17/6/94
Who’re
They Trying to Kid?
By:
Sam Orbaum
Anyone who thinks they can bridge the gap between
American and Israeli humor must be mad.
Or, more accurately, Mad.
Mad magazine has just hit the stands with a locally produced,
Hebrew-language version.
For decades Mad was the warped mirror of American
introspection, with a pronounced Jewish bent, while here we weren't
exactly rolling in the aisles.
So if the Jewish state lacks a Jewish sense of humor,
what impact could Mad magazine make where even Jackie Mason failed?
Modan Publishing House of Tel Aviv is gambling that
uptight Israel is ready to get goofy. The local version's two editors,
Rutu Modan and Yirmi Pinkus, figured the best way to find out was to
go right to the top: the Knesset.
"We hadn't even begun work on the magazine,
but we decided to send up a trial balloon," says Modan. "We
wrote letters to several Knesset members asking them to congratulate
us on the success of our new magazine. We got one response: from [Moledet
MK] Rabbi Yosef Ba-Gad."
Ba-Gad, an unrelenting arch-moralist but political
naif, wrote: "In the Book of Proverbs we're told: 'Be clownish
to clowns.' And since the trend today is to live on the light wavelength,
there's room for the humoristic magazine Mad that you have planned -
on condition that it is done in a responsible manner and with clean
language." Naturally, they published his letter - surrounded by
examples of vulgar Israeli slang.
"That's Israeli humor: coarse," explains
Pinkus. And sure enough, the pages of locally generated material are
filled with in-your-face raunch that is easily distinguishable from
the pages translated from the American edition. To wit: pages 24 and
25 are devoted to a demure, static but cute feature called "Snappy
Answers to Stupid Questions." The next two pages are a lurid, crass
and unsubtle foray into armpit hair. Guess which one is the product
of the People of the Book.
Modan affirms that this publication is not just New
York gags translated for Gymnasia dropouts. She explains with a mischievous
chuckle that the edition is "75 percent American, 35 percent Israeli."
The material they select and translate from the parent
edition is generally surefire stuff with universal appeal. "Lots
of absurdity; macabre, international humor. It can be translated into
any language," says Pinkus, who pauses and then adds, "Well,
except German; they have no sense of humor."
The first issue in Hebrew includes the work of such
Mad regulars as Al Jaffee, Sergio Aragones and Don Martin, plus the
classic Spy vs. Spy and Fold-In features.
The locally generated tomfoolery is from an array
of talents, including both Modan and Pinkus, Noah Stolman, Uri Fink,
Zev Engelmayer and chief designer Tamar Karavan. The editors are most
proud of the cover artist, Michel Kichka, an Belgium-born Israeli legend.
"Rutu and I both studied under Kichka at Bezalel," says Pinkus,
"and it was very satisfying to be able to ask our mentor to do
the cover. It was our tribute to him."
The cover has only two elements familiar to old-time
Mad aficionados: the logo and the bar code. Even Alfred E. Neuman, the
famous idiot-kid icon of Mad magazine, has a distinctly Israeli look,
though gamily Kichka-ized.
"You don't want to know what they thought of
the cover in New York," recalls coordinator Marc Bodner with a
moan, recalling when he showed the cover to the liaison in New York.
She took one look at the transmogrified, hairy Alfred - holding a drippy
felafel with one hand and his crotch with the other, with an Arab, a
haredi and a chesty woman looking on askance - and she went white. "You
can do this over there [in Israel]? !" she asked.
Indeed they can, for the readership they are targeting
likes that kind of humor. No, they're not trying to appeal to American
nostalgists; they're taking aim at a very different slice of market:
indigenous kids.
"We thought Mad should look younger, more radical,
to appeal to Israeli youth," says Pinkus of the free-form, avant-garde
issue that looks very different from the original Mad.
Modan adds, "We decided on no rules, no concepts, no censorship."
Designer Karavan bestows a clever graphic element
throughout the 48 pages: a wandering, doodling pencil line that, by
dint of ubiquity, unites the eclectic material. It may irritate, distract
or amuse, but it has a definite message: this ain't Mad magazine as
you remember it.
There is a lot of young blood in the magazine's staff.
Pinkus and Modan are both 28 and in their first jobs as editors; Karavan
is 26; Bodner, a New York-born lawyer, is 36.
Bodner acts like the fussbudget caretaker doomed to take the blame for
the antics of unbridled mischief-makers let loose with a bottle of permanent
ink. He says his role is "consultant and troubleshooter: I gotta
keep the publisher talking to the editors, the editors talking to the
PR people, the PR people talking to the ad people, the ad people talking
to the publisher, and somehow, I've got to keep New York happy."
What's that he said? Ads? In Mad, renowned
for being probably the only magazine in the Free World that does not
accept advertising?
Bodner explains that when the parent company began
licensing foreign editions - there are now about 12 around the world,
accounting for about 400,000 readers - they allowed them to run a limited
amount of ads, to give them a better chance of surviving. The maiden
Israeli edition includes ads for various youth publications and a promotion
for the upcoming Peter Gabriel concert. On the back cover is an announcement
by the publisher of another new product, God help us: the repugnant
Beevis and Butthead, translated into the language of the Bible.
