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SATIRE EXAMPLES
AP Lang Understanding Satire website
Satirical Movies List
VIDEOS:
Totino's / Gender ad SNL
President Barbie SNL ad (gender)
Woke Jeans ad - SNL
Key&Peele: TeacherCenter
The Day Beyonce Turned Black SNL
Key and Peele: Magical Negro Fight
Colbert Report - Swift Payment
Colbert Report - Modest Porpoisal
Daily Show - The Snacks of Life
Comedy Central Daily Show - satire on the street - ties to Obama "satire" cover
TED Talk parody speech
Colbert's (in character) opening statement to Congress about migrant farm workers
Greta Thunberg Help Line (satire)
To ensure every child wins, Washington athletic association removes ball from soccer
Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday
Onion articles:
1 "No Way to Prevent This" (guns)
2 Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with "Intelligent Falling" theory
3 Fun Toy Banned all because of 3 stupid dead kids
4 Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequences
5 CIA Realizes It Has Been Using Black Highlighters all these years
6 ACLU defends Nazi's right to burn down ACLU headquarters
7 Budget Mix Up Provides Nation's Schools with enough money to provide quality education
8 Flu Outbreak Reduces Class Sizes to Level Appropriate for Learning
9 Smiling, Knife-Wielding Marie Kondo Orders Followers To Leave Behind Cluttered Physical Forms
9b Sending Grandma to the Ovens
10 Girl Moved to Tears by Of Mice and Men Cliffs Notes
11 Jared Kushner's Harvard admission essay
12 Andy Borowitz from The New Yorker
13Babylon Bee - Christian news satire
14 We're Just Using Greta's Photo to Get Clicks - Waterford Whisperer - Irish satire news site
15 Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp
16 CLASSIC SATIRE: Mark Twain's "Advice to Youth"
17 I want a wife by Judy Brady (& appreciation for it as legendary feminist satire)
Also read
David Sedaris,
McSweeney's,
David Borowitz
NOT SATIRE (actually happened) but it sure seems like satire - School district clarifies they do not have a 'zero dating policy' after 5th graders were given 2 days to end relationships
REVISIONIST HISTORY PODCAST - THE SATIRE PARADOX
consider this article as a response to the podcast and the 2010Q3 prompt above
Malcolm Gladwell doesn't understand satire
How 9/11 changed what America will laugh at
The Politics of Humor
AP Lang Understanding Satire website
Satirical Movies List
VIDEOS:
Totino's / Gender ad SNL
President Barbie SNL ad (gender)
Woke Jeans ad - SNL
Key&Peele: TeacherCenter
The Day Beyonce Turned Black SNL
Key and Peele: Magical Negro Fight
Colbert Report - Swift Payment
Colbert Report - Modest Porpoisal
Daily Show - The Snacks of Life
Comedy Central Daily Show - satire on the street - ties to Obama "satire" cover
TED Talk parody speech
Colbert's (in character) opening statement to Congress about migrant farm workers
Greta Thunberg Help Line (satire)
To ensure every child wins, Washington athletic association removes ball from soccer
Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday
Onion articles:
1 "No Way to Prevent This" (guns)
2 Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity with "Intelligent Falling" theory
3 Fun Toy Banned all because of 3 stupid dead kids
4 Wealthy Teen Nearly Experiences Consequences
5 CIA Realizes It Has Been Using Black Highlighters all these years
6 ACLU defends Nazi's right to burn down ACLU headquarters
7 Budget Mix Up Provides Nation's Schools with enough money to provide quality education
8 Flu Outbreak Reduces Class Sizes to Level Appropriate for Learning
9 Smiling, Knife-Wielding Marie Kondo Orders Followers To Leave Behind Cluttered Physical Forms
9b Sending Grandma to the Ovens
10 Girl Moved to Tears by Of Mice and Men Cliffs Notes
11 Jared Kushner's Harvard admission essay
12 Andy Borowitz from The New Yorker
13Babylon Bee - Christian news satire
14 We're Just Using Greta's Photo to Get Clicks - Waterford Whisperer - Irish satire news site
15 Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp
16 CLASSIC SATIRE: Mark Twain's "Advice to Youth"
17 I want a wife by Judy Brady (& appreciation for it as legendary feminist satire)
Also read
David Sedaris,
McSweeney's,
David Borowitz
NOT SATIRE (actually happened) but it sure seems like satire - School district clarifies they do not have a 'zero dating policy' after 5th graders were given 2 days to end relationships
REVISIONIST HISTORY PODCAST - THE SATIRE PARADOX
consider this article as a response to the podcast and the 2010Q3 prompt above
Malcolm Gladwell doesn't understand satire
How 9/11 changed what America will laugh at
The Politics of Humor
Satire Defined
The use of mockery, irony, humor, and/or wit to attack or ridicule something, such as a person, habit, idea, institution, society, or custom that is, or is considered to be, foolish, flawed, or wrong. The aim of satire is, or should be, to improve human institutions and/or humanity. Satire attempts through humor and laughter to inspire individuals, institutions, and humankind to improve or to encourage its readers to put pressure on individuals and institutions so that they may be improved for the benefit of all.
