Satire and Society

Last year, our high school started a satirical newspaper where students write articles that basically poke fun at whatever ideas they can muster up in their heads.  This year, I've begun writing for this newspaper, and it's so far been a blast.  I find that writing something for comedic purposes is often quite relieving, fun, and exciting; it's exciting to see how people will react.  I've always been a junkie for laughter and love to hear other people laugh at my jokes, no matter how stupid they may be.  I began to wonder as I wrote some of my articles, however, what the significance is to a satirical newspaper besides making people laugh.

At first, I thought that making fun of issues in society can be an interesting and raw perspective straight into the eyes of the public.  For example, if Saturday Night Live makes a hilarious skit about how there are always so many people in any given Apple Store not really doing anything but playing around with the various gadgets, this can send an important and true message about what is considered important to people in today's society.  Satirizing something is a gateway into what people are thinking and it often (but not always) adds a spin to relate it to real life or to make it funny.

According to an article titled The Purpose and Method of Satire, "Inseparable from any definition of satire is its corrective purpose, expressed through a critical mode which ridicules or otherwise attacks those conditions needing reformation in the opinion of the satirist."

Above all, the author is saying, true satire highlights what is wrong in society and offers a solution or a "correction." Of course, our high school satirical newspaper is not a relay of society's ideas, that's more the purpose of a free press.  Our ultimate goal is to be funny by finding out and exploiting what is wrong in high school, suburban, or global society.  In doing this, there is a sense of connection people feel to one another to see that something they see everyday is seen by someone else and they can talk about this with other people.  An illustration of this is found in the show Seinfeld, where some of the funniest episodes are making fun of what we see all the time.  This has commonly been dubbed as "observational humor" and an example is shown in the clip from Seinfeld shown above to the right.

You'll notice in the clip that George, the bald character, is describing a moment in a hotel that many of us have probably experienced and this connection is what's supposed to make it funny.  Same goes for the part with the woman at the payphone.  This part suggests a societal issue of the time (early 90s), however.  Back when this show aired, payphones were commonplace and therefore societal issues arose from this that led to popular t.v. show satire.  This is similar to the Apple store example mentioned above; as the times change, so do peoples' interests and opinions, and these are often relayed through the channel of satire.  Can you name a time when something funny also made you think about the society you're living in?  You could ask yourself, "what makes this so funny and how/why is this significant?"