I innocently asked what sort of sales figures they're
anticipating. "Oh, around 500,000 copies. And that's just in Tel
Aviv," Pinkus responded airily. The magazine is selling for NIS
9.80.
Publisher William Gaines's father, Max, is credited
with publishing the first commercial comic book in 1934. When Max died
in a boating accident in 1947, his son took the helm of the publishing
firm.
In 1952, Gaines's Mad, then a satirical comic book,
first hit the stands. McCarthyism was gaining steam, the New York Rangers
hadn't won a Stanley Cup in 12 long years and the first hydrogen bomb
was detonated. In Israel, prime minister David Ben-Gurion attended the
first circumcision in Eilat, white bread appeared for the first time
on the black market and Golda Myerson announced the first export of
grapefruits. Yitzhak Rabin was 30 years old.
Mad in its heyday was selling as many as 2.4 million
copies per issue, a figure that has slipped to a still-hefty million
or so. It forged an honored place in counterculture, in part because
it never compromised its conscience; it bowed to no sacred cow. It took
on the most daunting of powers, from the US presidency to Hollywood
to the almighty dollar to even its own moral righteousness. And it goosed
that most feared of forces, McCarthyism.
The oldest humor magazine in the US, its iconoclastic squawking was,
for the impressionable youth of '50s and '60s America, a liberal burr
on the butt of establishment conservatism.
And besides, it was very funny.
It had to be, with the eccentric Gaines at the helm.
He was a one-of-a-kind publisher, "the cheapest man in the world"
but apt to blow thousands on a bizarre vacation for his entire staff.
And he ran his business any way he pleased, even after Time- Warner
bought the joint. Consider:
Mad does not accept ads, though it did for a short
time in the late '50s;
It does not solicit subscribers by direct mail (95
percent of sales are off the newsstand);
There is no market research, nor readership surveys
(Gaines said in a Washington Post interview, shortly before his death
in 1992 at the age of 70, "We really don't know [who our readers
are], and we really like it that way.");
Gaines and his so-called "usual gang of idiots"
practically invented the idea of a self-deprecating product image.
His whims and escapades are legendary. Once he got
word that the lone subscriber in Haiti had not renewed. Naturally, he
flew his staff and contributors to Haiti, knocked on the fellow's door
and persuaded him to take Mad for another year. Then, before returning
to New York, they went looking to double their Haiti readership, and
finally snared someone on a beach.
There was the time, in the early 1960s, when he urged
his readers to apply to the FBI for draft-dodger cards. There was so
much response that J. Edgar Hoover sent two agents to convince the editors
to stop such pranks.
When the great caricaturist Mort Drucker came by
looking for a job, Gaines was listening to the 1955 World Series. "If
the Dodgers win," he told Drucker, "you're hired."
They did, and he was.
Every American election year, Mad commits itself
to support a candidate - its own. Alfred E. Neuman must be the most
enduring write-in presidential nominee of all time.
Mind you, Gaines was always gracious in defeat. In 1960, Mad hit the
stands the day after the presidential elections, the first monthly magazine
to depict the victor. That was quite a trick, since the issue was put
together four weeks earlier. The solution was genius: a flip-flop cover
that, on one side, congratulated Richard Nixon for winning, and on the
other, congratulated John Kennedy. Both halves of the contents inside
were correspondingly upside-down. News vendors were instructed to display
the cover depicting whoever won.
Even if the gap between American and Israeli humor
is greater than the one between Alfred E. Neuman's front teeth, there
is one aspect of Mad magazine that is tailor-made for Israel: its famous
motto, "What, Me Worry?"
Whether the Hebrew edition is a hit or not, one hopes
that the publisher and his "gang of idiots" will just shrug
and say: "Ma, Echpat Li?"
(BOX
1)
Mad
about Israel
Though more accustomed to writing weightier stuff, I accepted
this assignment because it's one of the very few things I know anything
about.
It so happens I own a large collection of Mad, some
300 editions dating back to 1956. That does not include the issue Rabbi
Feigelshtock, principal of Lubavitch Yeshiva in Montreal, confiscated
and ripped up in front of my class when I was a bocher there. (That
might not have happened had Mad been published in Hebrew back then.
Or Aramaic. )
In a rare trip to New York in 1985, I made a pilgrimage
to 485 MADison Avenue (Alfred E. Neuman's hideaway), where I encountered
a Yiddishe neshumeh in the name of Nick Meglin, a Catholic.
Meglin, a cooly pin-striped executive editor, came
racing out of his office when he heard there was a visitor from Israel.
Come to think of it, everybody did, except William Gaines, who had me
brought to him.
But Meglin was an experience. Assuring me that he
was not a religious nut, nor particularly religious for that matter,
he carried on for a good half hour about his profound love for Israel,
Jews and Judaism. And as he spoke, he actually cried.
Ten years later we spoke again, this time long-distance,
to find out how he felt about his magazine coming out in Hebrew. "What
can I say? Mazal tov!" he replied.
"It's breathtaking," he said, "that
Mad will be in the same language as the Dead Sea Scrolls. What a thing!
