A Filmmaker's Guide to: Satire

In this chapter of ‘the filmmaker’s guide’ we’re actually going to be learning about literature and film together. I understand that many of you are sitting in university during difficult times and finding it increasingly hard to study and I understand that many of you who are not at university or not planning on it are possibly stuck of what to do, need a break or even need to catch up on learning film before you get to the next level. This guide will be brief but will also contain: new vocabulary, concepts and theories, films to watch and we will be exploring something taboo until now in the ‘filmmaker’s guide’ - academia (abyss opens). Each article will explore a different concept of film, philosophy, literature or bibliography/filmography etc. in order to give you something new to learn each time we see each other. You can use some of the words amongst family and friends to sound clever or you can get back to me (email in bio) and tell me how you’re doing. So, strap in and prepare for the filmmaker’s guide to film studies because it is going to be one wild ride.

Satire

What is it?

Satire is the use of methods like humour or exaggeration to express the distrust for a situation or to make light of faults within the situation that have gone ignored.

Satire is one of the world's most relatable genres of art because it is where we can laugh at each other and at ourselves without being called rude or unpleasant because that is what the genre wants us to do. Popular works of satire include the all too famous American sit-com cartoons "The Simpsons" and "Family Guy". Whereas, in literature, satire has built itself up most through the previous century's dip into the world of dystopia. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, Anthony Burgess and Tom Wolfe are mostly regarded for their anti-humour attempts at satire, focusing on making the faults exaggerated and embedding the result of a far-fetched nature that is not necessarily impossible. Later on, authors like Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk and other authors of the 'transgressive era' sought to make a living out of pointing out where their generation was most definitely going wrong and again, it was a piece of criticism rather than humour.

Humour and satire though, are more suited to television and film rather than novels. Novels tend to offer a serious criticism because the medium is seen as one that 'intellectuals' pursue, for some reason. But, when it comes to television and film, few people are frightened of a little bit of satire, even if it does come across as a tad offensive.

What about in film?

Well, as we discussed, the realm of film is the place to do funny satire because it works. Films like Mickey Rooney's "Quicksand" and basically every film that Charlie Chaplin ever made comes off as humorous satire. Whereas, even film can have reasonably serious satire as well with Christian Bale's starer, "Equilibrium" and the more recent one with Alicia Vikander, "Ex-Machina". Anti-humour satire sometimes, as we can see, reaches in the realm of sci-fi as it tries to convince us of a dystopian future that awaits us if we don't change our ways now. Personally, because of the prophetic nature of these films, I often choose to go back in time to when satire was supposed to be about being funny and critical about the era you lived in rather than apocalyptic and existential. I can have an existential crisis in my own time thank you very much.

Here's a watchlist which gives you variations of satirical films:

- The Simpsons Movie (2007)

- Quicksand (1950)

- The Great Dictator (1940)

- Vice (2018)

- American Psycho (2000)

- Birdman (2014)

Now, let's take a quick look at a reading list that you can read some of the books from and further your base knowledge of satire.

Further Reading:

• Huxley, A (2007). Brave New World . UK: Vintage Classics
• Lewis, S (2017). It Can't Happen Here. UK: Penguin Modern Classics.
• Orwell, G (2004). Nineteen Eighty-Four. 2nd ed. UK: Penguin.
• Roth, P (2005). The Plot Against America. 2nd ed. USA: Vintage Classics
• Zamyatin, Y (1993). We. 2nd ed. UK: Penguin.