew a few early issues of Marvel's Daredevil and established the title character's distinctive red costume. Wood created and owned the long-running characters Sally Forth and Cannon.
Morton Lyon Sahl was a Canadian-born Jewish American comedian, actor, and social satirist, considered the first modern comedian. He pioneered a style of social satire that pokes fun at political and current event topics using improvised monologues and only a newspaper as a prop.
The "Great Moon Hoax", also known as the "Great Moon Hoax of 1835" was a series of six articles published in The Sun, beginning on August 25, 1835, about the supposed discovery of life and civilization on the Moon. The discoveries were falsely attributed to Sir John Herschel and his fictitious companion Andrew Grant.
News satire or news comedy is a type of parody presented in a format typical of mainstream journalism, and called a satire because of its content. News satire has been around almost as long as journalism itself, but it is particularly popular on the web, with websites like The Onion and The Babylon Bee, where it is relatively easy to mimic a legitimate news site. News satire relies heavily on irony and deadpan humor.
Joe Pyne was an American radio and television talk show host, who pioneered the confrontational style in which the host advocates a viewpoint and argues with guests and audience members. He was an influence on other major talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Morton Downey Jr., Bob Grant, and Michael Savage.
Mort Gerberg is a multi-genre American cartoonist and author whose work has appeared in magazines, newspapers, books, online, home video, film and television. He is best known for his magazine cartoons, which have appeared in numerous and diverse titles such as The New Yorker, Playboy, Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post and Paul Krassner's The Realist, and for his 1983 book, "Cartooning: The Art and The Business". He created a weekly news cartoon, Out of Line, for Publishers Weekly from 1988 to 1994 and has drawn an editorial-page cartoon for The Columbia Paper, the weekly newspaper in Columbia County, New York, since 2003.
Mae Magnin Brussell was an American radio personality and conspiracy theorist. She was the host of Dialogue: Conspiracy.
Giuliano Ferrara is an Italian journalist, television presenter, and former politician. He is the founding editor of Il Foglio. Born into a communist and anti-fascist family, Ferrara took part to the student movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1973, he joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and carried out political activity within the PCI, and at the same time dedicated himself to journalism, collaborating with Corriere della Sera since 1982 with the column "Bretelle Rosse". Later in the 1980s, he joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), with which he became a member of the European Parliament (1989–1994).
The Air Pirates were a group of cartoonists who created two issues of an underground comic called Air Pirates Funnies in 1971, leading to a famous lawsuit by Walt Disney Productions. Founded by Dan O'Neill, the group also included Bobby London, Shary Flenniken, Gary Hallgren, and Ted Richards.
Eugenio Scalfari was an Italian journalist. He was editor-in-chief of L'Espresso (1963–1968), a member of Parliament in Italy's Chamber of Deputies (1968–1972), and co-founder of La Repubblica and its editor-in-chief (1976–1996). He was known for his meetings and interviews with important figures, including Pope Francis, Enrico Berlinguer, Aldo Moro, Umberto Eco, Italo Calvino, and Roberto Benigni.
Gianni Pezzani, is an Italian photographer.