Satire and Political Humour
Chair: Nick Holm
Satire at Work: A Case of Censorship and its Cultural Context
Jessica Milner Davis, Sydney
Irony and Satire in Glam Metal Media From the 1980s to Present
Al Marsden, RMIT
The Use and Abuse of Memes by Hyper-Partisan Online Publishers
Lucien Leon, ANU
Comments 14
Kia ora kotou,
It’s my pleasure to welcome you to this panel on Satire and Political Humour, Thanks to Jessica, Al and Lucien for presenting us with three entertaining and stimulating discussions of the ways in which humour can work to critique, subvert and upset. While I’m aware Al might be wondering what he’s doing a ‘political humour’ panel, I think the idea of ‘satire’ provides us with a really useful through-line between the different presentations and the way they’re asking us to think about humour as an active and meaningful cultural form.
The get the discussion started, I’d like to ask you all about how you understand the relationship between satire and seriousness. Jessica, near the end of your presentation, you spoke about the threat of “overseriousness” to humour and satire, while Al suggested that glam metal made use of humour to challenge the historical seriousness of the metal genre. Lucien, you didn’t evoke seriousness as directly, but there’s certainly a sense in which memes are a way to conduct political debate in a non-serious manner: even less serious, perhaps, than the political cartooning tradition that you evoke.
My question, then, is to what extent can we understand satire to be serious? Is satire opposed to seriousness, or is it a way of doing serious things through humour? Or does this range of possibilities suggest that the idea of satire is perhaps to flexible? You all discuss ‘satire,’ but do you think you are discussing the same thing?
I’d also encourage anyone who might have any other questions and responses to this panel to please feel free to jump in!
Thanks,
Nick
Hi all. I enjoyed your presentations Jessica and Lucien! I would suggest that satire requires a critical edge and does not necessarily need to be funny (but it tends to be more effective if it is) and this is what distinguishes it from parody which renders its target comical by exaggerating its features, but not always in the form of critique. The two terms overlap of course and a true consensus is impossible.
Many of Lucien’s examples of political memes are polemics which will be taken as funny or not-funny depending on the viewer’s affiliations, and Jessica discusses a case of corporate disapproval of satire. The common issue is that no one likes being made fun of, directly or indirectly. I am reminded of a recent example involving two of the bands I spoke about: Steel Panther (the satirist) made a joke at the expense of Motley Crue (the satiree) singer Vince Neil, and his band mate Nikki Sixx responded with hostility to “Steal Panther [the] wannabe band.” The stakes of such a disapproval are lower than Jessica’s case study in the short term, but this exchange means it is unlikely that Steel Panther will be invited to be an opening act for Motley Crue (as they have been in the past) in the future which is a big pay day for a metal band.
To Nick’s question, then, I would say that satire is not absolutely required to be serious, but when it is done well it is typically taken as such, especially by the party it is critiquing. Therefore, it can have serious consequences.
Good morning all — 8.00am here on the lovely East Coast of Australia (except in Queensland where it isn’t!). Satire is a very loosely used word like so many in humour studies. The reference I list to one of the pair of articles whose lead author is Conal Condren (C. Condren, J. Milner Davis, R. Phiddian & S. McCausland. 2008. ‘Defining parody and satire: Australian copyright law and its new exception, Part II – Advancing ordinary definitions’, Media Arts Law Review, 13 (4): 401-21) gives a useful working definition of satire. It turns on intentionality — does it possess an inherent trait of criticism or critical intent against its target? Despite this, satire can range (as the article points out) from the gentle and good humoured to something so bleak and bitter and angry that there is next to no humour or amusement in it at all. That’s why it is such a broad-ranging term. And then on top of it, it’s become a bit of a buzz word in today’s online world — anything and everything can be referred to as satire or being satirical. So yes, Nick is right, it is useful to define what way one is using the term to guide an audience.
Thanks for these excellent presentations. Looking forward to discussing them online later today.
4-5pm AEDT (Melbourne/Sydney/Canberra). Zoom link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83269611574 [Meeting ID: 832 6961 1574]
What a fascinating line-up. Thanks to all the presenters and I look forward to discussing these papers in more detail this afternoon.
