Satire: The Art of Humorous Criticism

1. Satire Unit AP Language

2. What is satire? • An art form (literary, dramatic, visual) that uses humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings with the intent of shaming individuals, corporations, and/or society itself into improvement or reform. • What does this mean? Put it in your own words. • What is a vice? What is a folly? •  Although satire is usually humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon and as a tool to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. • Tina Fey as Sarah Palin—as you watch, consider what it is that Tina Fey is satirizing. • Teenage Affluenza—as you watch, consider what it is that is being satirized.

3. Satire and the Law • The relations of satirists to the law have always been delicate and complex. • In the United States, satirists attack individuals only at the risk of severe financial loss to himself and his publisher. • In totalitarian countries he risks imprisonment or death. • Under extreme conditions satire against the reigning order is out of the question. • Such was the case in the Soviet Union and most other communist countries. For example, a poet was sent to a concentration camp and his death for composing a satirical poem on Stalin. • Why would the law care about satire?

4. Main types of satire • Juvenalian: any bitter and ironic criticism with personal attacks, angry and moral indignation, and pessimism • Horatian: meant to delight and humor using laughter and ridicule in a non-accusatory manner to highlight vice and folly

5. Satirical Techniques (this is where the project comes in) • Exaggeration/hyperbole • Distortion/reversal • Understatement • Invective/diatribe • Pun/malapropism • Incongruity • Parody/allegory