The question in my mind is whether someone who claims to be doing satire can meaningfully hold the line at altruism. There is a value decision in the comic's decision of both subject and approach which I think implies at least the critical motivation and, in my view, the moral.
On numerous occasions I have heard smart, thoughtful comics complain about hack comics that aren't invested in their material making lame points about banal subjects. Their attitude towards the hackery I heard most elegantly stated by Patton Oswalt though I'm sure others have said the same as 'Really?
That's what you're angry about? It is this type of choice that I claim has a normative component that entails - necessarily - the critical and moral motivation. This is perhaps a bit strong. There are plenty of smart, thoughtful comics who are not obviously motivated by anger or similar feeling. Think Jim Gaffigan or Brian Regan. Those comics, however, are not satirists. Satire is something one engages in when one is at least vexed and more likely angry about a subject.
So motivated the satirist takes at least a critical and, I claim, a moral stance towards her subject. To claim otherwise is a form of false consciousness in the most genuinely existential, philosophical sense. Another aspect of satire that highlights the moral component is the necessity of an unequal power relation between the satirist and her subject. This is rarely explicit but always present. Satire is a tool of the weak against the strong. When the powerful satirize the weak it is cruelty.
I think it is this more than anything that contributes to the false consciousness I mentioned above. Aristophanes may have been the first satirical comic but the paradigm for modern satire is the court jester. The jester was the definition of powerless - the lowest ranking member of the court permitted to speak. Derided, scorned and existing outside of the political and social hierarchy, the jester could have no meaningful impact on the functioning of the court.
It was precisely this position that empowered the jester to be the only public critic of the monarch. He was powerless ergo he was permitted to be critical of the monarch - but only satirically. The legacy that only the truly powerless are permitted to satirize power informs the modern view that satirists have no real power and so are just in it for a laugh.
The view that 'I'm just a comic' is a call back to the function of the jester. This view is undermined, however, when one realizes that the social and political structure that made the jester-monarch relationship possible no longer exists. Choosing satire as a medium and choosing powerful individuals, organizations or structures as targets entails responsibility for that choice. The comedian as satirist can simultaneously claim a moral position and the desire for change while entertaining.
Denial - false consciousness - is a defense mechanism against the extreme difficulty of holding that position. It is hard to remain funny and poignant while being outraged.
Holding the line between satire and indignant criticism or political activism is a balancing act with real consequences for failure.
One might cease to be a comic and become a part of the power structure Al Franken, Dennis Miller. One might be pilloried and marginalized Janeane Garofalo. One can be driven to extreme behavior, drugs or mental illness Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce. Few survive and excel Chris Rock, Lewis Black. I'll leave the topic here though I think there is something to be said about the special and exceptional case of satire as performance exemplified by Stephen Colbert.
Perhaps another post. My argument can be summarized as follows: satire by design has a normative component. Satirists highlight things that they believe should be different. That 'should' entails a desire for change or action that goes beyond simple entertainment or self-gratification. Any satirist who denies this is denying something essential about her work.
Let me close by talking about the need and purpose of satire in the world today. In Bread and Wine, the scarcity is holiness which poets must recover and to which they must testify.
Our time is scarce in informed criticism, shame, openness to changing beliefs, gratitude and compassion. It has an overabundance of fear, anger, meanness, inequity and selfishness. It is the job of the satirist to testify to this dire state of affairs. Walsh makes a convincing case that a key if not the key function of prophets is to call the community back to shared covenant values and bring about social or political consensus in times of crises.
Her focus is on scientists as political advisers and I think some part of her analysis is valid for satirists as well. Humor is a rhetorical device that can make difficult or painful subjects palatable for contemplation. The satirist is using humor to create a form of consensus through the experience of laughter to remind us of shared, human values that are not exemplified by the target of the satire - but should be.
Satire is bad. And, it is the type of bad that everybody says is good. Which is the worst type of bad. Love the veiled Heidegger allusion, here. Consider what Voltaire has in common with Juvenal and Horace both early practitioners , as well as, I think, Aristophanes. But oes it also present something like a philosophy of satire? I think a key issue is figuring out how it is differentiated. What does comedy do to enable or mitigate the criticism vs.
