ARTS COMMENTARY

It's been said imitation is the highest form of flattery. I wonder what parody's considered.

Some things in the world - pieces of art, books, songs, videos - are so well known, they're iconic. They're so famous you can make fun of them and most everyone knows what you're referring to (eg. "The Last Supper," "Mona Lisa," Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video.)

"Goodnight Moon," Margaret Brown Wise's classic children's picture book from 1947, has been referenced and parodied over the years. It's been featured in animated television series "The Simpsons" and "Animaniacs" and even referenced in HBO's gritty series "The Wire."

Berkeley Breathed, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist of "Bloom County," "Outland" and "Opus," wrote and drew a book called "Goodnight Opus." In it, the infamous penguin is being read "Goodnight Moon" as a bedtime story. He then goes on to meet a number of unusual creatures and animals.

And in the summer of 2006, writer and actress Brett Paesel came out with "Mommies Who Drink: Sex, Drugs, and Other Distant Memories of an Ordinary Mom." It's a memoir about dealing with motherhood, from someone who is decidedly not a traditional mom. (What other book on motherhood do you know of that starts out: "'What we'll do is rent a limo. We'll do the cocaine at my house, then take the limo to a couple of clubs,' says Lana.")

The cover of "Mommies Who Drink" never fails to make me laugh. It boasts a photograph of a nude woman with a pleated lampshade on her head. The woman is in black and white, and the lampshade's a golden yellow with shades of pumpkin. The woman's right hand is up - polished nails glowing black- and holding the pull chain to the lamp.

And behind her is the familiar blue night sky of "Goodnight Moon," with the white twinkly stars and the curve of a full moon in the upper right corner. The window's bordered in red, and the wall, what you can see of it, is green, just like in the book. And the book's title and author's name are in lemon yellow, the same slightly curved typeface and color as the children's book classic.

The cover works, whether you know the children's classic or not, but if you do, it only serves to increase the humor of the image.

Then, just a few weeks ago, Little, Brown and Company released an unauthorized parody called "Goodnight Bush," by Erich Origen and Gan Golan. The cover looks strikingly similar to the cover of "Goodnight Moon," but outside the window, there are silhouettes of nuclear reactors and oil refineries. On the fireplace mantel is a church building and the Capitol, and in-between, a set of scales, dipping towards the church. And in the fireplace - a box labeled Florida 2000 is in flames, with a few voting ballots on the floor. And that's just the cover.

In the publisher's press release they note that the orginal "Goodnight Moon" has been successful in soothing children into a "state of drowsy, unquestioning acceptance for over sixty years…The 'bedtime stories' of the Bush administration seemed to be informed by 'Goodnight Moon' in creating the same comforting aura of reassurance, the same promise of safety; when in fact our political landscape was a dangerous, confusing minefield we were made to hazily accept."

While adhering to the structure of the original book, Origen and Golan manage to include many of Bush's numerous failures. The couplets include: "Goodnight towers/And goodnight balance of powers" and "Goodnight constitution/And goodnight evolution," as well as: "Goodnight democracy/And goodnight privacy" and "Goodnight old growth trees/Goodnight detainees."

Like a kid playing dress-up, Bush is wearing a flight suit. On one table is a mirror with lines of cocaine, which disappear as the story progresses. On another table on the opposite side of the bed is a copy of "My Pet Goat," the book Bush was reading to children when he was informed America was under attack and planes had been flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center…and then continued to sit and read for five minutes afterwards.

The clock on the table next to the book reads 9:11 throughout the parody. The painting over the bed, which is of the three bears the original, is now of suited war profiteers wearing pigs' heads. The pile of cash in their midst grows bigger as the story continues.

Instead of a little mouse scurrying around, as in the classic, there's a miniature figure of Osama bin Laden freely running about. And on top of the bookcase, a toy figure of Jesus rides a dinosaur.

The book concludes with "Goodnight failures everywhere," and Bush huddling in the dark in a room filled with his disasters.

It's a book that makes you want to cry as much as laugh.

In the afterward, Origen and Golan talk about how odd the original book is, if you look at it objectively: "If you weren't exposed to 'Goodnight Moon' as a child, you might recognize how strange and fantastic the book really is," they write. "Yes,

old lady is really a giant t ato that o rabbi rabbit, there's a feral mouse on th the loose, and the soonto to-be slumbering little one has e easy access to fireplace pok pokers. Look closely, and you you'll discover further odd oddities: the books on the she shelves change from page to page, someone steals th the drying socks off the ra rack; the mailbox in th the painting of the cow ju jumping over the moon s sometimes disappears. Ye Yet, for young readers, the story takes on a surreal co coherence. The soothing l d t colors and sweet couplets settle children into a state of drowsy acceptance. It is no surprise that 'The New Yorker,' reviewing 'Goodnight Moon' on its initial publication, described it as 'hypnotic.'…

 

"A similar process happened over the last eight years. Under Bush, the nation we thought we knew was distorted into something almost unrecognizable, leaving us feeling strangely out of place in our own home - America."

Its creators have packed so many little details into this parody that there's something new to find on repeated readings.

And maybe that's a good lesson for us all: to pay close attention to the details, and how things subtly change over time, almost without our realizing it.