“The best satire does not seek to do harm or damage by its ridicule, unless we speak of damage to the structure of vice, but rather it seeks to create a shock of recognition and to make vice repulsive so that the vice will be expunged from the person or society under attack or from the person or society intended to benefit by the attack (regardless of who is the immediate object of attack); whenever possible this shock of recognition is to be conveyed through laughter or wit: the formula for satire is one of honey and medicine. Far from being simply destructive, satire is implicitly constructive, and the satirists themselves, whom I trust concerning such matters, often depict themselves as such constructive critics.
Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form, although in practice, it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humor in itself so much as an attack on something of which the author strongly disapproves, using the weapon of wit.
Type of Satire: Horation Satire vs. Juvenalian Satire
Traditionally, satire was classified according to two basic types, named after the Roman satirists Horace and Juvenal. “Horation” satire is light and amusing, whereas “Juvenalian” satire is bitter and shocking. But between these two extremes lies a vast range of attitudes; amusement and contempt may be blended in varying proportions. You might imagine these two qualities as the oil and the vinegar in a salad dressing, differing in proportion according to the chef’s taste.
Horation satire is found in the following passages from Gulliver’s Travels, part 1:
…the rope dancing diversion, in which vacant political offices in Lilliput are filled by whoever jumps the highest without falling off the tightrope. Also, honor in office is awarded to those who show the most agility in leaping and creeping over a stick held by the emperor.
Juvenalian satire is found in the following passage from Gulliver’s Travels, Part 2, the King’s response to Gulliver’s descriptions of government in England:
You have made a most admirable [speech of praise] upon your country. You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying as a legislator…I cannot but conclude the bulk or your natives to be the most pernicious race of odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the earth.
Strategies/Devices/Techniques of Satire (3)
Parody works well as an “umbrella” term because the whole piece is a parody. Introduce it as your first strategy and show how all other strategies contribute to the parody. To analyze parody, identify the satirical target, that is, what is being mocked through imitation.
The use of mockery, irony, humor, and/or wit to attack or ridicule something, such as a person, habit, idea, institution, society, or custom that is, or is considered to be, foolish, flawed, or wrong. The aim of satire is, or should be, to improve human institutions and/or humanity. Satire attempts through humor and laughter to inspire individuals, institutions, and humankind to improve or to encourage its readers to put pressure on individuals and institutions so that they may be improved for the benefit of all.
“The best satire does not seek to do harm or damage by its ridicule, unless we speak of damage to the structure of vice, but rather it seeks to create a shock of recognition and to make vice repulsive so that the vice will be expunged from the person or society under attack or from the person or society intended to benefit by the attack (regardless of who is the immediate object of attack); whenever possible this shock of recognition is to be conveyed through laughter or wit: the formula for satire is one of honey and medicine. Far from being simply destructive, satire is implicitly constructive, and the satirists themselves, whom I trust concerning such matters, often depict themselves as such constructive critics.
Satire is often strictly defined as a literary genre or form, although in practice, it is also found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, ideally with the intent to bring about improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, the purpose of satire is not primarily humor in itself so much as an attack on something of which the author strongly disapproves, using the weapon of wit.
Type of Satire: Horation Satire vs. Juvenalian Satire
Traditionally, satire was classified according to two basic types, named after the Roman satirists Horace and Juvenal. “Horation” satire is light and amusing, whereas “Juvenalian” satire is bitter and shocking. But between these two extremes lies a vast range of attitudes; amusement and contempt may be blended in varying proportions. You might imagine these two qualities as the oil and the vinegar in a salad dressing, differing in proportion according to the chef’s taste.
- HORATION SATIRE is light and playfully amusing, and seeks to correct vice or foolishness with gentle laughter and understanding. (also Horatian)
Horation satire is found in the following passages from Gulliver’s Travels, part 1:
…the rope dancing diversion, in which vacant political offices in Lilliput are filled by whoever jumps the highest without falling off the tightrope. Also, honor in office is awarded to those who show the most agility in leaping and creeping over a stick held by the emperor.
- JUVENALIAN SATIRE provokes a darker kind of laughter. It is often bitter and shocking, and criticizes corruption or incompetence with scorn and outrage.
Juvenalian satire is found in the following passage from Gulliver’s Travels, Part 2, the King’s response to Gulliver’s descriptions of government in England:
You have made a most admirable [speech of praise] upon your country. You have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying as a legislator…I cannot but conclude the bulk or your natives to be the most pernicious race of odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the earth.
Strategies/Devices/Techniques of Satire (3)
- Burlesque: work that ridicules people, or actions by mimicry and ridiculous exaggeration achieved through a variety of ways intending to cause laughter. For example, the sublime may be absurd, honest emotions may be turned to sentimentality. STYLE is the essential quality in burlesque. A style ordinarily dignified may be used for nonsensical matters, etc. Characterized by ribald humor and immodestly dressed women; impertinent comedy, the point being to spoof and titillate and not to offend.
- Caricature: An exaggerated parody, "over the top" portrayal of a person's mental, physical, or personality traits in wisecrack form. Can be insulting, complimentary, and political or can be drawn solely for entertainment too.
- Diminution: Reduces the size of something in order that it may be made to appear ridiculous or in order to be examined closely and have its faults seen close up. Also known as deflation. To analyze diminution, identify what has been reduced, as well as why it would be reduced (satirical purpose).
- Double entendre: a figure of speech in which a spoken phrase is devised to be understood in either of two ways. Often the first (more obvious) meaning is straightforward, while the second meaning is less so: often risqué (with a sexual connotation) or ironic to convey an indelicate meaning.
- Farce—exciting laughter through exaggerated, improbable situations. This usually contains low comedy: quarreling, fighting, coarse wit, horseplay, noisy singing, boisterous conduct, trickery, clownishness, drunkenness, slap-stick. Farce is literature that combines exaggeration with an improbable plot and stereotyped characters to achieve humor. Ex. Three Stooges, Frasier, 3rd Rock
- Grotesque: creating a tension between laughter and horror or revulsion; the essence of al “sick” humor or black humor. Ex. A baby seal walks into a club… OR dead baby jokes
- Hyperbole – exaggeration. To enlarge, increase, or represent something beyond normal bounds so that it becomes ridiculous and its faults can be seen.
- Incongruity. To present something that is out of place or are absurd in relation to its surroundings. To analyze incongruity, describe the scene, as well as what is out of place, with an explanation for why it is out of place.
- Inflation: A common technique of satire is to take a real-life situation and exaggerate it to such a degree that it becomes ridiculous and its faults can be seen, and thus satirical. To analyze inflation, identify what is being exaggerated, how you know it is exaggerated, and why it is exaggerated (satirical purpose).
