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The Serious Business of Making Fun
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Also known as:
◦ A spoof
◦ A send up
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The point is to make fun of a person or
situation
Examples:
◦ Saturday Night Live sketches
◦ Weird Al songs
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Tone is usually “tongue-in-cheek” or
humorous
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May be humorous or serious in tone
Targets a specific person or situation
Unlike parody, satire has one of three main
aims:
◦ to make people aware of a problem
◦ to warn against a situation or problem
◦ to promote reform of a situation
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Examples:
◦ The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
◦ The Daily Onion
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Every satire or parody has three main
elements:
◦ A purpose:
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To
To
To
To
make fun or light of a situation
call for reform
warn
raise awareness
◦ A target: a specific person, issue or situation
◦ A tone: a specific attitude on the part of the author
◦ An audience: a set of people towards whom the text
is directed
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Where it started…18th Century/Restoration
Period
Why it started…The culture began to
emphasize reason and intellect over so-called
emotional arguments
Who it started with…Dydren, Swift, Pope,
Defoe, Johnson, Lord Byron
Forms of satire…novels, short stories, poems,
skits, cartoons, videos, films, blogs, websites
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has a clear target.
exaggerates and distorts the target
provides recurring, unrelenting sources of
humor.
sets up a certain distance between the character
and the audience.
does not consider the inner feelings or motives
of the target.
confronts the audience with the difference
between what the characters say and do and what
we fully understand by their actions.
Pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable,
touches a nerve.
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Satire is by nature unfair and the target is only
life-like, not a true copy.
A satire fails if the audience thinks it is unclear,
stupid or offensive--or chooses, instead, to embrace
the trait or person being satirized as admirable.
◦ If they say, “That offends me,” or “Life’s not like that so I
don’t get the point,” or “Hey…maybe we should all be more
like that,” then the satire is not very effective.
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Remember as well…If it is to be funny, then that
sense of shared moral meaning must exist in the
audience as well—it can’t be just something that
enrages you…it must enrage your audience as well.
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It may seem easy to put together a satire or
parody.
However, satirists have a wide range of tools
at their disposal
One of the most powerful tools is irony
We’ll look more at these next time.