The eternal language, for the most temporary literature on Earth."
He chuckled. "Mad is forgotten about 17 minutes after it's read,
so it's a beautiful, strange contradiction."
He said the magazine staff is anxious to see how
it translates not just into our language but our culture. Another little
laugh. "Anything you guys are doing can only be an improvement."
Then I asked him if he'd ever been to Israel. "When
my daughter converted, 10 years ago," he answered. And then, to
my astonishment, he added: "But I'd love to visit again, now that
I've become Jewish too."
Is this guy mad, or what?
- S.O.
(BOX
2)
What
They've Said about 'Mad'
"A
short-lived satirical pulp." - Time magazine, 1956
"No
it isn't a bit - not the least little bit like me. So jolly well stow
it! See!" - Prince Charles in a 1958 letter to Mad, responding
to a photo published in the magazine showing the startling resemblance
between the Prince of Wales and Alfred E. Neuman
"[Mad is] the most insidious Communist propaganda in the United
States today." - Oklahoma crusader Clyde Watts in 1961, which led
William Gaines to sue for libel and slander
"
... The jew-communist (sic) run Mad magazine [is] obviously trying to
do away with the great Red, White and Blue and promote radicalism in
this country's youth." - Bill Wilkinson, Grand Dragon of the Ku
Klux Klan, in a 1979 letter to Mad
"It
was the only subversive literature available. I remember actually seeing
the original Mad Comics, when I was about nine ... It was so different
from other comics, so rampantly hysterical, it burned my fingers."
- historian Paul Buhle
"The
kids who were 12 when Mad first appeared are in their early 20s now
[in 1968] - and they have had a decade's experience in treating the
stuff of their parents' lives as contemptible laughing stock."
- historian Theodore Roszak in his book The Making of a Counter Culture,
citing Mad as one of the major influences for the political upheaval
of the younger generation in the 1960s
"After
Mad, drugs were nothing." - rock singer Patti Smith
"If
you were growing up lonely and isolated in a small town, Mad was a revelation.
Nothing I read anywhere else suggested there was any absurdity in the
culture. Mad was like a shock, breaking you out." - R. Crumb, underground
cartoonist
"Richard
Nixon will attempt a fix." - Mad political predictions, 1956
"I
don't think it's going too far to say that for my generation, the generation
that protested the Vietnam War, growing up with ... Mad ... shaped the
situation to allow our generation to protest that war." - Art Spiegelman,
underground comic artist, author of Maus
"Mad
is every bit as preachy as that old codifier, Moses. Beneath the pile
of garbage that is Mad, there beats, I suspect, the heart of a rabbi."
- theologian Vernard Eller in a 1967 article titled "The Mad Morality:
An Expose" in the Christian Century
"Mad
is teaching an old, a real old morality - but without morality."
- ibid
"Criticism
we can take; praise from his kind could kill us." - Gaines and
Al Feldstein, in a disclaimer to Christian Century, referring to Eller's
article
"Mad
made me fall in love with people with big ears. That's a good influence,
isn't it?" - Andy Warhol
"What
do you expect in a country that thinks the funniest man in all of history
is Jerry Lewis?" - Mad co-editor John Ficarra, on the reason why
three French editions of the magazine failed
"You
work forwards with all your math to a certain point, then you work backwards
to a certain point. So there you are, you've got this figure here and
that figure there and they're supposed to be the same figure, but they
ain't, which means there's something very wrong. That's when you employ
the Boogerian Constant - it's the number you multiply this by to get
that. It's a simple thing! I've been faking it for 25 years - they've
never found the Boogerian Constant." - Gaines explaining how he
fills in his monthly cash-flow report to Time Warner
"An
office like that doesn't belong in a building like ours." - Steve
Ross, CEO of Time Warner, which owns Mad, explaining why the magazine
is allowed to operate away from its centralized operations
"I
think it's unethical to take ads when you're charging money for something."
- Gaines
"You
can't take money from Coke and make fun of Pepsi." - Gaines
"The
relativity theory in 1905 announced the dissolution of uniform Newtonian
space as an illusion or fiction, however useful. Einstein pronounced
the doom of continuous or 'rational' space, and the way was made clear
for Picasso and the Marx Brothers and Mad." - Marshall McLuhan
Steven
Spielberg, a longtime fan of Mad, once said the feature "Mad Scenes
We'd Like to See" was his inspiration for the film Raiders of the
Lost Ark.
"Mad
was a puzzle of comedy. You couldn't take it all in one reading, so
you'd delve back in. When Firesign started to make records, we wanted
to do the same thing - create something so rich in activity that people
would want to return to it again and again." - Phil Proctor, a
member of the Firesign Theater comedy group
"Much
of what's resulted in humor in the last 15 years has come directly out
of Mad." - cartoonist Jules Feiffer
"What?
You mean Mad is American?!" – Peter Orelle, my London-born Jerusalem
dentist
(With
thanks to Dawn Evans of New York for providing the source for most of
these quotes: the book Completely Mad - a History of the Comic Book
and Magazine, by Maria Reidelbach)
-S.O.
