Can Satire Save Our Souls?
Rather than try and be funny in this particular essay, I decided to try and turn my keen analytical mind to a certain type of humor, namely the kind that helps restore my sanity when my keen analytical mind can no longer cope with trying to make sense of this mixed-up world. Satire can be cruel, vicious and mean, but it can be penetratingly insightful and even cathartic; I think it’s the form of humor that’s most likely to make you laugh until you cry.
Just for my own sense of clarity, I checked with the American Heritage Dictionary for a definition of satire, and I especially like the second: “Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.� Satire too often gets lumped in with parody – deliberate imitation of an existing work or style for comic effect – because parody can be a very effective means of satire; imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it can also undermine the imitated by bringing its absurdities closer to the surface. But as much as I might enjoy, say, “Weird Al� Yankovic retelling the plot of The Phantom Menace to the tune of “American Pie,� nothing’s really being attacked or exposed there. It’s all in good fun, and there’s no underlying message beyond having some good fun. And that’s great; by no means do I think that all wit should be caustic.
But humor can do more than just amuse – it can express outrage and dissatisfaction as well. When Dave Barry lays off the booger jokes, he can be a master at this, skewering not just minor annoyances like how god-awful commercial radio has become but larger issues like the state of our major cities, presidential scandals, and his own (successful) attempt to win a Pulitzer Prize by talking about those larger issues instead of making booger jokes. In one column about the Iran-contra scandal, Barry keeps piling on the absurdities into a massive run-on sentence (only part of which follows) until you have to laugh, but you also can’t miss the palpable frustration, the underlying bewilderment at how such ridiculousness occurs and is tolerated:
It all started when some Extremist Maniac Lunatics took some American Hostages, which upset Ronald Reagan, who to the best of his recollection was President Of The United States at the time, so he naturally sold Weapons to the Extremist Maniac Lunatics in exchange for Money, which was funneled, with the help of various Courageous Patriots who received nothing for their efforts except a Sense Of Satisfaction and Eight Million Dollars, to the crack Foreign-Policy Adventure Squad headed by Lt. Col. Oliver North . . .
When it comes to using parody for satire, I don’t think anyone is doing it better than The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The television-news-parody is a comic staple at this point, dating at least as far back as Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, which still gets its share of zingers in. But The Daily Show is in a class by itself. Its very structure mocks the often-vapid news programs we currently suffer through; everyone is a senior correspondent of whatever they happen to be talking about at the time while flashy graphics and too-clever-by-half titles identify recurring segments where self-absorbed reporters take themselves far too seriously. But because the show is obviously ‘fake’ it often has a chance to illustrate fairly complicated truths.
Without a doubt my favorite example is a sketch from a few months ago where Stewart ‘moderated’ a debate between President George W. Bush and Governor George W. Bush by interspersing clips of recent presidential speeches with clips from the campaign trail where candidate Bush criticized whatever type of policy President Bush had just advocated. Sure, a conventional reporter could compile those quotes to show the way in which the current administration has flip flopped direction, but Stewart’s commentary and the outlandish visual of Bush arguing with himself helps focus the audience’s attention, to point to those changes of direction as an object worthy of being laughed at – that is, worthy of derision. And if the audience accepts that object as worthy of derision, the odds are good that it will accept it as one worthy of change.
Of course, that can be a big if. The danger of satire is when its meanness runs past the point of provoking thought and starts making people defensive. To an extent it may be impossible to avoid this entirely; effective satire will have to touch on divisive issues, and it almost always exaggerates and/or simplifies for effect. Those who actively disagree with the satirist’s point are not likely to suddenly change their mind because they’re being mocked. The Onion, another fine news-parody satire, recently ran an article called Pope John Paul II: 25 Years of Laughs, which treated most of John Paul’s major policy pronouncements as jokes. As someone who’s had his issues with those pronouncements over the years, I found the piece amusing. But someone who accepts that John Paul is a messenger for a higher power is probably going to focus on the oversimplifications and the mean-spiritedness of the commentary, and possibly become even more resistant to criticism.
It’s a very tough balancing act; if satire only preaches to the converted, it’s not really achieving all it could. One comics website recently posted a series of satirical reviews, supposedly written by the site’s intern, that utterly ripped to shreds several semi-popular books and the fans who read them. The reviews had a point they were trying to make, about the insular nature of the medium and the way some of its less-appealing idiosyncrasies have been unconsciously accepted by too many people. But the negativity was so relentless and often overdone that no one really wanted to discuss the issues being raised; defenders and opponents of the reviews settled into rigid camps and, in the finest message board tradition, spent hundreds of posts arguing that their opposite numbers were missing the point. That kind of satire is counterproductive and even destructive. But the Stewarts and Barrys of the world are an invaluable resource, and I’m happy to have them as a prominent part of our cultural discourse.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.