Demon Stands By Its Crimson Key Parody

In his November 27 editorial, "Demon's Humorless Antics," Justin C. Danilewitz faults a recent piece in Demon, written by Matthew A. Greenbaum '00, for its reference to "Schindler's List." Danilewitz writes that Greenbaum's fiction piece, which satirizes the Crimson Key Society at one point by showing the organization making jokes about "Schindler's List," is guilty of "question[ing]" the "tragedy" and "seriousness" of the Holocaust. Danilewitz goes so far as to say, "It is a sad testimonial to the legacy of our First Amendment that such material is considered to be imbued with enough expressive value to be published."

Demon's editors, though, would like to make clear that the reason we decided to print Greenbaum's piece without further revision has to do with the way in which the piece tears the humor found in the fictional depiction of CKS insensitively. Danilewitz realizes this. "Rest assured that I did not take this dialogue at face value," he says. He goes on to say that he knows that the author of the humor piece clearly had not intended to make light of the Holocaust. Yet Danilewitz still feels that the piece shouldn't have been printed because "There is real danger that readers flipping through the latest issue of Demon who do not have time to ponder the subtleties of the authors' convoluted sarcasm would have taken away little more than the new and dangerous attitude that the Holocaust is fair game for knee-slapping satirization."

We question how fair a criticism this is. Anything can be misunderstood by someone carelessly "flipping" through a magazine, but does this mean that humor should stay away from all serious topics? We should say no, humor does not have to avoid all weighty issues. We feel that what matters is not simply what topics one deals with but how one deals with them. We also believe that it would have been impossible to have edited out the Schindler's List segment without the piece having lost some of its effectiveness.

Danilewitz would be right to point out that, in some cases, our popular culture threatens to trivialize the Holocaust with jokes which show no awareness of the tragedy of the Holocaust and how seriously it must be taken. But in Greenbaum's piece, the humor arose entirely from the thought that here, in this instance, the CKS is fictitiously shown making jokes where jokes are so obviously inappropriate--making jokes about solemn scenes in Schindler's List. Greenbaum's humor relied on its dramatization of the idea that the Holocaust is not a joking matter. We regret that this may have caused some confusion, but we stand by our decision to print the piece as it appeared in our issue. --Jeremy Friedman '98,Demon Vice-President; Matt Stovcsik '98,Managing Editor; Juliet Rothschild '97,Business Manager; Chase Tingley '99,Assistant Managing Editor; Niffer Esty '97,Literary Editor; Matthew Greenbaum '00, Writer