Does it create a space for more people to engage or does it create a distance designed for safety? I should have clarified: with the poem linked above, you have to press the forward arrow on your keyboard to read through. Is satire necessarily a species of comedy? Why would you prejudice an understanding of satire as NOT intellectual or political?
Your typology of intentions for comedy are useful, though I would be cautious about identifying any one of these as apolitical or non-political.
It seems to me that in order to be either moral or critical, though, the comedy could be either egocentric or altruistic. Kierkegaard Is Nothing Sacred Anymore? The Extended Mind What is an adult? Too Much Information? Corporations as Persons Psychological vs. March Fear! Live Blogging! April Journalistic Ethics? Beyond the Cartesian Moment? To blog is to forgive? Great post, Laura. Lots of food for thought here. I think satire's judicious use isn't actually too far off from your refined theory of bullshit.
For those unfamiliar, to be defined as 'bullshit', the idea in question must be in some way unjustified. An action categorized as enacted bullshit, e. I think the same applies with satire. Good satire is not only very much not-bullshit, it seems to exist because of it.
If bullshit exists, or is at least perceived to, then satire is an effective tool to highlight and subsequently mock it. The very fact that the people we elect to lead, supposedly on their merit, often screw up while in office is considered unjustified to the public.
It's bullshit when Christie backs up a bridge like it's his own arteries, or when Weiner sends a lascivious photo in a moment of obvious foreshadowing fulfillment. If not, it isn't really satire, it's bullying. From any general consensus, satirizing any undeserved recipient will feel mean-spirited and brutish.
You mentioned privilege as being the most salient targeted aspect for satire, which I think is completely apt. Privilege, be it justified or not and this gets into subjective philosophy, though trending towards the largest common denominator in a society can often seem unjustified. It's easy to satirize the rich and powerful because they have a power the general population may often deem excessive or at the very least, not accessible to the greatest number , thus cementing its status as bullshit when abused, i.
Please let me know if any of this is sophomoric or facile, I'm trying to get better at philosophical debate. Monday, July 27, -- PM. Please share with us some more great and informative post. In the future my wish is your website lead top ten site in world's. Please keep it up your work If there is any satire so offensive it must be prohibited it is murdering the satirist.
That is, the question of bad taste is very much aside from the kind of criminal lashing-out it might provoke. The point of satire is to prove that unity is not the basis for community and to prove the productive truth of the fact that memory does not serve. It shows us that the most perfect remembrance or most revered arguments for unity or faith are ridiculous in some way. But in its most effective form we are so close to this memory or sense of union that the proof of its incompetence to unite us, by fiat as it were, binds us closer than that assumed unity could ever in reality do.
This is why when applied to the alien it falls a little flat, and enrages the target of it. In such a context it divides only and unites not at all. It becomes something monstrous rather than merely domestic mischief. But we in America are so homogeneous, at least compared to Europe, that we are jarred by the cultural contrasts that are taken for granted there.
The extremity of sarcasm there derives from the diversity of cultures that nurtures excessive and exaggerated expressions , and the violent history there sustains a cynicism that many Americans find shocking.
But, all in all, bad manners is not a justification for murder. And the discussion needs to be very clear that the Hebdo murder does not imply the issue of outrageous satire somehow occasions such a scale of crime. Satire has always been used by elites to sustain unjust social divisions and to drum up support for wars on or deportations of aliens. But it's not so much a question of bad manners or unfair assaults on those weaker than us.
It's a question of denaturing the social function of satire as a uniting force through iconoclasm. The trick, of course, is that they have to be our own icons that get smashed and our own oxen that get gored. Targetting the weak or the alien rather misses the point, and attempts to turn iconoclasm into an iconic ritual.
It is oxymoronic to do so. But I hope censorship is not being suggested here. I came across two references to Jonathan Swift? So like any good true searcher, I found, rented, and watched the movie. I also gave it a critic rating of? The story is a satire, meaning that it negatively abuses the fundamental institutions of humanity.
The story is about a person named Gulliver, who goes on a trip, finds unbelievable truth, and comes back to share his discovery.
Unfortunately for him, he was measured to be crazy, and locked up. The history of other great discoverers have met with similar discomforts, such as burning them on a stakes, something only humans could invent. Gulliver tells a story of the irony of man, the flaws of who we are, even though we think ourselves better.
There is one place Gulliver stops on his journey that had particular interest to me. He becomes one with wild horses, and sees freedom for the first time.
The horses have given human beings the name? Several months before seeing this movie, I thought it a good idea to check out a new elementary school, just to see modern education at work, it also being a part of my current study of everything. I was told due to security reasons, I was not allowed to look, so on my way out I did anyway.
I looked into a classroom and saw young children standing neatly at attention, next to computers with thin screen monitors. At the blackboard a teacher wrote? I then questioned the importance of? Swift saw us as savage ignorant? I still can not believe his insight. None of us are born? Do students of any age bring homework home on the subject of? Is computer science more important than ourselves? Perhaps geometry, algebra, calculus, computers, biology, science, astronanophysics, materialism, and?
Are we being taught the importance of helping others, or the importance of money, and helping ourselves? Can you imagine a school called the institute of how to live instead of technology?
The school of law could be the school of morality. The department of physics, or in other words the department of measuring the differences in nature, could be the department of the nature of equality.
Would the universe be a better place if we studied what we can see, instead of what we can not? I think Mr. Swift knew the foundation of ignorance is education, what about you? The question has often been asked:? Why do we have to study something we will never use?? Would a class on the proper use of a public garbage can be more beneficial than Euclid? Many people over our human history have pointed us to where wisdom is to be found, right in front of us, not further away.
We have been micro and macro measuring everything, only to take us further from the truth, something we were unfortunately taught to do. We have a choice to make with the direction of education for our future, that is? If man has become ignorant and cruel, then perhaps a change in curriculum to what is most important and true, will enlighten, make us wise, and set us free. I was surprised and bemused when this program on the radio conflated satirical mockery of religion with satirical mockery of race perhaps a sign of confirmation bias?
The Book of Mormon with all of the accolades. I would be interested in knowing if the individual suggesting 'moral satire' and discomfort with Chrlie Hebdo's cartoons would laugh or be outraged while watching mormons and Africans being demeaned in The Book of Mormon?
When one inserts the the word 'moral', they are only submitting their own personal opinion regarding what they find acceptable and what they personally think should be censored. Tuesday, July 28, -- PM. Hi Judson! Thanks for your comments and good to "see" you here. I think you're right that satire often serves to highlight various kinds of bullshit, whether it's spoken or performed.
It's an important tool for combatting all the bullshit we have to deal with. Personally, I think politics and religion are two domains in which a lot of bullshit is dispensed, so we need satirists to draw attention to that. Or to the fact that FB was talking about creating a satire warning because so many people post fake news stories there believing them to be true and expressing their outrage.
Have politcs become so ridiculous that we can no longer distinguish truth from satire? Satire not only draws attention to the blaring issues of current affairs, but also their more subtle complexities as well. In order for a reader to get the full effect of a satirical piece's purpose, they have to read and commit to understanding not only the topic at hand, but why a seemingly small line might point out a crippling fallacy in the targeted argument just as well as its header.
It's not only that politics have become increasingly ludicrous to the point where much of satire's work is done for it, but also that satire has to work with more discretion and subtlety to be truly impactful. No wonder there's confusion over pieces like the one you linked- not only is truth becoming harder to distinguish from satire, satire is becoming harder to distinguish from truth.
Of course satire should bite. But it's a question, isn't it, of a certain symmetry between biter and bitten? If Punch pulled his punches Judy would be the one laughing, not us.
Wednesday, July 29, -- PM. I think the question comes down to something like: when is it morally acceptable to be mean to others? If satire is ever morally justified, and if it necessarily has a bite, then that means we do think it can sometimes be moral to be mean whether or not we're mean in a humorous way, which is a hallmark of satire.
There's been a lot of discussion recently about the American dentist Walter Palmer who killed Cecil the lion. The online backlash against him has been huge, and justifiably so.
But is there a line we as decent human beings should not cross in our criticism? Obviously, directly threatening him with violence would be to cross that line, but is joking that he should be skinned and decapitated? It would seem that satire is by definition militant. Thus satire like any attack is only appropriate when used to point out a legitimate flaws in b a more powerful entity. Any exercise of power by the powerful over the less powerful is some kind of bullying.
It is, of course, still satire. But it is also bullying. Although bullying need not be punishable by death, it need not be supported in the name of free speech, either. The question in most cases of "the ethics of humor" but not all comes down to who or what is the target of the humor in some senses, the butt of the joke. If satirists are targeting the oppressed minority of French citizens who are Muslim, they are on very shaky ground indeed. If they are targeting Islam in general, they are on much firmer if not safer ground as satirists.
If they are targeting the Prophet peace be upon him , they are either attacking someone with infinitely more power than they have an appropriate target of satire or a foolishly revered imaginary friend arguably an appropriate target of satire, too.
Surely it is not just the intention of the satirist that decides who or what the target is. Art is subjective and someone might take offense to almost anything.
However, the defense that the artist has no responsibility whatsoever for the emotions created does not seem legitimate. Artists intentionally evoke emotions and use their craft to achieve that. They must have some degree of responsibility for that conscious act. So what are these cartoons targeting? What are they ridiculing? The pope is being depicted as prostituting himself liberalizing church doctrine in order to land more customers believers.
Although I do not agree that he is doing that, I can easily see why a conservative believer would think so, and it seems like a valid point. The Muslim in the cartoon seems to be complaining that only his worst side was portrayed in the film. That is likely true. That film probably looked at the dark side of the faith as do critics of Christianity and other religions. If so, then the complaint by the Muslim in the cartoon seems quite valid. It is not clear why we are a ridiculing his protest and b gratuitously picturing him as naked.
This cartoon fails to ridicule the legitimate flaw wanting to punish non-Muslims for violating rules that only apply to Muslims , so where is its justification? If satirists are risking their own death for a few laughs and arguably making followers think twice , I suppose that is their right It appears that Walter Palmer is a a repeat offender who b ran away instead of facing the consequences of his act and c may have been paid to do it. If so, he certainly seems to be "fair game.
Mean humor is sometimes used to reduce the impact of a problem on our psyche by "cutting it down to size. But with humans, ideally at least, satire should attack the problematic behavior or thought pattern instead of just ad hominem. Interesting issue. Thanks Jim.
I think you hit the nail on the head here with the question of how we identify the target of satire. If the satirists take themselves to be ridiculing extremist Muslims say , whereas the oppressed Muslims in France or elsewhere in Europe feel like they are being targeted, how do we decide this question? Is there an independent fact of the matter or is it simply a matter of perspective? The answer is very important because, as you say, it it what distinguishes satire from bullying.
Thursday, July 30, -- PM. Thank you for your response. I suppose this is a little like the distinction between discriminatory intent and adverse impact in employment law. Since, in practice, we cannot know or prove someone else's intent, we are left making judgments about the reasonably foreseeable consequences of the act. Friday, July 31, -- PM. I have come here to correct a gross miscarriage of knowledge and truth. I believe it was this episode I heard in the car.
My apologies if it's not the right episode, but neither do I have the time nor patience nor willingness to spend 2 dollars an episode to determine if this is the right episode. In this episode or one within the last week, at the very end of the segment, one of the hosts or a guess grossly misrepresented my personal hero John Stuart Mill. The person was arguing for laws against the possession and distribution of cartoons that depict cartoon underage "persons" having sex.
Near the end of the show, this person stated matter-of-factly that John Stuart Mill's defense of free speech was limited to political speech.
Nothing could be further from the truth. This can only be the result of willful lying or being entirely ignorant about what John Stuart Mill actually wrote. It's gross intellectual dishonesty either way - stating a clear falsehood, or inventing something out of pure ignorance.
If this is a host, then shame on you host, and if I figure that out, I will be sure to avoid your program forever. If it was a guest, you should probably never have that guest on again. I invite everyone here to read what John Stuart Mill actually wrote in the freely available essay titled "On Liberty". Use your favorite search engine of choice - I don't know the policies for including links in comments offhand.
It's out of copyright, and it's easily and freely available many places online. Sunday, August 2, -- PM. The conversation, alas, seemed limited, to defining satire as comedic speech or cartoons that are targeted at either institutions or persons or groups of individuals. What of ideas? It is possible for an individual to change his opinions and beliefs -- as the guest stated in her invective against the political correctness that has run amok on universities, this is one of the few core functions or goals of a liberal education.
Satirists and commentators not only ought to be free to criticize ideas, but they, and we, have a responsibility to do so. To allow false or pernicious ideas to persist is to allow a cancer to grow across society. It is how conspiracy theories formulate, denials of scientific facts and results to flourish, bigotry and racism to prosper. Making ideas the subject of satire and comment means that the satirist or commentator need not pull his punches against the downtrodden -- if the downtrodden are following ideas that are detrimental, to the satirist or society or even to the downtrodden believer, then shaking him to his senses and showing him the absurdity of his beliefs is a form of education.
It attempts to correct fallacies and pernicious beliefs while they are inchoate or nascent and weak. Moreover, by attacking the ideas or beliefs and rather the individual, the satire or commentary is not bigoted. The offended individual may be persuaded by the satire or commentary and can change his beliefs. Can stop following blindly and thereby question the authenticity and integrity of those who espoused the beliefs he had been holding.
Two final points: first, if an individual finds it offensive to ridicule X, then he ought not to ridicule X.
But the individual cannot impose that belief system upon others and prevent them from ridiculing X. In the face of ridicule of X, let the offended individual respond by: i ignoring it; ii contemplating the meaning and questioning why he finds it abhorrent and beyond reprehensible; iii respond with a ridicule of the tenets of the offending satirist or commentator; or iv counter the argument and show why the satirical piece or commentary either has a logical fallacy or rests on assumptions that either do not hold where they are purported to hold, or are actually false.
In sports, art, business, politics, and academia -- and certainly other areas of life -- we set the rules to be indifferent between A and B and then let A and B have at it. The score starts , we inhibit and penalize companies from deterring competition, we allow all sorts of political speech, and publish in double-blind peer-reviewed journals.
In the marketplace of ideas, there are various arenas. This Community of Thinkers is one such arena, where we can present our ideas, hold them up to scrutiny, and learn their weaknesses and strengths, thereby more legitimately holding them with greater confidence, or modifying them in response to the criticism. Gary, I am with you on your point on bad manners not equating to terrorism.
As I see it, the problem is not satire and what satire might or might not generate when targeting this or that. The problem is not whether satire is good or bad or whether satire goes after the rich or after the poor, the powerful or the oppressed. The problem is terrorism. Terrorism kills innocents not in response to a greater or lesser provocation, not due to a cartoon strengthening one? Dissecting what satire does well and not so well in this particular context of the terrorist attack to Charlie Hebdo, which killed so many innocent people, rests uneasy for me, and I strongly oppose such an approach - no harsh level of satire can ever justify a terrorist act.
Even if the Hebdo material was incendiary or targeted the marginalized, in itself another area of debate, that does not come close to a reason or justification for murdering 11 people and injuring another The prejudices are there. I think satire as a subject of discussion is fascinating; however, it should be thought of independently from terrorist acts and hate crimes.
Monday, August 3, -- PM. Some centers of conviction cannot abide shame, even where it is deserved. To paraphrase Shakespeare, Hell hath no fury like a privilege scorned! The point being that, at least the earlier Islamic radicals were of a generation miffed at the loss of social status they experience in the West and under a globalized interconnectedness.
These days Islam is in a state of Suni-Shia civil war, bringing the lower tiers of society into the mix. It wasn't all that long ago when Western women would have been scandalized if they showed any part of their body, and in which that cartoon of the Pope would have brought death, just as surely as Hebdo did with the one of Mohamed. Incidentally, I don't remember if anyone has yet applauded the moderators for having the guts to posts these cartoons.
But the issue stands, how do we get the shameful to respond to our recognition of it? Satire is mischief, not violence. But it is, if appropriate, in response to a kind of mischief not so non-violent. This breaks down into domestic and foreign or enemy. But this means that even the most iconic expression of who we are has a kind of violent mischief to it, deserving a bit of shaming.
To sully corrode or efface even the most sacred icon amongst us can be an expression of greater intimacy among us than that icon, in the hands of its most fervent promoters, can ever hope to inspire. Domesticity is in itself a kind of mischief, and unless we are free to profane it a bit we will end up strangers to each other in the very reverence of the icon of it.
Domestic sarcasm brings us closer. The key to this is that the shamed be so intimate to us that we can recognize the profaning of it as necessary to its intrinsic violence against us. This is why symbols can be so pernicious. But what about shaming the shameless? Or the enemy that can only react violently? It cannot bring us together except as a kind of violence of its own. And the implacably shameless can set us on a course of escalation that has no easy resolution.
There is no answer I can see to domestic power centers that simply refuse to see how deserved the criticism is, and who simply use their power to thwart the effect. But with external regimes of such resistance to rebukes, the resolution, it seems to me, is one of domestication, not escalation. That is, we should help each other see the joke. And that it is intended to bring us together, not inspire violence. A magazine like Hebdo's does have a bit of blame to accept.
And that is that when a periodical like this takes upon itself the regular business of ridicule, in order to keep the pages full it must keep up its supply of targets. The danger can only increase of undeserved insult, and escalation looms as a tempting tactic where imagination, or deserving targets, thin out.
Friday, March 16, -- AM. I have no connection either with anyone Muslim, so I would have to do a lot of research to even begin to grasp the enormity of the problem. I am not that moved by any sort of religious philosophy or dogma, so this is one area of research I shall forego. I am working on some ideas of my own philosophically and that takes up a great deal of mind space and creativity. Sadly, the world as we have come to know it, encompasses a Totality of Circumstances, including a cultural war which has erupted into bloody war.
Would there have been a bloody attack on Charlie and its satire without Rushdie; free-speech; women's rights; wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a host of other historical influences? Maybe yes and maybe no. But, I think we have to at least speculate that the impetus for such attack was spurred by those sorts of influences.
We magnify the complexities of the world and thereby generate potentials for unpredictable outcomes. Occasionally, we know what we are doing; recognize the perils; and do it anyway. That might be construed as degeneracy, or at mildest, stupidity. Sometimes it is called politicswhich may be much worse Sunday, March 18, -- AM.
The point that I think was missed on the program with respect to free speech is how to deal with institutions that institutionally forbid disrespecting a symbol. The Muslim religion is the current whipping boy on this with their attachments to symbols representing Muhammad and also printed copies of the Quaran.
The US government isn't even clear about this with respect to flag burning. With respect to John Perry's issue of whether some speech is "moral" I believe he missed the point. It has long been my view that invoking Hitler or a swastika in an argument is plain not productive to any argument about anything else.
The same with the "N" word. Its use throws any discussion off the rails and thus is a bad idea. Tuesday, March 20, -- PM. I only got half the show today on KALW, but I was surprised that no one came at the question from a developmental point of view. As a child, I was relentlessly targeted for aggressive, mocking attacks. As someone of mixed cultural background, I am aware that not everywhere on the planet are school yards run on the law of the jungle. Some places, people are taught manners.
These attacks were meant to be destructive, and they were. To this day, I am really not clear if the natives think of this as ok, allowing these destructive forces to run wild. So to get the the point, is this a matter of the "free speech" of children?
If not, at what point in development does this kind of behavior become such? As an adult, I no longer allow anyone to have this kind of power over me, but when I see people like those at Charlie Hebdo, I am clear that these are the aggressive bullies of the school yard who never grew up and who never learned basic respect.
Please note that the distinction between attacking the person and attacking a symbol or institution is not such a simple one when we are discussing in a developmental context. The constitution of an "I" is always in relation to such symbols.
If I had been Muslim, for example, attacking Islam would be, to a child, like attacking me. Also note that this distinction is perhaps not such a simple one when discussing in a cultural context. The local notion of adult development does not leave room for such powerful identifications with and connections to such symbols of group affiliation.
We are supposed to become the "Individuals" of "Individualist Society". Perhaps that itself is a rather provincial attitude. Skip to main content. Search form Search. The Power and Perils of Satire. Laura Maguire.
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Viral Xenophobia. Sorry, Critics: Parasite is a Good Movie. Anti-Sacred Spaces. Is the Self Real? The goal of good satire is not mockery, but to generate debate and conversation about subjects. Maisel, who graduated from Penn State in fall , began collaborating with McClennen as an undergraduate student when the two discovered they were both blogging about satire.
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