Political Satire

“Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!”, the opening line in Saturday Night Live. In Korea, there has been SNL season 9 from March 2017. Many viewers enjoy the contents of SNL, and they are giving a favorable evaluation because their political satire has been revived in season 9. Actually, there was a satire “여의도 텔레토비” which means corrupted members of the National Assembly during the run-up to the election in 2012. Public also liked it because it had both funny factors and satirical contents, but 여의도 텔레토비 was banned while former President Park Geun-Hye was in Blue House and other satirical factors had not the least chance to be shown. 미운 우리 프로듀스 101 showed during the 2016 election campaign has revived after past president Park Geun-hye was

Comedy programs influence people not only in negative ways but also positive ways. Let’s talk about the negative effects first. When comedians use satire, they usually dress up as a politician whom they try to be, copy politician’s action, language, face and attitude and pretend to be him. They describe one’s characteristic in specific, but negative ways. Politicians are often portrayed negatively rather than positively. However, comedians satirize politician’s personality, not political pledges so one’s action and comment are the subject of lampoon. As they are shown negatively to public, people have negative images of them. In ‘victims of GAG Concert’ part, writers researched the shown image of politicians in GAG Concert. The result was that people have negative images on politicians. They especially 20s thought that images of politicians were negative, politicians’ social roles are poor and moral evaluation of them is low. Comedy programs have more influences on people with little political knowledge. As they have poor knowledge in politics, they easily accept the negative contents about politicians, so the viewers only have biased recognitions not knowing the true merits of politicians. Actually, there is research called Late-night comedy in election 2000 about the relationship between people with different levels of political knowledge and late-night program exposure. During the

There is a contrasting example, Obama Care. When President Obama made his health care plan, Obama Care for all people for the first time in the history of USA, a lot of citizens did not know the existence of it. So the president Obama appeared on the comedy show “Between Two Ferns” to promote Obama Care. Obama wanted more people to sign up for the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges. He started promotion by saying the website healthcare.gov. On the show, he carries on talking about the circumstances about how to sign-up for health care, the inexpensive membership fee, an implication, a due date and a safe law. Obama suggests other solutions that people can use for signing up in response to a popular question “what if I do not have a computer”. After Obama’s appearance, this video had 11 million views and Healthcare.gov traffic was up almost 40%, more than 890,000 visits. This is a good example of positive comedy program effect. Many people who watched the video, realized the law and signed up for it. As a result, I have clearly shown the real influence of comedy programs on people’s determination. Some people learn all about politics, have the negative image of politicians and this results in the low supporting rate. In the other case people determined to sign up for Obama Care after gaining information about it via comedy programs. Comedy programs make people determine in positive and negative