Ada Travelsted Skillern, Bowling Green High School
Through the Dark Glass: From Swift to the Simpsons
Teaching high school students how to critique and create satire
General Teaching Strategies-Outline:
I. Catch students unaware and assign “A Modest Proposal,” with no prefatory remarks, as
rhetorical analysis homework.
II. Discuss the homework (assignment attached) the next day.
III. Follow-up with an analysis of “Ketchup Soup” and “Feed the Children” commercials,
comparing/contrasting audience awareness, rhetorical appeals, persuasive devices in each.
IV. SATIRE: definition, devices, techniques, etc.
V. “Hold up the glass” and examine some of the less flattering aspects of American culture:
Dove/Slob Evolution
The Onion
Saturday Night Live Weekend Update with Seth-Really?!?
Lindsay Lohan eHarmony Parody
The New Yorker Cartoons
VI. Cultural Satire continued: The Simpsons
(at this point in the spring, we have read Hamlet, and all freshmen read The Odyssey, so we
examine the episode that “retells” The Iliad/the Odyssey and Hamlet).
VII. Political Satire:
Fresh Air interview of Jon Stewart (10/4/2010—beautiful explanations of The Daily
Show’s purpose, comedic approaches, etcetera)
Daily Show clips: Parody of Glenn Beck, interview with Jim Cramer
J. Stewart speech at the close of the “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear” (10/30/2010)
TIME Cartoons of the Week
VIII. Culminating Creative Activity:
Compose an original satire (alone or with a partner).
Share them/vote on the best one (could design apt satirical crowns for the winners
to wear).
IX. Culminating Analytical Assessment:
In-class timed essay over The Onion-MagnaSoles (2006) prompt
X. Additional Resources included in the PowerPoint, including Applied Practice: Satire
Selections, which
has terrific AP-style multiple choice and Free Response questions—what appeals to me about it
as well is that it has the older writers and prose—I think it would be ideal to begin and end with
practice and analysis of the older prose; I plan to do so this year, now that I have discovered this
resource.
Some of my reflections on the satire unit: we don’t cover it until April, but it ends up being one
of
the most fun and intellectually challenging all year—I love that it helps foster/encourage them to
be
more “informed citizens” and creators/ original commentators on the culture of high school and
all
the larger cultural circles (town, state, country, world) of which they are members. As well, the
discussions provoked by satirical examples encourage careful analysis of visual arguments as
well as
traditional texts. They seem to gain confidence in their analytical abilities by the end of this unit.
The process of creating original satire helps my students internalize and be able to recognize a lot
more quickly satirical elements; “publishing” their satires in class has become one of the
highlights
of showmanship of the year. I think this year that I will experiment beyond the “Modest Proposal”
essay or Onion journalistic style article, and offer original political cartoons, political ad parodies,
Daily Show or Weekend Update-style video segments as options, too.
One aspect of the Language course that I have found more difficult to get a handle on is how to
organize and hold students accountable for being informed citizens, but this goal is also what
makes
the course so immediately accessible and relevant to them—it also lends itself to such natural
collaboration with the Government & Politics instructor (political cartoons, columnist/Op-Ed
analysis, etc.); one of the best professional compliments a student can pay is that she no longer
can
shop, watch a movie, or a commercial without thinking analytically, and the work we do with
satire
seems to help accomplish that.
GENERAL OVERVIEW of SATIRE:
SATIRE: any piece of writing designed to make its readers feel critical—of themselves, of their
fellow human beings, of their society. Some satire intends to make us laugh at human foolishness
and weakness; others make us angry and indignant at human vices and crimes.
Swift’s satire sometimes provokes laughter, but often laughter of a bitter kind.
Satirists are dissatisfied with things as they are, and they want to make them better.
Satirists know that human beings often don’t respond well to lecture or admonitions. To shake us
out of our complacency and provoke us to hold the glass up to see ourselves and our world more
honestly, they avoid offering straightforward advice.
Instead, they make fun of selfish, mean-spirited, or willfully ignorant people in the hope that we
will
see ourselves in such people and mend our ways.
Devices satirists employ:
1. EXAGGERATION: to enlarge, increase, or represent something beyond normal bounds so
that it becomes ridiculous and its faults can be seen; every idea and concept is carried to the
extreme, to capture the reader’s attention. No reasonable halfway measures are
used--something is either all good or all bad.
HYPERBOLE: wildly extravagant exaggeration
2. UNDERSTATEMENT: the opposite of exaggeration (such as being casual and offhanded
about something quite serious; making less of a deal of something than it is)
3. IRONY: things are just the opposite of what they seem. Something small and trivial is made
to seem important or serious; known as the “mountain out of a molehill” method. This
can be reversed, as when something very important is made trivial, to show that people
aren’t paying enough attention to this problem. In either case, the subject is described as the
opposite of what really exists.
4. INCONGRUITY: To present things that are out of place or are absurd in relation to its
surroundings; INCONGRUOUS JUXTAPOSITION: placing side by side two things that
do not belong together.
5. REVERSAL: To present the opposite of the normal order (e.g., the order of events,
hierarchical order).
