![\"Siouxsie_Mittagessen.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Siouxsie_Mittagessen.jpg\")
In the field of branding, \u201cbaseline\u201d is the advertising phrase that accompanies the brand in all the media supports used to promote it. Nike\u2019s \u201cJust do it\u201d, Nokia\u2019s \u201cConnecting people\u201d, the \u201cMove your mind\u201d of Saab or Apple\u2019s \u201cThink Different\u201d. In colloquial terms, branding professionals refer to the \u201cbaseline\u201d as \u201cvaseline\u201d, that is to say, the lubricant that helps the message \u201center\u201d. <\/p>\n
In the context of culture, humour, parody and satire can have this \u201cvaseline\u201d effect, enabling authors to criticise facts, situations or questionable systems relentlessly. There are times when in which reality is so tough, disconcerting, unreasonable and unjust, that it seems as if it is only through parodied representations that one can agitate perceptions and consciences. One of these moments was in the convulsive thirties, that gave rise to the political photo-montages of John Heartfield (born Helmut Herzfeld): Adolf Der \u00dcbermensch: Schluckt Gold und redet Blech<\/a> (Adolf, Superman: swallows gold and spouts junk<\/em>), in which with the help of X rays one sees Hitler\u2019s innards, a pile of golden coins; Goering: Der Henker des Dritten Reichs<\/a> (Goering, Executioner of the Third Reich<\/em>) appears caricatured as a butcher or Hurrah, die Butter is alle!<\/a> (Hurray! The butter is all gone<\/em>), in which a family sitting around a table have nothing more to eat than bits of metal, in reference to the unfortunate phrase pronounced by G\u00f6ring during a period of food scarcity, in which he affirmed that iron had always made the nation strong, while butter and lard only made people fat. It wasn\u00b4t by chance, that Hurrah, die Butter is Alle!<\/em> was paid homage to, at an equally critical time, by punk, appearing on the cover of \u201cMittageisen\u201d by Siouxsie and the Banshees.<\/p>\n The heirs to the photomontages of Heartfield or Jacob Kjeldgaard (who with the pseudonym Marinus realised critical photo-collages for the French newspaper Marianne) are now to be found in the written press, in satirical magazines like El Jueves, Karma Dice, Chralie Hebdo<\/em>, or, the recently appeared, Mong\u00f2lia<\/a><\/em>\u201ca satirical magazine without any message\u201d that is defined itself in a manifesto\/\/declaration<\/a>, that makes its message quite clear and which includes in each issue the section \u201cReality News\u201d, with investigative articles (of the serious kind) in which reality exceeds any kind of parody. <\/p>\n![\"aznar.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/a-desk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/aznar.jpg\")
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