A scene in which a soldier advocates carrying a blank piece of paper to gain official kudos, safe in the knowledge that no one can afford to be seen wasting time by checking it, hits the target of not only Catch-22 style military bureaucracy, but also the soldiers' knowing, deadpan mockery of it.
Yet it must be said that it is not for everyone, that some people have been thoroughly irritated by all this self-knowing mockery.
Its script is a rehash of the obvious and the pointless, without the knowing self-mockery of "21 Jump Street".
But these are hard times for satirists, given the pervasiveness of knowing self-mockery in everything from television commercials to campaign speeches.
Either he or Mr. Franco smartly decided that the actor's performance should be delivered without knowing self-mockery, a strategy that helps keep the ridiculous story from collapsing into full-on camp.
As for the myth, the celebratory rituals of Purim are about playing the fool, not being one; a knowing self-mockery, not a puerile, leering and labored attempt to be farcical and hip.
The knowing attitude of Mad's mockery helped the readers who grew up to join the business realize they must sell "a skeptical audience," Mr. Lubars said.
I don't blame him for not knowing the words in Spanish, but his mockery of the language is completely unacceptable.
The show floats mostly on lighthearted mockery of Hollywood, with lots of knowing references to movies and movie stars.
The essay's tone – knowing, insiderish, never polemical, and constantly shifting between mockery and studied neutrality – probably accounts for some of its warm reception.
The Lincolnshire port, so often the butt of southern metropolitan mockery, will edge uncertainly along a red carpet knowing not whether notoriety or approval await it.
