Why is satire an effective device for social critique and social change?

Question

I have to write an essay about it using family guy episodes.

Answer 1

satire an effective device for social critique

Contemporary western satire
Stephen Colbert’s television program The Colbert Report is instructive in the methods of satire. Colbert impersonates an opinionated self-righteous conservative who, in his TV interviews, interrupts people, points and wags his finger at them, and unwittingly uses every logical fallacy known to man. Colbert's finger wagging character is supposedly inspired by Bill O'Reilly, who hosts a conservative news program on Fox News Channel.

Cartoonists often use satire as well as straight humour. For example, Garry Trudeau, whose comic strip Doonesbury has charted and recorded every American folly for the last generation. With his satiric comic strips dealing with Viet Nam (and now, Iraq), dumbed down education, and over-eating at "McFriendly's", Trudeau has continued to entertain the American public, while trying to instruct it. Recently one of his gay characters lamented that because he was not legally married to his partner, he was deprived of the "exquisite agony" of getting a nasty and painful divorce like the rest of us. This, of course, satirizes the claim that gay unions would denigrate the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.

On occasion, satire can cause social change. For instance, the comic strip Doonesbury satirized a Florida county that had a law requiring minorities to have a passcard in the area; the law was soon repealed with an act nicknamed the Doonesbury Act.[citation needed] In the 2000 Canadian federal election campaign, a Canadian Alliance proposal for a mechanism to require a referendum in response to a petition of sufficient size was satirized by the television show This Hour Has 22 Minutes so effectively that it was discredited and soon dropped.

Many modern TV shows combine satirical and comical elements. The most prominent TV satire is the animated series The Simpsons, other examples are South Park and Family Guy Animated shows can easily use images of public figures and generally have greater latitude than conventional shows using actors. Like its literary predecessors, TV satire can have comical parts as well; proof of The Simpson's mainly satirical character is the opening sequence, mocking aspects of the modern (not only) US-American way of living. Series 7: The Contenders satirized what might happen if reality TV shows got out of hand and ended up in people getting killed for entertainment.

Satiric parodies are common on the internet; one of the most prominent examples is the news satire site The Onion. Individuals are picking up the idea and exploiting the genre through their blogs, such as The Swift Report. Also, satirical shows like Have I Got News For You and They Think It's All Over are very popular on British television.

Satire under fire
Because satire is stealthy criticism, it frequently escapes censorship. Periodically, however, it runs into serious opposition.

In 1599, the Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift and the Bishop of London George Abbott, whose offices had the function of licensing books for publication in England, issued a decree banning verse satire. The decree ordered the burning of certain volumes of satire by John Marston, Thomas Middleton, Joseph Hall, and others; it also required history plays to be specially approved by a member of the Queen's Privy Council, and it prohibited the future printing of satire in verse. The motives for the ban are obscure, particularly since some of the books banned had been licensed by the same authorities less than a year earlier. Various scholars have argued that the target was obscenity, libel, or sedition. It seems likely that lingering anxiety about the Martin Marprelate controversy, in which the bishops themselves had employed satirists, played a role; both Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey, two of the key figures in that controversy, suffered a complete ban on all their works. In the event, though, the ban was little enforced, even by the licensing authority itself.

In Italy the media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi used censorship by stopping RAI Television's satirical series, Raiot, Daniele Luttazzi's Satyricon, Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro's Sciuscià, even a special Blob series on Berlusconi himself, by arguing that they were vulgar and full of disrespect to the government. He claimed that he would sue the RAI for 21,000,000 Euros if the show went on. RAI stopped the show. Sabina Guzzanti, creator of the show, went to court to proceed with the show and won the case. However, the government and the RAI refused to follow the court order and the show never went on air again.[citation needed]

In 2001 the British television network Channel 4 aired a special edition of the spoof current affairs series Brass Eye, which was intended to mock and satirize the fascination of modern journalism with child molesters and pedophiles. The TV network received an enormous number of complaints from members of the public, who were outraged that the show would mock a subject considered by many to be too "serious" to be the subject of humour.

In 2006 British commedian Sacha Baron Cohen released Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan a "mockumentary" that satirized everyone from high society, to low life frat boys. Criticism of the film was heavy, from claims of Antisemitism, to the massive boycott of the film by the Kazakhstan government.

Answer 2

I suggest that the upper limit for contributions be done away with, and that the maximum payouts in retirement still remain as they are, adjusted for inflation. Social security is not a "give away" program but one that we all contribute to like a savings plan, and should be protected from other uses by the government. Do you agree or disagree and why? If you are so worried about it then why don't you; first put it back into the private sector and make to were no can take out money from it for their own interest, second pay back every penny you have borrowed from both Social Security and Medicare, third take the illegal immigrants off of it and those who come over here but never paid a penny to it, and lastly have it the same for everyone; in other words government officials are to participate in it and if they want something more they do it on their own without the tax payers funding it?Yet, the monetary stytem feeding the imbalances had never been really changed. They, a group of scholars, suggested that all interest rates would be 3% or less for everyone to become rich if desired (that must be true also to taces). The best economic situation would be, they said, when there were no interest rates. Why not try this solution? The rich would still be rich. My question is: when soial security becomes a problem connected to federal debts, why not work with a balanced or gain budget and spend no more than comes in, as any family has to strive for? Why not ban all loobying gifts in order to get laws that serve the country? God bless America.