Group Project
Our blog's topic is satire and how it influences and persuades an audience. One good newspaper that uses this a lot is The Onion. Like in The Modest Proposal, which we read for class, it has articles that are about serious issues but use satire to get across their point.
In this video, Trevor Noah uses comedy and satire and storytelling about how British took over India.
Satire is a literary device that uses humor to ridicule, criticize or expose flaws in society or humanity. Most satirical deliveries apply styles such as irony (opposite of the real meaning), hyperbole (over-exaggeration), and understatement (under-emphasis) to focus on or expose the target. Although satire is commonly used to mock flawed political systems and politicians, it can also be used to expose other issues including racism, classism, the divide between the rich and poor, and disturbing individual beliefs among others. In Born a Crime, Noah uses it to racism and apartheid in South Africa, like here when he learns how lenient people are on white people, “I learned how easy it is for white people to get comfortable with a system that awards them all the perks” (Noah 52).
Satire can be used to inform and persuade an audience to change their ways even though it uses a light-hearted or humorous approach. Satire creates awareness about disturbing issues in the society. At first, the audience may laugh but later they recognize that the issue being mocked is actually ridiculous and needs to be addressed. Satire matters because it helps us to face heavy issues with a light heart. In his book, Trevor Noah creates awareness about the problem of apartheid in South Africa and he uses such a humorous narration that it lifts the depression that one may feel reading about the racism that the native South Africans endured under the colonial Dutch. In chapter two, he writes:
"Soweto was designed to be bombed—that’s how forward-thinking the architects of apartheid were. The township was a city unto itself, with a population of nearly one million. There were only two roads in and out. That was so the military could lock us in, quell any rebellion. And if the monkeys ever went crazy and tried to break out of their cage, the air force could fly over and bomb the shit out of everyone" (Noah 28). In the above passage, Trevor uses satire to mock apartheidists by even calling them forward thinking in their plan to bomb the “monkeys” (black people) should they dare escape from their designed cage. Even though the passage is delivered satirically, it brings awareness of the violent, discriminative, and prejudicial environment of the apartheid South Africa and creates a discomfort that calls for reform.
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