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Satire

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1867 edition of the satirical magazine Punch, a British satirical magazine, ground-breaking on popular literature satire.

Satire (lat. medley, dish of colourful fruits) is a technique used in drama and the performing arts, fiction, journalism, and occasionally in poetry, the graphic arts, and more commonly popular media. Although satire is usually witty, and often very funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humour but criticism of an event, an individual or a group in a clever manner.

Terminology

Satire is one of the most precise literary terms; it usually has a very definite target, which may be a person or group of people, an idea or attitude, an institution or a social practice. In any case the target is held up to a ridicule that is often quite merciless, and sometimes very angry; ideally in the hope of shaming it into reform. A very common, almost defining feature of satire is a strong vein of irony or sarcasm, in fact satirical writing or drama very often professes to approve values that are the diametric opposite of what the writer actually wishes to promote. Parody, burlesque, exaggeration and double entendre are all devices frequently used in satirical speech and writing – but it is strictly a misuse of the word to describe as "satire" works without an ironic (or sarcastic) undercurrent of mock-approval, and an element at least of anger.

History of western satire

Ancient Rome

The first to discuss satire critically was Quintilian, who invented the term to describe the writings of Lucilius. Unlike an 16th century confusion states, the term satire is not related to the satyr, companions of Dionysos and their satyr plays of the Theatre of Ancient Greece, only its derivatives (satirical, satirise) are. But the style of the Roman satire is rather linked to the satira, or satura lanx, a "dish of fruits" resembling the colourful mockings or figuratively a "medley". Still, Pliny reports that the 6th century BC poet Hipponax wrote satirae that were so cruel the offended hanged themselves.[1]

Criticism of Roman emperors (notably Augustus) needed to be presented in veiled ironical terms - but the term when applied to Latin works actually titled as "satires" is much wider than in the modern sense of the word, including fantastic and highly coloured humorous writing with little or no real mocking intent.

Prominent satirists from Roman antiquity include Horace and Juvenal, who were active during the early days of the Roman Empire and are the two most influential Latin satirists. Other important Roman satirists are Lucilius and Persius. In retrospect, a few earlier cynical comedies, especially Aristophanes, are classic examples of the current definition of satire.

Middle Ages

There are examples of satire from the Early Middle Ages, especially songs by goliards or vagants now best known as an anthology called Carmina Burana and made famous as texts of a composition by the 20th century componist Carl Orff. Satirical poetry is believed to have been popular, although little has survived. With the advent of the High Middle Ages and the birth of modern vernacular literature in the 12th century, it began to be used again, most notably by Chaucer. The disrespectful manner was considered "Unchristian" and ignored but for the moral satire, which mocked misbehavior in Christian terms. Examples are Livre des Manières (~1170), Till Eulenspiegel and Reynard the Fox, and in some of Chaucers Canterbury Tales. Its (more overt) comeback was in Brandt's Narrenschiff (1494), Erasmus's Moriae Encomium (1509) and Thomas More's Utopia (1516).

Early modern western satire

The Elizabethan (i.e. 16th century English) writers did not know about the real origin of the word satire, and stressed only the Greek-influenced derivative, so that they believed it to relate to the half-animal, half-human satyr, that lived in the wild and was full of grim. They related it only to the notoriously rude, harse and sharp satyr play. That way, authors attempting satire developed an even more biting pamphlet than the (well-known) Roman original satire was. The discussion ended when French Huguenot Isaac Casaubon discovered in 1605 that satire was a Roman term, ending the misunderstanding. Since then it referred again to the "amendment of vices" (Dryden).

Direct social commentary via satire returned with a vengeance in the 16th century, when farcical texts such as the works of François Rabelais tackled more serious issues (and incurred the wrath of the crown as a result). But the greatest[citation needed] satirists emerged with the Age of Enlightenment, an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th century advocating rationality. Here, astute and biting satire of institutions and individuals became a popular weapon. Although Isaac Casaubon discovered and published Quintilians writing and presented the original meaning of the term (satira, not satyr), Early Modern satire was already an established genre, but the sense of wittiness (reflecting the "dishfull of fruits") became more important again.

