This video now includes Spanish as well as English subtitles. For a full list of dual-language videos in our series, please see the following site: liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/oregon-state-guide-english-literary-terms
This should be taught more in schools at the high school level than it is. Satire is so commonplace in the current day and so hard to understand at times that it can sometimes be missed by people who aren't educated on how to identify it and what it does. Irony on the other hand, which is taught in high school, isn't as hard for you to identify even if you don't know what irony is. you can still understand irony without the knowledge of its existence. Satire however DOES need knowledge of its existence and how it works to understand it. Teaching students the multiple forms of irony and their names won't help the students understand irony, as much as it would help them NAME iron. If you teach satire, it can actually help get to the core belief of a piece, especially when you get to more complex forms of satire.
Pretty cool definition video from Professor Gottlieb :) Below is my favourite quote from this video. “Satire is a powerful weapon when used effectively, and appropriately; but it’s also a risky one.”
Satire definition is use of humor , irony , exaggeration, ridicule to expose and criticize people stupidity or Vice , particularly in context of contemporary politics. Examples of satire tv shows South Park , the simpsons , family guy . Satire represents irony pertains to situations while satire sacrcasm are form of expression. Famous satire is samuel butler was English poet , satirist , famous as author of huidbras, most rememberable burlesque poem in English language and first English satire to make notable and successful attack . Thank you for your wonderful educational literary channel.
Great video! I feel like satire being 'read/received wrong' gifts extra discourse and attention at the expense of the message/narrative. E.g Most things on social media.
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Thank you very much for your videos. It would be very nice of you if you could upload a video about Poetry Commentary ( with practical examples). Many thanks from FRANCE.
Thanks so much for your suggestion, Alexi57, and for your kind words. We're delighted that the series has made its way to France! We do have a few videos dedicated to poetic subjects--rhyme, meter, enjambment, assonance and consonance, stanza, etc. Would those be what you were looking for with respect to poetry commentary?
@@SWLF Thank you for having me. Yes it is, however analyzing a poem for commentary needs to be done by Professors like you who have a good mastery of the subject and a wide experience. I found the following video , just in case : Analyzing a poem for commentary (by: Brad Coltrane, 2012 ). Many thanks.
Thanks so much, Jackeline! If you are interested in the Spanish translations for many of our terms, check out the following page: liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/wlf/oregon-state-guide-english-literary-terms
Thanks for the question! We have published a video called "What is Irony?" that should help you to distinguish satire from irony. We also will be getting a "What is Sarcasm?" video out soon, so keep an eye out for it.
Other works that might be included in Mennippean satire are the novels of Boris Vian. Maybe Balzac could be included. Then there are the Chinese classics, "Jing Ping Mei" and "Journey to the West" which clearly are not influenced by the Roman categorizations.
Thanks so much for your comment, Ned! Your last examples in particular raise some fascinating questions about just how universal these categories of satire are and how widely we should use them. Given the fact that these works (as you categorize them--we aren't familiar with them) seem to resemble Menippean satire but are not influenced by them, could this be the literary equivalent of "convergent evolution"? Is this category ahistorical--existing outside of time and culture--or should this term only be used in Western stories?
I dunno how journey to the west is a satire unless you’re seeing it as commentary of human nature in athropromorphic characters? Like gulliver travel and the different people etc they come across. I guess it could be
@@SWLF well they have some dark topics with light humour such as the wars in middle East and the selling weapons and receipts bit from Hicks or the Club that they used to bash you over the head by Carlin, just trying to figure out if that's the correct type of satire....🤔🧐
@@Onkarr In those examples, we would suggest that Hicks and Carlin were moving between Horatian and Juvenalian, but mostly staying on the Horatian side.
Great video, thank you. I'm interested in writing long-form satire, but all the resources I find are for short-form. The Onion, Daily Show, etc. Do you have any suggestions for materials around writing longer satirical fiction?
Thanks so much, Jeff. Unfortunate,y, we don't have any suggestions for writing manuals on the subject. The best way to go (in our opinion) is to read as much of the genre as possible and, perhaps, dig into some literary histories of the genre as it evolved from the classical period through the 18th century and on into the present. Good luck to you!
I’ve been finding more and more that the word ‘satire’ has been misused so often on social media. It’s actually become a trend to call any sort of joke or meme satire.
Hmmm. Maybe that trend is confusing the term satire (as a genre) and satirical (as an adjective meaning critical or sarcastic)? We hope this video helps a bit in this regard!
Memes are pretty satirical tho. Comedy itself is slowly dying.. and people trying to cencor memes kinda proves memes are one of the last bastions of true satire
thank you! I’m so sick of people saying “I hope this is satire” or “please tell me this is satire” when someone is just meant to be a joke or sarcastic. Satire is a thing of its own. 😂
Thanks for the comment, Tim. Pahlaniuk isn't a fan of the term either--see his nuanced interview on the subject here: melmagazine.com/en-us/story/a-conversation-with-chuck-palahniuk-the-author-of-fight-club-and-the-man-behind-tyler-durden-2 But we find it is a useful shorthand, given the brevity of these videos, for a certain kind of hyper-macho posturing presented by Tyler Durden and satirized by Pahlaniuk. If you can think of a better term, please feel free to share to keep the conversation going!
