Satire is largely misunderstood. People think they understand it, and they can point to examples, like The Onion, but when asked to explain what satire is, they often say things like “it’s funny” or say that it is a parody. This page explains what satire actually is, how to write it, and why it is used.
Before I decided that what I wanted to do with Noun of Noun and Adjective was put it all over the internet for free, I queried it, a lot. It got some interest, but no takers. It’s not hard to see why. There’s not a huge number of authors writing things like this. Of the ones who still are, they’ve been doing it for decades. Terry Pratchett was arguably the most well-known and widely read satirist, and he’s sadly not writing any more books.
But anyway, I queried, and to make sure my query was the best it could be, I workshopped it. A beta reader suggested I shouldn’t describe the novel as a parody satire as they mean the same thing. I didn’t change it, because they don’t. Satire and parody are different enough that the two terms can easily be placed together.
It’s a little like saying you’re writing paranormal romance. Sure, you could say you were writing paranormal or you could say you were writing romance. Neither of those things would be the same as writing paranormal romance.
In Anatomy of Satire Gilbert Highet says parody is a subset of satire – paranormal romance is a subset of romance. It’s still different enough to be its own thing.
In my time writing satires, I’ve discovered a lot of people don’t know what satire is, or why it exists. They think they do, they point to examples like The Onion, but they usually just describe it as funny.
Here’s the thing though: satire doesn’t have to be funny. It often is, because that gets more readers, but it also often isn’t.
WHAT IS SATIRE?
[Satire is] the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticise people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
The Oxford Dictionary
The Oxford Dictionary definition isn’t complete, because it leaves no discernible difference between satire and lampoon. “Lampoon aims to hurt or destroy individuals or groups, satire hurts or destroys individuals or groups for the benefit of society as a whole. Lampoon is a poisoner or gun man, satire is a policeman or physician.” Gilbert Highet, Anatomy of Satire
One thing The Oxford Dictionary makes very clear though is that humour is only one aspect of satire. There are three others.
THE WHY OF SATIRE
The why of satire is pretty succinctly put in the quotes above. To whit: expose and criticise people’s stupidity or vicesfor the benefit of society. Ultimately the why of satire is anger. People think Terry Pratchett was a funny little man who wrote funny little books. If you look at Discworld you can see the seething anger resonating through the plots. And if you look for the source of that anger, you’ll find it’s empathy.
“And that anger, it seems to me, is about Terry’s underlying sense of what is fair and what is not. It is that sense of fairness that underlies Terry’s work and his writing, and it’s what drove him from school to journalism to the press office of the SouthWestern Electricity Board to the position of being one of the best-loved and bestselling writers in the world.” I’m not going to credit someone who sexually assaulted women even if I will quote him. You probably know who he is anyway. If you don’t, I consider that a good omen.
Imagine a hole in the ground. A man, let’s call him A, is stuck in the hole. Another man, B, comes along and hears A shouting for help. B jumps in the hole beside A. Later, a third man, C, comes along, finds A and B in the hole, and leaves. A little after that a fourth man, D, comes along. He finds A and B in the hole, and goes and fetches a ladder so they can get out. B had sympathy, C had apathy, and D had empathy. Sympathy is about the sympathiser, and often gives the original person even more stress to deal with. Apathy is not caring at all. Empathy is about helping the original person with a solution.
Often we find that when we feel empathy we also feel powerlessness. When Russia first invaded Ukraine, I reached out to a Ukranian friend. I asked if she was okay, and if I could do anything to help. She said she was upset, worried about her family, and that there isn’t much that can be done. She listed these possible actions.
keep informed with good resources
ask for action from NATO
protest
donate
I did those things, and would have done them without her suggesting them. I made sure I was there for her if she needed to talk. I also gave her space in case she didn’t want to. I did what I could, which felt like it wasn’t much. We all feel powerless against an entire army invading a country, or a president using executive orders to strip away our rights, or states legislating what we can and can’t do with our own bodies. When the law states who we’re allowed to marry, when our employers hold power over our health by the insurance packages they chose, when our landlords charge triple what a property should cost, when billionaires exist, when it seems like all the power and authority in the world doesn’t want us to exist, we feel powerless.
This powerlessness is where the anger comes from.
“He will rage, as he leaves, against so many things: stupidity, injustice, human foolishness and shortsightedness, not just the dying of the light. And, hand in hand with the anger, like an angel and a demon walking into the sunset, there is love: for human beings, in all our fallibility; for treasured objects; for stories; and ultimately and in all things, love for human dignity. Or to put it another way, anger is the engine that drives him, but it is the greatness of spirit that deploys that anger on the side of the angels, or better yet for all of us, the orangutans.” Still not going to credit someone who sexually assaulted women even if I will quote him. We’ll all be stardust before I say his name.
