Satire & The Public Domain

The problem with bad parodies is that they serve no purpose. A good parody, like one's shadow at evening, rises to meet its mark, confronts it with a waggish dignity. It need not destroy its target, as Lewis Carroll did Robert Southey - there is room for parody and parodied to co-exist until - like Dennis Thatcher - with the passing of time the original is absorbed into the mimicry. Some parodies completely fail to register on the scale (see Ezra Pound's 'The Poems of Alfred Venison' ); others prove that parody can be generous and genuinely amusing (it usually isn't) - see Hugh Kingsmill's Housman rip-off.

With all of this in mind, I find myself angered by everyone's present infatuation with Uncyclopedia. This noisome dig at Wikipedia is excessively tedious and not very funny. It accompanies the tiresome attitude that Wikipedia is not 100% reliable, and consequently completely redundant. Wikipedia is plainly a marvel: one of the wonders of the internet - perhaps the most useful tool since email. I know for a fact that Hamilton has passed many a sleepless night, lost deeply and intensely within its pages. I have offered a comparison between the two sites by examining their respective treatment of the German electronica group Kraftwerk. Notice that Uncyclopedia - in the feeblest of satirical wet-farts - makes the creative leap from German pop music to Hitler. It pains me to point out - given the nerdiness of the reference - that Viv Stanshall cornered the market in Hitler/band-line-up gags back in the late 60s when he played MC to the Bonzos' big band:

Princess Anne on sousaphone. Mmm!
Looking very relaxed Adolf Hitler on vibes.