Transcript The Wonderful World of Satire

The
Wonderful
World of
Satire
Satire Characteristics
 Satire
at its heart is concerned with ethical
reform.
 Makes vice laughable and/or
reprehensible

Brings social pressure on those who still
engage in wrongdoing.
Characteristics (con’t)
 Attacks
types -- the fool, the boor, the
adulterer, the proud -- rather than specific
persons.*
 *If
it does attack some by name, rather
than hoping to reform these persons, it
seeks to warn the public against
approving of them.
What it seeks to do…
 reform
public behavior
 Elevate its audience's standards
 (at the very least) a wake-up call in an
otherwise corrupt culture.
Audience Assumptions
 Satire
is often implicit and assumes
readers can pick up on its moral clues. It is
not a sermon.
 witty, ironic, and often exaggerated. It
uses extremes to bring its audience to a
renewed awareness of its ethical and
spiritual danger.
To avoid retribution…
 Sometime
if the satirist is in danger for his
or her attack, ambiguity, innuendo, and
understatement can be used to help
protect its author.
Shrek
Check out this scene from Shrek.
Take notes on what you observe.
51:20-53:20
Satire
 There
are four major techniques
employed in satire:




Exaggeration
Incongruity
Reversal
Parody
Hyperbole
 Puts
emphasis on the target's unfavorable
characteristics by exaggerating or
overstating.

Example: She's as tough as a junkyard dog.
She sprinkles arsenic on her cornflakes at
breakfast and eats it with a side of nails.
 "All
cartoon characters and fables must
be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very
nature of fantasy and fable." -Walt Disney
 "All news is an exaggeration of life." Daniel Schorr
Incongruity
 To
present things that are out of place or
are absurd in relation to its surroundings.
 Synonyms: paradox, contradiction.
 Related words: mystery, puzzle, enigma,
and riddle.
 Example: a woman who is impeccably
groomed but keeps a messy house.
Reversal
 To
present the opposite of the normal order
(i.e. the order of events, hierarchical order).
 order of events, such as serving dessert
before the main dish or having breakfast for
dinner.
 hierarchical order—a young child making
all the decisions for a family or when an
administrative assistant dictating what the
company president decides and does.
Parody
Attacks pieces of literature, music, and
artwork and enables the satirist (often an
author, entertainer, or advertiser) to use it as
criticism to convey a viewpoint
Example: Song parody
 Original: The Soul selects her own Society—
Then—shuts the Door—
 Parody: The Soul selects her own Sorority—
Then—shuts the Dorm—.

"Satire is a lesson, parody is a game." -Vladimir
Nabokov
Shrek:
scene
Let’s take Re-watch
a look at Shrek the
one more
time.
This time, see if you can find an example of each
satirical technique.
Satirical Techniques in Shrek

Exaggeration


Incongruity


Princess Fiona uses her ponytail to defeat one of
the Merry Men, stopping in mid-air to adjust her
hair
Reversal


Princess Fiona fights and successfully defeats
Robin Hood and his Merry Men without help.
The role of the hero and the damsel in distress are
reversed. The damsel saves the hero.
Parody

The fight scene is an exaggerated imitation of the
martial arts style in movies like The Matrix.
So what’s the commentary?
 The
traditional story of the knight rescuing
the damsel in distress is not a realistic
depiction of the roles filled by men and
women in modern society.
 Current Hollywood action movies like The
Matrix have become ridiculous because
they are too focused on special effects.
 Any other ideas?