Satire

V

18th-Century Satire

What has been called the golden age of satire occurred in England early in the 18th century, when the genre became a dominant literary form. One of the most brilliant social satires was The Beggar's Opera (1728) by the dramatist John Gay. It inspired a 20th-century adaptation, Die Dreigroschenoper (1928, The Threepenny Opera) by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. A wealth of satire was produced by the poet Alexander Pope; the essayist Joseph Addison; the novelists Henry Fielding, Tobias George Smollett, and Jane Austen; and—most notably—the writer Jonathan Swift, whose passionate concern for individual human life paradoxically cast him in the role of misanthrope. Following one or the other of the two classic modes of satire, the Horatian or the Juvenalian, these writers either gently nudged their subjects, as in Smollett's uproarious picture of life at Bath in The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), or ruthlessly devastated them, as in Pope's Dunciad (1728-1743). Not fearing to launch attacks against powerful enemies, they often became the victims of reprisal, as in the case of Swift and Queen Anne, and of the French writer and philosopher Voltaire. The novel Candide (1759), Voltaire's avowal of the principles of the Enlightenment, aroused official reaction because of its criticism of previously accepted social and religious ideas. During this period a new medium for satire evolved in the form of caricature, mostly of a political or religious nature. Examples of satirical caricature can be traced back to the Renaissance, in Mediterranean countries, and within the Protestant Reformation in Germany. Leonardo da Vinci and Martin Luther both used visual caricatures. Woodcuts and engravings conveying a powerful critique of religious ideologies were popular among the rising merchant classes. Supreme among English caricaturists was William Hogarth, who satirized 18th-century London society.

VI

Satire in the 19th Century

The 19th-century Romantic movement had little taste for satire, preferring other types of expression. Modern satire returned in the later 19th century in various manifestations. It appears in the short stories of the American humorist Mark Twain and in more sardonic form in the work of Ambrose Bierce, notably in his book The Devil's Dictionary (1911), first published in 1906 under the title The Cynic's Word Book. The novels of Charles Dickens constitute a superficially humorous but deeply felt and often lacerating satire of Victorian social conventions and official hypocrisy. Gentler social commentary came from such contemporaries as the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray and the poet and librettist Sir William S. Gilbert. The plays of the Irish-born writers Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw achieve different satirical purposes in different manners. Wilde's drawing-room comedies, with their use of verbal paradox, laugh at human society; Shaw's wit is directed to the improvement of that society and is especially apparent in the prefaces to his plays. Throughout the 19th century, the significance of satirical caricature in cartoons increased with developments in printing. During the American Civil War, graphic examples were provided by Thomas Nast in Harper’s Weekly and Joseph Keppler who founded German and English versions of Puck in 1871. In Britain, the magazine Punch was first published in 1841 and ran until 2002, containing both satirical cartoons and text, which commented critically on British social and political life throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The most esteemed of 19th-century English caricaturists include Thomas Rowlandson, James Gillray, and George Cruikshank.

VII

Satire in the 20th Century

Artful handling of satire in the earlier 20th century is seen in the work of writers as disparate in subject-matter and style as Sinclair Lewis, with his rather obvious attacks on American middle-class values in novels such as Main Street (1920) and Babbitt (1922); James Thurber, with his ironic stories and whimsical cartoons of the contemporary social scene; and Nathanael West, with his dissection of Hollywood film society (in The Day of the Locust, 1939).

Satire in the mid-20th century tended to become more brutal and direct, often verging on naturalism. This style of satire was employed by many regional novelists in the United States, including John O'Hara with his exposés of suburban and city life, and by black novelists of protest, including Ralph Ellison, who satirized white society and its attitudes.

In The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy (1948), Evelyn Waugh took a satirical look at the American funeral industry. Waugh poked sophisticated fun at a variety of (usually upper-class) 20th-century foibles, while Aldous Huxley satirized 20th-century utopian dreams in Brave New World (1932), and George Orwell, in Animal Farm (1945), provided a satirical allegory of the Russian Revolution under Stalin.

Satires on war in the 20th century include Evelyn Waugh’s Put Out More Flags (1942), the masterly novel sequence Osudy Dobrého Vojáka Svejka za Svetové Války (1921-1923; The Good Soldier Švejk, 1930) by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek, and the ribaldry of Catch-22 (1961), a novel by the American writer Joseph Heller that became the object of an appreciative cult. Anti-Soviet novels smuggled out of the USSR showed that satire and the satirical impulse flourished there under communism. Cancer Ward (1968-1969) by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and The Bluebottle (1963; trans. 1963) and Ward 7 (1965; trans. 1966) by Valeriy Tarsis, for example, took on the Soviet bureaucracy, the police state, and the party line.