Jonathan Swift was one of the greatest of English satirists, and one of the first to practice modern journalistic satire. For instance, his "Modest Proposal" suggests that poor parents be encouraged to sell their own children as food. Swift creates a moral fiction, a world in which parents do not have their most obvious responsibility, which is to protect their children from harm. His purpose is of course to attack indifference to the plight of the desperately poor. John Dryden also wrote an influential essay on satire that helped fix its definition in the literary world.

Anglo-American satire

Ebenezer Cooke, author of "The Sot-Weed Factor," is possibly the first to bring satire to the British colonies;[citation needed] Benjamin Franklin and others followed, using satire to shape an emerging nation's culture through shaping its sense of the ridiculous.

A great American satirist was Mark Twain. For example, his novel Huckleberry Finn is set in the ante-bellum South, in a world where the moral values Twain wishes to promote are completely turned on their heads. His hero, Huck, a rather simple but good-hearted lad is ashamed of the "sinful temptation" that leads him to help a runaway slave. In fact his conscience – warped by the distorted moral world he has grown up in, often bothers him when to us he is at his best. Ironically, he is prepared to do good, believing it to be wrong.

Twain's younger contemporary Ambrose Bierce gained notoriety as a cynic, pessimist and black humorist with his dark, bitterly ironic stories, many set during the American Civil War, which satirised the limitations of human perception and reason. Bierce's most famous work of satire is probably The Devil's Dictionary, in which the definitions mock cant, hypocrisy and received wisdom.

20th century western satire

In the 20th century, satire has been used by authors such as Aldous Huxley and George Orwell to make serious and even frightening commentaries on the dangers of the sweeping social changes taking place throughout Europe and United States. The film, The Great Dictator (1940) by Charlie Chaplin is a satire on Adolf Hitler and his Nazi army. A more humorous brand of satire enjoyed a renaissance in the UK in the early 1960s with the Satire Boom, led by such luminaries as Peter Cook, John Cleese, Alan Bennett, Jonathan Miller, David Frost, Eleanor Bron and Dudley Moore and the television programme That Was The Week That Was. It continues to be a popular form of social commentary and expression today, although there is an increasing perception that satire must be explicitly humorous, which has not always been the case.

Contemporary western satire

Stephen Colbert’s television program The Colbert Report is instructive in the methods of satire. Colbert impersonates an opinionated self-righteous conservative who, in his TV interviews, interrupts people, points and wags his finger at them, and unwittingly uses every logical fallacy known to man. Colbert's finger wagging character is supposedly inspired by Bill O'Reilly, who hosts a conservative news program on Fox News Channel.

Cartoonists often use satire as well as straight humour. For example, Garry Trudeau, whose comic strip Doonesbury has charted and recorded every American folly for the last generation. With his satiric comic strips dealing with Viet Nam (and now, Iraq), dumbed down education, and over-eating at "McFriendly's", Trudeau has continued to entertain the American public, while trying to instruct it. Recently one of his gay characters lamented that because he was not legally married to his partner, he was deprived of the "exquisite agony" of getting a nasty and painful divorce like heterosexuals. This, of course, satirizes the claim that gay unions would denigrate the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.

On occasion, satire can cause social change. For instance, the comic strip Doonesbury satirized a Florida county that had a law requiring minorities to have a passcard in the area; the law was soon repealed with an act nicknamed the Doonesbury Act.[2] In the 2000 Canadian federal election campaign, a Canadian Alliance proposal for a mechanism to require a referendum in response to a petition of sufficient size was satirized by the television show This Hour Has 22 Minutes so effectively that it was discredited and soon dropped.

Many modern TV shows combine satirical and comical elements. The most prominent TV satire is the animated series The Simpsons. Other notable examples include South Park and to a degree, Family Guy. Animated shows can easily use images of public figures and generally have greater latitude than conventional shows using actors. Like its literary predecessors, TV satire can have comical parts as well; proof of The Simpson's mainly satirical character is the opening sequence, mocking aspects of the modern (not only) US-American way of living[citation needed]. Series 7: The Contenders satirized what might happen if reality TV shows got out of hand and ended up in people getting killed for entertainment.

