Pranks 2

Cultural Writing. Essays. In this collection of essays resistance is shown to be ultimately dispiriting unless we can also have fun. The last remaining quasi-legal territory of imaginative, humorous, creative, dissenting expression is signposted by pranks--any humorous deeds, propaganda, sound bites, visual bites, performances and creative projects which pierce the veil of illusion and tell "the truth." This book is a mere introduction to the enormous body of unheralded, uncelebrated, undocumented pranking that has occurred just within the past hundred years. Includes interviews with The Yes Men, Margaret Cho, John Waters, Ron English, Al Jourgensen & Jello Biafra, Jihad Jerry, Frank Discussion, Billboard Liberation Front, Lydia Lunch, Julia Solis, Cacophony Society (S.F.), Survival Research Laboratories, Paul Krassner, Reverend Al, Suicide Club, monochrom, Joey Skaggs, and more.

Introduction of section: On-Line Satire

The corporate-government mass media now demonizes so-called “hackers,” equating them to terrorists. But many of them are gifted youth driven by the curiosity to find out everything a computer can do. And everything a hacker does is something a computer connected to the Internet was designed to do.

If hackers lampoon illegitimate authority and greedy corporate marketing scams, isn’t that their right?  Isn’t satire a form of protected speech under our Constitution and Bill of Rights? We say “yes!”

A parody website is in principle no different from an issue of National Lampoon or Mad magazine. Now, we do not regard stealing of credit card information as a prank―it’s just plain greed and theft. But if George W. Bush or Enron or the W.T.O. or any other global corporate plunderers and polluters can be satirized and lampooned, then why not?

If on-line satire and parody is demonized and equated to “terrorism,” then the U.S.A. has just become the U.S.S.R . . .