So it has come to my attention that most of the guides of writing satire that I have previously linked on this blog have been good as guides of inspiration, but that some of you would appreciate getting a more straight-forward, "this-is-how-you-do-it" step-by-step guide to writing satire. Well fret not if you are one of the people desiring this, because I have found you a good guide here. It consists of a six-step guide of how to write good satire, as well as a short explanation of what satire is. I think that this guide, from yourdictionary.com could also help you get started with writing satire; it helps you avoid the mistake of writing an ironic or a sarcastic text instead of a satirical text. Lastly, I think it would be worth it giving this page a glance; it discusses the importance of knowing your audience and knowing the limits of good taste. I hope that this will help you on your journey to satire-writing-greatness.
A few
months ago I posted a blog post about the sad fact that there are almost no
British examples of satire on this blog, and I promised to do better in the
future. However, this is not a promise I have kept (mostly due to that I forgot
about the promise to be honest). But today I will write a bit more about
British satire, more precisely about satire in the movie Monty Python's Life
of Brian. If you haven't seen this movie already, you definitely should,
since it displays that it is possible to make fun of religion and satirize
religion without being (very) disrespectful and provoking conflict. The movie
is about the life of Brian (as one might guess from its name) who is born on
the same day as Jesus Christ, and people continuously believe that Brian is
Jesus Christ, or a Messiah of some sort, throughout the movie. I don't want to
give away too much, so that you feel that there is still a purpose in watching
the movie, but I will tell you about my favorite scene in the movie, which also
just happens to be a great example of satire.
Somewhere in the middle of the movie, Brian is chased by some people who
believe that Brian is their savior and Messiah (Brian has just held a speech in
the town square, attracting followers). Brian has little interest in being
these people's God, and he is also trying to escape some Roman soldiers who are
chasing him, so he is running away from his followers as fast as he can. In the
midst of this, Brian drops his shoe, which his followers find and take as a
sign. The followers all agree that the shoe is a sign from God, but they don't
know what the sign means. After a somewhat long debate, one girl among the
followers states that she does not think that the holy sign is a shoe, but a
gourd, and she convinces some of the other followers of this. The group is then
divided up into Shoe-followers and Gourdeners. In other words, the scene is an
excellent example of how different religious beliefs and different branches of
religions can be satirized: Are the different branches within religions really
as different as their adherents would make you believe? Or are they,
essentially, formed as a result of debates over things as unimportant as shoes
and gourds?
FOLLOWERS: ...Look! Ah! Oh! Oh! ARTHUR: He has given us a sign! FOLLOWER: Oh! SHOE FOLLOWER: He has given us... His shoe! ARTHUR: The shoe is the sign. Let us follow His example. SPIKE: What? ARTHUR: Let us, like Him, hold up one shoe and let the other
be upon our foot, for this is His sign, that all who follow Him shall do
likewise. EDDIE: Yes. SHOE FOLLOWER: No, no, no. The shoe is... YOUTH: No. SHOE FOLLOWER: ...a sign that we must gather shoes together in
abundance. GIRL: Cast off... SPIKE: Aye. What? GIRL: ...the shoes! Follow the Gourd! SHOE FOLLOWER: No! Let us gather shoes together! FRANK: Yes. SHOE FOLLOWER: Let me! ELSIE: Oh, get off! YOUTH: No, no! It is a sign that, like Him, we must think not
of the things of the body, but of the face and head! SHOE FOLLOWER: Give me your shoe! YOUTH: Get off! GIRL: Follow the Gourd! The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem! FOLLOWER: The Gourd! HARRY: Hold up the sandal, as He has commanded us! ARTHUR: It is a shoe! It is a shoe! HARRY: It's a sandal! ARTHUR: No, it isn't! GIRL: Cast it away! ARTHUR: Put it on! YOUTH: And clear off! SHOE FOLLOWER: Take the shoes and follow Him! GIRL: Come,... FRANK: Yes! GIRL: ...all ye who call yourself Gourdenes! SPIKE: Stop! Stop! Stop, I say! Stop! Let us-- let us pray.
Yea, He cometh to us, like the seed to the grain.
In my
family, there is always a battle over the newspaper in the morning. I actually
love reading the news, as weird as that might sound, even when they are
depressing and demoralizing (which they, let's face it, often are). Recently, I
have also come to love satirical news, mostly in the form of satirical news
shows. I love satirical news shows for their ability to deconstruct real events
and show people a different side to a story or an interview that
"normal" news shows have displayed as one-dimensional. My favorite
fake news show is The Daily Show, followed by This Hour Has 22
Minutes and The Colbert Report (check them out if you haven't done
it already). For those of you who are looking for a satirical newspaper to
read, I have found you a list of good newspapers here. My personal favorite happens to be the one on top of
the list, The Onion. The Onion has more resources than the other
satirical newspapers featured on the list, which clearly rubs off on the
quality of its "news" coverage.
