Satire is my time machine

Sometimes I find it hard to understand old satirical texts; at least the very first time I read them. I think that this is probably due to that satire is often, if not always, very much bound to its historical and social contexts. Satire reflects society and therefore you need to understand the society in which a satire was written to understand the satire itself. Satire should aim to bring out points generally applicable to everybody in a certain time and in a certain place to reform or change said time and place. Hence, it is not that strange if you do not understand a satire if you did not live when it was written. However, even though this can be confusing sometimes, it is one of the things I love about satire; satire is like a time machine that takes you to another world, another way of thinking and another way of being. And when I actually find my own world’s opinions and behaviors in satire from another time period it makes me think even harder about the change that the satire I am reading wants to see in society and why that change has not been implemented yet.

Jane Austen is famous for using satire in her novels and much of the satire in her books still rings true today. This can perhaps explain why her most famous novel, Pride and Prejudice, has been re-set in so many different time periods and societies. One of the most recent adaptations of the novel is a movie called Bride and Prejudice. In this adaptation the director and writer, Gurinder Chadha, re-uses Austen’s satire in showing how fixated certain Indian families are on marrying off their daughters. The mother in the movie is, like in the original novel by Austen, a true parody of the husband-crazy mother who pushes her daughters to marry at whatever cost. Above, you can see an extract from the movie, in which the mother encourages a wealthy Indian man, Mr Kohli (Mr Collins in Austen’s version) to marry one of her daughters, despite him being a complete bore, without social skills and not really suited for any of them.