Satire
The familiar opening phrase "tales well-calculated to..." was satirized by Mad as the cover blurb "Tales Calculated to Drive You... Mad" on its first issue (October–November 1952) and continuing until issue #23 (May 1955).
Radio comedians Bob and Ray had a recurring routine lampooning the show, with stories that were presented as dramatic but were intentionally mundane, entitled "Tales calculated to put you in a state of... Apathy!"
Read more about this topic: Suspense (radio drama)
Famous quotes containing the word satire:
“Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“The satirist who writes nothing but satire should write but little—or it will seem that his satire springs rather from his own caustic nature than from the sins of the world in which he lives.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)