Over the last few days, I’ve posted a smattering of videos that demonstrated what I think of as satire. It seems to me that in this postmodern aren’t-we-all-so-damned-sardonic world of ours that the whole concept of satire has become weakened, watered down, and enfeebled. This has been on my mind for while, but I didn’t have any examples to demonstrate what I am talking about until just a few minutes ago.
And then I came across a review of a new musical called “What’s That Smell: The Music of Jacob Sterling” on the website of The New York Times. The review is a positive one, and I am glad of that. I wish the show, its cast, creators, and producers nothing but luck and success. What set me off was the following sentence in the review:
For connoisseurs of atrocious musical theater — and/or whip-smart satire — the fictional Jacob Sterling is a godsend to be eternally grateful for.
What I object to is the phrase “whip-smart satire.” While the show may be “whip-smart,” it is not, to my mind, satire. It is a spoof. And that’s fine. The world needs spoofs. There is nothing wrong with spoofing a subject. It is just not satire.
Satire speaks to power. Two-bit show biz hacks possess no power. However silly or self-indulgent they may be, they are not a measurable source of the world’s misery and deflating their tiny balloons will have no discernable effect on the Powers That Be. And this has been forgotten.
Quite often, these days, I come across something being described as a satire when it is not. It’s meaning has been reduced to being merely “something that makes fun of something,” which is just a plain lousy definition. Satire, in its true sense, is a quest, however Quixotic, to make a given society a better place. It rails at power and exposes its flaws. It get people to think. And maybe think differently.
Now, Mark Twain, in the video I posted on Monday, wasn’t speaking to political power. He was speaking to the power and pretensions of religion and the uselessness of war. And he does it in such a way that you almost don’t even notice that he’s really telling most of the people of his day–and perhaps ours–what fools they are. “Man is the reasoning animal. Such is the claim, though I do think that’s open to dispute.” How true and how wonderful. It is funny, wise, and timeless. Watching it again for probably the tenth time, it occurred to me that he was doing what Eddie Izzard does, only 90 years earlier and with more depth and sorrow. (And I’m not knocking Eddie. He might get there one day.)
The second and third videos that I chose were from the British series Blackadder. Interestingly, I’m not really a Blackadder fan. It’s generally more mean-spirited than I prefer. However, in this fourth series–Blackadder Goes Forth–the show moves into new territory. It truly becomes satire.
There is no satire in kicking the small and the weak. There is no satire in trashing Britney Spears or in spoofing the latest hit TV show. True satire attacks hypocrisy and power and the few who would dare rule the many. It is republican in the sense that it believes that the government serves the people and not the other way around. It is democratic in that it knows that no man, no leader is above the law. It is wise and profound, and yet makes its point with delicious laughter.
It occurs to me that the problem with our current politics is that we take it too seriously, that we do not laugh at it enough. So much of what gets bandied back-and-forth on the op-ed pages is such utter and complete nonsense that those of us who read those pages should never stop laughing. The evening news is a master class in absurdity regardless of which channel you watch. And the only things sillier than CNN are MSNBC and Fox News.
It all cries out for satire, which seems, sadly, to be in short supply. Oh, of course, there’s The Daily Show, but not much else. But maybe the time will come. And in the meantime, let’s not debase the word “satire.” Let’s retain its true meaning and therefore its true function.