Satiric parodies are common on the internet; one of the most prominent examples is the news satire site The Onion. Individuals are picking up the idea and exploiting the genre through their blogs, such as The Swift Report. Also, satirical shows like Have I Got News For You and They Think It's All Over are very popular on British television.

History of Persian Satire

Main article: Persian satire

In Persia, 14th century (CE) Obeid e zakani introduced satire. In the 1905-1911 Persian Constitutional Revolution, Bibi Khatoon Astarabadi and other Iranian satirists wrote notable satires.

Appreciation of satire

Because satire often combines anger and humour it can be profoundly disturbing - because it is essentially ironic, including that heavy handed form of irony called sarcasm, it is often misunderstood.

Common uncomprehending responses to satire include revulsion (accusations of poor taste, or that it's "just not funny" for instance), to the idea that the satirist actually does support the ideas, policies, or people he is attacking.

For instance at the time many people misunderstood Swift’s purpose – assuming it to be a serious recommendation of cannibalism.

Some critics of Mark Twain see Huckleberry Finn as racist and offensive while others claim it is one of the most powerful anti-racist works ever written.

Satire under fire

Because satire is stealthy criticism, it frequently escapes censorship. Periodically, however, it runs into serious opposition.

In 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift and the Bishop of London George Abbott, whose offices had the function of licensing books for publication in England, issued a decree banning verse satire. The decree ordered the burning of certain volumes of satire by John Marston, Thomas Middleton, Joseph Hall, and others; it also required history plays to be specially approved by a member of the Queen's Privy Council, and it prohibited the future printing of satire in verse. The motives for the ban are obscure, particularly since some of the books banned had been licensed by the same authorities less than a year earlier. Various scholars have argued that the target was obscenity, libel, or sedition. It seems likely that lingering anxiety about the Martin Marprelate controversy, in which the bishops themselves had employed satirists, played a role; both Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey, two of the key figures in that controversy, suffered a complete ban on all their works. In the event, though, the ban was little enforced, even by the licensing authority itself.

In Italy the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi used censorship by stopping RAI Television's satirical series, Raiot, Daniele Luttazzi's Satyricon, Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro's Sciuscià, even a special Blob series on Berlusconi himself, by arguing that they were vulgar and full of disrespect to the government. He claimed that he would sue the RAI for 21,000,000 Euros if the show went on. RAI stopped the show. Sabina Guzzanti, creator of the show, went to court to proceed with the show and won the case. However, the government and the RAI refused to follow the court order and the show never went on air again.[citation needed]

In 2001 the British television network Channel 4 aired a special edition of the spoof current affairs series Brass Eye, which was intended to mock and satirize the fascination of modern journalism with child molesters and pedophiles. The TV network received an enormous number of complaints from members of the public, who were outraged that the show would mock a subject considered by many to be too "serious" to be the subject of humour.

In 2006 British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen released Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan a "mockumentary" that satirized everyone from high society, to low life frat boys. Criticism of the film was heavy, from claims of Antisemitism, to the massive boycott of the film by the Kazakhstan government.

Chronological list of notable satirists

References

  1. ^ Cuddon, Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford 1998, "satire"
  2. ^ Melnik, Rachel. A picture is worth a thousand politicians, Cartoons catalyze social justice, McGill Tribune (2007-01-23), Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
  • Jacob Bronowski & Bruce Mazlish, The Western Intellectual Tradition From Leonardo to Hegel, p. 252 (1960; as repub. in 1993 Barnes & Noble ed.).
  • Theorizing Satire: A Bibliography [2], by Brian A. Connery, Oakland University
  • Bloom, Edward A. . "Sacramentum Militiae: The Dynamics of Religious Satire." Studies in the Literary Imagination 5 (1972): 119-42.
  • The Modern Satiric Grotesque. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1991.

Theories/Critical approaches to satire as a genre:

  • Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. (See in particular the discussion of the 4 "myths").
  • Hammer, Stephanie. Satirizing the Satirist.
  • Highet, Gilbert. Satire.
  • Kernan, Alvin. The Cankered Muse

The Plot of Satire.

  • Seidel, Michael. Satiric Inheritance.

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