- Invective—harsh, abusive language directed against a person or cause. Invective is a vehicle, a tool of anger. Invective is the bitterest of all satire. An invective is an angry, critical or abusive tirade directed at someone or something.
- Irony
- Cosmic irony: when a deity, or fate, is represented as though deliberately manipulating events so as to lead the protagonist to false hopes, only to frustrate and mock them.
- Dramatic irony: reader knows something important that a character does not know. Dramatic irony is a relationship of contrast between a character's limited understanding of his or her situation in some particular moment of the unfolding action and what the audience, at the same instant, understands the character's situation actually to be.
- Situational irony: what actually happens is the opposite of what is expected or appropriate. Situational irony results from recognizing the oddness or unfairness of a given situation, be it positive or negative. Even though a person typically cannot justifiably explain this unfairness logically, the coincidental nature of the situation is still very obvious to those evaluating it.
- Socratic irony: named after Socrates. Presenting a willingness to learn, for the sake of exposing an opponents errors. Feigned ignorance for a purpose. Socrates pretended ignorance of a subject in order to draw knowledge out of his students by a question and answer device. Socratic irony is feigning ignorance to achieve some advantage over an opponent.
- Verbal irony: meaning is different, often opposite, from what it says, a contrast between what is stated and what is meant. Often using sarcasm, overstatement, understatement, and/or litotes.
- Juxtaposition: Places things of unequal importance side by side. It brings all the things down to the lowest level of importance on the list.
- Knaves & Fools—in comedy there are no villains and no innocent victims. Instead, there are rogues (knaves) and suckers (fools). The knave exploits someone “asking for it”. When these two interact, comic satire results. When knaves & fools meet, they expose each other.
- Malapropism—a deliberate mispronunciation of a name or term with the intent of poking fun. Ex. “Lorraine, my density has brought me to you.” George McFly, Back to the Future (destiny). To analyze a malapropism, point to the intentionally incorrect word, as well as identify the real word, the word that should have been used and how it mocks its target.
- Mock Encomium: praise which is only apparent and which suggests blame instead
- Mock Epic: using elevated diction and devices from the epic or the heroic to deal with low or trival subjects
- Parody: To imitate the techniques and/or style of some person, place, or thing. An imitative work created to mock, comment on or trivialize an original work or its subject matter (or some other target). Designed to ridicule in nonsensical fashion an original piece of work. Parody is in literature what the caricature and cartoon are in art. Parody is used for mocking or mocking its idea of the person, place, or thing.
Parody works well as an “umbrella” term because the whole piece is a parody. Introduce it as your first strategy and show how all other strategies contribute to the parody. To analyze parody, identify the satirical target, that is, what is being mocked through imitation.
- Reversal. To present the opposite of the normal order (e.g., the order of events, hierarchical order). To analyze reversal, identify what the normal order is and then where and why that order has been violated.
- Sarcasm: use of language to hurt or ridicule; not subtle; a sharply mocking or contemptuous remark. To analyze sarcasm, identify the verbal irony (meaning opposite of what is stated), as well as evidence of “attitude,” the words (diction) that indicates the snarky tone, which is the defining feature of sarcasm.
- Syllepsis: one word modifies or governs two or more words with different senses. Ex. "He was deep in thought and debt."
- Travesty—presents a serious (often religious) subject frivolously it reduces everything to its lowest level; a mockingly undignified or trivializing treatment of a dignified subject, usually as a kind of parody. Travesty may be distinguished from the mock epic and other kinds of burlesque in that it treats a solemn subject frivolously, while they treat frivolous subjects with mock solemnity.
- Understatement – Reference to something as exaggeratedly lesser than its true nature; for example, describing a flooded area as "slightly soggy" (Litotes: deliberate understatement)
- Wit: humor in order to criticize, verbal cleverness
- Word Play: the words that are used become the main subject of the work: puns, phonetic mix-ups, obscure words and meanings, clever rhetorical excursions, oddly formed sentences, telling character names, etc.