We feel empathy at the plight of others, and anger at our inability to affect change. Both of these combine in satire, where we expose and criticise people’s stupidity or vicesfor the benefit of society.
see something unjust (empathy)
believe it should be changed (anger)
take action to affect change (satirise)
Satire is activism.
THE WHAT OF SATIRE
Satire is a form of social commentary. By using literary devices, writers expose and criticise the faults and failings of political leaders and other public figures or social customs, traditions, and practices. Paul Beatty’s The Sellout is a satire of race, Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club are satires of capitalism, and the Wachowski sister’s Matrix movies are satires about the cultural attitudes towards transitioning, whilst the first act of the fourth film is a perfectly executed satire on marketing, franchise film-making, and the decisions that led to its own creation.
From these examples, one thing that should stand out is that, whilst satire can be hilarious, it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes the most satirical parts of the Discworld novels were the least funny and the most angry, and it was the puns, one-liners, witticisms and dad-jokes in the rest of each book that caused readers to laugh. And yet, throughout Anatomy of Satire, Highet returns to the idea of satire as a form of humour (though the humour might be sneering contempt).
Highet’s definition of the purpose of satire doesn’t mention humour, and some of the most famous film satires (Matrix, Fight Club) aren’t funny, but satire almost always is humourous, even if we’re just laughing out of a sense dread when a widespread idea is exaggerated to a horrifying conclusion, as when Swift suggests in A Modest Proposal that the Irish sell babies to be food.
In Attack of the 50ft Trans Woman, Caledonia Fife satirises the UK government and media’s attitude towards trans people, and the situation with our health care. Lily goes for an experimental procedure because it’s that or wait over a decade. When the procedure goes badly, and she becomes a giant, the health care company decides to kill her and do an autopsy to see what went wrong. Lily flees, and the police are sent after her for stealing from the health care company, who claim her DNA as their intellectual property. When the police fail to stop her, the government send the army in. They massively over-react to a person who just wants to live and isn’t a threat to them.
THE THREE TYPES OF SATIRE:
Horatian
Named for the Roman satirist Horace, this is indulgent, tolerant, amused, and witty. It is probably the most well known type, and is what people generally think of when thinking of satire. Ask most people for an example of satire and they might say The Onion, which is Horatian. It’s target is more often folly than evil, and its goal is to heal a situation with smiles.
Juvenalian
Named for the Roman satirist Juvenal, Juvenalian satire attacks that which it perceives as evil. It is more contemptuous and abrasive, using scorn, outrage, and savage ridicule. There is less emphasis on humour, and often it seeks to make people angry. George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a good example of Juvenalian satire.
Horatian and Juvenalian satire often attack people: Animal Farm went after Stalin, and The Onion has a different target with each article but it’s usually someone in American politics. Menippean satire is different in that it targets beliefs and mental attitudes.
Menippean
This satire was named for the Greek writer Menippus, but existed even before him. The targets of Menippean satire are often archetypes. Whilst the other satires might have a character called Ronald Drump, a fascist president and failed businessman, or even (in the case of The Onion) go after Trump himself, Menippean satire is more likely to have recognisable character types that are not specific people: the bigot, the pedant, the crank, the seducer, the miser, the quack, etc.
This form of satire often casts moral judgement on a particular social belief, such as homophobia, or racism. Discworld books are often Menippean – for instance, they might be about equality, capitalism, or the post office. Alice in Wonderland was another Menippean satire, good-naturedly ridiculing upper class intellectualism.
Menippean satires often have an element of the fantastic about them. This is important because it means that the philosophical idea at the core of the story can be tested in extraordinary situations. Transphobia, the nature of femininity, and what it means to be a woman, are explored in the Discworld through the Dwarves, a race that essentially has two genders and both of them are male.
Is It Satire?
In The Anatomy of Satire, which is so far the best book about satire I’ve read, and which I absolutely recommend if you want a deeper understanding of satire than a blog page can convey, Gilbert Highet proposes certain things a satire must have. If you want to know if something is satire, check to see if it has at least one of the following.
A generic definition by the author i.e. “this is satire” – does the author state, perhaps in a foreword, that the book is a satire? It is common to include a “this is a work of fiction” disclaimer in books and some websites. Sometimes such a disclaimer will include a statement that the work is a satire, as on the Pipet Monkey blog. You can also see this on the cover of Attack of the 50 ft Trans Woman – it states “a satire” directly under the title.
“Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental or is intended purely as satire, parody or spoof of such persons and is not intended to communicate any true or factual information about that person.“
Pedigree, or a line of descent from classic satires – does the author acknowledge or credit the influence of previous satirists on their work. This can even be through formatting: the influence of Discworld on Noun of Noun and Adjective can be seen in that both use footnotes extensively and, mostly, for jokes.
Theme and method used by earlier satirists – as an example, my novel Noun of Noun and Adjective is set on a disc-shaped world that has a galactic-sized world tree growing through its centre. This is obviously inspired by Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, and can be seen as a satire simply because the location is so similar to the work of a previous satirist.
Quoting the words of a distinguished satirist – many satires open with a direct quote from a previous satire.
Describe a painful or absurd situation or foolish or wicked person or group as vividly as possible and make people see the truth they habitually ignore – this is, after all, the primary purpose of satire. This is the why of satire, and without it can a work really be called satire at all? An example of this is the character of Karen in Attack of the 50 ft Trans Woman. Karen is a terf, and claims to have no pronouns. In her POV chapter, the narrative honours this and refers to Karen only as Karen. In dialogue and social media Karen refers to Karenself using 1st person pronouns.
Uses uncompromisingly clear language to describe unpleasant people to shock readers by compelling them to look at a sight they had missed or shunned, making them at first realise the truth and then protest against it – this really builds upon the previous point.
Does it try to invoke amusement and contempt in readers – again, the why of satire. Many novels seek to make people think, but satire seeks to make people angry. The purpose of comedy is to amuse, but the purpose of satire is to make people act. It’s not enough to make readers see the world in a new way, or laugh at some silly joke, satire aims to make people angry at the world, at the unfairness of it, and to take action. By ridiculing the powerful, satire takes away some of their power, and by making people angry, satire aims the focus of that anger at injustice. Even if the action is only to change the way the reader behaves, that’s often enough, if enough readers change their behaviour. The satirist aims to be the pebble that starts the avalanche.
The Onion’s satires were so realistic we’ve seen them come true – they were a prophetic warning, but people simply laughed and moved on. The failure of The Onion was in making people act, because the worst of what has happened could have been headed off before it occurred. They invoked amusement but missed the mark on contempt.
My own contribution, based on the last point is, does it punch up?Anyone can ridicule the weak and the powerless, anyone can be a Dave Chapelle or Ricky Gervais, and talk about trans people, but unless you believe in some ridiculous conspiracy theories, this isn’t ridiculing the powerful. The mainstream media and governments in a lot of countries do enough to make people angry at whatever ethnic, religious, or gender scapegoat they’ve painted a target on, the satirist takes aim at the powerful.
All satires have some element of the above (it’s how we know they are satire) but also include many other things. These are listed below, for those who want to know how to write a satire.
More Things Satire Has
Real people – as shown in the disclaimer above, satires often include fictionalised versions of real people. These are often written about in lurid colours with unforgettable clarity, exaggerated to extremes but somehow true to what we recognise about the person.
Real people can also be satirised in meme form, but because memes are so short, essentially just a snapshot, there’s much less opportunity to describe a person’s failings. Rather than go into detail, a meme satirises a single moment, something that person is well-known for, for example Boris Johnson hiding in a fridge, as on the cover of Attack of the 50 ft Trans Woman.
Brisk comic dialogue – if there’s going to be an example of brisk comic dialogue, it’s going to be from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, which has the best comic dialogue. Here’s a short conversation between Vimes and Death in The Fifth Elephant.
Vimes: “Are you Death?” IT’S THE SCYTHE, ISN’T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE. Vimes: “I’m going to die?” POSSIBLY. Vimes: “Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?” OH YES. IT’S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT’S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE. Vimes:“What’s that?” I‘M NOT SURE. Vimes:“That’s very helpful.” I THINK IT MEANS PEOPLE MAY OR MAY NOT DIE. I HAVE TO SAY IT’S PLAYING HOB WITH MY SCHEDULE, BUT I TRY TO KEEP UP WITH MODERN THOUGH.
Uses bold vivid language of its own time – Most satires contain cruel and dirty words, and all of them (except memes) contain trivial and comic words, nearly all contain slang, and nearly all use accurate descriptive words that also startle or dismay. Brutally direct phrases, taboo expressions, nauseating imagery, and callous and crude language are often used, too. Memes are exceptions because many contain so few words at all, so the normal rules don’t apply.
An example from Noun of Noun and Adjective plays upon the idea that Black people in books (and only Black people) have their skin colour described by food. This is reversed in the novel so that only white people have their skin colour described by food, and although the descriptions are accurate, they also startle, because it is such an uncommon type of description, but it achieves the purpose of making people think.
Such descriptive phrases include gammon, soft-shelled almonds, white skin tanned the sun darkened light brown of freshly cooked pastry or the pale brown of a freshly made milk cookie, the golden tan of a deliciously roasted chicken, and a character with so many freckles that skin which should have seemed like butter beans (…) was closer to the hue of baked ones. The one exception to food descriptions for white characters is a character whose skin is the colour most make up companies like to call Nude as if only white people can be naked.
Realistic, urgent, combative – a question that bounds around a lot lately on the internet is – is satire dead? In the time of Trump, and the aftermath of Brexit, with the real world so often seeming like an exaggerated worst-case fictionalised dystopian version of the real world, can the real world be satirised? To be honest, we weren’t sure, so we decided to ask a panda. Is satire still necessary?
We also weren’t sure why this Panda speaks English, but presumably it is one of the former Edinburgh Zoo pandas.
Okay, now that this pressing question has been firmly pandanswered, let’s look at in a little more detail. In 1729 when Swift wrote A Modest Proposal and suggested poor Irish families relieve poverty by selling their children to wealthy landowners as food, there was an apparently serious suggestion going around that the Irish could defeat British subjugation by refusing to have children. No more Irish, no more Irish subjugation.
The world has always had real situations or serious ideas much worse than anything satire can create. Sure, for a while there it seemed like every real news article had been prophesised by The Onion, but that only shows how astute The Onion writers truly are.
The purpose of satire is to make people angry enough to act – in a time when real news seems exaggerated to extremes and people still aren’t acting satire is more important than ever. And a panda said so, so you know it must be true.
Satire isn’t dead. It’s needed more than ever. But it could be more combative.
Minimum of convention, maximum of reality – stories have structure. Structure is a very important part of dramatic convention. There are countless books and blog posts about the structure of storytelling, so many in fact that the 3 act-structure has become such an internalised view of the modern Western mind that readers and viewers consider all fiction under the guise of the 3-act structure. Agents and publishers will often turn away books that don’t adhere to this structure.
The three act structure dates back to Aristotle and was used by Shakespeare. Other Western narrative structures fit within the 3 act structure, for example The Hero’s Journey and Freytag’s Pyramid can fit within the 3 act structure, as does the 5 act structure, which is just the 3 act structure with 2 of the acts further divided.
Reality does not follow a narrative structure and, mirroring reality, satire doesn’t have to follow one, either. With most fiction, the story is the point, but with satire the story is just a vehicle, and storytelling methods can be picked up or discarded with ease.
Satire is improvised, structureless, spontaneous, wildly unpredictable, and asymmetrical, which is hard to convey in narratives which are bound by structure. A play has much more versatility here, because each performance can be different if the actors have something of a free reign, but how does a book become improvised?
Basically, the point of all other fiction is to tell a story. If you want to write a horror, you are telling a story that will scare the reader. If you want to write a romantic comedy, you are telling a story that will make the reader say aww and laugh. Drama, tragedy, adventure, mystery, are all about the story. Some stories will have moral messages, some stories invite emotional reactions, but the overwhelming thrust is always the story.
In satire, the story is secondary. The point of satire is to satirize. To expose and criticise people’s stupidity or vices for the benefit of society. This may or may not be best achieved through a story, but ultimately the story is only the bucket that carries the water, and the water is the important part.
In Voltaire’s Candide the main character goes through a series of events that are both fortunate and unfortunate. He makes money, he loses money, he gains prestige, he loses prestige. There is no underlying structure, no point that it is building to. There is no rising tension, no climax, just the capriciousness of fate in an uncaring world. The book aims to show that sometimes things just happen without a reason by having lots of things happen without reasons. Apparently dead characters return to life with flimsy excuses. The improbable and the unexpected constantly intrude, and the rules of narrative structure are… not disregarded. They are disassembled.
Life is chaotic and messy and, like life, satire is also chaotic and messy. The urgency and immediacy of real life is conveyed through the lack of narrative structure, and improvisation seems to be provided by having anything happen.
But the unexpected isn’t just conveyed through the plot (there is a plot, it just isn’t bound by the normal narrative structures. Plot is defined as the main events of a play, novel, film, or similar work, devised and presented by the writer as an interrelated sequence. Satires that are plays, novels, films, or similar works have these) but also through discourse, emotional tone, vocabulary, sentence-structure, and patterns of phrase.
