Cultural Impact
When Harvey Kurtzman began editing Mad in 1952, his intention was simply to satirize comic book genres. He had no idea that his comic book was destined to become a publishing phenomenon that would reach a circulation of 2,132,655 by 1974, be reprinted in slick, full-color hardcover slipcased editions and transform the culture of the 20th Century. The cultural significance of Kurtzman and his creation were noted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman:
- Kurtzman's Mad held a mirror up to American society, exposing the hypocrisies and distortions of mass media with jazzy grace and elegance. He's our first post-modern humorist, laying the groundwork for such contemporary humor and satire as Saturday Night Live, Monty Python and Naked Gun.
Only three years after it began, Mad was catalogued in Harvard's Houghton Library.
Read more about this topic: List Of Mad Issues
Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or impact:
“Unfortunately there is still a cultural stereotype that it’s all right for girls to be affectionate but that once boys reach six or seven, they no longer need so much hugging and kissing. What this does is dissuade boys from expressing their natural feelings of tenderness and affection. It is important that we act affectionately with our sons as well as our daughters.”
—Stephanie Martson (20th century)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)