Exhibited at Parody, Pastiche or Piracy June 2014 © Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons
Regular readers who can get to London within the next three weeks might want to visit the ‘Parody, Pastiche and Piracy’ show I wrote about here. It will be a good exhibition with many fantastic contributing exhibitors, many from the UK’s procartoonists.org.
Parody takes many forms and one of the most popular in recent years has been digital short-form video. Indeed, it has produced memes such as ‘Downfall’ in which the excellent movie by Constantin Films became an audio-visual staple for disasters of all sorts.
The attitude of the producers of the film to this wild popularity held up a fascinating mirror to the issues around IP and parody in a global network. Everyone felt they owned a piece of a great film and wanted their own networks to love a bit of it too.
So popular did the internet meme become that eventually content distributors such as YouTube (Google) felt pressured to remove all of the parodies that were appearing featuring the original sequence from the movie.
Happily, however eventually Constantin Films also came to understand this was a self-defeating view even though in law they were or had been correct. The effective ban on publication of such video parodies using this clip was lifted in 2010.
The example above features a UK centric parody by Paul Bernal about the dubious reuse of NHS data in a project called Care.Data.
© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons for http://tribunecartoons.com
The long delayed Chilcot Report must be due – and Iraq is going up in flames again.
© Matthew Buck Hack cartoons for The Times Educational Supplement
The football World Cup is upon us once more! Joy!
© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons
© Mark Hillary. Cover: Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons
With the World Cup in Brazil now imminent, what better time to read up on the huge and not well understood country. My hat tipped to author Mark Hillary, not least for commissioning me to do the cover image.
© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons for Tribunecartoons.com
My hat tipped to Simon Parker for good use of a metaphor after today’s Queen’s Speech announcing the last program of legislation to be carried through parliament before the general election.
The legacy of the global financial crash helped do for Gordon Brown (see above) and you can’t see it having done much for his successor either.
Brobdingnag? Doff your headgear to Jonathan Swift.
© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons
I have some artwork in an upcoming London gallery exhibition on the arts of pastiche, parody and piracy. The show opening June 20th at The Cob Gallery in London will be packed with great art from the members of procartoonists.org with which I have been proud to have been associated for many years.
Above, is an image about non-creation that did not, sadly, make the cut for show. (And immediately apologises to the memory of Michelangelo who once painted the roof of a chapel.)
The cartoon was drawn back in 2005 as a part of an exchange to South Africa in which I was involved – my subject was prevention of the spread of HIV through use of condoms.
© Matthew Buck Hack Cartoons after David Low
The elections for the European parliament are complete and they have been notable for the rise of non-mainstream parties, particularly from the right of the spectrum. In the UK this has delivered the United Kingdom Independence Party as the largest single party from the traditionally low national voter turnout.
The cartoon references ‘Very well alone’ by the New Zealand cartoonist David Low and which was drawn in 1940 at the fall of France to the Nazis.
I’ve chosen to reinterpret it with a more modern icon of Britain and a soundbite beloved of the Prime Minister who infamously took the UK into a political alliance with some openly neo-fascist parties back in 2009. James Clive-Matthews wrote about that and more here.
Edited: Jerry Hayes, the former Conservative MP for the marginal seat of Harlow in Essex, makes some good observations here about the general scene after the voting.
Jeremy Paxman listening to Nigel Farage on 19th May 2014. Paxman has recently announced his intent to leave the BBC late night current events show.
