Satire in the Book Gulliver’s Travels and The Movie Airplane

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Devices of Satire Essay

Satire is an accepted form of social criticism that goes as far back as 5 BC. Initially, satire was primarily in the form of plays and poetry. A Greek playwright by the name of Aristophanes is an example one of the best known early satirists and was well known for satirising the Athenian court system. Other important satirists include Horace and Juvenal and through their extensive work, these great Roman poets established the literary device satire as a distinct genre and in doing so they had a great impact on all subsequent literary satires. Thereafter, another one of the greatest satirists was none other than Jonathan swift, who was well known for his disgust in government and human nature. All which were very influential on the modern era is where one can find satire in just about everything from political cartoons in the newspaper, to even television. In fact, many modern comedy TV shows use satire to some extent, especially animated comedies such as The Simpsons, Futurama, South Park, Family Guy, or even popular parody programs such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and CNNNN. Many of these satirical sources present their satire in the form of a parody.

Parody, an imitation of a specific known person, literary work, movie, or event, is a form of satire strongly displayed in Jonathan Swift’s book, Gulliver’s Travels, and the movie, Airplane, by Jerry Zucker, David Zucker, and Jim Abrahams. These satirical works most commonly targeted subjects from a range of areas such as present day social issues all the way to politics.

Starting out, Swift was a man who used satire to convey his contempt for the human race. One of his most famous works conveyed this hatred and anger towards the human race....

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...e form of a parody. Parody is an imitation of a specific known person, literary work, movie, or event; often involves mocking. Parody is a form of satire most commonly shown in Jonathan Swift’s book, Gulliver’s Travels, the movie airplane, and most commonly targets things like present day social issues all the way to politics. Swift really targeted politics and humans as a whole in his satirical work, Gulliver’s Travels, due to his contempt for the human race. Airplane as well was a very well done parody that did a very good job of illustrating satire on social issues and more.

Works Cited

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's travels. Ireland : Benjamin Motte , 1726. Print.

"Parody." Oxford Dictiionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2014.

"Quotes." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

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