Quote: Everyone @ August 11 2011, 1:23 AM BST
I'm a great lover of satire, but in contemporary satire I feel there is a major problem. I should also say that by contemporary satire I mean since the 1960s. That problem is that it is not constructive, it mocks often for the sake of mocking, which is relatively easy to do, without giving a vision, or at least an implication, of how things should be done. If one reads the great satirists, Aristophanes, Juvenal and Dean Swift, for instance, then as misanthropic and savage as they could sometimes be, they still left one with some idea of why they were satirising and what their alternative was. They were constructive, indeed they were even what you could call traditionalists.
In Australia for instance there is a TV satirist who produces highly-acclaimed shows every few years called Chris Lilley. In the wild praise of his latest offering it was several times noted how he made piercing satire of our times. Having seen some of his work though I cannot for the life of me find much constructive satire as opposed to mocking caricatures. Surely the surgeon pierces you to remove the cancer and then sow you back up, not just so he has somewhere to leave his scalpel?
Maybe I'm just misreading modern satire and am I missing constructive criticism that I simply disagree with? Is there any 'constructive' satire left? Is this a real problem in modern satire and commentary?
I've decided not to just be a whiner though and am slowly writing some of my own.
The Thick of It is ingenious is laying bare the thought process behind public relation stunts. It doesn't spoof, it actively educates, yet this not being an anarchist transmission, it does so under the guise of gentle mockery.
And the BBC had a show called 'Broken News' which was sly marketed as comedy yet was an oustanding satire on the way news is packaged/worded to incite fear and over reaction.
Social satire comes in all forms, in fact satire is so widespread and common it's not always identified as such. Even 90% of what The Simpsons do is this.
I think satire is in quite a healthy place at the moment and there's a surplus of material to mine for satirical gold.
Finally another Broken News fan on here. A great show that never really enjoyed the success it should and was sadly cancelled after one series. The same writer also did The Sunday Format, an excellent Radio 4 show parodying weekend broadsheets and the ludicrous supplements they're stodged full of.
Ah, I see, you've were aiming higher. This is a good debate to have. V. important to comedy and writers about where one places themselves in the spectrum of boat rocking.
I wouldn't put The Thick Of It up against Gulliver's Travels as a piece of social satire. I think in that context, art holds less of a power (or need) to reform society, much less a glorified sitcom. But I think modern day mickey-taking holds its own, in intellect and accuracy. We need to tinker with our ways, not completely overhaul.
I reckon Swift's targets; politics, physicality, superstitions, morality and whatever else are less of a worry now than the utter chaos of Swift's time. Although considered great work (and it is) it really does belong in its own time. And any modern equivelance can easily stand along side it, it's just that the nature of studying literature based on the limitations or restrictions of its author's climate give it greater kudos than a modern work, which could be easily as searing or provocative.
The bigger the problem, the greater the swipe against it, nowadays satire may comment on smaller aspects of life; because there's 'more' of life now, than then, more awareness, more interactivity, more knowledge, more everything. And as a result, more specific, broken down parts to deconstruct than subjects as broad and general in scope as 'The Monarchy', 'The Government', 'The Citizens'.
Catch 22 and Strangelove skewer war pretty well, Larry Sanders cover the vapid religon of the entertainment industry. There's America: The Book, I've read extracts of The Onion. Even stuff like Colbert, Chris Morris (have you seen his last film?) some Jon Stewart. Even South Park throws a few barbs. Team America may be puppets, but I honestly feel it makes a valid point on a par with Swift. I know that's not the instituational way to think, but self-congratulatory namedrops aside, that's honestly how I feel.
Chuck Palahniuk may be lightweight compared to, say Voltaire, but the points made are still valid. Even some may argue (but not me) that Sacha Baron Cohen is a sharp satirist.
My personal hero Bill Hicks, skewered American foreign/home policy and fundamentalist Christianity with a fierce intellect. Not a case of "Noahs ark doesn't make sense" or "Isn't Bush stupid?" but check out something like the "What does G13 do Tommy?" routine, albeit in stand up, so there was no metaphorical, coded, piss taking, just out and out truths really, which I feel is even stronger than satire in a sense.
