With satire and liberty for all
This pundit made the comment that if satire has to be explained, it’s probably not good satire. In other words, if we don’t dumb down everything so that everyone can understand it, it’s not of any value. We must remember, satire is like music. There is a level of sophistication and nuance for everyone. In the musical world we have everything from Hannah Montana to Handel’s Messiah. When it comes to literary satire, we have everything from Mad Magazine to the New Yorker. True to our democratic ideals, there are levels of each for everyone to enjoy.
Of course, not everyone has a sense of humor. However, most of the world loves good satire. Again the qualification “good’ is a very relative term. Satire is a form of irony that has many styles and forms. Parody, burlesque, caricature, travesty, lampoon, even sarcasm are some of the terms used to describe the various genres of satire.
The differences between these terms have to do with the artistic form in which the material is presented and the levels of malice, vulgarization and sophistication of the work. For the purposes of this column we don’t need to go into detail, but let’s just say that these definitions cover everything from your teenager’s nasty retorts to Jonathon Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.
Speaking of Gulliver’s Travels, there were many in 18th century England who read the book as if it were a real autobiography of an adventurer and not a masterful allegory which lampooned the politicians of the day.
Some things don’t change. In fact, my favorite day of my teaching year is when I have my students read Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” in class. I wait as the fastest readers’ heads snap up from the book and look around to see if they are on Candid Camera (or are being “Punk’d” for those under 40).
If you are unfamiliar with the essay, it is Swift’s “proposal” that the English should cannibalize Irish babies to alleviate the problems of the overpopulated and economically distressed island. The proposal is presented so sincerely and is so disturbingly well thought out that my students react with horror usually reserved for weekend homework assignments.
Yet, there is usually one bright student who is slyly smirking in the corner of the room. That’s the one kid who understands this is one of the most powerful uses of satire in all of English literature. That kid understands that Swift was making his point about how the English treated the Irish far more powerfully than he could have in an angry letter to Parliament or a boring treatise on human rights.
When I was a kid I remember being amazed as my father explained to me that newspapers where written at an 8th grade reading level.
Even then, it seemed to me that the weighty issues being covered should require language and complexity commensurate with the material. However, my father explained the point of view that any media was still a business which needed to appeal to the broadest market. Today newspapers are written at a fourth grade level.
However, those who subscribe to the New Yorker are educated and savvy enough to know that the cover depicting the Obamas in Muslim and radical garb was, in fact, ridiculing the ignorant and racist segment of our society, not the candidate and his wife. It was an attack on those who still believe the ridiculous caricatures of the candidate.
Do you really think that anyone in the 10 percent of Americans who still believe the Obamas are Muslims could be found on the New Yorker’s subscription list? As for the argument that the cover will be used by right wing yahoos as fodder for attack; do you really think they need the magazine for that? In fact, most of them would have never known the magazine existed if not for Fox news’ coverage of the controversy.
The debate over the decline (or democratization, depending on your point of view) of the mass media’s intellectual level rages today as it has since the penny press and “vast cultural wasteland” comments about television’s infancy. But the beauty of satire is that there is a level for everyone’s enjoyment.
I understand that some people have no sense of humor and are either too intense or too dim-witted to get any attempt at levity. But the vast majority of Americans appreciate some form of irony.
Let’s not devolve to the point where intelligent satire is pushed out of our culture because not everyone gets it without an explanation from a talking mannequin on basic cable news.
Such misplaced outrage in the name of political correctness demonstrates the further decline of our civilization. Why, the next thing you know, they’ll be putting cameras in people’s houses and filming them saying and doing stupid things and call it a show.
It could even get to the point where they hire shills from one of the political parties, put them behind a desk and call it Fair and Balanced News. (Get it?)