More Problems with Satire

Brian Raftery of Wired.com (11/11/2016) points to the problems with satire as it is commonly understood:

In fact, my dependence on satire was so severe this year that I occasionally wondered if the combined forces of Oliver’s army, along with satirical powers that Bee, could maybe steer the conversation (and votes) to a degree unseen in previous elections. In a year full of ridiculous beliefs, this one was a doozy, but at least this one was rooted in optimism: Throughout this openly hostile year, I saw people creating and exchanging comedy that both assuaged my fears and affirmed my worldview—so much so that, once in a while, I sometimes allowed myself to think that the comedians could somehow break through in a way that objective information could not. Maybe you believed it, too.

Comedy Is Too Essential to Abandon

But the idea that satire could ever enact quantifiable change is, of course, a notion worthy of satire itself. And it places an unbelievably cruel burden on satirists, whose job is to reflect (and often reject) what’s going on in the world, not to help steer it. There’s a nearly instant disposability to modern political satire, no matter how strong it is: The references quickly grow old (Ben Carson something something pyramids?), and the main arguments can easily get lost in all the inevitable online rebuttals. Bee and Oliver and the Onion and their ilk created some of the sagest, most appropriately damning political satire we’ll likely ever see—but in comedy, as in politics, there are limits on power. The most they could do (and likely all they ever wanted to do) was share our rage, make us feel OK about it, and maybe inspire us to use it somehow.

This critique is rooted in a number of aspects of litige.  First off is the idea of humor as a simple carnivalesque space in which change is impossible. Then there’s the notion of authorial intent or intentionality – that the comic has no desire other than to play, to “reflect (and often reject)” the status quo in a way that, rather than subverts it, merely affirms it [I have more on this, détournement, in the pipeline].

Additionally, we see Booth’s notion of local irony, in the idea that the references get too old, too fast.  Then there’s all the rebuttals, which recast the irony and satire as unstable.

The combined effect is that comedy can’t do anything on its own. That’s not to say that the audience can’t do anything.  As Raftery notes:

But all [they] need to do is share a little truth, and spur us to seek out some more.  The rest is up to us.

Questions? Comments? Thoughts? Additions?