Ada Travelsted Skillern, Bowling Green High School

Ada Travelsted Skillern, Bowling Green High School Through the Dark Glass: From Swift to the Simpsons Teaching high school students how to critique and create satire General Teaching Strategies-Outline: I. Catch students unaware and assign “A Modest Proposal,” with no prefatory remarks, as rhetorical analysis homework. II. Discuss the homework (assignment attached) the next day. III. Follow-up with an analysis of “Ketchup Soup” and “Feed the Children” commercials, comparing/contrasting audience awareness, rhetorical appeals, persuasive devices in each. IV. SATIRE: definition, devices, techniques, etc. V. “Hold up the glass” and examine some of the less flattering aspects of American culture: Dove/Slob Evolution The Onion Saturday Night Live Weekend Update with Seth-Really?!? Lindsay Lohan eHarmony Parody The New Yorker Cartoons VI. Cultural Satire continued: The Simpsons (at this point in the spring, we have read Hamlet, and all freshmen read The Odyssey, so we examine the episode that “retells” The Iliad/the Odyssey and Hamlet). VII. Political Satire: Fresh Air interview of Jon Stewart (10/4/2010—beautiful explanations of The Daily Show’s purpose, comedic approaches, etcetera) Daily Show clips: Parody of Glenn Beck, interview with Jim Cramer J. Stewart speech at the close of the “Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear” (10/30/2010) TIME Cartoons of the Week VIII. Culminating Creative Activity: Compose an original satire (alone or with a partner). Share them/vote on the best one (could design apt satirical crowns for the winners to wear). IX. Culminating Analytical Assessment: In-class timed essay over The Onion-MagnaSoles (2006) prompt X. Additional Resources included in the PowerPoint, including Applied Practice: Satire Selections, which has terrific AP-style multiple choice and Free Response questions—what appeals to me about it as well is that it has the older writers and prose—I think it would be ideal to begin and end with practice and analysis of the older prose; I plan to do so this year, now that I have discovered this resource. Some of my reflections on the satire unit: we don’t cover it until April, but it ends up being one of the most fun and intellectually challenging all year—I love that it helps foster/encourage them to be more “informed citizens” and creators/ original commentators on the culture of high school and all the larger cultural circles (town, state, country, world) of which they are members. As well, the discussions provoked by satirical examples encourage careful analysis of visual arguments as well as traditional texts. They seem to gain confidence in their analytical abilities by the end of this unit. The process of creating original satire helps my students internalize and be able to recognize a lot more quickly satirical elements; “publishing” their satires in class has become one of the highlights of showmanship of the year. I think this year that I will experiment beyond the “Modest Proposal” essay or Onion journalistic style article, and offer original political cartoons, political ad parodies, Daily Show or Weekend Update-style video segments as options, too. One aspect of the Language course that I have found more difficult to get a handle on is how to organize and hold students accountable for being informed citizens, but this goal is also what makes the course so immediately accessible and relevant to them—it also lends itself to such natural collaboration with the Government & Politics instructor (political cartoons, columnist/Op-Ed analysis, etc.); one of the best professional compliments a student can pay is that she no longer can shop, watch a movie, or a commercial without thinking analytically, and the work we do with satire seems to help accomplish that. GENERAL OVERVIEW of SATIRE: SATIRE: any piece of writing designed to make its readers feel critical—of themselves, of their fellow human beings, of their society. Some satire intends to make us laugh at human foolishness and weakness; others make us angry and indignant at human vices and crimes. Swift’s satire sometimes provokes laughter, but often laughter of a bitter kind. Satirists are dissatisfied with things as they are, and they want to make them better. Satirists know that human beings often don’t respond well to lecture or admonitions. To shake us out of our complacency and provoke us to hold the glass up to see ourselves and our world more honestly, they avoid offering straightforward advice. Instead, they make fun of selfish, mean-spirited, or willfully ignorant people in the hope that we will see ourselves in such people and mend our ways. Devices satirists employ: 1. EXAGGERATION: to enlarge, increase, or represent something beyond normal bounds so that it becomes ridiculous and its faults can be seen; every idea and concept is carried to the extreme, to capture the reader’s attention. No reasonable halfway measures are used--something is either all good or all bad. HYPERBOLE: wildly extravagant exaggeration 2. UNDERSTATEMENT: the opposite of exaggeration (such as being casual and offhanded about something quite serious; making less of a deal of something than it is) 3. IRONY: things are just the opposite of what they seem. Something small and trivial is made to seem important or serious; known as the “mountain out of a molehill” method. This can be reversed, as when something very important is made trivial, to show that people aren’t paying enough attention to this problem. In either case, the subject is described as the opposite of what really exists. 4. INCONGRUITY: To present things that are out of place or are absurd in relation to its surroundings; INCONGRUOUS JUXTAPOSITION: placing side by side two things that do not belong together. 5. REVERSAL: To present the opposite of the normal order (e.g., the order of events, hierarchical order). 6. PARODY: To imitate the techniques and/or style of some person, place, or thing. What is the risk all satirists run? SATIRE is not just a type of RHETORICAL ANALYSIS; it is an ARGUMENT; therefore, one should reflexively think about the RHETORICAL TRIANGLE (Speaker/Audience/Subject) and consider the creator’s choices/reasoning for constructing his argument in this manner. Remember, also, the “Triumvirate of Persuasive Appeals”: 1. Logical appeals: supporting a position with evidence, such as facts or statistics; 2. Emotional appeals: passages that use words that arouse strong feelings; 3. Ethical appeals: passages that establish the writer as sincere and qualified to make the remarks. Satire can have two MOODS: 1. BEMUSED/GENTLE (Horatian) -- where the humor is mild and the author sees the problem as more foolish than evil; 2. BITING/ANGRY (Juvenalian) --where the ridicule is savage and the author sees the problem as urgent and severe, possibly evil. Satire can be directed at several kinds of TARGETS: 1. THE INDIVIDUAL -- the author makes fun of one person’s behavior and beliefs because he feels that the person is foolish or malicious. One example is Swift’s “The Death of the Late Famous General.” 2. THE GROUP -- the target can be a political party, a club, a social class, a profession, even a whole society. 3. THE “SYSTEM” -- this often involves large systems of beliefs, such as religion, or human nature in general. One example is Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” Forms Satirists Use: 1. FANTASY -- the setting of the satire is an imaginary world or time. It softens the criticism by removing it from reality. The idea behind it: people are more willing to consider criticism if the finger isn’t pointing directly at them. 2. MOCK HEROICS -- take the realistic problem or dispute and turn it into a highly exaggerated epic battle. 3. FORMAL PROPOSAL -- prepare a highly serious, highly rational proposal for action on this problem, but make it totally unreasonable and exaggerated. 4. PRAISE/BLAME -- take something that is bad and praise it without boundary, or take something good and cut it to shreds. Either way, the reader will appreciate the irony the author intends. Some of our brief class observations about the Simpsons: The SIMPSONS: caters to two audiences: 1. “low-brow” humor: crass, more obvious, bathroom humor. Examples: the Three Stooges, slapstick, cheap jokes, physical comedy. 2. “high-brow” humor: subtle, often has two different meanings. INCONGRUOUS JUXTAPOSITION: EX. Odysseus says he won’t make a sacrifice to the gods, because it’s barbaric, and then immediately orders all captured enemies to be slain. Homer: the “everyman” writer of the Odyssey. Hero: Odysseus Odysseus fights the Trojan War for ten years; it takes him another ten to get home to his beloved Penelope. Odysseus’s journey and all of the obstacles that distract him from his true destiny became a PARADIGM, or the model, for all men’s lives/journeys. SIRENS: women who are irresistible and almost destroy the men; in our lives, they are the distractions, temptations that preclude our reaching our true destinies. O Brother, Where Art Thou? A remake of the Odyssey in recent years. Like the Simpsons’ television series, it reflects mankind in many unflattering, non-heroic, ignoble, and definitely recognizable ways (like the verisimilitude of many of Chaucer’s characters in The Canterbury Tales). The Simpsons recast The Trojan War, Joan of Arc, and Hamlet: Opening song/movement of the show: reflects the fast pace of American society. Individual characters satirize what aspects of American culture? HOMER: factory job, puts in his time (work is joyless) MARGE: oblivious; chooses to believe and promote the good. BART: mischievous, loves pranks, school is a joke. LISA: the “good” child; foil for Bart. BABY MAGGIE: easy to lose her in the fast hustle Early in episode: allusion to O.J. Simpson Failing to read to his children when they were babies: satirizes parents’ best intentions. REMEMBER as you create your own: Satire is more than ridicule: it is ridicule with a purpose. Just making fun of someone because you don’t like them is not satire. You must focus on the problem, the foolishness or wrongs that ought to be changed. Find a way to make these seem ridiculous, but make the reader think about the problem at the same time he/she is laughing, and you have written an effective satire. As a class, generate a list of problems you might attack in your own original satires. AP prompts throughout the brief unit to assess their ability to write on the subject: the Cat Bill (1982); Ellen Goodman’s “The Company Man” (1995); The Onion (2006), the Pink Flamingo (2006). Other ideas offered by many amazing teachers on the AP English list-serve: Show the Clayton Bigsby, black White Supremacist episode of the Dave Chappelle show because it uses many of the techniques we cover (exaggeration, offensive language, etc.) and it's just plain brilliant. Also has a graphic example of the "tell"--the point where if you've had any question about whether the satire is real or sarcastic, you now know (in this case, it's a visual metaphor, as well-- the head exploding from the knowledge). Dixie Dellinger explains to her kids that one can associate different levels of humor with different body parts: Bathroom humor is lowest; bawdy humor is only slightly higher; Belly laughs over slapstick; traditional humor in the heart; wit associated with the brain, and satire is the highest and most complex level of humor.