.png)
4 months ago
9
Here’s a recent message from our current Satiric paradigm.
People have been saying this shit for years.
I could chase down quotes from every person who said it across the internet, but come on, you’ve heard it.
Anyway, these idiots are all wrong. Satire isn’t dead.
Satire won.
This is what it looks like from inside, looking out. People say you cannot satirize the world of today, sure, because you cannot satirize a satire.
Satire is not a Genre
In Splitting Genre, IG Agent 13 argued for a simplified taxonomy of art, but especially of literary art.
Where purpose is defined as
…what affective purpose the art has — this means is it a comedy, is it a drama, is it educational, is it a horror, is it speculative, is it fantastical. That is to say what result does it hope to get from its audience.
People might mistakenly assume that the purpose of Satire is comedy, and that this would put Satire as an actual Genre under comedy. But no.
This is now the first part of the essay were we mention what every essay on Satire must mention:
Do you really think Swift wrote A Modest Proposal hoping to make people laugh?
The affective purpose of a Satire is to Satirize. It is to put the perspective of Satire onto other Purposes and Genres. The perspective of Satire when applied on things can have many affects, one of which is to make them seem comedic, probably because it makes them seem ridiculous and ridiculous things are often comedic, although not always.
How does Satire achieve its purpose
To achieve this purpose Satire uses a way of looking at the world, it is a color scheme that can be laid over genre. Thus one gets satires OF genres when the perspective of satire is turned upon some existing narrative.
Satire does not value its target
I’m saying the obvious thing here not because I think you don’t understand this obvious point, but because this refusal to value is what explains Satire’s triumph, which being some steps removed may not have been picked up on.
Satire spent many generations devaluing things, and when it won, nothing had value anymore, and it became easy to be a satirical misanthrope without any obvious targets left.
Satire Is Not Funny Anymore
As we noted earlier the purpose of Satire is not necessarily to be funny, that is the purpose of Comedy. It is to make something ridiculous, or to demonstrate the inherent ridiculousness of a thing. There is some debate about this.
A recent Metafilter thread on The Onion and their message to Congress, prompted the following comment
Lots of people then jumped on the idea of the Onion not being funny anymore.
Which implies that at one point the Satirical site was funny.
So, why is Satire sometimes funny and sometimes not?
As noted earlier we are inside the Satire, I propose that the closer the Satire gets to touching us, that we are the target of the satire instead of just the observer, the less funny it starts to seem to us.
When Taliesin satirized the Poets of Maelgwn’s court I’m sure that the Peets did not think it funny, nor Maelgwn, perhaps some of Maelgwn’s courtiers, but no the humor of those satires was most effectively felt far outside the sphere of Maelgwn, amongst other kings.
Are we inside the Satire?
We started this article noting the complaints that Satire is dead because the modern world is too possessed of some undefined quality that means it cannot be satirized — maybe that quality is insanity is is never really clearly specified.
The argument is however, that it cannot be satirized because the Satire will not seem any worse or more exaggerated in effect than the reality.
The reader will be forgiven for thinking that I am saying Tomato when I claim this is because we are inside the Satire, that the world has been effectively Satirized, and like the Poets of Maelgwn must now only make nonsensical noises as Taliesin, the satirist vaunts their own skill above us, while the whiners of Satire are saying Tomatoe with their claims that things cannot be satirized.
But my model of what is happening does give to Satire one power that their model denies, the power of prophecy.
And during the last few decades a recurring observation has been that the Onion, seems possessed of the power to predict the future.
Following are some well known examples in which the articles essentially work as prophecy (since we are on the Internet I must observe that Prophecy as its own literary type is assumed to roughly delineate what will come to pass with figurative language, and is not expected to be completely correct in the minutia of things)
And of course the first story that ever prompted their ability to prophecy the future
With the wonderful quote that undoubtedly future historians will believe actually happened
“You better believe we’re going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,” said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. “Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?”
The current situation that the people from Metafilter do not find funny, being often the constituents of Congress
And of course the future
The courtiers of Maelgwn are all standing around with frowny faces while around the world people point and say “look at those idiots”, slap their knees and say now that is hilarious!!
When you’re the target of Satire, it’s not funny at all!
I just put this section in to note that the first time I ever heard the complaint “I don’t find the Onion funny anymore” or “The old Onion was funnier” happened sometime around 2004 and was a common whine of Right Wing bloggers like that Instapundit guy who used to be alive somewhere in the U.S.
Because of course these were the first guys getting pulled into the Satire, and they didn’t like it.
But everybody else back then thought hah, these Onion guys are funnnnyyyy! That feeling has diminished as everybody has been pulled into the reality of the Satire, and made to feel its brunt.
Forget about Punching down or up, the important thing is they shouldn’t be punching me, is a common self-pitying whine of the Satirized.
Well, sorry, but the punching will continue until you change your behavior, or you’re just knocked out.
OK I lied about that last part, no Satirist worth their salt would stop satirizing you just because you’ve been knocked out.
