When you hear the word politics, there’s a good chance your senses would probably begin to heighten. Politics as a subject is something that cold be considered undeniably fragile, especially in today’s climate in a world where any sort of information, false or not, can be spread to thousands. In this current era of politics, any mention of the subject at land can immediately bring an army of people against you. So when satire decides to become political, I’m sure you can already understand the outcome.
Some people will absolutely love it, and find it a good mockery of one political figure, or a few in some cases. Meanwhile, there will be others that are absolutely fuming at the result, and are on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. These roles could flip to any side of any political party, but if a political group will get angry by satire of certain figures no matter who it could be, then why is political satire still prevalent?
To put it simply, it’s not because anyone wants to make people angry on purpose. If anyone did that on purpose, it definitely would show through their work through a pretty heavy bias. Political satire has managed to thrive in today’s political environment for the sole purpose of its talking points. I’m not talking about during the piece of satire, but what comes as a result of it. Like I mentioned earlier, when it comes t talking about politics, it can get a huge ball rolling when it comes to discussion from either side of the argument. When we see something or someone we enjoy criticized, based on the situation, we can react in many different ways. While these still apply in politics, these extremes are dialed up. For example, the past presidential and vice presidential debates. Not even a few days after the event, people jumped on the satire bandwagon for both parties, and for the most recent debate, not even a week has passed.
It’s pretty obvious that people can capitalize off of politics, it can bring lots of potential viewership. But it can also bring lots of discussion, and even though talking about politics can get out of control, I think being able to talk about it can be a good thing. Sure, we may not agree with every point someone says, but the value of political satire, and especially satire in general, is that it allows society to gain a much more open mind about all sorts of subjects, warts and all. The first political debate seemed like a joke within itself to a lot of people, for all the right and wrong reasons. But if we’re able to make light of the situation in a comedic way, then we’ll be able to think about it more, comedically and psychologically. After all, the world is just one beautiful mess. We’ve just got to make the most of it, even with our differences.
