Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Saturday 1 March 2014

Hooptedoodle #122a - a more fitting tribute to the 1980s


Following on from my attempted non-rant about Margaret Thatcher Day, someone reminded me of this clip.

I was never a big fan of Spitting Image, to be honest - there were some funny bits, but they aimed low and dumbed it down to promote the viewing figures, and - for me - the inherent paradox of satire looms overall:

If you mock everything, and do not stand for anything yourself, then your criticism carries no weight; if you invariably poke fun at the Establishment, then that is just what we expect you to do - it becomes meaningless - a sort of Establishment job.

MSFoy   2014

Whatever, here is Sting's own parody version of his hit record, over the credits at the end of the last show in the first series (1984) - I  found it powerful at the time, despite the trivial context, and I think I still do. In amongst all the silliness - in both world affairs and the smaller world of rubber puppets - here is something sincere. That was the Eighties, my friends, and it wasn't all bad, but there's some old friends in the gallery…


4 comments:

  1. Sting could be a bit of a self-important twit, but in the 1980s he was often on the side of the angels:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHylQRVN2Qs

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, it was a good show until the later series. This is the one I'll never forget:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T3OwB6mARI

    ReplyDelete
  3. Had forgot all about this - excellent !

    ReplyDelete