Political Satire and Huck Finn

First let's start with what satire is. According to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary it can best be defined as wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly. Basically what this means is to make fun of someone (or something) to show how foolish they (or it) really is.

One of my favorite T.V. series of all time would definitely, hands-down, without a doubt have to be Saturday Night Live, SNL for short. I'm sure you've heard of SNL before, and if you haven't please have a talk with my Grandpa he'd be happy to show you a few oldies. Saturday Night is full of satire left and right, I feel as if the roots of this show were built on satire. So when it came to choosing what direction I wanted to go with I had no idea. There are so many different sketches that I could talk about for hours on end (luckily for you this won't take hours).

After watching hours of my favorite SNL sketches I decided what route I was going to take: Political Satire. I know how that sounds if you're anything like me, lame, but the producers and writers make this anything but boring. Recently, the 2012 Presidential election was going on and that was all anyone was talking about... yay. This is a blog on satire, not politics so if you have no idea what happened during the 2012 election you should talk to your U.S. History teacher, not me. Anyway, it was pretty obvious that the two candidates President Obama and Mitt Romney did not like one another. The 3 debates gradually showed the dislike between the two grow. My favorite (and i say this loosely) debate would definitely be the town hall style, debate two. Why? Obama and Romney were in each others faces, what's not to love?! But seriously, not only that but the sketch SNL did on this was not only completely hilarious but strangely accurate. Not joking when I say this 10 minute video makes me die from laughter. If you're trying to tickle your funny bone I suggest you watch the video located below.

So why is this video considered satire?  Well if you haven't been reading this blog post you might not realize the obvious. What Jason Sudeikis and Jay Pharoah are doing in this sketch is politely trying to show President Obama and Mitt Romney how rediculous they look (sarcasm).

The same type of satire that is used by the actors and through the writers of Saturday Night Live is also clearly shown in Mark Twain's novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This novel is about a a young boy named Huckleberry Finn who travels down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave named Jim. The duo travel their way through the South as we see them also 'travel' through many different stereotypes of that time. The satire in Huck Finn is a play on the social and political views of slavery. Back in the day it wasn't necessarily accepted to travel down a river on a raft helping a slave to escape. Strangely enough, Huck was okay with that. And there begins the humor in Huck Finn. One prime example that I thought was especially funny about the friendship between Huck and Jim is the conversation between the two about King Solomon and King Louis of France. Huck tries explaining the details of both kings to Jim, and Jim just contradicts him with uniquely logical arguments the entire time. It gets better when Huck tells Jim that King Louis speaks French which makes no sense to Jim, and he asks Huck if a cat is a man, or if a cow is a man. Huck responds no, so Jim says of King Louis being a man, "Dad blame it, why don' he talk like a man?  You answer me dat!" (Chapter 14). I find this funny because Jim is made out to be this character who has no idea about anything and relies on Huck (we later see that Jim is a lot smarter then first let off to be). This shows that Twain made Jim's character a pretty narrow stereotypical view of African Americans during that time which is exactly what the writers of Saturday Night Live do to project a certain prospective of the former presidential candidates.

So there you have it, satire. Whether it be political or just simple irony, it can be tied into almost anything you can think of. So go ahead, think about it. What other examples of satire can you think of?