Satire, what is it?

Before we get into that I shall reflect on our current unit as a whole. ‘The Act of Writing’ is the unit PLP 12 cohort is currently working through. The unit is before us for the main reason of preparation, as are writing the English 12 provincial in January. We are writing this exam months earlier than the rest of my graduating class in order to try and free up space and room within the curriculum and relieve some stress from our minds.  I am oh so happy we are doing this unit because I need help improving my writing skills and want to score high on my provincial exam. The unit has been a grind, in my opinion, it’s been less fun and more mentally fatiguing than talking about cool stuff like Titan missiles and Mobsters. Considering this I can see the value of what we are learning and how it will help me in January.

I have done lots of learning so far this year. ‘The Act of Writing’ unit has taught me about writing and its different aspects which are many. From style, forms and voice to persuasion, satire and the different paragraphs within a essay a lot of information has been thrown at me and I’m trying my best to comprehend it all.  Readings like “Local Foreign Policy” and “Thanks for not Killing” have also broadened my mind to what good writing is and how the use of all the things I’ve been learning about looks.

(below is “Thanks For Not Killing My Son” visual short film)

The final unit assignment revolved around Satire, and creating our own. Here we can answer that fateful question asked at the top of this post. Willemse writes satire as “A literary work that ridicules its subject through the use of techniques such as exaggeration, reversal, incongruity, and/or parody in order to make a comment or criticism about it”. Each of these techniques having their own definitions.

Exaggeration: To enlarge, increase, or represent something beyond normal bounds so that it becomes ridiculous and its faults can be seen.

Reversal: To present the opposite of the normal order(eg, the order of events, hierarchical order.

Incongruity: To present things that are out of place or are absurd in relation to its surroundings

With this we learned about the difference between satire are parody which took some time in all honestly.

From there we were tasked to create our own satire through a video, podcast, photo or anything expressive.

Cashel, Tom and I took inspiration from SNL and there mockery of Trump that they seem to do on a constant basis. We wanted to take this and expand so Tom and Cashel had characters as well, giving more room for content and ideas that we could put a satirical twist on. We tried to create a video that highlighted the childishness of three of the most powerful leaders of the world, but we also wanted our viewers to gain a sort of understanding and message that we are not promoting this childishness but condemning it through absurd comedy and exaggeration. Our projects link together but are each there own entities with original content and editing.

The final product came out looking like this. ^

Struggles:

I believe that we struggled to emphasize the childishness above and beyond to make the exaggeration really visible. This was hard because we don’t look much like kindergarteners anymore and mimicking kid speech while trying to get across messages said by full adults is a challenge. The message that ‘we have childish leaders ruling some of the most powerful countries and its bad’ was also hard to describe without having a blurb at the end that ruined our comedic theme and tone.

Strengths:

I believe that the video is pretty well done. As our first task with satire and understanding it being hard enough, we tried through exaggeration to show the viewer how children looked when acting like some of the most powerful adults. I believe we nailed the comedy aspect. In my opinion the satire is there its just shrouded behind the true ridiculousness of how Trump, Putin and Kim Jong actually act in real life.

To conclude.

This unit is important and I know that. Ive been learning a lot and that is also important. It may be boring and times and feel monotonous to work through but its essential to my future in reality. The project was enjoyable for me, the more and more I work with Cashel and Tom the more I enjoy assignments and projects. Having an avenue like comedy to run down with this project helps make the work more enjoyable, as you can act more freely and expressive. Short films are also fun to make and improve my editing, filming, acting and time management skills.