A guy saying "this is what happened and it's wrong", as opposed to, "here's a clever allegory to represent what's happening".
Every other newish Star Trek episode contained a metaphor for war and after a while it jarrs. People know the score, so that removes the education aspect of satire and turns it into a slight, sermon to the converted.
I think satire's in a healthy state, although context is enforced, which may make the weight of our targets/attacks less 'profund' than Burke, but we can only satirize what is relevant to our time.
I'm sure a mind like Swift, if around today, would hold opinions on plastic surgery, wars for oil, technology/Internet, corporate greed, media manipulation and celebrity culture as you can only attack what's put in front of you.
Cheers for the chance to stroke my chin and think out loud on this subject.
You make some excellent points about the social, and therefore artistic, differences between today and that of the great satirists. As you may or may not have noticed I'm something of a traditionalist, even a raging reactionary, so I have quite a different opinion of the merits and demerits of our current polity, society and culture. I think it is probably better to avoid such 'philosophical' discussions, though I think Dean Swift himself would find much more than minor problems with modern society; I think he'd think it was the end times.
I'm not sure I agree with you that Swift is not a superior literary talent to today's satirists, I think he is definitely the greatest satirist in English literature and there are reasons for thinking the way he used language can objectively support this. I do agree with you that there are definite differences in culture today. I think part of the issue could be simply that most satirists today do, as you suggest, think that only minor changes are needed and I don't and therefore it is me who is looking for strident satire when I shouldn't be. Those of us who do have major problems with contemporary society, or at least the traditional conservatives among us, seem to have lost most of our once formidable (even dominating in the days of Eliot and Yeats, Coleridge and Wordsworth, Swift and Johnson, Shakespeare and Jonson) artistic sensibilities and creativity. We do not usually connect with modern popular culture. I don't connect with a lot of it myself, but satire, comedy, drama and even sitcom are an exception (how coherently though I'm not quite sure).
I actually have either not seen any output of those you mention or not seen much of it. There is certainly more I could do to get to gripes with modern satire and will follow up some of those suggestions you gave. I suppose the best way to exorcise my dissatisfaction is to try and write some of my own satire.
I would say that it is far easier to mock than to put across a solution. But that's hardly surprising - it's almost always easier to spot that something is wrong than to work out how to fix it.
But even if just mocking, satire can still be good and powerful as it throws a spotlight on what's wrong and points out it is wrong to people who might not have noticed it before. The best satire makes you think and makes you see the world in a different light.
Frankly, I'm not convinced that your 'constructive satire' would necessarily be better - as it would rely on the satirist actually having a better idea and would only be listened to by people who already agreed with his/her better ideas.
e.g. Rory Bremner. He takes the piss out of whoever happens to be in power. He makes some valid points and throws light on absurdities.
Would you listen to him if he was also preaching about what should be done instead? Would you listen to him if he was diametrically opposed to you on the political spectrum as he preached to you with his satire?
Or perhaps the constructive part is just "We shouldn't be doing this" without needing to think of something else to do instead - just pointing out that it shouldn't be done can be enough and powerful on its own.
Slightly dated but here's some satire of my own from a few years back (I forget the exact bit of legislation they were trying to bring in at the time). For me, leaving it at "we shouldn't be doing this" was enough.
Sometimes the 'positive alternative' is to just stop doing something wrong. Yes Minister was a case of a satire with a strong alternative agenda, public choice theory, that has turned out to be more damaging than that which was being satirised.
Perhaps we do not need our satirists to be political theorists; there is something to be said for highlighting absurdity for its own sake. In this vein the Two Johns have been the outstanding political satirists of recent years. You make a very good point here, you would no doubt go from a case of a seemingly endless stream of apathetic mockers to having a lot of strident, ideological satirists, most of whom would not be listened to by anyone outside their own ideology. I still think that that is probably a preferable situation though. You can always count on finding people to argue for or against almost anything in politics, society and culture (and beyond), but most of us do not give up on any sort of argument because of this. Those whose content or style, preferably both of course, was truly able to transcend merely preaching to the converted would still be worth paying attention to.