What I am
essentially trying to say with this is that if you don't read the news because you
think they are "too depressing" or for some other similar reason,
there is no longer any real excuse for being ignorant.
If I ever
decide to buy art, I am definitely going to buy it from Pawel Kuczynski.
Kuczynski is a Polish artist who paints satirical,
"thought-provoking" images. He has been awarded with 95 (!) prestigious
prizes and distinctions and his artwork has been displayed everywhere in the
world. I stumbled upon his artwork yesterday, when I was browsing satirical art
online. I find Kuczynski's paintings extremely engaging and interesting, mostly
because they don't have any text on them (for the most part). Kuczynski
makes his satirical points solely through images, showing that satirical art
and images do not have to be in the form of cartoons. Below I have posted some
of his paintings that I particularly liked, hope you like them too!
A painting showing how politicians "fool" voters into voting for them by making it seem like "the grass is greener" in a society with their political ideology. The voters are behaving like sheep, following the shepherd without questioning him.
So now that I am done with my series of blog
posts about satire and movies, I thought it could be interesting to dedicate
one blog post to the topic of satire and music. My favorite satirical song is
REM's Shiny Happy People. Allegedly, the chorus of the song ("Shiny
happy people holding hands") is taken from a Chinese propaganda poster.
The song was released in 1991, two years after the Tiananmen Square
uprising (where the military killed and injured hundreds of students), and it is
meant to satirize how the slogan or headline "Shiny happy people"
concealed what was really going on in China at the time (and in other parts of
the world as well). Another, perhaps more straightforward, example of a satirical
song is "Weird Al" Yankovic's Eat It. The song is a parody of
Michael Jackson's Beat It, but instead of warning a person of trying to
be a bad ass and getting into a fight, Yankovic's version of the song warns
people of trying to get away with not eating more food. Yankovic sings "I
don't care if you're full / Just eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it / Open up your
mouth and feed it / Have some more yogurt, have some more spam / It doesn't
matter if it's fresh or canned / Just eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it / Don't
you make me repeat it." This, if anything, is satire of our contemporary
consumer society, where obesity has even become more common than malnourishment and
starvation. This also ties in with what I wrote about in my last blog post,
about similar satire in The Hunger Games.
Above you can see the music video for REM's Shiny Happy People, and below "Weird Al" Yankovic's Eat It-video.
Satire and
Sci-Fi are two genres that often intertwine. Books such as 1984, Brave
New World and Fahrenheit 451 are often referred to as satires, for
example, even though they are more commonly known as science fiction novels or
dystopian literature. The Hunger Games-trilogy is a more
"modern" science fiction series, which is currently being made into
movies (the second movie, Catching Fire premiered in November). The
movies, and books, are set in a future society where the United States has been
made into a dictatorship named Panem where 12 "districts" slave under
the rule of a despotic president, President Snow, and his "capital."
The main character, Katniss Everdeen, is from the poorest of the 12 districts,
District 12. In the first movie/book she is forced to take part in Panem's
annual "Hunger Games," which is a television series where one girl
and one boy from each district are chosen to go into an arena and kill each
other until only one "victor" remains. This in itself can be seen as
satire of our contemporary society, where almost everything is shown on TV for
entertainment. The fact that the country is called Panem, derived from the
latin panem et circenses (bread
and circuses) also suggests that the trilogy is satire of how people can ignore
atrocities happening around them if they are entertained and have food (the
whole society is basically built on this premise).
In the newest movie, Catching Fire, there are many examples of satire.
In this movie, Katniss and Peeta (who were both declared victors of the Hunger
Games in the first book) are forced to go on a victory tour through all twelve
districts. After many plot twists they are then, once more, forced into the
Hunger Games arena (I am not going to go into the particulars of how this
happened). One of the clearest examples of satire in the movie can be seen in
the scene were Katniss and Peeta are attending a party thrown by President Snow
in their honor. Peeta declares that he is too full to eat anything more. He is
then asked if he wants to drink some sort of liquid that other people attending
the party say will make him throw up what he has eaten so that he can eat more
("How can you otherwise taste everything?" they ask). Peeta declines
and asks Katniss is she wants to dance, and on the dance floor when they are
alone he says "People in the districts are starving and here they are
making themselves sick so that they can eat more." This can in many ways
be seen as satire our contemporary society. Perhaps, people in rich countries
today do not commonly take drugs to throw up food, but in a society where 15%
are starving and 20% obese, this scene still has to be regarded as something
that we can learn from.
