"Every year, the whole town turns out to enjoy Nebraska's famous summer sunshine, sample foods, browse the craft bazaar, and shame homosexuals for their repulsive, decadent behavior," the Onion reports fictitious mayor Frank Mitchell of fictitious Grand Plains, Nebraska as saying. This article I found under the Local category of theonion.com portrays a festival in complete contrast to "Gay Pride" parades held in larger cities throughout the United States. The article describes a small town's "Gay Shame" parade in detail, including all of the homophobic festivities.
The onion's story reads and looks just like a local newspaper article. The column includes many quotes from local parade-goers and outside of its preposterous content (and the fact there is no Grand Plains, Nebraksa), could be mistaken for a real news story. The article even includes the usual LOCATION - to start the article. The only difference between this article and the real news is the slightly advanced vocabulary. Generally newspapers try to use common words for the masses, but the Onion occasionally throws out words like "demonization", "admonishment", and "levity."
The great thing about the Onion is its satirical value. This article is a great example of this as it not only pokes fun at gay pride festivals, but homophobic rural communities as well. The article raises questions about how homophobic certain parts of the nation are. While no small town actually has a "Gay Shame Parade" the way the article is written makes it almost believable that such a festival could exist. The article also pokes fun at how everyone's opinion seems to be respected in the media, no matter how outrageous it is.
While the reader gets a laugh out of fictitious Ellen Lundbloom's quote, "If I were a lesbian, this would have really made me feel awful about myself," it also has the social undercurrents to make it relevant to today's readers.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment