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Whether it is encouraging critical thinking or acting as much-needed social commentary Satire uses comedy to analyze flaws and injustices of contemporary society.
With its origins traced to Ancient Egypt around the early 2nd millennium BC with ‘The Satire of the Trades’. The satire genre has grown alongside humanity as well as our desire for truth stripped of illusion, a relentless pursuit of clarity that exposes the fragile fabric of our societal constructs across history.
The Satire genre evolved from the profound examination of human nature that is seen in Aristophanes’ ‘The Acharnians’ to the shedding of light on the political situations that occurred during England’s early 18th century seen in Jonathan Swift’s ‘Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships’ also known as ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, it meticulously adapted to and alongside our evolving environments in order to challenge the very essence of perception, provoking reflection on existence itself and the blind certainty with which we construct meaning.
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Laughing Through Life’s Misfortunes
Throughout the years Satire has grown alongside humanity and our societies. While ‘The Satire of the Trades’ stands as the first known recording of satire in use, the term did not surge alongside the Egyptian didactic work.
The term for it didn’t come to be until the earnestly cynical educator and rhetorician Marcus Fabius Quintilianus coined the term “satura” upon unveiling the metaphysical dimensions as he introduced the literary genre as we know it today, by accentuating the criticism aspect of Satire. Quintilianus not only managed to unearth the paradoxes of the nature of our existence but he also revealed the latent power of contradiction within the human condition.
Despite the art form still fostering some sort of criticism throughout ancient civilizations like Ancient Greece with Aristophanes’ work and the intricate writings that surged through the Warring States period toward the final centuries of the Zhou dynasty in Ancient China, Quintilianus was the one who formalized and solidified it as a literary genre.
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The Children Around the World Continue to Ask the question
Thanks to Quintilianus’ architectonic vision of Satire, its evolution became more drastic as it shaped the very fabric of modern civilizations. After its coinage during Pax Romana, and landing upon the early Middle Ages where the genre followed its newly formed critical essence yet due to the Catholic Church taking control of Europe after the Fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the genre’s criticism aspects were delivering in with more subtlety.
One modern aspect that satire takes and is many times overlooked is memes. While they were popular before the rise of the internet as seen with “Kilroy was here” or the classic “Cool S”, it wasn’t until the invention of the internet that the meme became a language of its own. Some maintain themselves as quirky or ephemeral jokes while others, which are the ones closest to satire, tend to rub upon the thin barrier between moral ambiguity and political correctness.
The effect of memes as a form of satire can be greatly shown across the world, one of set cases is within the country of Mexico. Over 85% of users had posted memes just within the past month over 60% of those memes being towards political topics. Through these fleeting fragments of digital culture, the meme acts as both a mirror and a magnifying glass, reflecting society’s contradictions while amplifying the silent tensions that brew beneath the surface of the political discourse.
The Chuckles of Reflection
Satire has seen many embodiments across History, growing from an educational tool to a central form of human entertainment. Having so many faces, allows the genre to actively criticize every aspect of human absurdity, reaching an audience in particularly every industry.
Often blending with other genres Satire was designed to be a reflection of human contemporary society, analyzing the absurdities of our existence by mocking at the flaws and contradictions in our behavior. It serves as a conduit through which the veil of normalcy is torn away, revealing the unsettling truths hidden beneath. By exposing the incongruities of our actions and beliefs, it urges us to confront the dissonance between our ideals and realities by questioning our perceptions and encouraging self-reflection.
An amazing example of this is one pinnacle of the Science Fiction genre, the astonishingly intricate work that is Stanislaw Lem’s 1971 novel ‘The Futurological Congress’. Lem interwovens Science Fiction, Dark Humor, and Philosophical Fiction to satirize not just the ostentation of academic gamesmanship and excessive optimism about the future more specifically technological utopias that were seen during the late 60s early 70s, but also criticized the Science Fiction genre itself alongside the tropes that re-surged during the New Wave Science Fiction movement that began a decade prior.
Since the book’s beginning Lem attacks the very foundations laid onto the genre’s way of portraying revolutions and totalitarian regimens, with the just first couple of pages featuring three to five offhand attacks and bombing attempts, written in a way that they feel absurd and disorientingly surreal. It deconstructs the illusion of control, forcing us to confront the arbitrary nature of our constructed realities.
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Reality’s Absurdities
The Satirical genre was created with a purpose of pointing out the absurdities of the human experience. Still, not all historical periods and societies were as tolerant to any sort of dissent as we see today, with institutions like Puritan New England and the Soviet Union up to the late 1980s often censoring criticism. So as a way to disguise set reproach, it often became entangled with comedy, subverting the surface of mirth to reveal the deeper tensions of the human condition.
While many may view this blend as an act of dullness or diffuseness, it in fact allows for the satirizisms to have a more enduring and outlasting impact. A very common way people nowadays deal with adversity is through the phrase “laughing at one’s own misfortune”, as humor allows us not only to have a psychological release, shifting our sense of perspective into one of resilience allowing for a more effective stress coping, but it also acts as an offer for a means to reconcile and navigate with the inherent contradictions of our existence.
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The Satire genre is more than just mockingly taunting the absurdity of life. It is a delicate dance with discomfort, a path that leads through the chaos of contradiction to find meaning in what seems senseless. Acting as a profound meditation on the fragility of truth, unveiling the underlying structures of belief and illusion and forcing us to confront the paradox of seeking certainty in an inherently uncertain world. Teaching us that meaning is not a fixed construct, but a fluid reflection of our willingness to embrace the void, standing as a reminder that wisdom often lies not in the answers we find, but in the questions we dare to ask.
By Mario Martinez Ignacio
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Mario Martinez Ignacio is a writer from Mexico City. As a child, he spent most of his free time deep-diving into online wikis, which sparked a passion for lore and worldbuilding. Driven by his love for writing, Mario obtained a BFA in Dramatic Writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2024. With the objective of inspiring others, he fuses writing and education to create narratives that entertain while igniting curiosity and fostering new perspectives, one word at a time.
Mario Martinez Ignacio is a writer from Mexico City. As a child, he spent most of his free time deep-diving into online wikis, which sparked a passion for lore and worldbuilding. Driven by his love for writing, Mario obtained a BFA in Dramatic Writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2024. With the objective of inspiring others, he fuses writing and education to create narratives that entertain while igniting curiosity and fostering new perspectives, one word at a time.