Gotta disagree with toxic masculinity. It wasn’t . It was against consumerism, yes. But it was abotu identity from what I got. The monotony of life and finding value in the things we own. The fight club represents human connection and the need to belong.. that primitive animal aspect of what makes us human. Its not toxic masculinity. It’s about what is the meaning of life- what u own, or the thrill of being knocked tf out. ..but how far either side can go.. When you don’t have hat balance of purpose.. it becomes a dellusion. Just like how ikea makes us have no identity, a fight club where everyone is meant to stay underground but then becomes a trend, also starts to lose its value..
First time I had seen your channel, very glad to know about it , definitely will be back.i do most of the writing for the channel, so I really wanted to say I learned something, and you can't ever know too much
There are definitely some satirical elements to Watchmen's depiction of superheroes. But like Prof. Gottlieb's discussion of Tyler Durden in Fight Club, readers don't always pick up on this (many of them lionize Rorschach, for example). Thanks for keeping the conversation going!
@@SWLF Thanks for answering. The reason I asked was because I've had problems separating what is parody from what is satire, not helped by the fact that people misuse the terms so that I don't know who are using the terms correctly and who are not. More specifically, in this case my question was prompted by someone claiming Watchmen satire, something I disagreed with, for reasons that might be stupid, so therefore I thought it worthwhile to ask someone that might know better. If I may make stupid summary of what my own read has been and what the someone I mentioned thought, my read was that parody is commentary on an original work and satire is commentary on reality. The other guy's opinion was that parody was more friendly ribbing on an original work whereas satire was more hostile. From that point of view, I could not see how Watchmen was satire, since it is an exploration of the underlying assumptions present in superhero fiction and what their impact would be on reality, not actually pointing finger at anything present in reality going "See how flawed this-and-that is", given that superheroes do not exist.
I've been having a dispute with some people over the meaning of satire in relation to a series called Warhammer 40k. In brief, it is a massive media property with games, books and even short films set in a extremely dystopian future. There has been a controversy because many real life fascists have adopted the game, particularly the human faction, known as the Imperium of Man, which is essentially a fascist theocracy. Many people argue that the fascists mistake satire for straight storytelling because the writers obviously don't intent for the Imperium to be seen as heroic. My argument is that, intention or not, the way they portray the Imperium (populated by ruthless, xenophobic super warriors) is attractive to fascists and is not satire. Satire would be if they gave the super warriors male patterned baldness, micro penises and massive guts that hang out of their power armor. But they are all portrayed as ultra powerful and amoral. Am I right? Can satire exist without ridicule?
Interesting question, Joel. We aren't familiar with this game or series, but this scenario is precisely the danger of satire--it might, as Prof. Gottlieb suggests, be read straight, Fight Club certainly runs the same risk. That said, I'm not sure the solution is to parody the "super warriors" in quite as explicit a manner as you suggest (well, you could, but it wouldn't be necessarily understood as satire specifically). Satire typically is ridiculing something (especially the Juvenalian version) but it often speaks in the voice of the thing to be ridiculed (the people advocating for eating children in the case of Modest Proposal or Tyler Durden in the case of Fight Club). As such, satire's irony often makes us work harder to distance ourselves from what these sometimes seductive figures are advocating.
Thanks for the comment, Barmach. If you're looking for shorter answers to this question, we're pretty sure you can find rudimentary answers via Google. This series is designed to offered a bit more detail than those dictionary definitions, but we admit that this approach isn't for everyone!
Thanks for the comment, FlareGunDebate. Pahlaniuk isn't a fan of the term either--see his nuanced interview on the subject here: melmagazine.com/en-us/story/a-conversation-with-chuck-palahniuk-the-author-of-fight-club-and-the-man-behind-tyler-durden-2 But we find it is a useful shorthand, given the brevity of these videos, for a certain kind of hyper-macho posturing presented by Tyler Durden and satirized by Pahlaniuk. If you can think of a better term, please feel free to share to keep the conversation going!
@@SWLF it's useful shorthand for prejudice but not clarity. I don't think "toxic masculinity" exists so I wouldn't use another term for it. I think Evan Gottlieb is projecting a contrived value on to Palahniuk's writing. Fight Club isn't a satire of masculinity it's addressing the lack of social model stories for men. I would compare Tyler Durden to Randle McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I think Nurse Ratched would contrive a term like "machismo" or "toxic masculinity".
Why is it always white men that love to talk about toxic masculine when it’s a white men lecturing others about toxic masculinity but they are literally the definition of it, ..don’t get it.
@@FlareGunDebate agreed. I'd also add that suggesting satire must be directed at a more powerful subject is ridiculous moral grandstanding with the same faulty logic of "punching down comedy". Satire is suppose to illuminate human weakness. It doesn't matter who it's directed toward, so it's not bullying. Human error is human error. And it's probably more immoral to suggest your outgroup identities make you immune to your human weaknesses.
@@as73142 I agree. Satire is a form of humor and comedy is subversive. Laughter undermines a prideful person's sense of authority. I think narcissists get a power trip by accusing kind hearted people of mockery. You can keep a tight psychological grip on modest people by diagnosing them with made up stuff too. Like some kind of emotional mountebank. Kinda funny when you think about it.
Each gender has their own privileges' and "rights" (of sorts) that the other gender doesn't have as much access too. 2 examples of this are men are generally physically stronger, whereas females are generally trusted more with kids.