6. PARODY: To imitate the techniques and/or style of some person, place, or thing.
What is the risk all satirists run?
SATIRE is not just a type of RHETORICAL ANALYSIS; it is an ARGUMENT; therefore, one
should reflexively think about the RHETORICAL TRIANGLE (Speaker/Audience/Subject) and
consider the creator’s choices/reasoning for constructing his argument in this manner.
Remember, also, the “Triumvirate of Persuasive Appeals”:
1. Logical appeals: supporting a position with evidence, such as facts or statistics;
2. Emotional appeals: passages that use words that arouse strong feelings;
3. Ethical appeals: passages that establish the writer as sincere and qualified to make the remarks.
Satire can have two MOODS:
1. BEMUSED/GENTLE (Horatian) -- where the humor is mild and the author sees the
problem as more foolish than evil;
2. BITING/ANGRY (Juvenalian) --where the ridicule is savage and the author sees the
problem as urgent and severe, possibly evil.
Satire can be directed at several kinds of TARGETS:
1. THE INDIVIDUAL -- the author makes fun of one person’s behavior and beliefs
because he feels that the person is foolish or malicious. One example is Swift’s “The
Death of the Late Famous General.”
2. THE GROUP -- the target can be a political party, a club, a social class, a profession,
even a whole society.
3. THE “SYSTEM” -- this often involves large systems of beliefs, such as religion, or
human nature in general. One example is Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.”
Forms Satirists Use:
1. FANTASY -- the setting of the satire is an imaginary world or time. It softens the
criticism by removing it from reality. The idea behind it: people are more willing to
consider criticism if the finger isn’t pointing directly at them.
2. MOCK HEROICS -- take the realistic problem or dispute and turn it into a highly
exaggerated epic battle.
3. FORMAL PROPOSAL -- prepare a highly serious, highly rational proposal for action on
this problem, but make it totally unreasonable and exaggerated.
4. PRAISE/BLAME -- take something that is bad and praise it without boundary, or take
something good and cut it to shreds. Either way, the reader will appreciate the irony the
author intends.
Some of our brief class observations about the Simpsons:
The SIMPSONS: caters to two audiences:
1. “low-brow” humor: crass, more obvious, bathroom humor.
Examples: the Three Stooges, slapstick, cheap jokes, physical comedy.
2. “high-brow” humor: subtle, often has two different meanings.
INCONGRUOUS JUXTAPOSITION: EX. Odysseus says he won’t make a sacrifice to the gods,
because it’s barbaric, and then immediately orders all captured enemies to be slain.
Homer: the “everyman” writer of the Odyssey.
Hero: Odysseus
Odysseus fights the Trojan War for ten years; it takes him another ten to get home to his beloved
Penelope.
Odysseus’s journey and all of the obstacles that distract him from his true destiny became a
PARADIGM, or the model, for all men’s lives/journeys.
SIRENS: women who are irresistible and almost destroy the men; in our lives, they are the
distractions, temptations that preclude our reaching our true destinies.
O Brother, Where Art Thou? A remake of the Odyssey in recent years.
Like the Simpsons’ television series, it reflects mankind in many unflattering, non-heroic,
ignoble, and
definitely recognizable ways (like the verisimilitude of many of Chaucer’s characters in The
Canterbury
Tales).
The Simpsons recast The Trojan War, Joan of Arc, and Hamlet:
Opening song/movement of the show: reflects the fast pace of American society.
Individual characters satirize what aspects of American culture?
HOMER: factory job, puts in his time (work is joyless)
MARGE: oblivious; chooses to believe and promote the good.
BART: mischievous, loves pranks, school is a joke.
LISA: the “good” child; foil for Bart.
BABY MAGGIE: easy to lose her in the fast hustle
Early in episode: allusion to O.J. Simpson
Failing to read to his children when they were babies: satirizes parents’ best intentions.
REMEMBER as you create your own: Satire is more than ridicule: it is ridicule with a
purpose. Just making fun of someone because you don’t like them is not satire. You must focus
on the problem, the foolishness or wrongs that ought to be changed. Find a way to make these
seem ridiculous, but make the reader think about the problem at the same time he/she is laughing,
and you have written an effective satire.
As a class, generate a list of problems you might attack in your own original satires.
AP prompts throughout the brief unit to assess their ability to write on the subject: the Cat Bill
(1982); Ellen Goodman’s “The Company Man” (1995); The Onion (2006), the Pink Flamingo
(2006).
Other ideas offered by many amazing teachers on the AP English list-serve:
Show the Clayton Bigsby, black White Supremacist episode of the Dave Chappelle show
because it
uses many of the techniques we cover (exaggeration, offensive language, etc.) and it's just plain
brilliant. Also has a graphic example of the "tell"--the point where if you've had any question
about
whether the satire is real or sarcastic, you now know (in this case, it's a visual metaphor, as well-the
head exploding from the knowledge).
Dixie Dellinger explains to her kids that one can associate different levels of humor with
different
body parts: Bathroom humor is lowest; bawdy humor is only slightly higher; Belly laughs over
slapstick; traditional humor in the heart; wit associated with the brain, and satire is the highest
and
most complex level of humor.