Satire and the Satire Unit

What is Satire?

Satire (Noun): A text that uses irony, derision, or wit to expose or attack human vice, foolishness, or stupidity.

Characteristics of Satire

Concerned with ethical reform and attacks corruption.

Makes vice laughable. If it attacks a person by

name, its goal is to make a caricature of that person to make him become foolish.

Satire uses extremes to make its audience aware of political dangers or wrongs.

Types of Satire

Horatian Satire: named after the Roman poet Horace, it uses mild, light hearted humor to expose the absurdity of a situation or institution.

Juvenalian Satire: named after the Roman poet Juvenal, a harsher form of satire that uses anger and invective towards its subject which is supposed to enrage its audience.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/29527/the-simpsons-aptitude-test-cheater

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMBZDwf9dok

Early Satirists

The first known example of satire comes from ancient Egypt in a book called The Satire of the Trades. The author calls the laziest workers the most effective.

Another famous example is in ancient Greece where the playwright Menander portrayed the Greek emperor Calindon as a drunken fool in the play Drunkedness.

Famous American Satirists

Mark Twain: the most famous and controversial of American authors. In his most famous novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain criticizes everything from slavery, school, religion, and parenting.

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.: Vonnegut used absurdist humor combining such things as time travel, aliens, optometry, and babies to give a scathing critique of the allied bombing of Dresden in World War II in his famous work Slaughter-House Five.

Early Western Satirists

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745): In the most famous piece of satire in the English language, Swift criticizes English society and humanity as a whole in Gulliver’s Travels, a book that has become mistakenly known as a children’s story.

Voltaire (1694-1778): Voltaire criticizes European colonialism in his tale about a boob who becomes a hero in French society.

Modern Satirists

Warning: Black Humor Ahead!!

A WARNING ABOUT SATIRE: Satire is the most misunderstood of rhetoric. Many times satirists are blurring the line between absurdity and reality that their humor can be misconstrued for honest opinion.

As you read the satire in this unit, consider how satire can make us laugh, make us angry, and challenge our assumptions all at the same time.

The Fifth Estate of Politics The first, three estates of politics

are our three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.

The four estate is the media. The media role is to report and expose the government.

The fifth estate is satire. Satire can expose and criticize the government in ways the mainstream media cannot through humor.

Compare the tones in the following clips and consider which presentation is more effective getting its message across.

Vs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DMGrlSOsaE

http://tv.gawker.com/5730178/

The Satire Unit:EssaysWe will be looking at

diverse satirists such as Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, and Dave Barry to unpack how they use satire as a form of rhetoric to reach their audience.

Satire Unit: Novel

In addition, we will be reading Twain’s The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn and discuss and how, almost 130 years after its publication, the novel is still controversial today.

Satire Unit: Visual Texts

We also will be looking at clips from a number of satirical films including Michael Moore’s documentary about the Columbine tragedy Bowling for Columbine, the high school satire Election, and the Cold War satire Dr. Strangelove.

Formative Assessments

1. Close Readings: An analytical dissection of a text.

2. Socratic Seminars: We will be having group discussions unpacking the satirical rhetoric in the texts we are reading.

3. Room For Debate: You will be debating and composing paragraphs on a prompt related to a “Room for Debate” topic.

4. Practice Exams: We will be taking practice essays and scoring them with our peers.

Summative Assessments

1. Vocab/Term Quizzes

2. Argumentative Essay

Please Stand for Think on Your Feet