Politics and Humor Fail Easily and Often
Tina Fey's Ridicule Helped Save the World
Over crepes and coffee this weekend, my mom and step-dad told me stories about unidentified clients who were on two-year waiting lists for shelters and eight-year waiting lists for Section 8 housing. Information like that is so disturbing it’s difficult to face.
Generally when people need a shelter, they need it right away. It isn’t like you calculate, “I think I’ll lose my job in two years and my house along with it. I’ll get on the waiting list for this bedbug infested shelter today so I can spend a few weeks there in 2012.” Similarly, you don’t want to believe that you are going to be destitute and in need of heavily regulated subsidized housing eight years down the line. It seems we have three ways in which we can respond to the horrible and horrifying: dismiss the information with a simple, “That’s too bad,” absorb the information and allow it to saturate our pores with gloom, or transform it into satire.
I don’t necessarily have good associations with satire. My two main ones are that it is a “low art,” and that it is politically based (many seem to think that political literature is automatically low). When I look up satire’s definition, the word “ridicule” is almost always used in the entry. Ridicule is not a nice word. Satire involves holding something or someone up for ridicule. But I think it might be worth it to ridicule some of our human services. I enjoy watching American office culture and sales culture being ridiculed in The Office. I can’t stop bringing up that show.
Some of our greatest minds have used the fine art of satire—Aristophanes, Groening, Donne, Kafka, Sacha Baron Cohen, Orwell, Huxley, and creators of The Onion. Horace and Juvenal, Roman poets, get credit for starting it. Horace’s style is known for its wit and humor and Juvenal’s for its bitterness and anger. You’ll probably find this information in Wikipedia, but I wouldn’t know. I’ve got a ten-pound Norton tome on my right knee.
What I like about satire is that a) sometimes it is very funny, and b) it can be an important avenue for political critique.
I wonder if you, also, have bad associations with/intense appreciation for satire. I suppose the attempt at combining politics and hilarity can be dangerous. I tend not to like what the New Yorker runs in Shouts and Murmurs, for instance. Has it ever been funny?
Mostly, what I want out of this blog post is to find out what you think about satire. Do you like it? What does it have to offer? Which are our best specimens? What can a naïve writer do to avoid your worst satiric pet peeves?
As a former student refugee from the island called England, I can say from direct experience that I do not appreciate their form of satire. I found the source of this particular satire to be rooted in heavy negative thinking, bordering, in some cases, on biting angry words. I suppose in the beginning I thought people were being clever (and at times people were downright funny) … but as I had a closer look, it seemed that the use of satire created an acceptance for ‘choosing to do nothing’ even when there was a problem to be solved and a solution to be found. I describe it as a sort of ‘resignation’, that nothing could be done so why bother trying. After a while this attitude became boring and aggravating and I lost all my humor about those who carried themselves this way. My two pennies …
It’s so good to see your two pennies! I wonder if there are certain satirists who particularly irritated you, if it’s certain British satiric style that is aggravating, or if you think of satire as a general cop-out? Do you think that writing satire about something could be a legitimate way of engaging politically, that readers could become more aware of or angry about what is being satirized? I guess I am greedy–you make interesting points that make me more curious.
You forgot one of the great satirists of our time: Yankovic
Comedy (and here I’m thinking more commercial comedy, standup and the like) can be the easiest and most powerful venue for societal critique. I don’t think it absolutely has to be satire, but the critique is more obvious there.
Get a person laughing, and they’ll be more willing to consider your point of view. Comedy can allow us to approach topics, like housing, and give them a spotlight. It can definitely be argumentative, persuasive, proactive, and critical.
I agree that comedy, especially standup, is where satire especially thrives.
Paul Provenza compiled a book of interviews with artists (mostly comedians, but some spoken word artists and writers) called ¡Satiristas! It’s a look into how these different people approach and use satire and social critique. I’ve read pieces of it, and so far, I really like it.
One comedian in the book (I can’t remember which) sums up very nicely my feelings on what makes bad satire. He says something like: bad satire is someone pointing at something in society and saying, “look at how stupid this thing is. Look at how smart I am for pointing out how stupid this thing is.”
Probably used most effectively by those suffering under the condition they’re ridiculing. I just found out Jonathan Swift was Irish, for example. And so, I think, to write an effective bit of bedbug satire, one ideally would have personally fallen prey to the beasts, preferably on numerous occasions.
Is eating crepes and coffee while discussing homelessness part of the satire?
Oh, and I agree wholeheartedly with Mr. Seattle.
I think satire and humor is an effective way of criticizing policy while starting a dialogue. When two very polarized positions fight each other by spewing out prepared talking points, I quickly lose interest. When someone with opposing viewpoint says something clever or funny about what they think or how wrong I am about what I think, I’m much more inclined to listen.
Oh, and I think sometimes the Shouts and Murmurs section is hilarious, but it’s been a while. Steve Martin’s piece about 72 virgins had me in stitches, but I think it’s more than a year old.