Kia ora koutou, I enjoyed the papers I’ve seen so far (Jessica’s and Al’s). I noted that Al solicited feedback from those who lived through the halcyon days of glam metal. I did, and many of the bands you mentioned in your intro as characteristic gained much notoriety through the MTV phenomenon, and to some degree were inseparable from it. That is to say, many people who weren’t necessarily die-hard fans (and were Gen-X teenagers) waiting to see something interesting televisual would encounter the visual cavalcade of “hair metal” bands of that era, also without going to see live shows. Their performative liveness was through this mediation into a record, then CD, purchasing audience of the suburban strip mall. So novelty shop chains would sell such paraphernalia as studded belts and armbands/bracelets and posters, stickers, etc advertising the bands and emblazoned with logos and likenesses. And in the 1980s ideological demarcations were still set about genres and taste, for example “punk” and “metal” were often considered completely different things, although musically rather similar. Lyrics and stylistic presentation and dissemination/circulation were rather different however. A metal band of that era might be aiming for stadium, or at least auditorium venues, while sticking it out in clubs, whereas the “grassroots” punk circuit in US was much more along the lines of traveling in vans and couch surfing. There are many punk memoirs documenting this. I was simply thinking about mass media circulation of metal videos also in contrast to fanzines, shows, and micro-scale record labels as the primary modes of early distribution of punk. Thus mediation, dissemination, performativity, and notions of genre all could be aspects to interrogate a bit further in my view. Again, enjoyed it! Thanks, Martin
Cheers Martin! Glam metal definitely benefited from MTV et al, and arguably would not have crossed over into the mainstream without that exposure. I have used such sources to analyse interviews with band members who perform a rockstar or clown (or both) persona.
Memes certainly are a way to conduct political debate in a non-serious manner – after all humour is an inherent component of meme culture, and evident in a range of styles (ie acerbic, playful, deadpan etc). What I found interesting when analysing the political images in my sample was an apparent lack of humour in the ‘Breitbart’ examples. I applied Charles Press’ and Manning & Phiddian’s political cartoon taxonomy in coding the sample for satire, and what I discovered in the ‘Breitbart’ images was that none of them qualified as such – and yet readers responded to many of the images with ‘laugh’ reactions. I concluded that in order for the images to ‘make sense’ as satire, the publication context and political affiliation of the reader had to be taken into account to provide the ‘missing bits’ (ie contrast, contradiction, commentary). I also considered Phiddian’s assertion in his excellent element ‘Satire and the Public Emotions’ (https://researchnow.flinders.edu.au/en/publications/satire-and-the-public-emotions) that satire can activate feelings of ‘contempt, anger and disgust’ and concluded that the ‘laugh’ responses that these images elicited stemmed from these very ‘serious’ emotions.
The clarity of your account of how and where memes become propaganda rather than satire (or, I would add, carnivalesque play) seems wonderful to me, Lucien. That is a very valuable addition to the tendency of some critics (me included) who tend towards the ‘one person’s satire is another’s gratuitous offense’ sort of analysis. The capacity for propaganda in a decentralised media is not what the inventors of the internet thought they were making, but memes (as you explain them) illustrate that problem precisely. Thanks.
Interesting talks everyone! The question will be to find the balance between appropriate and overly sensitive—many examples to talk about in future.
Thanks for these presentations everyone; I enjoyed them.
Just watched Al’s presentation as I have a sentimental attachment to the Twisted Sister videos, which I enjoyed back in the 80s. Enjoyed the presentation very much. As an 80s teen, I mostly understood such videos as comic and light, yet I still lumped their anti authoritarian rhetoric in with the humourless punk bands I’d listen to. This makes me wonder whether the irony employed by these bands isn’t sometimes a detached belief in what the narrative presents rather than irony as some sort of opposite. The real-life drug overdoses and manslaughter charges of some band members suggests that their irony wasn’t always the knowing presentation of some sort of humorous opposite; that the danger of not getting the joke wasn’t a paramount concern for some bands? Do you think some bands started to believe their own ironic myths? What else might explain this confused irony?
Thank you Bryce. With certain bands it is difficult to reconcile the ironic position of their musical product with the reality of their offstage behaviour. It is possible the insincerity of the characters they were portraying began to bleed into their real lives and made them feel above the laws of “normal people,” in other words they felt more empowered to do antisocial things if they were doing it in character.
Thanks again to all our presenters and everyone who took time to leave thoughtful questions and comments. We really appreciate everyone’s engagement and commitment, which we feel has gone a very long way to making this online format work. I hope that you’ve found the format productive and, despite our inability to meet in person this year, you’ve gotten something useful out of our conversation.
On behalf of the committee for the 27th Conference of the Australasian Humour Studies Network, thanks for taking part.
Nick Holm