The Politics of Parody

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Do you know anything about the new religion called Dinkoism, based on the cartoon character Dinkan?

Is it a parody?

Click the image below to hear a short, recent BBC news story on how Dinkosim is now trending in the Indian state of Kerala, on the southwestern tip of India. (It’s the first few minutes of the episode.) For even if it is a parody, meant to criticize so-called mainstream religions, it can still have a pretty potent effect, prompting us to know something about current Indian politics if we’re going to make sense of its popularity.

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3 thoughts on “The Politics of Parody

  1. Two odd elements. The BBC reporters take Facebook Likes as the demonstration of Dinkoism’s significance. Perhaps that is a factor of the Internet focus of this particular BBC show. The gotcha moment (founded in 2008, claims to be 65 million years old) suggests that the reporters really struggle between seeing Dinkoism as a real religion (which obviously must be consistent?) and as a parody.

    1. Indeed–the reporters are there to contest it, aren’t they. Not too far off the mark of that one interviewee.

    2. But in an odd way, their style of contesting Dinkoism in an “objective” fashion leaves them taking the Dinko leader seriously, not as a cultural/religious critic but as a leader of an organized but flawed religion.