How do you use unexpected sentence structure, patterns of phrase, and vocabulary? Terry Pratchett provides some excellent examples.
The night was dark like the inside of a cat – Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters The Moon hung in the night sky like a giant ball of rock – Terry Pratchett, Soul Music They landed. It’s a short sentence, but contained a lot of incident – Terry Pratchett, The Last Hero
Things Satire Often Has
Other things often included in a satire are parody, irony, mild and subtle humour, weird paradox, antithesis, colloquialism, anticlimax, topicality, obscenity, violence, vividness, exaggeration, and snatches of foreign languages. The next section breaks down what these are.
Parody is defined as an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect. Satires can use parody to great effect but not all parodies are satires. Scary Movie is a parody of Scream, but not a satire. Anatomy of Satire states satire is (…) for the benefit of society. Parody is a comedic commentary about a specific work. Satire is a commentary and criticism about the world. Satire will use parody if it is the best way to get across the satirical message: Menippean satire will often, but not always, use parody.
Irony is defined as the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect and is included in the standard definition of satire. There are three forms of irony: situational, dramatic, and Socratic.
Situational irony is, obviously, when a situation is ironic, such as in Gulliver’s Travels, when Gulliver visits The Country of the Houyhnhnms, a race of horses that are rational and refined and keep humans as brute force.
Dramatic irony is when the reader or audience knows something that the character doesn’t, and the most well known example of this is when Romeo finds Juliet, apparently dead, and kills himself.
Socratic irony is a feigned use of ignorance to prove an argument erroneous, and is difficult to find an example of in fiction. One example we can point to is in Attack of the 50ft Trans Woman, where there is a gender critical character called Karen who claims to have no pronouns. Because the narrator respects other people’s pronoun choices, in narration Karen is only ever referred to as Karen, Karen’s, or occasionally Karenself. However, because Karen has no respect for pronouns, Karen refers to Karen as “I” in dialogue and tweets. By feigning ignorance of how pronouns work and going by Karen’s avowed word, which Karen constantly breaks, the idea of a person having no pronouns is ridiculed.
Mild and subtle humour is best conveyed through Discworld, which has some humour so subtle most readers might miss it, such as the humour in the band name Surreptitious Fabric in Soul Music, which is a Discworld version of the real world band Velvet Underground.
Weird paradoxes are statements that don’t make logical sense. Whilst an oxymoron is a paired word group, a paradox is an entire phrase. A famous paradox from George Orwell’s animal farm is “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Nothing can be more equal, or it isn’t equal, but the point of the phrase is that when governments say they have equality, they are lying. Or perhaps it is that people have a skewed view of equality. Or perhaps it is both. If Orwell had stated his meaning clearly, the readers would have been told what was intended. By hiding the meaning in a paradox, the readers must determine the intent for themselves, and the perceived intent gains more importance in the readers’ minds.
Antithesis pairs opposite or contrasting ideas in a parallel grammatical structure, for example in An Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope wrote “To err is human, to forgive divine.”
Colloquialism is the use of informal words or phrases. This includes aphorisms (a short statement or catchphrase that contains a well known general truth such as pride goes before a fall), idioms (similar to aphorisms, but with a figurative meaning, such as under the weather, which has nothing to do with weather – only astronauts are ever technically not under the weather in a literal sense), and profanity (fuck we can’t be assed doing another goddamn shitty definition, here’s a bloody example instead). It also includes slang (which is used by social groups), jargon (which is used by professional groups), and dialect (which is used by geographic-specific groups). As satire aims to reflect reality using language that has a more free, easy, direct, and conversational feel allows for reality to be reflected.
Anticlimax is a disappointing conclusion to a climactic series of events, such as in The Hunger Games, which satirises American capitalistic society, reality television, and the cultural hunger for violent content, by having the main character refuse to partake in it. From an emotional viewpoint, it is a fantastic ending, and from a satirical viewpoint, it is also a fantastic ending: it shows that we can step aside; the story builds up the things that are wrong with society and the ending shows we can refuse to partake in them. But within the narrative structure that builds violence on top of violence the ending is anticlimactic.
Topicality is defined as regarding events that are happening now or of interest at the present time. Of course, when exactly the present is can be hotly debated but with satire it is important to be relevant. No one now should be satirising David Cameron and pig’s heads, because this isn’t culturally relevant anymore. Books do take a while to produce, of course, so it’s best to pick a topic that is going to be around a while (like climate change), or a topic that is always relevant (Noun of Noun and Adjective has the parent-child relationship when a child is transgender as one of its main topics). Attack of the 50 ft Trans Woman has Boris Johnson as Prime Minister and he no longer is, so it’s lost a little topicality, but this isn’t the main theme, which still applies.
Obscenity is often thought of as swearing or porn, but that’s not what’s meant by obscenity in satire. It’s most famous use in satire was in Swift’s A Modest Proposal where he suggested resolving poverty by having the poor sell their children to the rich as food. The use of obscenity, of pushing taboos to an extreme level, creates a visceral reaction in the reader and hopefully entices them to examine more than just the idea, but also their reaction to it, and even their culture.
Common taboos in our culture include menstruation (there’s a menstruation scene in Noun of Noun and Adjective), sex, sexuality, reproduction and abortion, death especially including suicide and state-sanctioned murder, food including cannibalism and veganism (look at the reactions to someone saying they are vegan on social media – people react extremely to what is, essentially, a personal choice. Of course, some vegans try to force their views on others: there are bad actors on both sides).
Violence doesn’t really need a definition, but satirical violence does. Satire ridicules folly and vice through irony, sarcasm, etc, and can have a variety of tones, from light to extreme. Violence in satire refers to the severity of the attack on the subject.
Vividness refers to the descriptions that place us wholly in the world of the text. One of the main descriptions of satire is the use of vivid imagery that clearly depicts painful, wicked, or foolish people and events. Ursula K LeGuin’s The Ones Who Wallk Away From Omelas uses incredibly vivid descriptions and is worth reading.
Exaggeration comes with its counterpoint understatement, and both are great ways to make satire work. By exaggerating a situation we can see that it is ridiculous – Attack of the 50ft Trans Woman exaggerates the idea of England having a huge trans problem to show that, actually, it has a huge transphobia problem.
My love is as a fever, longing still For that which longer nurseth the disease, Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill, Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please. My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept, Hath left me, and I desperate now approve Desire is death, which physic did except.
William Shakespeare, Sonnet 147
Snatches of foreign languages are often also used in satire, such as in John Skelton’s Speke Parott:
My lady maystres, dame Philology, Gave me a gyfte in my nest whan I laye, To lerne all language, and it to spake aptely: Now pandez mory, wax frantycke, some men saye; Phroneses for Freneses may not holde her way. An almon now for Parrot, dilycatly drest; In Salve festa dies, toto ys the beste.
John Skelton, Speke Parott
In Noun of Noun and Adjective there is a character called Torta de la Taza del bárbaro. He is a very colourfully tattooed and massively muscled warrior with gleaming oiled skin who only wears a loincloth and sandals, and has fantastic hair. He fulfils much the same role as a female character in an action movie, essentially being there only for eye candy purposes.
Because he is eye candy, it never really matters what he is saying. As such, he speaks a fantasy language which is represented in text with Spanish. For English readers, he makes statements they can’t understand. For bilingual English and Spanish speakers, however, his words still don’t make sense as they have nothing to do with the scene he is in.
The Characters of Satire
Satire deals with real people. It mentions them by name or describes them so vividly there is no doubting who they are. Often real people are the targets of satire. Southpark is an example of satire that often targets real people.
Satirising real people can open you up to defamation law suits, and there are some famous people who are very happy to sue everyone. It isn’t successful much of the time, such as when Elton John attempted to sue The Guardian in 2008. There’s a good explanation of that case here and some information on changes to defamation law in the UK here – in 2019 a “serious harm” requirement was brought in.
When satire isn’t targeting real people (when the subject is something more ephemeral, like an idea or society), satire often uses character archetypes, such as The Fool, The Boor, The Adulterer, The Proud, The Rebel, The Neurotic, The Innocent, The Eccentric, The Seducer, The Mother, and so on. These are different from character archetypes in non-satirical narratives such as The Hero, The Mentor, and The Villain because satire is aimed at reflecting reality, not creating dramatic tension.
As well as dividing people into broad personality groups such as those above, professions can also be character archetypes, such as The Cop, The Lawyer, The Mad Scientist, The Politician, The Barman, and The Billionaire. Yes, that’s an occupation. It just is, okay?
Almost any grouping could be an archetype, for instance a satire could have characters that are The Leo, The Gemini, The Scorpio, though we haven’t come across this. Don’t think it would work? Why don’t you try it and see? Oh, you think there are rules against it. Well, then you’ve forgotten to throw out the rule book.
If it can be made to work, then it fits, and if can’t, then it doesn’t. That’s really the only rule you need.
Two archetypes that don’t work in satire are the hero and the villain. The villain doesn’t work because the nature of satire means it points out that we’re all, to a greater or lesser degree, someone else’s villain, and the hero doesn’t work because satire reflects reality and there are no true heroes of the fictional kind. Basically there are no real humans who are like fictional heroes or villains.
They say don’t meet your heroes (because you will be disappointed) but really they should say remember your heroes are humans too.
With parody, it can seem like the characters already exist, but often in parody the original characters are exaggerated into the roles of the nearest archetype. In a Star Wars original trilogy parody Luke can be the Innocent, Han the Seducer, Chewbacca The Mother (he definitely mothers Han, and Han definitely needs a mother), Vader The Rebel, the Emperor The Proud, Yoda The Eccentric and, of course, Leia is The Girl. That kind of thing happens when you only have one female character. Lando Calrissian would be The Gay, and Jabba The Hutt would be The Mob Boss. Ewoks are The Savages, not The Indigenous People, because Ewoks are small and cute and child-like and seem like they need protection and, oh, they eat people, too. It’s a very British Empire Colonial attitude to “less developed” societies from far away.
We actually like Star Wars, by the way. It’s harder to parody something you don’t love. For instance, in Lord of the Rings, Frodo, Samwise, Merry, and Pippin are The Boor. The Ring is The Seducer, Gandalf, Aragorn, Boromir, Gimli and Sauron are The Proud (there’s a lot of pride in LOTR which makes sense, because pride comes before a fall and at the end of the book the ring falls in a volcano) and Gollum is A Weird Little Guy, Just A Little Guy, and also It’s His Birthday, he’s Just a Little Birthday Guy (only Frodo and Gollum have birthdays in LOTR even though it feels like walking to Mordor takes 60 years). Legolas is The Girl, which is something that happens when you don’t have any female characters at all (we’re not counting the three chapters The Horse Girl gets).
We’re sure you disagree. That’s cool. We’re not saying LOTR is bad and we’renot saying you shouldn’t like it, and we’re not even saying we dislike it, we’re just saying we don’t love it. Like, it’s fine, it’s just not something we love, and if the completely subjective opinion of other people makes you angry you should ask yourself why. We also don’t like old Star Trek, football, and pineapple on pizza. Oh, and terfs. We don’t like terfs. They are possibly worse than pineapple on pizza, but at least they’re not as bad as football.
Sometimes in satire there is an author-insert character. Unlike in non-satire narrative fiction, this isn’t a Mary Sue. It is a vehicle for the author’s voice to speak directly to the reader and more clearly convey the purpose of the satire.
In Aristophanes’ comedies there were a few chief characters, many subordinate figures, and a large singing and dancing chorus. The chorus itself is a collective character. However, about halfway through the play, the chorus turns its back on the now empty stage and addresses the audience directly, breaking the 4th wall, speaking with Aristophanes’ voice. Some scholars speculate Aristophanes himself may have led the chorus, taking on the role of delivering his message to the audience.
This is something Attack of the 50ft Trans Woman also does, taking a break in the middle, but instead of delivering the message of the satire, it delivers a lengthy disclaimer. Hey, we don’t want to be sued, okay?
the wham of satire
Wham means striking something forcefully, and that’s exactly what we’re looking at here. The forceful impact of satire.
“We see satire emerge when political discourse is in crisis and when it becomes important to use satirical comedy to put political pressure on misinformation, folly and the abuse of power.”
Sophia McClennen, professor of international affairs and comparative literature and director of Penn State’s Center for Global Studies
One of the best examples of the forceful impact of satire is the 2008 US Presidential campaign. John McCann was beating Barack Obama in the polls, until Tina Fey’s impression of McCann’s running mate, Sarah Palin, went viral, and he lost his lead and, ultimately, the presidency.
Doonesbury, an American comic strip, satirised a Florida county that had a law requiring minorities to have a pass card: the law was repealed, and the new legislation was nicknamed the Doonesbury Act. In 2000, a Canadian Alliance proposal that any petition of sufficient size require a referendum was dropped after being effectively satirised.
But it’s not always effective at bringing change. Swift’s A Modest Proposal didn’t lead to lasting changes for the poor in Ireland, and a century later thousands died in The Great Famine.
A 2017 study by Sylvia Knobloch-Westerwick at Ohio State University about the effect of satirical news found that satirical news can engage people who otherwise would avoid political news. Additionally, satirical news increased the political efficacy feelings of Democratic viewers, but decreased the political efficacy feelings of Republican viewers. Perhaps this is related to the fact that those who are politically on the right can’t meme (according to SCIENCE!).
