Satire

Robert WonserSOC 86 – Fall 2011

All good Satire

• According to sociologist Peter Berger, all good satire has four criteria: – Fantasy (often grotesque)– A firm moral standpoint– An object of attack– An educational purpose

The Simpsons as Satire

• “To entertain and subvert” – Matt Groening.• Satire—the gap between what is and what should

be. What should be doesn’t exist, only what is.• Satire makes the lie of what should be manifest

and in doing so weakens or destroys it.• Satire beautifully exposes the gap between ideal

and real culture in much the same way that a breaching experiment reveals social norms that aren’t self-evident.

• Satire comes from deep anger, and is at its best when it is ruthless in its assessment of the subject’s ills, but its final message is that the sickness, once satirically diagnosed, can possibly be cured.

The Simpsons

• Who is the smartest person in the Simpsons?

• Who is the stupidest?• The most evil?• The stereotypical mother of the 50s?• Where do they live, the most generic

city in America?• The brat?• They’re satirizing Americans

Society’s Institutions• The Simpsons parodies all

of society’s other major institutions:

• politics (Diamond Joe Quimby),

• how we handle the elderly – Grampa Simpson

• law enforcement

• religion • crass commercialization

• Corporate America• The Media

• School• secret societies• the legal system

Family Guy• Also a satire of the

American Family as a functioning unit.

• One child is always ignored.• The father is an idiot.• The mother is smarter than

the father.

• Even the opening is a reference to All in the Family

South Park

The Chewbacca Defense

The Kids Are Alright• Kyle and Stan – logical, make

sense, even when parents and others have lost touch with reality

• “You know I learned something today…”

• Cartman on the other hand is a bigoted anti-semite who is consistently shown to be stupid and wrong

• Also parodies society’s institutions as well as topical issues; – ex: Kenny and the Terri Schiavo

case• Parents and the townspeople

are usually quick to panic and ineffectual

Mr. Hankey• The Christmas Poo• He’s a piece of shit, literally• Who crawls out of the toilet to

ruin the annual orgy of consumerism at Christmas time by smearing himself all over the place

• Mr. Hankey's stains systematically mess up the cleanliness of the social order.

News (real and fake)• News television has had a

noticeable effect on electoral politics and public opinion.– Ex: Nixon and Kennedy

debates; radio listeners felt Nixon won, tv viewers felt Kennedy won.

• What does it say when so many people get their news from satirical news programs?

• The Daily Show‘s influence over voter perceptions has been well documented—a 2006 study by East Carolina State found that Daily Show viewers, while considerably cynical of the electoral system, demonstrated a higher degree of interest in politics as a whole.

• A more recent survey, released by the Pew Research Center on April 15, 2007, indicates that regular viewers of The Daily Show tend to be more knowledgeable about news than audiences of other news sources. Approximately 54% of The Daily Show viewers scored in the high knowledge range, followed by Jim Lehrer's program at 53% and Bill O'Reilly's program at 51%, significantly higher than the 34% of network morning show viewers.

• The Project for Excellence in Journalism released a content analysis report suggesting that The Daily Show comes close to providing the complete daily news.

• In July 2009, Time Magazine held an online poll entitled "Now that Walter Cronkite has passed on, who is America's most trusted newscaster?“ Jon Stewart won with 44% of the vote, 15% ahead of Brian Williams in second place with 29% .

• Additionally these programs are satirical and self-referential in other words, they support Johnson’s argument about the increased complexity of television programming.

• Moreover, in order to get the jokes you must have prior knowledge of current news.

• Satire is described as a playful distortion of reality (Feinberg 1967).

• Young (2006,2008) found that the satire used in late-night political comedy was an ambiguous form of comedy that required audiences to apply cognitive effort in processing the jokes.

• Satire or not? Context provides the cues.

Jon Stewart vs. Stephen Colbert

The Irony of Satire

• In that last clip is he stating his true beliefs or mocking those who believe it?

What do these results tell us?

• Your belief in whether or not he was serious or satirizing depends on your own political orientation.

• We like validation of what we believe so when we’re presented with ambiguous data we make it fit with what we know (or believe).

• From this perspective, it becomes clear that while the satirical messages themselves are ambiguous, Stewart aids viewer interpretation by offering himself as an unambiguous source and providing external cues (Baym 2005; Young 2006; Young and Tisinger 2006).

• In contrast, we outline below how Colbert’s deadpan satire and commitment to character do not provide viewers with the external cues or source recognition that Stewart offers. Thus, Colbert creates conditions under which biased processing is likely to occur.

• Faux journalism allows more freedom to question, dispel and critique the manipulative language and symbolizations coming from politicians and others news outlets while simultaneously opening up deeper truths about politics than that offered by the “objective” reporting of mainstream journalism

• By being “fake” it only refuses to make claims to authenticity, but the info it imparts is not untrue

• Pointing out the truth isn’t the same as taking sides

Colbert’s Meglomania• The parody of punditry• Broad-based critique and

comment on the devolution of public affairs talk into the irresponsible and incomprehensible nonsense that is paraded as “truth”

• Parody blends the god and country motif so common in American politics

• His set is geared to focus on him exclusively

• And the “confirmation bias” the desire to see what a person wants to see

• “Colbert bump”

• Here we see Colbert’s inflated sense of self-importance in his stage design

• And in his ice cream, his superpac, his testimony before congress, his 7” with the Black Belles, his Rally to restore sanity and/or Fear