LS3000A Introduction to Wit and Satire

Formally defined, satire is "A composition in verse or prose holding up vice or folly to ridicule or lampooning individuals. . . . The use of ridicule, irony, sarcasm, etc., in speech or writing for the ostensible purpose of exposing and discourage vice or folly."

In other words, satire is a particular use of humour for overtly moral purposes. It seeks to use laughter, not just to remind us of our common often ridiculous humanity, but rather to expose those moral excesses, those corrigible sorts of behaviour which transgress what the writer sees as the limits of acceptable moral behaviour.

Let me put this another way. If we see someone or some group acting in a way we think is morally unacceptable and we wish to correct such behaviour, we have a number of options. We can try to force them to change their ways (through threats of punishment); we can deliver stern moral lectures, seeking to persuade them to change their ways; we can try the Socratic approach of engaging them in a conversation which probes the roots of their beliefs; or, alternatively, we can encourage everyone to see them as ridiculous, to laugh at them, to render them objects of scorn for the group. In doing so we will probably have at least two purposes in mind: first, to effect some changes in the behaviour of the target (so that he or she reforms) and, second, to encourage others not to behave in such a manner.

In that sense, what sets satire apart from normal comedy (and the two often shade into each other in ways which make an exact border line difficult to draw), is that in satire there is usually a clear and overt didactic intention, a clear moral lesson is the unifying power of the work. Whereas in normal comedy, we are usually being asked to laugh at ourselves and our common human foibles, in satire the basis of the humour is generally some corrigible unwelcome conduct in a few people. Normal comedy, if you will, reminds us of our inescapable human limitations; satire focus rather on those things which we can correct in order to be better than we are. It invites us to scorn the target in order to spurn that activity. This is no doubt a somewhat muddied distinction at this point, but it should become clearer as we proceed.

At the basis of every good traditional satire is a sense of moral outrage or indignation: This conduct is wrong and needs to be exposed. Hence, to adopt a satiric stance requires a sense of what is right, since the target of the satire can only be measured as deficient if one has a sense of what is necessary for a person to be truly moral. And if this satire is to have any effect, if it is to be funny, then that sense of shared moral meaning must exist in the audience as well. Satire, if you like, depends upon a shared sense of community standards, so that what is identified as contrary to it can become the butt of the jokes.

This moral basis helps to explain why a satire, even a very strong one which does nothing more than attack unremittingly some target, can offer a firm vision of what is right. By attacking what is wrong and exposing it to ridicule the satirist is acquainting the reader with a shared positive moral doctrine, whether the satire actually goes into that doctrine in detail or not. Dryden in "Mac Flecknoe" does not discuss what good literature is; but by attacking bad literature, he makes it clear what needs to occur if literature is to be valued.

[I should note here that it is possible to write satire in the absence of any shared sense of moral standards, but the result is a curious form of "black" satire. This genre is particularly common today. Modern satire typically makes everything look equally ridiculous. In such a satiric vision, there is no underlying vision of what right conduct is and the total effect, if one tries to think about it, is very bleak indeed--a sense that we might as well laugh at the ridiculousness of everything because nothing has any meaning. Whether we call this Monty Python or Saturday Night Live or This Hour Has Twenty-two Minutes or whatever, it seems to add up to an attitude that since there's no significant meaning to anything, we might as well laugh at everything. That will enable us to retreat with style from the chaos. Such an attitude is certainly at odds with traditional satire, which tends very much to work in the service of a moral vision which is being abused by particular people]

Satire may be very topical, that is, refer directly to people and events known to the readers from their own immediate context (e.g., satires on President Clinton), or it may focus upon more general human characteristics or upon both. Very topical satires which have no interest in universal characteristics tend to lose their impact very quickly, once the details of the context are no longer shared by the readers (e.g. Saturday Night Live). Satires which focus on the lasting characteristics of human experience (in addition to their topical interest) tend to have a longer life (e.g., Gulliver's Travels).

One central challenge to the satirist is to be subtle and varied enough to keep the reader interested in the wit of the piece, while at the same time making it clear (but not obvious) that there is a satiric intent. The major interest satires provoke in the reader often arises from the style, which invites the reader to share the joke. Since most satires depend upon a certain awareness in the reader (awareness of events, of literary models being satirized, of irony working in the language), skilful satires tend to require a certain sophistication in the readers or viewers. A person insensitive to levels of irony in language will normally find satires difficult to follow (unless the irony is very obvious).

Whatever the style of the satire, the writer must avoid at all costs becoming predictable and dull. Satires which are boring are ineffectual, and satires in which the ironies do not register properly simply don't work as satires, since the readers fail to see the satiric intent and take the distortion or the irony literally (e.g., Machiavelli's The Prince (perhaps), All in the Family).