Tragedy and the Boundaries of Internet Parody

As I was researching and scanning the web for background on the sermon I ended up not preaching this week, I found myself wondering something.

With painful frequency, you will find someone making the claim that it was God's punishment on People X for having done Action Y.  The tsunami happened because God hates [fill in the thing you hate here.]  The earthquake destroyed Haiti because of Voodoo.  That sort of thing.

So I Googled "haiyan God punishment," just to see what I came up with.  Lo and behold, there it was.  There were links from news sources read in the Philippines, referencing an American Christian blogger who had made just such a statement. A blogger going by the name of Jim Solouki at a blog called Creation Science Study had asserted that because the Philippines were tolerant of homosexuality and immorality, God had punished them with the storm.

There was a small array of re-posts and re-links, some from Atheistic bloggers and news aggregators, splashing out the outrage and another terrible statement.  Sure, by a random blogger with traffic no better than mine, but still.  Look at what those terrible Christians are saying again!

I was all ready to parse out that theology, and resist it, but then I actually bothered reading the blog in question.  It did make those outrageous statements, sure.  And there were hundreds and hundreds of responses from anguished people with relatives in the Philippines, many of whom were faithful Christians, deploring what they felt was a complete betrayal of the essence of their faith.

But this is the internet, after all.  Here, truth and falsehood are on a level.  You check a source, and then you recheck it.

I looked around for any reference to Mr. "Solouki."  There was none.  I looked around for any information that might corroborate the identity of the blog or ground it in the real.  There was none.  And then I began to read it, looking for clues.

I've debated with literalists and fundamentalists, and I know what such folk sound like.  There are patterns of language and assumptions that they bring to bear with such consistency that sometimes they sound like the same person.

This blog did not capture that tone.  In fact, it sounded rather different.

Images used were often sexual in ways that Christian conservatives simply aren't gonna put out there.  Scripture was referenced, but only in passing and as a gloss.  Arguments were taken to the level of transparent absurdity.  Links to "faithful" sites were actually links to atheist comedians, or to churches that exist only as parody.

It was evident that this was…well…what atheists have come to call a "Poe."  Meaning, someone masquerading as a faithful person, in an effort to show that the thing they are pretending to be is inherently wackadoodle.

I know it is intended as humor, as a prank that illustrates absurdity.  Like the Onion, or the Borowitz Report, or the still-catches-out-my-friends Daily Currant.

I get parody.  In fact, I enjoy it.  But still, I wonder at what I read on "Jim Solouki's" blog.

Sure, good parody bears with it an awkwardness, toying around with the edges of discomfort.  But the greatest practitioners of prank and parody were best at skewering themselves, and bringing everyone else in on the joke.  That was certainly a potent part of the possibly-late Andy Kaufmann's peculiar genius.

If you're parodying something, and your parody fundamentally misrepresents the the thing you're mimicking, is it parody at all?  Sure, Christians are flawed, and often express themselves clumsily or offensively.  But if no-one from the Christian world resembles the image you're presenting, where's the humor in it?

And if you're the only one laughing, at a deep and real human tragedy, if you have brought no-one along for the ride, it is not funny or incisive.

It stops being meaningful satire, and becomes simple cruelty.   From this side of the equation, it feels culturally oblivious, more akin to watching a frat boy capering around in blackface on Halloween, convinced he's the very height of metahumor.

Sometimes, son, that ends up just making you look like the fool.

Headlines, Violence, and Cynicism

The headlines this morning were hard.  Another mass shooting, this one close to home, close enough that I found myself doing a mental inventory of everyone I know who works for the Navy.   I remember touring the museum there a few years back, and wandering the decks of the decommissioned destroyer Barry with an excitable herd of cub scouts.  

What's hardest about these deaths is the depth of our resignation towards these spasms of violence as a culture.  There's just nothing, nothing that can be done, we say.  And sometimes I feel this, and feel it strongly.  This is simply the way things are.   When violent angry men misuse their freedom, people...children, soldiers, teachers, first responders...will die.  Period.  We just have to do what we do, and accept this as the pattern of existence.  If it seems overwhelming, well, there are plenty of other places we can look to distract us.

Assuming those distractions aren't somehow echoes of the horror outside.

Like, say, the headlines in the gaming world, which today trumpet the latest installment of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto franchise as it goes to market.   Though I regularly read gaming news, as a gamer, I've been slacking a bit lately.  Part of it is income-related, as I have trouble justifying dropping fifty bucks on something we don't really need.

But part of it is that nothing particularly appeals to me.  And this I say as one who plays a wide range of games, from Real Time Strategy to casual to puzzlers to platformers to multiplayer combat sims.

What I don't like playing, though, are games that immerse me in a world or ethos that I find unpleasant. And Rockstar is particularly talented at unpleasantness.  Their notable genius as game designers is almost entirely turned to that purpose.   Even Red Dead Redemption, their brilliantly designed and realized Western-themed sandbox game, was too infused with a dark and cynical spirit for my tastes.  

Reading through the glowing reviews of the latest Grand Theft Auto...a solid nine of ten on Gamespot, and a full fledged perfect 10 on IGN...I found myself reading a dark harmony between the reviews and what I've been reading in the headlines that tell the story of our world.

Grand Theft Auto V, or so the IGN reviewer tells us, is a satire of American culture.  It paints a singular picture of our world, shining a fierce and unforgiving light on the ways in which our society is broken and hateful.   Kids are lazy, useless slackers, or empty-headed consumers.  Spouses are all unfaithful.   Leaders are corrupt and manipulative, and corporations are even more so.  Everyone is just out to make a buck.  To quote from that review:

There is nothing in San Andreas, though, that doesn't serve Rockstar's purpose in creating an exaggerated projection of America that's suffused with crime, violence, and sleaze.  There are no good guys in GTA V.  Everyone you meet is a sociopath, narcissist, lunatic, sadist, cheat, liar, layabout, or some combination of those.

The reviewer for Gamespot struggles with that a bit more, perhaps because she's a woman, and the view of women in GTA is...well...let's just say there's not a single female character worth knowing.   They're all two-dimensional objects, "b*tches and hoes", and while this is nominally part of the "satire," that's not enough.  As she puts it: 

With nothing in the narrative to underscore how insane and wrong this is, all the game does is reinforce and celebrate sexism.

But let me suggest that this worldview is not just misogyny.  If men are invariably violent, brutal, and monstrous, the story GTA V tells about them is just as "insane and wrong."

And that, I think, starts to get at the essential challenge of satire, parody, and cynicism.  I love good satire as much as anyone.  It can be a fierce and prophetic tool for tearing a hole in our darkness.  But if it is not counterbalanced, not leavened with hope and grace, then it becomes something rather different.

The story that Rockstar tells, the world they have so brilliantly created?  In that world, there's no reason not to destroy and inflict horror. Human beings are inherently monstrous, so deeply flawed that there is no possibility of good.  Why not just do whatever you want?  Why not steal and kill and torture?  What does it matter?  Cynicism may seem like a justified response to horror, but it is a response that ultimately feeds the darkness rather than defying it.

It's why I prefer not to spend time in Rockstar's worlds, but it's also a good reminder of the dangers of giving up in this one.