Storyboard

My Satire Website’s Site Mapish Thingy

Default – This page will include a brief definition of satire as well as a short passage on modern American satire (since that would be the focus of the class). There will also be a discussion of course goals, and something resembling a lit review. As well as hyperlinks within various pages, there will also be a menu on the left with links.

Satirical Concepts

v Irony – This will discuss some different types of irony and include embedded examples. Because irony is a rhetorical technique central to modern satire, this page could end up quite long and may need to be divided into more than one page.

v Invective – After defining the term, this page will include some examples (probably from Mencken, and maybe Ann Coulter too [who rarely uses anything but invective]).

Historical Examples

v Chaucer – While Chaucer obviously isn’t American or modern, his use of irony through superlative descriptions of certain pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales is a significant historical example of irony in satire. The CT is a kind of estates satire, a popular genre during Chaucer’s time; however, estates satire typically uses invective whereas Chaucer uses irony be describing how certain pilgrims are the best at things they shouldn’t be good at (i.e. the Monk is an expert hunter).

v Swift – Like Chaucer, Swift is an important figure in the history of satire written in English. I often have students rhetorically analyze “A Modest Proposal,” so this page will likely only have a short excerpt with some of Swift’s rhetorical strategies highlighted.

v Twain – This page will include excerpts from Twain’s work (and possibly some shorter works in their entirety, such as “Advice to Youth”). Twain also seems to exhibit something of a trend in the work of white male American satirists: appealing to a sense of individualism. Even though he comes from a very different place politically then, say, Mencken or P.J. O’Rourke, all three seem to rely heavily on appealing to a sense of individualism.

Parody and Satire – This page will make an important distinction between the two terms and include examples of each. Parody has one target and tends to comment only on that target whereas satire also includes some kind of social or cultural critique, and good satire tends to be target-rich. The Family Guy provides numerous examples of satire, and I will include an embedded clip of one of their Star Wars spoofs. South Park tends to be more satirical, and I will embed a clip of a South Park news clip that satirizes the BP oil spill and Tony Haworth’s response.

Us and Them – Satire can work to bring people together, but it ultimately operates on some level to divide people into “us” and “them.” Those people who get the joke are “in” on it, while someone else is meant to be the target of the joke. This is also a good page for discussing some aspects of satire by women and African Americans, which, unlike satire by white men, often appeals to a sense of community (which makes sense if you are not in a position of privilege).

v Satire by women – Will includes examples by Sarah Vowell, Ann Coulter, and other.

v Satire by African Americans – Some examples from before and during the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. I will also see if I can find a clip from Chris Rock that I can embed.

Satire and the news

v One page will discuss The Daily Show and the Colbert Report (and possibly some lesser known examples, such as InfoMania or Super News). I’m not committed to the title of this page, but it seems like The Daily Show and the Colbert Report deserve special attention as examples of video satire because of their cultural significance. It’s worth looking at the differences in their approaches, and a program like The Daily Show provides some great examples of the affordances of video for satirizing video, especially T.V. clips.

v This would also be a good page to discuss The Onion, which uses multiple modes but is still primarily known for its online news articles. The Onion takes a satirical approach that is similar to the Colbert Report by reporting fake news that deftly follows the genre conventions of real news. Sometimes they are so successful that their stories are picked up and re-reported as if they were real (or as close to real as Fox News ever gets).