Since we started this blog, we’ve encountered a whole bunch of misogynist ish whose authors have dressed it up as “satire.” Be it the ill-advised “bikini bod” ads from Joe in New York or the hideous bit of hateration published by the Irish Times back in February, there seems to be a recurring trend that when people inflict something hateful or sexist or racist or just plain stupid on the rest of us, they immediately hide behind the excuse: “But it was satire!” Of course, in most cases, they hide behind the satire excuse only after they realize that what they said was not, in fact, funny or smart or even satirical. Satire has become the lazy asshole’s way of trying to excuse himself–or herself–without an apology.
So I am calling in my old friends G & C Merriam and Noah Webster to school us:
sat·ire
1 a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn; 2. trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
For a primer on practical usage, you can’t beat commenter have.at.it’s breakdown:
Effective satire usually takes a reasonable premise to a ridiculous conclusion or vice versa (see the classic example, Swift’s A Modest Proposal). Their [bikini bod] sign wasn’t funny or satirical. Now, if they had said something like “Drink Joe’s coffee and lose 20 pounds overnight! You’ll develop holes in your intestines but no one will notice the colostomy bag because they’ll all be looking at your flat stomach!”, that may have been satirical, if possibly bad for business.
BeckySharper, I’m glad you posted this (I’m new to Harpyness and I haven’t gotten a feel for the commenting milieu, so I hope I am not being echo-chambery here. I just wanted to share a few thoughts:)
Satire requires a context. The audience has to be in on the “joke”. If you’re going to riff on a pre-existing supposition, your audience has to have some level of agreement on what that supposition is, and they also have to know you’re being deliberately hyperbolic, non-sequitur, absurd, etc.
Satire that is too obtuse or unimaginative falls flat. In order for satire to be effective, it has to be clear that you’re making a point. Saying “LOLOLOL OMG CAFFEINE GIVES YOU A BIKINI BOD LADEEZ DRINK UP!!11″ isn’t particularly imaginative, since caffeine has been included in weight loss supplements since like, dinosaur times. I won’t vouch for its efficacy; I like caffeine because I’m physiologically and psychologically addicted to it, not because of what it’ll do for my waistline. But that’s not the point–the point is this: Satire requires a disconnect; you have to acknowledge the intelligence of your audience while making a point that is sufficiently distanced from the original premise. Intentionally offending people for the lulz isn’t satire. It’s just dumb.
hey tscheese! welcome!
Also I totally agree, your comment is very articulate.
BeckySharper, is the sign finally down?
@tscheese: YES, EXACTLY. Intentionally offending people for the lulz doesn’t make you a satirist, it makes you an asshole. And assholes deserve to be called out for their assholery. (Also, welcome!!)
@AuntieEm: When I went by Joe yesterday the chalkboard itself was gone, along with the offending message.
It’s kind of like the commenting equivalent of “Just kidding, jeez, you take things so LITERALLY”
!
JessMess: Or the ever-powerful “LOL JOKESSSSS” or “I had my fingers crossed behind my back, it doesn’t count” or “IT WAS OPPOSITE DAY!”
Good post, to take it very slightly off track I would argue that while the UK version of The Office is satire, the US version isn’t. It’s a very well-made sitcom but i don’t think it’s satire, largely because the disconnect tcheese mentions isn’t there because we’re asked, unlike the UK version, to identify with and like the characters.
@emilyanne: The UK version is totally satirical IMO. The US version has occasional flashes of satire, but yeah, it’s mostly straight comedy. I think Americans are less comfortable with trenchant, biting satire, which is why the US version morphed pretty quickly into sitcom territory.
Becky, I agree – I think that US satire generally seems to work better when political because when it comes to comedy they prefer characters that they can emphasise with in someway (noted exceptions The Garry Shandling Show, pretty much anything Larry David does). I can’t imagine the US being comfortable with a show such as Peep Show for example which is genius, but genius largely because we know the characters are terrible, awful people and the show is satirising that.
@emilyanne: Yeah, we’re mostly a nation of golden retrievers…we just want to be liked and petted and bounce happily around in the backyard.
emilyanne, you’re totally right about The Office/s. I think that’s why I prefered the UK version (also because they knew to END the story, instead of all this jumping-the-shark eloping/not-eloping/suprise pregnancy nonsense).
Or to put it another way – America likes success and prefers its characters achieve a measure of it, whereas in Britain we’re most comfortable when bitching about failure and predicting bad things coming our way, thus our comedies centre around losers. We could never make Friends or even Sex and The City, the US wouldn’t make Spaced, Peep Show or Pulling. (Although oddly I believe they’re trying with the latter).
Maybe when the capitalist/imperialist US empire crumbles the way Britain’s has, which is hopefully already happening, we will finally see ourselves as not ALWAYS the winners or the best, and our comedy will evolve the way British comedy has? (I’m not sure if what I just wrote makes any sense!)
@emilyanne: Thanks for mentioning my favorite show, Spaced!!!! I definitely think that it wouldn’t work here–too smart and people wouldn’t ‘get it’.
JessMess, they actually made a pilot of it in the US but it was pulled asap – if you google it you’ll see that Simon Pegg was particularly unamused about the whole thing, especially the way in which they practically wrote Jessica Stevenson’s involvement out.
Thank you, thank you, A MILLION TIMES THANK YOU for this post. It immediately got linked on my facebook. I’m an English major, and it BEYOND bothers me when people either claim something as satire when it’s obviously not or when it completely goes over their heads.
Another good example of satire, by the way, is Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.” He takes the problems he sees in his society (social stratification, focus on self-gratification, drug use, eugenics to an extent) and exacerbates them. This is partly why the novel is so shocking to us… it’s satire that’s coming true.
Anyhow, keep up the good work!
I would still argue that Emerson’s piece in the Irish Times was in fact satire – to use the language of your perfect definition, he took a premise that was, in all seriousness, being suggested by some people as reasonable (“if women hadn’t started working outside the home, things would be better”), and took it to a ridiculous conclusion (“Women caused the credit crunch and their jobs should all be abolished”).
I just think there’s a cultural context, an Irish twist, that didn’t come across to non-Irish people. Because the Irish Times is my paper of choice, and it’s lefty and feminist in general and Newton Emerson writes piss-takes, not offensive rants.
I’m sorry if I’m not being clear, and I don’t like to undermine anyone’s feelings of offence, but in this case as an Irish person I think I have some extra insight. And some extra hangover.
Eeva – completely off context but I was bought up with my father’s mutterings that the Irish Times was the paper of the Dublin establishment. Although it has definitely changed.
On track, i think it was intended as satire, I didn’t think it was especially well-written or perceptive satire. And I say that as someone whose parents are Irish (although admittedly I grew up in London)
@Eeva: You make a good point, and I think you’re right that in context it seems more likely to be satirical and the author was going for satire. But it does read like a piss-take, and piss-takes are very hard to pull off as satire because they’re nearly always mean-spirited (I mean, really, the upshot of the piece was “you working women are ruining society for us menz”, which is certainly said in hateful earnest all the time). Also, it just plain wasn’t funny….
[...] this is a really good article on the difference between satire and bullshit offensive [...]