Sounding out The Bugle

Transcription

1 Sounding out The Bugle Political Satire in an Audio Newspaper Format Markus Kangas Pro Gradu Thesis University of Eastern Finland Philosophical Faculty School of Humanities English Language and Culture March 2018

2

3

4 Contents: 1. Introduction: The Bugle as a Podcast Aims and Outline of This Thesis The Bugle as a Podcast Prior Studies of Political Satire and Other Sources Consulted 9 2. The Discourse of Satire Defining Satire Satire as a Discourse Satire and Irony Satirical Frames of Reference The Bugle and Satirical Television Method and Key Concepts Echoic and Referential Frames of Reference Horatian and Juvenalian Satire Reflection Conceptual Domains and Metaphors Inflation Deflation Negation Reductio ad absurdum Faux News as Political Satire Analysis The Bugle as an audio newspaper Satirical Devices Reflection 56

5 Inflation Deflation Negation Frames of Reference Echoic Frames Referential Frames Reductio ad absurdum Summary Conclusion 77 References 79 Primary Source 79 Secondary Sources 80 Appendix 1: A Breakdown of Two Typical The Bugle Episodes

6 1 1. Introduction The Bugle is a satirical podcast hosted by Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver that is presented as an audio newspaper for a visual world. A variation on the contemporary format of satirical newspapers or television news or talk show programmes that feature satirical commentary on current events, presented in a style that mimics real newspapers or news programmes, it represents a cross-atlantic take on the news. This thesis is a study of the methods in which the satirical pieces in The Bugle are constructed, as well as the ways in which the podcast relates to other, contemporary satirical faux news programmes on television Aims and Outline of This Thesis Satire is a form of discourse in which a humorous approach is taken to comment, critically, on an institution, individual, attitude, or action that is perceived by the satirist and, presumably, the audience as deserving of criticism. Usually, satire is aimed at those in positions of power. One form of political satire that has become popular since the 20 th century, and especially in the 21 st, is faux news : parodic, satirical commentary on topical issues presented in the form of news. The British satirical faux news magazine, Private Eye, for instance, employs the generic structure potential of canonical newspaper discourse It is, for want of a better term, a spoof (Simpson, 80). It is worth noting that the target of the satire in Private Eye is not just the event, person, or phenomenon represented in each piece of satire, but also the genre as a representative of which Private Eye is presented: the newspaper, and more specifically, the British tabloid press. On the other side of the Atlantic, television programmes employing this form of satire are very popular. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is a fake news show (Jones, 153), often

7 2 satirising politicians and the news with each segment of each episode. (After Stewart s retirement from The Daily Show, it has been hosted by Trevor Noah.) The Colbert Report ( ), hosted by Stephen Colbert, also has a similar format, and it is a spinoff of The Daily Show, but instead of pretending that it is a news broadcast, it simulates the format of the talk show, with Colbert playing the role of an egotistical yet ignorant rightwing talk show host (Jones, 77), also named Stephen Colbert. The Bugle is a political satire podcast hosted, from 2007 to 2015, by Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver. Oliver left the show in 2015, and subsequent episodes have featured Zaltzman and one or more guest hosts. While Private Eye is a print paper that looks like an actual newspaper, and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are television programmes that look like the corresponding real programmes (cable news and political talk shows), The Bugle is an audio-only online production, a podcast, that is presented as a newspaper according to the programme s slogan, an audio newspaper for a visual world. While The Bugle is presented as a representative of a genre other than its own (as it is a podcast pretending that it is a newspaper), it otherwise follows as this thesis will show the general patterns featured in satirical faux news, such as Private Eye, The Daily Show, and The Colbert Report. Thus, it is a representative of a very popular and influential genre of political satire, but in an emerging medium the podcast and in a style that is a mixture of contemporary and prior political satire and the hosts own style of comedy. Recent research on political satire has tended to focus on popular satirical television programmes, such as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but there is also research of contemporary political programmes in the media of radio and certain types of online publications (such as The Onion, which started in print but has become an online-only publication, with faux news articles and videos presented as news programmes). Unfortunately, when it comes to political satire podcasts, there is still very little research.

8 3 In this thesis, The Bugle is placed in the context of contemporary political satire, in particular in the format of faux news. A set of ten sample episodes of The Bugle, starting with episode 273 at the time of the 2014 Scottish referendum for independence and ending at episode 283, are analysed, with pieces of satire from those episodes investigated using a method derived, mainly, from Paul Simpson s On the Discourse of Satire. The target of the satire in each selected piece is identified, and the satirical devices used by the hosts are examined. The satire is also compared to that of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and other pieces of political satire that were discussed in some of the prior studies of political satire that were studied during the process of drafting the themes, theoretical framework, and analytical model of this thesis. This thesis is a study of The Bugle as an example of topical, political satire, inspected through a method that is based on previous studies of satire, while also establishing the position of The Bugle in its larger cultural context in particular, in relation to topical satirical television. Sample episodes of The Bugle, chosen from its independent period with both of the original hosts, are analysed and discussed for this purpose. For this thesis, a relatively small sample of ten episodes of The Bugle from , representative of the general content of the podcast, will suffice; using the full run of The Bugle, constituting hundreds of episodes under two different publishing organisations and a long independent period, as a source material would have required the expansion of this thesis into a full volume. This thesis, then, is a pilot study when it comes to applying this method to The Bugle. Because this thesis is only focused on The Bugle as political satire, other forms of comedy in The Bugle are mostly ignored in the analysis of this thesis. The next section of this chapter describes The Bugle and podcasts in general as a medium and as a subject of research, including a brief discussion of The Bugle s history and the

9 4 selection of sample episodes for this analysis. The final section of this chapter lists the sources that were used for this thesis. Chapter 2 starts with a definition of satire, especially as a mode of discourse rather than a mere genre of literature. Irony is discussed as a central component of satire. The use of frames of reference as tools of satire is also discussed in chapter 2. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the genre of faux news as a popular genre of political satire in American television. In this thesis, The Bugle is established as a member of that genre, albeit one in a new medium. The method and key concepts of this thesis are the subject of chapter 3. In this chapter, several methods for the construction of a piece of satire are explored, with examples. These methods are: echoic and referential frames of reference; Horatian and Juvenalian satire; satirical reflection; inflation and deflation as tools for the manipulation of the conceptual domain and metaphors pertaining to the satirical target; satirical negation; and the reductio ad absurdum. Each of these methods is presented in its own subchapter. Chapter 3 concludes with a further discussion of the genre of faux news. Chapter 4 consists of analysis of pieces of satire from a sample of 10 The Bugle episodes. The analysis starts with episode 273, from September 2014, and ends at episode 283, from January The length of these episodes varies between 28 and 40 minutes. The satirical devices discussed in chapter 3 are used as the basis for analysis of these pieces as examples of political satire. As with chapter 3, each device is the subject of its own subchapter, although some of the pieces analysed make use of several devices simultaneously. Chapter 4 also contains an analysis of some of the ways in which The Bugle is presented as an audio newspaper and the relationship of this approach to the broader genre of faux news as political satire.

10 5 This thesis will close with a summary of its conclusions in chapter 5. A breakdown of two sample episodes is included as Appendix The Bugle as a Podcast The Bugle is a podcast, originally hosted by Andy Zaltzman and John Oliver and produced by TimesOnline, the online edition of The Times. The podcast is a relatively new format, but The Bugle has a foundation both in the established satirical discourse in general in particular, satirical fake newspapers in the UK and satirical faux news programmes in American television and Oliver and Zaltzman s previous collaboration as a double act on stage and radio. Topical political comedy has been a growing television genre in the United States, and Oliver participates in this scene through his work in The Daily Show, as well as in his own TV show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The Bugle can be seen as analogous to these shows. In addition to its growing commercial and popular success, satire has also reached a high degree of social and political relevance as an avenue through which the general public and younger audiences, in particular receive information about news items and participate in the public discourse about them. While podcasts, including those in the field of political satire, do not currently enjoy the same success as television, The Bugle is an interesting phenomenon that deserves to be studied as an example of topical satire in a new, emerging field. The academic study of podcasts has produced a variety of studies from different fields, including its utility in education (e.g. Khe Foon Hew s Use of Audio Podcast in K-12 and Higher Education ), as an asset for learners of English as a second language, as in Rahimi and Katal, The Role of Metacognitive Listening Strategies Awareness and Podcast-Use Readiness in Using Podcasting for Learning English as a Foreign Language and, indeed, as a form of political satire literature, such as Nick Marx s study of the Onion Radio News

11 6 podcast and the process of making it, Radio Voices, Digital Downloads: Bridging Old and New Media in the Onion Radio News Podcast, and a study of the Korean satirical podcast, Naneun Ggomsuda, by Kyoo Sang Jo, Rhetorical Analysis of a Political Satire Podcast, Naneun Ggomsuda. At this time, the field of political satire podcasts is still emerging as a subject of academic study, as there are not many studies of it, and none of The Bugle. Podcasts are a growing form of online entertainment. According to Ben Hammersley s article Audio Revolution in The Guardian, the format was created, quite organically, in the early 2000s. It arose from the creators wish to have a more direct relationship with their audience, generally publishing directly on their own site with no intermediaries, constituting a kind of vanity press. The prerequisites for the emergence of podcasting were cheap technology (such as the MP3 format), the low cost of audio-only production, and the previously established culture of weblogs (blogs). Like blogs or any other form of online content, podcasts are very diverse in terms of style and subject matter. A podcast is much like a radio programme, but generally, it is produced independently, and at little or no cost, by the creators and provided to the audience (usually for free) with very little marketing for the podcast, or advertising in it. More recently, podcasts have started to include advertising; for example, The Bugle, after becoming part of the Radiotopia network, has included ads for other programmes on the network, as well as other advertisers. Podcasts are often also supported by donations from listeners, either one-off or repeated with a given frequency. Often, this will be a small sum every month or whenever a new episode is released. Some podcasts have premium content that is only available for paying subscribers, and some only provide new episodes for free, charging a typically small fee for access to earlier episodes. Some podcasts also produce merchandise: The Bugle, for instance, sells products with the podcast s logo, with the profits used to produce more episodes. Mugs

12 7 and shirts with the podcast s logo and the slogan powerhosing premium-grade satirical hogwash all over planet Earth since 2007 are sold at the firebrandstores.com website, 1 which The Bugle advertised until joining Radiotopia. Podcasts that are made as a hobby might not generate any revenue at all; some operate at a loss. Podcasts are usually not broadcast live; instead, they are recorded and edited before they are posted, usually on the podcast s own website, but sometimes as a feature on another site. Once the podcast is online, anyone can download it, usually for free; so the backlog of a podcast is entirely available for anyone who discovers the podcast. There may or may not be an established schedule for the release of a given podcast. The Bugle, for instance, is usually released during the weekend, and introduced as the issue for the week starting the Monday following the episode s release. Most podcasts provide an RSS stream and/or other ways to receive instant updates whenever a new episode is released. The Bugle is, to an extent, an exception to the rule when it comes to the structure behind a podcast, in that it began under the auspices of The Times, with the newspaper hosting the podcast on its site and providing the resources to enable the hosts to have access to a studio for each of them (Zaltzman in London and Oliver in New York), as well as a producer in each end. This constitutes a relatively extensive and expensive production for a podcast, and it led to considerable difficulty for The Bugle after they were dropped by The Times and had to arrange their own funding, eventually joining Radiotopia. The Bugle began in 2007 as a production of TimesOnline. John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman were a double act, but their collaboration was about to end when Oliver was offered a recurring part in The Daily Show and he had to move to New York. Rather than ending the double act altogether, Oliver and Zaltzman, supported by TimesOnline, launched The Bugle as a weekly comedy podcast. The tagline for The Bugle is: Audio Newspaper for a 1

13 8 Visual World. It is presented as a newspaper reporting on the events of the past week, with both hosts writing their own material during the week and performing it to each other during the recording. The episodes analysed in this thesis run from 28 to 40 minutes. In 2012 The Bugle became an independent production after TimesOnline stopped producing it. In 2015 and 2016, it became apparent that Oliver would not be able to contribute regularly to The Bugle, so after a hiatus the podcast returned in a different format, with a rotating roster of guest co-hosts. Each episode features Andy Zaltzman and one of these co-hosts. Otherwise the format is the same as before. Together with the relaunch of the podcast in October 2016, it was announced that it would be hosted by the Radiotopia network. For the period between becoming an independent production (2012) and signing with Radiotopia, The Bugle was listener-funded. The Bugle has had an extensive run, and new episodes are still released, so there is ample material for a study of the podcast. For the purposes of this thesis, a relatively small sample of 10 episodes is sufficient, as it is large enough to be representative of the source material. A selection of episodes from The Bugle s independent ( ) run starting with episode 273, at the time of the Scottish referendum for independence in 2014, and ending with episode 283 represents the general style and attitude of The Bugle very well, and also includes a set of topics that are typical for The Bugle and appropriate for analysis. The episodes from the independent period are more easily accessible than those produced for The Times, as they were released before the departure of John Oliver from the podcast. On the official website of the podcast, the episodes are provided through the SoundCloud service. In this thesis, the episodes referenced are listed, with links, in the Works Cited section. Time references regarding quoted episodes will be based on the files as they are at the time they were accessed for the research of this thesis; sometimes, advertisements are

14 9 added to, or removed from, older episodes, and because of this, the time labels might not be entirely accurate after such a change. At the time these episodes were made and released, Oliver had already left The Daily Show to work on his own HBO show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. Still, as will become clear, the influence of The Daily Show on Oliver s work, including The Bugle, is significant Prior Studies of Political Satire and Other Sources Consulted As preparation for this study, an overview of prior studies of (mostly contemporary) political satire was conducted. The field of political satire is broad and international, and this is reflected in the studies that have been consulted for this thesis. Such studies represent a variety of theoretical approaches, with differing points of focus on the methods and reception of political satire. The studies and monographs used in this thesis can be described as follows. Several monographs about satire in general were used as a starting point for this thesis, before the focus became more centred on political satire and faux news programming in particular. Introductory books such as Dustin Griffin s Satire: A Critical Reintroduction, Jane Ogborn and Peter Buckroys Satire, Emil A. Draitser s Techniques of Satire, and Peter Petro s Modern Satire: Four Studies, were used mostly to frame a definition of satire and to provide insight into some of the key concepts and methods of satire and research about satire. Paul Simpson s On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a Stylistic Model of Satirical Humor was particularly useful, as it provided a method for the study of satire as a mode of discourse. Roger J. Kreuz and Richard M. Roberts discuss the distinctions between irony, satire, and parody, and explain the way those concepts relate to each other, in On Satire and Parody: The Importance of Being Ironic. Kreuz and Roberts define satire and parody as genres,

15 10 while identifying irony as a complex rhetorical device sometimes used by these genres (Kreuz and Roberts, 97). Adding Nuance to the Study of Political Humor Effects: Experimental Research on Juvenalian Satire Versus Horatian Satire, by R. Lance Holbert, Jay Hmielowski, Parul Jain, Julie Lather, and Alyssa Morey, is a study of reader responses to two types of political satire Horatian and Juvenalian about a contemporary topic in political news. American Critic: Satire and Political Discourse in Warren Beatty s Bulworth is a study, by Johan Nilsson, of critical reviews of the film Bulworth and the way those reviews framed the satire in the film in the context of American political discourse. Lara Ryazanova-Clarke s On the Satirical Counter-Discourse of Processed Cheese is a study of the Russian satirical radio programme, Processed Cheese, hosted by Viktor Shenderovich. In the study, Ryazanova-Clarke discusses the use of references to features of contemporary Russian political discourse as ironic frames for satirical comedy that counteract the dominant discourse in contemporary Russia by contesting its ways of expression (Ryazanova-Clarke, 93). Kyoo Sang Jo s thesis, Rhetorical Analysis of a Political Satire Podcast, Naneun Ggomsuda, discusses a number of elements in the Naneun Ggomsuda podcast that are interesting and relevant for a discussion of The Bugle. Naneun Ggomsuda, or Naggomsu, meaning I am a Weasel, is a satirical political podcast from South Korea that ran in 2011 and In it, four hosts comedian Ou-Joon Kim, opposition politician Bong-Ju Jung, investigative journalist Jin-Woo Joo, and radio commentator Yong-Min Kim laugh and chat among themselves without paying attention to the listeners as if they do not have an audience (Jo, 15). This style of performance is very similar to that of The Bugle. Naggomsu was broadcast weekly, and each episode was dedicated to His Highness,

16 11 President Myung-Bak Lee, and mostly consisted of discussion of various scandals involving the President and his family and associates (Jo, 6). For a study about a political, satirical podcast in the format of an audio newspaper, mimicking the features of actual newspapers to step in their frame of reference and undermine them through parodic satire, the most relevant studies of political satire are ones that focus on faux news programmes, such as The Colbert Report and The Daily Show. This format, and those shows, have been studied by critics such as Jeffrey Jones in Entertaining Politics: Satiric Television and Political Engagement and in Satire TV, a collection of essays edited by Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey Jones, and Ethan P. Thompson. These monographs and collections have been particularly useful for this study of The Bugle. Other studies of political satire and, specifically, faux news programming as a satirical device, include the following works. In Political Satire and Postmodern Irony in the Age of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, Lisa Colletta discusses the way Stephen Colbert parodies, satirises and criticises the press and political news television by producing an (even more) over-the-top programme that is presented as if it was just another political talk show, exhibiting exaggerated caricatures of many of the tropes of actual, contemporary, American political television. In a similar vein, Amber Day addresses many of the same topics in Jon Stewart s The Daily Show in And Now... the News? Mimesis and the Real in The Daily Show. Kristen Boesel, in The Colbert Nation: A Democratic Place to Be? studies The Colbert Report and its use of rhetorical devices, such as the use of oversimplified binary oppositions (Boesel, 26) and the choice of which news are covered (26), as well as the concept of the Colbert Nation, often mentioned but rarely defined by Colbert in his show, to participate in, and satirise, American news programming and the political discourse in general. An understanding of the format of the faux news as the premise for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report emerges from a reading of these

17 12 sources. In this format, a presentation that mimics actual news broadcasts or other political news programming serves as the basis for the construction on pieces of satire and parody about the news and the subjects covered in the news. For a more in-depth discussion of this format, see chapter 2.5. Taken together, these sources provide a variety of definitions for satire that broadly converge on a set of criteria, including that satire must have a target that it seeks to ridicule, and that this ridicule constitutes a form of criticism or attack that is understood as a social commentary. These sources also provide a theoretical basis that is used to establish a method for the study of satire, through some of the methods utilised by the satirists, that is used in this thesis to study the satire in The Bugle. An additional discussion about contemporary political, satirical faux news programmes on television is defined by some of these sources, and used in this thesis to show that The Bugle, while not a television programme, still represents broadly the same genre of political satire.

18 13 2. The Discourse of Satire This chapter presents the theoretical framework for the academic study of political satire that will be used in this thesis. First, the definition of satire is discussed, with the help of a variety of recent and older sources. After a general definition of satire as a literature that utilises comedic devices to criticise a specific target it is argued, in the second section of this chapter, that rather than a mere genre of literature, satire is a field of discourse that can exist in a variety of forms and genres. The central role of irony in the creation and understanding of satire is the subject of the third section of this chapter. The fourth section of this chapter deals with the use of satirical frames of reference, explored through the examples of two prior studies of political satire. The final section of this chapter establishes the broader context of contemporary political satire in the faux news format of satirical television programmes as the genre that is the closest match for the type of satire in The Bugle Defining Satire Virtually all of the sources consulted for their insight into satire for this thesis have discussed the difficulty of defining satire. The attempted definitions summarised in Petro s Modern Satire: Four Studies include: that satire exists as a literary genre (Petro, 5) and is a kind of literature (5) defined by having wit or humour [and] an object of attack (6). Satire is also a poem in which wickedness or folly is censured (5). Simultaneously, it is a spirit or tone which expresses itself in many literary genres (5) and a tone or quality of art which we may find in any form (5-6). It is also a structural principle or attitude (6). Without arriving at a conclusive definition for the term, Petro points to two of its vital ingredients: criticism and humour (8). Holbert, Hmielowski, Jain, Lather, and Morey, in

19 14 Adding Nuance to the Study of Political Humor Effects, agree: In short, satire as a literary form often seeks to both educate and entertain as it tries to persuade (Holbert et al., 191). Even this cursory a glance at various approaches to defining satire shows that satire is a very broad category; that its definitions seem to include the element of social commentary (or attack towards a wickedness or folly ) and that of humour; and that it appears in so many forms that it goes beyond genre, into the level of discourse. In the other sources used for this thesis, the definitions of satire follow this general line, as will be illustrated below. Seeking to define satire on the terms of prominent satirists, Ogborn and Buckroyd, in Satire, describe satire in these terms, presented as a list: Satire reflects society. Satire helps people to view others differently. One of satire s purposes is to reform or change society. Satire brings out points generally applicable to everybody. Where an individual is the satirical target, satire should not be libellous. Satire helps people to work out the difference between folly and vice. Satire is particularly concerned with pointing out hypocrisy. Satire has a lofty aim: to prompt the good to improve the world. (Ogborn and Buckroyd, 12; emphasis original) In Satire: A Critical Reintroduction, Dustin Griffin, in his overview of conventional modern theories of satire (from c. 1960), describes a view of the moral purpose of satire where the satirist attacks some behaviour or phenomenon that deviates from the norm by breaking the generally accepted moral principles of society, [persuading] his [sic] audience to virtue (37). Griffin notes, however, that more recent theoretical work on satire takes a more nuanced view of the satirist, with more emphasis on satire as a conversation with society in the form of an inquiry or provocation, rather than something analogous to

20 15 the preaching of a moral lesson by a priest (39). The definitions quoted by Ogborn and Buckroyd above seem to agree more with the former, more traditional definition of satire, as do some of those in Petro. Charles A. Knight, in The Literature of Satire, explores satire from two perspectives. The first, in part 1 of The Literature of Satire, is that of the boundaries of satire, where satire is viewed as a way to define and preserve social boundaries. This relates to the position of the satirist in society as an outsider, and also to the fundamental purpose of satire. The second part describes the forms of satire. Satire, according to Knight, is a broader category than any genre (8); but it does often use genres as a framework, which relates it to parody. M.D. Fletcher, as quoted in Satire TV, offers this definition of satire: [Verbal] aggression in which some aspect of historical reality is exposed to ridicule. It is a mode of aesthetic expression that relates to historical reality, involves at least implied norms against which a target can be exposed as ridiculous, and demands the pre-existence or creation of shared comprehension and evaluation between satirist and audience. (Gray et al. 12) Emil A. Draitser, in Techniques of Satire, describes satire in terms that agree with the descriptions quoted above: In the focus of the satirist's observation are the morals and mores of society; he or she turns the attention of the public to its defects and corruption. Satire's method is that of the caustic accentuation of social vice. The readers to whom the satirist turns are, primarily, the more conscious members of society. The satirist attempts to create and by writing contributes to an intolerance of vice. The mocking of vice amounts to its punishment. (Draitser, 39)

21 16 Jeffrey Jones, in Entertaining Politics, writes: [Satire] is a hard-knuckled critique of power, a verbal attack that passes judgment on the object of that attack, enunciating a perceived breach in societal norms or values (80). Lisa Colletta, in her article Political Satire and Postmodern Irony in the Age of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, approaches the study of satire from the point of view of the satire s target: Injustice, vice, or polite cruelty have to be recognised as the object of the attack, and they need to be judged against a better moral standard (Colletta, 860). Parody is a genre that is often considered related to satire. A work of parody exists in relation to an earlier work (or body of works) that it ridicules by exaggerating some of its features. Parody differs from satire in that a parody is not necessarily making any social or political statement; instead, it can comment on only the style of a text and be successful in its field, whereas a satire would not be recognised as such if it did not also include a criticism of some feature, action, or attitude of its target with political or social significance. In the words of Kreuz and Roberts: Both parody and satire requite the reader to construct multiple mental representations. These representations, however, are quite different. In parody, the audience does not need to go beyond the boundaries of the original work to consider societal implications as they do in satire. (103) Kreuz and Roberts also point out that a work of satire can also be a parody, but in that case, the reader must keep in mind at least three simultaneous representations: a representation of the events in the text itself, a representation of how the events in the text imitate the original work, and a representation of how the

22 17 events in the text have implications both beyond the text and beyond the original work. (104) In this type of satirical text, the aspect of the text that references and mocks another text would be the parodic element, while the aspect of the text that includes social commentary beyond either the original or the parody would constitute the satiric element; and the text can only be fully understood in reference to the historical and cultural context in which the text was produced, combined with a familiarity with the text that is being parodied. So far, this chapter has established satire as a literature that presents commentary about society in a comedic manner. The key elements of a piece of satire are its comedic approach and its ideological content, which the satirist delivers to the audience in the manner of an entertaining attack on the target that the satirist seeks to criticise. The following section is an examination of the nature of satire as a mode of discourse, in a tier of abstraction above that in which satire could be discussed as a genre of literature Satire as a Discourse Definitions of satire have fluctuated between those that consider it aa a genre of literature, and those that consider it as a much more general attitude. In On the Discourse of Satire, Paul Simpson describes satire as a discourse of a higher order than genre: satire manifests a level of organisation which is of a sufficiently higher-order status to constitute a discursive practice (69), a theme that is also explored in some of the other sources mentioned above. The classification of satire as a field of discourse, on a level higher than the genre, is important for the model of satirical analysis used in this thesis. Part of this discourse analysis is an understanding of the three subjects that are necessary for the performance of satire: the satirist (the producer of the text), the satiree (an addressee, whether reader, viewer or listener) and the satirised (the target attacked or critiqued in the

23 18 satirical discourse) (Simpson, 8). Pavlovskis-Petit points out that while the satire s target or the satired, in Simpson s terms is not included in the satire s audience (satiree), the message conveyed by the satire can be taken as pertaining, as social commentary, on society as a whole: Satire itself [ ] expects us to agree with its analyses and criticism of what it regards as wrong - with humanity as a whole or with particular groups within it [ ] and their proclivities and practices. Yet at the same time, while we, as a satirist's audience, are assumed to be in agreement with what is being said, while the 'others' [ ] are left out of this confidence [ ] After all [satire s] classic professed aim is to improve the world by revealing what is wrong with it and convincing it to better its ways. (Pavlovlkis-Petit, ) Commenting on the nature of satire as a discourse, rather than genre, Simpson shows that satire has itself the capacity to subsume and recontextualise other classes of discourse, other registers and genres from the broad system of language (Simpson, 141). Using the example of a piece in Private Eye, in which the Labour party s relabelling as New Labour is subjected to a product recall, Simpson explains how the piece uses one discourse framework as a kind of post onto which another set of meaning potentials is fused (Simpson, 141). As examples of discourses on this level, Simpson offers literature, advertising and academic writing, noting that it is a defining characteristic of satire that it be able to assimilate various classes of discourse, basic level genres and subgenres especially, and that, moreover, it be able to set these embedded genres in opposition to one another (Simpson, 81). Simpson uses examples from the British satirical magazine Private Eye, which include faux news items that present social commentary while disguising as

24 19 genuine news. For instance, discussing the January 2002 issue of Private Eye, Simpson analyses the ways in which the satirical faux newspaper ridicules the coverage, in real newspapers, of revelations about Prince Harry s time at Eton College. Starting with the headline World Exclusive to All Papers: Teenager Smoked Pot and Had Too Much to Drink, Private Eye parodies the attention-grabbing headlines of tabloid newspapers about an ultimately insignificant news item. While the Private Eye headline might look like that of a real tabloid newspaper, including the use of a claim of exclusivity which, as Simpson points out, is immediately revoked by the contradicting to all papers (Simpson, 133), the device of lexical (under)specificity, as evidenced by the use of the term teenager to refer to Prince Harry, is [mapped] onto Text D (Simpson, 133). Simpson shows that the Private Eye piece about this non story is a response that arises out of disapprobation of the widespread media attention given to this story, attention which is perceived as obsessively disproportionate (Simpson, 134). Through the device of attenuation, the piece [serves] up the very nondescriptness and anonymity that should have been accorded the initial news item (Simpson, 134). While the layout, fonts, and various other aspects of the piece echo the corresponding feature of the front pages and articles of real newspapers, there exists a layer of irony in the piece, as evidenced by the use of the satirical device of a lexical under-specificity that one would not expect in the coverage of this item in a real newspaper that anonymises Prince Harry and underlines how strange it is that the front page of a newspaper could be about the relatively ordinary behaviour of a teenager. As discussed by Gray, Jeffers, and Thompson in Satire TV, satire and parody are genres that often go together, but it would be wrong to confuse them as being one and the same. They offer a distinction: while satire draws on social conventions, parody draws on aesthetic ones (Gray et al., 17). A parody does not have to have a message, at least

25 20 relating to its subject, in which case it is a pastiche. If a parody criticises the social or political message included in its subject, it is a form of satire. (But satire does not always have to be parody, so the two categories are not entirely overlapping.) As Amber Day notes, The Daily Show is a parody and satire of TV news because it is presented as a news programme but also criticises the format and social attitudes presented in TV news (Day, 85). Similarly, The Bugle is both a parody and satire of tabloid newspapers; it not only mimics their presentation and content, but criticises the attitudes that are included in British tabloid newspapers (and news media and political discourse in general). As discussed above, satire is a commentary on society, targeting an attitude, belief, or action of an individual, group, or society itself. It seeks to criticise perceived hypocrisies and other violations of generally held moral standards that are perpetrated by those in power. As Lisa Colletta points out, this attribute of the purpose of satire is consistent through different styles of satire: Trusting in the reason and rationality of humans, artists [during the age of enlightenment] felt that when people saw their faults magnified in a distorted reflection, they could see the ridiculousness of their own behaviour and then correct that tendency in themselves. In both Horatian satire, which is somewhat genial and mocks imperfection while finding amusement in it, and Juvenalian satire, which is characterised by invective, insult, and withering attacks, the primary objective is to improve human beings and our institutions. (Colletta, 860) Holbert, Hmielowski, Praul, Lather, and Morey, in Adding Nuance to the Study of Political Humor Effects, discuss the distinction between Horatian and Juvenalian satire:

26 21 [The Horatian] satirical voice and humor [ ] is defined as lighter than juvenalian satire, with the ultimate goal being the production of a wry smile in audience members. [ ] Compared to horatian satire, juvenalian satire is more acidic in tone. [ ] Juvenalian satire is meant not to heal but to wound. (192) Holbert, Hmielowski, Praul, Lather, and Morey also point out that Stephen Colbert s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner, which is discussed in chapter 2.5, is clearly Juvenalian, not Horatian (Holbert et al., 192). They go on to comment on the style of satire in The Daily Show and The Colbert Report: Indeed, some of our society s more important sources for political satire (e.g., The Daily Show With Jon Stewart), could be argued to reflect a true mix of horatian and juvenalian satire (Holbert et al., 206). Johan Nilsson, in American Critic: Satire and Political Discourse in Warren Beatty s Bullworth, describes satire as a socially acceptable way to release aggression that could otherwise not be expressed without violating the rules of civil society: Inspired by Freud, [Robert C.] Elliott argues that social pressures have subjected impulses of hostility to restrictions and repressions. While the hostility remains, the physical violence that once may have resulted from it was forbidden by law and replaced by verbal invectives, and finally, as civilization set in, even that weapon became inappropriate. These kinds of restrictions led to the development of wit, an indirect weapon of hostility. (Nilsson, 49) E.M. Dadlez describes some of the arguments that have been made about the comedic effect in satire. She approaches this question from the direction of the incongruity model of humour, according to which the reaction of amusement arises from the realisation of an