Satirical thrusts at the lifestyles of their fellow Americans in the second half of the 20th century were aimed, subtly, by John Cheever and John Updike in their stories and novels and, in more barbed fashion, by Tom Wolfe in A Man in Full (1998), an extravagant saga about an Atlanta property magnate. The caustic and subversive satirical novels of Gore Vidal, including Myra Breckinridge (1968), Myron (1974), Duluth (1983), Live From Golgotha (1992), and The Smithsonian Institution (1998), are generally praised for their progressive ideas. However, Vidal’s exploration of American history, in such novels as Washington, D.C. (1967), 1876 (1976), Lincoln (1984), and The Golden Age (2000), are regarded as his principal contributions to satirical fiction.

Contemporary satirical novels include A Tenured Professor (1990), by the late Harvard Professor Emeritus John Kenneth Galbraith, about a liberal economist who makes a fortune on the stock market and uses the money to subvert the established order. In Gridlock (1991), the comedian Ben Elton satirized contemporary society’s over-dependence on the motor car. Richard Condon’s Emperor of America (1990) is a satire about an “imperial presidency” based on Ronald Reagan. Why Not Me? The Inside Story of the Making and Unmaking of the Franken Presidency (1999) is a satirical “novel” by comedian Al Franken detailing his fictional candidacy for the presidency of the United States in the 2000 election. In A Planet for the President (2004) by Alistair Beaton, the US president (an obvious caricature of George W. Bush) finally faces up to the disastrous reality of global warming. In the post 9/11 era, The Lamentable Journey of Omaha Bigelow into the Impenetrable Loisaida Jungle (2004) by the Puerto Rican-born American author Edgardo Vega Yunqué is a surreal take on New York streetlife punctuated by satirical commentary on United States presidents, social justice, religion, and American militarism. Recent presidential elections in the United States (2000 and 2004) have contributed to a resurgence in satirical drama and film.

Satirical films emerged from the Cold War era, including Dr Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) by Stanley Kubrick and Whoops Apocalypse (1986) (based on the 1982 British television sitcom), through to a focus on presidential and party politics including Bob Roberts (1992), Wag the Dog (1997), Primary Colors (1998), Bulworth (1998), Dick (1999), and Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) by Michael Moore. During the 20th century, animation created new possibilities for film and television. Early satirical examples of animated political cartoons were produced by Walt Disney during World War II, such as Der Fuehrer's Face (1942), which ridiculed Adolf Hitler. By the end of the century, The Simpsons (1989- ) was firmly established as the longest-running, most globally popular cartoon television series, both providing satirical glimpses of American life, and caricaturing other nations and communities.

Political cartoons continued to appear in daily and weekly national newspapers, and magazines. The Doonesbury cartoons of Garry Trudeau are syndicated globally; those of Steve Bell appear in The Guardian, and Michael Heath in Private Eye and The Spectator. Mad magazine, which was first published in the United States in 1952 as a comic book, specialized in parody, spoof, and lampoon. In Britain the satirical magazine Private Eye was born in 1961. Threatened by Private Eye, Punch presented itself as the true voice of satire compared with the parody and spoof of its competitor. However, these distinctions were increasingly difficult to sustain as the categories of humour merged. Malcolm Muggeridge, a former editor of Punch, considered Private Eye “silly” compared with the more “serious” tone of Punch, which aimed to emulate the Swiftian mode of satire.

Those involved in the “satire boom” in Britain were primarily “angry young men” who had been to public school and graduated from Oxford or Cambridge universities, a number of whom had been part of the Cambridge Footlights Review that created Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s. In 1962 That Was the Week That Was began broadcasting on British television. This was the first of a large number of British satirical programmes, through to the 21st century, including The Frost Report (1966-1967), The Late Show (1966-1967), Spitting Image (1984-1996), Have I Got News For You? (1990- ), Bremner, Bird and Fortune (1999- ), Dead Ringers (2002- ), and Don’t Watch That, Watch This (2005). During the same period, various distinctively British situation comedies such as Yes, Minister (1980-1984) and Yes, Prime Minister (1986-1987), The New Statesman (1987-1992), and The Thick of It (2005) all contained elements of satire. Equivalent US television series include Saturday Night Live (1975- ) and The Late Late Show (1995- ), as well as programmes and films spawned from the magazine National Lampoon (1970-1998).

VIII

Satire at the End of the 20th Century

At the turn of the 21st century, satire has persisted as a significant form of comedy, although it is now less distinguishable from other categories of humour, including parody and lampoon. In her book The Language of Humour (1998), the English language expert Alison Ross defines satire today as “the use of ridicule, irony, sarcasm, etc. to expose folly or vice, or to lampoon…” She argues that modern satire is purposeful and serious. It has become an important vehicle for political and cultural comment, echoing its origins as a means of recognizing and challenging propaganda and ideologies, whether religious or political in nature.