I don’t know what the value of political satire is today. When I agree with the creator’s general political views, I enjoy satire, but the ones linked I didn’t agree with were much less fun. The original goal of satire is to poke fun at something and make you think about it. I feel like that’s hard when people either agree and think it’s funny or refuse to think about the joke. I think it’s hard to tell if satire is losing traction because of anomie or simply because the political climate specifically is too partisan. The argument makes sense; if any opposing view is considered bad but valid, it gives a lot less power for satire. The Guns SNL skit has over 7 million views on YouTube and the coronavirus bit from Randy Rainbow has over 1.5 million. There’s clearly still an audience for political satire but that doesn’t determine whether it’s still functioning as intended or just acting as entertainment.
The excerpt of the article talked about who satire afflicts and who it comforts and how that needs to align with who is already afflicted or comforted in society. The parody of Modern Major General didn’t feel like it followed that to me. It was poking fun at AOC, a young woman of color, in congress, which is mostly old white men. In that group she’s a minority, and even more generally in society the same is true. That video felt like it was a very personal, and unnecessary attack to her. Perhaps since I like her, I’m biased but I think that’s something to consider. I didn’t find the snowflake song as bad, but I didn’t like it either. That one was much more general, poking more at liberals than any individual.
I also don’t know if we’re too partisan for political satire to change people’s minds. I feel like satire could change a person’s mind, but many people right now are very set in stone in their political ideology. I think it would take more than a 3-minute political satire to change their opinion. There’s also a difference between agreeing with politics and liking someone’s character. The two often go hand in hand and seeing someone poke fun at a politician who you like might make you upset rather than think about the joke. Thinking about how I reacted to the AOC satire as comparted to the Randy Rainbow’s Trump satire (which I found amusing) makes me a little dubious that satire could work right now to change people’s minds. Perhaps in the future it could, but now everything is so polarized that it seems unlikely.
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