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Marina Hyde

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    #26
    I'd not read it before. It's very good, and I think I agree with a lot of it. While I don't know how much of that is just me getting old and cynical, I've found more and more "satire" to be the same old tired jokes, a lot of in-jokes, a lot of very basic targeting of the easiest, weakest targets in the easiest weakest ways. Perhaps that comes from watching SNL in the US, where the focus is so much on bad impressions and the jokes having to be recognisable to a large audience, so it's very often going along with mainstream perceptions. Yet the same was true in the UK, where Ian Hislop's jokes got very repetitive after a while. It might, instead, be that we've learned with Boris Johnson and Donald Trump that no matter how simultaneously ridiculous and evil our politicians are, they can still succeed - if satire can't do anything about these two, it can't do anything at all as an action. So its job is purely an entertainment, is solely mockery, yet those two are already satires of themselves, there's nothing that can be said about them, really.

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      #27
      I find her humorous attacks on Johnson quite cutting, but she wrote one about the Jubilee recently that was lame as fuck

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        #28
        Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
        I'd not read it before. It's very good, and I think I agree with a lot of it. While I don't know how much of that is just me getting old and cynical, I've found more and more "satire" to be the same old tired jokes, a lot of in-jokes, a lot of very basic targeting of the easiest, weakest targets in the easiest weakest ways. Perhaps that comes from watching SNL in the US, where the focus is so much on bad impressions and the jokes having to be recognisable to a large audience, so it's very often going along with mainstream perceptions. Yet the same was true in the UK, where Ian Hislop's jokes got very repetitive after a while. It might, instead, be that we've learned with Boris Johnson and Donald Trump that no matter how simultaneously ridiculous and evil our politicians are, they can still succeed - if satire can't do anything about these two, it can't do anything at all as an action. So its job is purely an entertainment, is solely mockery, yet those two are already satires of themselves, there's nothing that can be said about them, really.
        Yeah, as we've discussed before, the best and most durable SNL bits are the ones that aren't particularly topical - Cowbell, The Californians, Land Shark, Bill Hader doing Vincent Price, etc.

        When the political ones are funny, it doesn't have much to do with politics or, at least not the politics on the service. Like Kate McKinnon doing Angela Merkel. It wasn't about the EU or Russia or refugees. It was about how female leaders are treated like the world's moms - expected to do all the emotional labor (and regular labor) while the men get credit.


        I liked that Coe piece too, although it is more applicable to Johnson than a lot of other politicians. The right in our country has no sense of humor or self-awareness whatsoever and therefore can't do the self-deprecating bit that Johnson does. Reagan could, perhaps, but that's a long time ago.

        I don't know if satire is always a replacement for protest. Sadly these days, it's simply reporting the facts in a way that's easier to remember.

        The Onion's classic 'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens is a good example. Where's the lie? As the kids say.

        I suppose seeing millions of people retweet/reFacebook stuff like that to absolutely zero practical effect lends support to his charge that satire's role is now just to replace protest.

        But I don't think that's satire's fault or the writer's fault. I'm not even sure it's the fault of all those people who are only preaching to the choir on social media.

        They do that because they feel powerless to do anything else and they feel that way because, for the most part, they are powerless to do anything else. A small group of very powerful people have been working very hard since the dawn of civilization - but especially in the last 50 years - to make sure that they are powerless.*

        But what that satire does accomplish is that it lets people know that they're not alone. It says, "No, you're not insane. The world is insane." That may not matter to the sort of high-functioning people who are published in the London Review of Books or The Guardian, but for those of us who feel like we're always on the edge of becoming completely unglued, it can be very helpful.




        *More recently, they figured out that giving the masses a place to vent their anger into the Void is also very profitable.
        Last edited by Hot Pepsi; 23-06-2022, 17:55.

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