[If ever a year both needed and yet resisted a heavy dose of satire, it would be 2024. So for this year’s April Fool’s series I’ll share a humorous handful of SatireStudying posts—please add your thoughts on these and any other satirical texts you’d highlight for a knee-slapping yet pointed crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On the
double-edged satire at the heart of Mark Twain’s first big hit.
I haven’t
done an exhaustive survey or anything, but it seems to me that most social or
political satire is both
directed at a particular target and driven by an earnest embrace of some
alternative idea. Take perhaps the most famous satirical work of all time, Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” (1729):
seems to be suggesting that the solution to the problems of Irish poverty and
hunger is to eat Irish babies; is really satirizing English bigotry toward the
Irish; and so is genuinely (if of course very subtly) pro-Irish instead. Similarly,
Joseph
Heller’s Catch-22 (1961)
satirizes virtually every aspect of war (even a war as seemingly noble as World
War II) while sympathizing quite overtly and poignantly with its soldier
protagonists; Heller’s satire would to my mind be entirely unsuccessful if we
didn’t come to care about those soldiers. Certainly there are satirical voices
which take on all comers (The Onion
comes
to mind), but for the most part, I’d say that social satire needs the accompanying
earnest advocacy to function.
Mark
Twain’s most famous character, Huck Finn, proves that point quite precisely:
Huck is painfully earnest, almost always unable to recognize humor at all (for
example), and it is through that earnest perspective that Twain creates his satires of
numerous aspects of antebellum (and postbellum) Southern and American society. But
Twain’s first book, the travelogue Innocents
Abroad; or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress (1869, revised from 1867 newspaper
pieces), is much more confusingly and crucially all-encompassing in its
satirizing. At first glance Twain seems to be satirizing the reverent tone and
attitude of typical travelogues, and thus too the Old World cultures which
demand such reverence; but at the same time, his American travelers, including
the author himself, come in for just as much ridicule, most especially for
their ignorance of these other cultures and their tendency toward pro-American
provincialism. If both communities are ultimately, equally foolish and silly,
though, it’s fair to ask whether the satire has a point.
Innocents is unquestionably a messy and
sprawling book (reflecting at least in part its origins in those many different
newspaper pieces), but I’d argue that its satire is in fact pointed precisely
in its multi-directionality. After all, one of the central goals of any
satirist must be to create discomfort, to force an audience out of any and all
comfort zones and into the space where established narratives or norms are
challenged and made literally laughable. While Heller’s book (for example)
certainly does so when it comes to any and all pro-war narratives, it might at
the same time make already anti-war readers more
comfortable, reinforce their existing views and ideas. That’s not necessarily a
bad thing (again, having an earnest point can make the satire of other points
more successful), but there’s something to be said for a satire that doesn’t
let any of us get too comfortable in where we are or what we believe. And
that’s doubly true for a travel satire—whether we think home is always the best
or are just constantly searching for somewhere better, we’re likely to be
over-simplifying both places, and Twain’s book forces us to push beyond those
simplifications and continue our journey in a more complex perspective.
Next
satire tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do
you think? Other satirical works you’d share?
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