THE RIGHT CAN’T MEME AND THIS IS WHY
It’s commonly said that the right can’t meme. When it comes to transphobes, they tend to have one joke: I identify as (whatever it is this time). Not all conservatives are transphobic, and not all transphobes are conservative, but generally most transphobes are conservatives, and it’s a good example of the ways the right can’t meme.
They’ve done a lot of psychological research into this, and people who vote conservatively tend to be more anxious and fearful, and this causes them to put greater value on laws, institutions, customs, and religions. It also causes them to distrust that which they see as different or other. Conversely, liberals (using the global definition of liberal as left-wing, and not the US definition of liberal as centrist) care for people who are vulnerable. Both conservatives and liberals care for fairness – but think of it in different terms. To liberals, fairness is everyone getting what they require to participate on an equal footing. To conservatives, people should get what they deserve based on what they put in.
Conservatives reject “empathy” as a decision making tool for ethics because it is unfair. It leads you to treat people unfairly based on association and preferences instead of equally before the law. For example studies show that “empathy” leads to lesser punishments for the pretty woman and a harsher one for the ugly man.
Online Conservative
This would be a point worth considering if the laws seemed remotely fair, if there weren’t proportionally far more Black people in US and English prisons than there should be (I looked, but couldn’t find statistics for Scottish prisons), and if it weren’t humans who ultimately decided the punishment. Also, it’s worth exploring if “empathy” is what motivates the lighter sentences.
There have been a lot of studies into the correlation between humour and empathy. There’s a really interesting one on pubmed.
A number of studies have shown that people who score high in humor also tend to score high in characteristics associated with positive and satisfying interpersonal relationships: social competence (Levine & Zigler, 1976), self-monitoring (Turner, 1980; Bell, McGhee, & Duffey, 1986), intimacy (Mutthaya, 1987; Hampes, 1992, 1994), generativity (Hampes, 1993 ), and trust (Hampes, 1999). In addition, humor has been shown to be a factor in reducing stress (Martin & Lefcourt, 1983; Lefcourt & Martin, 1986; Nezu, Nezu, & Blissett, 1988; Fry, 1995; Newman & Stone, 1996; Abel, 1998).
Rogers (1980) defined empathy as the ability to understand and experience the thoughts and feelings of another, and essential to intimacy, generativity, and trust. A person cannot understand the thoughts and feelings of another person, a large part of intimacy, unless they have the empathy to sense what those thoughts and feelings are. The lund of caring associated with generativity is also difficult without empathy, as it is hard to care for someone, and even harder to help someone, without knowing and experiencing what they are feeling. Developing empathy with someone makes it easier to trust them since you are more likely to know what to expect from them, emotionally and otherwise.
W P Hampes
So, basically, the type of people who vote conservative are fearful and anxious, more loyal to their groups, respond better to authority, lack empathy for people outside of their social circles, think fairness is getting rewarded based on effort, and there is a direct link between empathy and humour.
So, psychologically, people on the right and people on the left find different things funny. Right wing humour is more likely to be aggressive and hostile, and often punches down – at the things they see as different or other, such as minorities. Meanwhile, left wing humour is less likely to be aggressive and hostile, and often punches up – left wing people are more likely to defend those they see as more vulnerable and, at the same time, are more likely to challenge authority. From this, we can see that the right and left genuinely cannot see the humour in each other’s jokes. There’s no crossover between “this is unfair and it’s Authorities fault” and “you’re different and that scares me.”
As to why they keep recycling the same jokes over and over… change is scary, and conservatives are terrified. The science told us that.
In Conclusion
Satire has different effects depending on the attitudes of the audience, and can reinforce beliefs they already have. It can impact upon society and is more relevant than ever, with the internet meaning satire can go viral, and an improved level of education meaning most people can read satire (and if they can’t, we have satire on video now).
The goal of good satire is to generate debate and conversation about subjects, and it is particularly useful at times when conversation is not being had. A Modest Proposal was written after several of his more serious ideas were completely ignored. There are many things today about which conversations should be had, but viewpoints are largely being ignored.
Perhaps new satire will change that.
Noun of Noun and Adjective is a satire about pursuing profits without caring about the environmental impact of such pursuit.
Attack of the 50 ft Trans Woman is a satire about the difficulty of being a trans woman in the UK.
Bigoted Book Burners Bloodily Bludgeoned by Badly Burnt Books is a satire about bigotry and book burning.
Tranosaurus Wrecks The Gender Genocide is a satire about the rise of tech-bro fascism, and a how-to for newbie activists.
These are conversations that need to be had.
Reading List
In the movie Starship Troopers there’s a scene showing ads on a computer, and it keeps asking: Do you want to know more? That’s essentially what this is. More satire for you:
