Two Satires
There are two modes of satire. The first is affirming, portraying a person’s well-known qualities in the broadest strokes. If a subject is self-absorbed, satire will take this to absurd extremes of selfishness to highlight the flaw. This is Saturday Night Live satire, where the audience already agrees with underlying premises and laughs because the work accentuates and affirms their beliefs.
The other is challenging: as work that follows the inherent logic within an injustice to its absurd extreme. Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, for example, in which he argues that the poor in Ireland should sell their babies as food. Its “author” so thoroughly incorporates all the colonial propaganda into such an earnest-sounding document that a reader must pause to think, “is this guy for real?” This pause is key to its effectiveness.
Corporations for Congress
While satire is not my daily work, I have extensive experience with that second form. In 2010, days after the Citizen’s United ruling, I ran my company, Murray Hill Inc., for Congress— because corporations were now people too. It took me a few days and a television commercial script in need of editing to persuade my partner in satire,
to join the Murray Hill Inc. for Congress campaign. I was the Designated Human, much like the Silver Surfer in today’s Fantastic Four film, heralding corporations’ arrival as full-fledged persons. William was the high-priced inside-the-beltway Washington consultant. And we went to work.For a year, we never broke the frame—from the Washington Post front page, CBS’s Face the Nation, NPR’s All Things Considered, BBC, CBC, Australian Broadcasting, and a dozen other outlets. And then there was my earnest campaign debate with the now-Senator Chris Van Hollen.
It was a single performance, but a long one, which taught me the most important point about challenging satire—it needs to look as real as possible. People have to listen and consider, for a moment, “what is going on?“ Tell a voter the Supreme Court says corporations are people so that is why Murray Hill Inc. is running for Congress, and voters look at you with head-tilted puzzlement, followed by a laugh. Then you have moments to talk about things that are paint-drying boring, like campaign finance and the role of corporations in society, because there is space to fill as they settle on the notion that corporations are not people. I have seen this pause to reflect a hundred times.
South Park’s Accomplishment
Spoilers, etc., if you have yet to watch. But, come on, keep up with the culture.
So, I watched the “we just got 1.5 billion dollars from Paramount” South Park Trump episode. A great piece that called out how extreme the MAGA worldview is, by using this small mountain suburb and its protest against this extreme swing as the backdrop. The very un-politically correct Eric Cartman loses the will to live when the world now sounds like him in this death of woke. The granola school principal is now a youth pastor. Everyone is being sued by Trump—from the city through to Jesus. All this stuck the landing as affirming satire.
60 Minutes
But the scene that stood out to me as a challenge to life under Trump and MAGA is CBS 60 Minutes covering the South Park community protests. The anchors were obviously nervous and occasionally terrorized by reporting opposition to Donald Trump. In a bit not much more than a minute, South Park’s writers illustrated the self-censorship within the media as fascism takes hold in a clear, “how would you cover something if frightened of a dictator”, way. Well, that ultimately will look like OAN and Fox News, but not everyone watches those—yet. The 60 Minutes scene, more than the rest of the episode, is a challenge to consider what life would be like if Trump had his way in everything.
Satire Works
Satire as a challenge works best when it makes people think, even for a moment, something horrible is plausible. That pause—the gaps between considering, realizing, and laughing—are opportunities for real political reflection. You just have to hold up the mirror on our culture and not blink until they laugh.
I released a satirical song-Ticket to Mars. Most listeners get it :)
https://youtu.be/_w0jYcuXGr0