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I got to thinking about satire a few weeks ago, and never quite worked it out in my head, until yesterday. In case you don’t know of what I speak, look at yesterday’s post, most particularly the comments.
A right-winger dropped by to alert us to a letter “written” by the president in which he lauds to immigrants the great land they are entering wherein they will be gifted with free health care, a fake birth certificate and all manner of other right wing deranged liberal offerings.
Said commenter had of course either written the thing himself to express his wacko right leanings, or had lifted it from the Internet. In either case, it represented no known statements ever uttered by Mr. Obama. Yet the commenter insisted we were unkind because it was just “satire.” Lighten up he urged, why are you folks so serious?
It didn’t strike me as satire, and so I did a bit of research.
Properly defined, satire is the use of words to attack some human vice or folly by use of wit, irony, or derision. The satirist heaps scorn and ridicule upon another or upon a social evil to show its absurdity or its moral failings.
Although not properly stated, it seems to me that it does it fact demand that some actual fact be at the core of the idea. Wikipedia defines Stephen Colbert in this manner:
Colbert’s character is an opinionated and self-righteous commentator who, in his TV interviews, interrupts people, points and wags his finger at them, and “unwittingly” uses a number of logical fallacies. In doing so, he demonstrates the principle of modern American political satire: the ridicule of the actions of politicians and other public figures by taking all their statements and purported beliefs to their furthest (supposedly) logical conclusion, thus revealing their perceived hypocrisy.
Note the last statement “their statements” meaning that it is not your independent perception of them, what you personally believe about them, but it is taken from their actual words. Therefore the commenter’s “letter” fails as satire, and is nothing more than the demented ravings of someone who has some other agenda and makes up material to induce others to believe it so they will agree with his conclusions.
Satire derived from the Latin satura lanx and it has nothing to do with the Greek satyr, although there were surely Greek satirists such as Aristophanes. In Roman times there were two types: Horatian which dealt with poking gentle fun at social ills, and Juvenalian which was more contemporary and much more abrasive. Examples of the former might be C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtapes, and Matt Groening’s The Simpsons, while Juvenalian satire might be considered Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or SouthPark.
Examples historically can be found as far back as Egypt of the 2nd millennium BCE, in Aristophanes, as mentioned above, and transversed all cultures including Islam, and Elizabethan England. Mark Twain was one of our great American satirists although many to this day do not see the intense satire of Huckleberry Finn, still condemning it as racist. Of course it is well known that soft headedness tends to preclude one’s understanding of satire as satire, and it is well known for instance that some of the right wing actually think Stephen Colbert is one of them.
Cartoons and comedy have long been the center of satiric wit in the US. The Onion is a good example, as was Li’l Abner and Pogo before hand. As to the latter, both were at points banned because of their political attacks on the US Senate and Joseph McCarthy, respectively. One of the more successful has been Doonesbury, especially during the Vietnam war.
Dorothy Parker was famous for her satirical wit as were Mort Saul and Lenny Bruce, and the Smothers Brothers. Today of course we have Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. The list is quite endless.
Satire is not always funny, though Horatian satire is more so than Juvenalian. Juvenalian is often quite biting and mean–it intends to shock the sensibilities, and depending on the topic, one can find some humorous or not given one’s personal history.
I’ve pegged myself as mostly a satirist, though I assume no place among any of the above named. I have a certain ability to voice the absurdity of certain statements taken to their logical end, turned to expose the idiotic conclusion that must be admitted. For instance, to contend that one believes in creationism means that one must logically also believe that the earth is flat, for the cosmology explained in Genesis assuredly refers to a flat earth surrounded around, beneath and above the firmament (a metal dome) by water. Now if that’s your cup of tea, I suggest you stay off ships that sail the ocean blue, and ponder again just how the heck dear Columbus arrived upon our shores. (Satire–get it?)
One of the fun things is what is called prophetic satire. One of the most well known is one by our very own Benjamin Franklin. He advised Parisians while visiting there, to economize on candles by rising an hour earlier to take advantage of the daylight during the summer, presaging Daylight savings time. Similarly, the Onion satirically spoofed Gilette’s use of multiple razor blades in one by calling for a 5 blade razor. Two years later, Gilette indeed did so.
Sometimes I wonder if I can be a good and decent Christian and be so darned mean when it comes to my political and religious pieces sometimes. I mean, it is all so nasty–and I admit hurtful to the people involved. But I realize that I will never be as good as the Dalai Lama or Desmond Tutu no matter how hard I try–we both work for the same things, just by different means, and frankly, we might well speak to quite different audiences. If I am successful in any small measure along with their greater successes, then I have added in some incremental way to changing hearts and minds.
And, that is I think, enough for me.
Just sayin’.
**Note: much of the above was taken from Wikipedia, and the photograph is of one of my favorites, Dorothy Parker.
Existential Ennui 