Satire has been a vital political weapon at some time or other in most societies. There are elements of intentional political satire in Aristophanes’ play The Wasps, Voltaire’s novel Candide lampoons political doctrines of his day and English literature is full of satire in plays, poetry and novels, particularly during the 18th and early 19th centuries—Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift is certainly one of the best known examples. In the 1960s television satire came of age in most Western countries, and especially in the United Kingdom and the USA, with programmes such as That Was the Week That Was. Similarly, satirical political periodicals like the British Private Eye and the French Le Canard Enchaîné have long been important. The essence of satire is to exaggerate grossly characteristics of the political targets—visually exemplified, for example, in the British television series of the 1980s, Spitting Image, and its numerous European counterparts, with their puppets’distorted ears and overlarge noses.
At its simplest level satire works by making a political opponent look ridiculous, pricking pomposity, reducing authority by encouraging laughter, or by reminding readers or audience of a politician’s less pleasant aspects. More deeply, satire can work by taking an argument literally, and encouraging people to think much more clearly about the logical implications of initially acceptable stances. Swift’s essay Modest Proposal, encouraging the eating of Irish babies to avoid famine, by extension from the territorial swallowing of Ireland by England, is such an example. Perhaps George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a combination of both styles: it makes egalitarian doctrines seem ridiculous by extending them to absurdity, and at the same time it makes the leaders of communist societies seem less than human by the animal analogy. Satire tends to flourish for brief periods in societies, and then fade away as the ever present forces that encourage deference to those in authority re-emerge.
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