Moral Message Of Satire Essay

Name: Weitao Li

Instructor: Julie Flynn

Course:301: College Writing and Research

Date:9/15/2015

The Role of the Audience in Conveying the Moral Message of the Satire

Satire has been extensively used in order to convey powerful moral messages concerning social flaws, behaviors, attitudes and worldviews. The purpose of satire is to ridicule the social problems in order to cause a change of the society. Particular, Both authors of these two articles hope to help the audience to think about the issue, analyze it, and understand its implications, as they are put forth by the author. The strategies and means of creating satire differ to other kinds of literature. And it has to apply current issues. It went beyond the traditional media, and became televised or even broadcasted online. Satire is a complex type of literature that can impact audiences profoundly and cause them to analyze the subject matter critically, and consequently prompt them to

act with their conclusions. Therefore, the role of the audience in satire is crucial, because the work cannot be effective in lack of collaborative and responsive audiences. In order for the satire to be effective, and have the moral effect intended by the author in regards to his target, the audience needs to engage with the work of satire, analyze it, understand the argument, and constitute itself as part of the same reality, then find out that the issue is poignant.
Satire is a very complex form, which requires the audience’s full attention and focus, in order for the message to become apparent to the audience. Gray, Jones and Thompson explain in this respect, that “Satire demands a heightened state of awareness and mental participation in its audience” (15). These further shows that the audience needs to play an active role in engaging with and breaking the satire’s hidden meanings. The audience’s lack of interest and lack of engagement cause satire to lose its impact, and its moral message is lost, or understood incorrectly. However, having interest is not enough, as the role of the audience is much more complex, and also includes engaging critically with the piece.
Satire cannot exist in lack of engaged audiences, they should be capable of experiencing the piece with a critical attitude, ready to read between the lines and to analyze the piece. Gray, Jones and Thompson, in discussing the role of televised political satire in improving the citizens’ capacity of analyzing politics, explained that, “Such underutilization has been to the detriment of a more engaged citizenry, for to scrutinize is to scrutinize and therefore to encourage one’s audience to scrutinize as well” (Gray, Jones and Thompson 11). Therefore, the audience must scrutinizing of the political discourse that is brought forth to them and satire is able to encourage the audience to perform this role. By scrutinizing the satirical piece and criticizing the humoristic content of televised satires, the audience is, in Gray, Jones and Thompson’s (11) view, expected to learn how to scrutinize political messages as well. Scrutiny, or examination of satire may be perceived as an exercise that help understanding, and this is perhaps the most important role of the audience.
Satire is generally hided the social criticism under an apparently humorous or absurd analogy, and tries to express the author’s opinion of the ridicule of the issue which is being criticized. For this reason, the audience’s role as partners in the process of criticizing the social flaws, the author demands them to unpack the message of the satire and understand its argument. Diehl explains in this respect that “satire is commonly structured around an implicit argument by analogy and …a central task for the audience is to understand this implicit argument” (Diehl 312). The author’s argument becomes obvious for the readers to read, if the readers are able to find out the hidden meanings, which lead to the author’s main argument. Diehl further shows that, “if the reader understands the element of criticism that is being levied within the fiction and understands that the fiction is standing in for the real-world target, then the reader should recognize that the target is subject to an analogous criticism” (313)
Finally, in order for the satire to have the expected impact, the audiences need to constitute themselves as part of the same world as the author, and share the same values and principles as the author. In other words, the audience needs to feel the same life experience in the reality and relates with the author. This is important because, an audience who does not share the same realities with the author, cannot understand the argument, and even though they may know that the author is ironical, but they are not likely to understand what exactly the author’s ironies, and may not understand the irony as moralizing. Therefore, first, the audience needs to share the same reality of time and space with the author. As Diehl explains in this respect, “satires also prescribe the reader to bring her own relevant background knowledge of the real world to the reading experience and to use the fiction and that background knowledge to complete a moral argument” (314). The knowledge of the real world is gained from personal experience in the same world and time as the author. Even though contemporary readers would read the satire and understand it due to their historical knowledge on the topic, the moral message would not have the same impact on them, because they are not personally mind affected by the issue.
Furthermore, beside their knowledge on the topic, which comes from the fact that the audience is involved in, or has knowledge of the issue, the audience also needs to share the same values and principles as the author.

This is also shown in Gray, Jones and Thompson, who argue that, “In order for a joke to have an impact, it must play with the commonly agreed upon social norms (Gray, Jones and Thompson 9). For example, in Swift’s famous “A Modest Proposal”, the piece would convey no moral message to a cannibal from the jungle. This is because, first, they do not share the same social space and reality with the author, and therefore, they would not have the background knowledge to understand the argument and second, they have different values and moral principles, and also they would not be horrified at the idea of eating Irish children, but on the contrary, they would take the piece seriously. Such an audience would therefore not accomplish their role as the author’s partners in the process of criticizing the social

flaw.
Therefore, as the present paper showed, in order for the satire to be effective and to accomplish its purpose, the audience should be inner-directed and it cannot adopt an outsider perspective. On the contrary, the satire’s moral message can only be effectively conveyed if the audience plays an active role, which requires full partnership with the authors. The readers or viewers need to engage with the piece, analyze it critically, understand its main argument, but also, they need to be or to become part of the author’s world. This means that they need to have background knowledge on the issue, but also to share the same values and principles as the author. It is only by accomplishing this vital role as collaborators and active participants, that satire can become a real weapon through which the societal wrongs can be debated and fixed.

Works Cited
Diehl, Nicholas. “Satire, Analogy and Moral Philosophy”. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Gray, Jonathan, Jones, Jeffrey and Thompson, Ethan. “The State of Satire , The Satire of State”. Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey Jones and Ethan, Thompson (Eds.). Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. New York: New York University Press. 2009. Print.