27 22 incongruity that is benign i.e., the incongruous element must not evoke confusion or fear, or the amusing effect would be negated (Dadlez, 4.) Satire that exposes vice and is amusing, then, could be thought to imply that we find the vice itself benign; but upon closer inspection, [We] found the radical discontinuity between literal and intended meanings (more or less benignly) incongruous, rather than vice or misbehavior, and that we simultaneously found the vice itself distressing or repulsive. Nothing in the incongruity approach commits us to the claim that vice must be regarded as benign or as incongruous. It is the exposure, the whipping off of masks and concealments, that is startling and unexpected. This is where the incongruity lies. (Dadlez, 13) Compared to the reactions of outrage and indignation that the revelation of vice might evoke if it was simply told to the audience, the discourse of satire, with its use of irony and comedy, establishes an additional layer of interpretation and commentary on top of the event, allowing for the benign reaction of amusement; and this, in turn, produces a more useful emotional grounds for the discussion about the subject. As Dadlez puts it, there is a distance that humor affords and that outrage and indignation lack, something that permits those who are amused to adopt an unexpected and novel perspective on an issue (Dadlez, 13). Through this discussion, the conception of satire that emerges is that of an order of discourse that exists in its own right, above the category of genre. Instead of being a genre, satire is a discourse that can use different genres as part of its discourse, without limiting itself to simple parodying of genres of literature, while retaining parody as one of its many tools. Satire is always aimed at a target that it criticises through ridicule, with the goal of

28 23 prompting a change of attitude or behaviour that corrects for the implied message of the satire. The tone in which this social criticism is delivered can vary from the milder, softer Horatian style to a harsher, pointed Juvenalian style, existing in either extreme, or somewhere between, this spectrum from Horatian to Juvenalian Satire and Irony Simpson gives a very terse definition of irony: the space between what is meant and what is asserted (90). Irony is a crucial component of satire. Summarising and commenting on Wayne Booth s Rhetoric of Irony, Griffin introduces Booth s concept of stable irony, where a statement has a literal meaning and an opposite, actual meaning (65). Griffin disagrees that satirical irony is that simple, and suggests that irony should be understood not simply as a binary switch, either on or off, but more like a rheostat, a rhetorical dimmer switch that allows for a continuous range of effects between I almost mean what I say and I mean the opposite of what I say (65-66). A similar sentiment is expressed by Simon Critchley, as quoted in Satire TV: [Humour] is produced by a disjunction between the way things are and the way they are represented in the joke, between expectation and actuality. Humour defeats our expectations by producing a novel actuality, by changing the situation in which we find ourselves (Gray et al., 8). According to Simpson, a piece of satire consists of three parts. The prime is akin to the subject of the satire it evokes the real-world phenomenon or situation that is being addressed. Within the text, and in contrast with what (in a normal, non-satirical text) would be expected of such a prime, there is a dialectic, which is presented as if it was sincere content of the sort that would match the prime, but is actually different in some meaningful way. This contrast between the prime and dialectic, then, creates a tension that the audience must resolve by the process of uptake; in effect, realising that what was presented

29 24 as sincere was in fact ironic, and through this discovery, noticing the intended message (Simpson, 8-10). For a more in-depth discussion of the prime and dialectic, Simpson proposes a binary conceptualisation of irony (Simpson, 96), in which two phases of satire are distinguished. The first phase is the echoic phase, in which a well-known phrase, setting, or other such phase is represented, but insincerely; one example that Simpson cites is the use of a typical font and layout one would expect of an actual newspaper in a faux newspaper with spoof news in this case, the first page of an issue of the Delhi Telegraph, published in Private Eye (Simpson, 98). The pun of substituting Delhi for Daily in the newspaper s title is the first clue or, as Simpson puts it, a discursive twist or contra-expectation (Simpson, 101) that the paper is not presented sincerely, constituting one of many examples, as Simpson shows, of the second phase of satire, which Simpson terms the oppositional phase, in this piece of satire. Specifically, this piece consists of what is presented as the front page of the newspaper, listing news items, all but one of which relate to India; but the last piece, that is not about India, is: London train crash kills 40, an item relegated to page 94 of the paper (Simpson, 98). The contrast between the expected significance of this news item, if it were real, to the actual (British) readers of Private Eye and its placing as the last item in the paper is another way in which the piece creates a tension between what is expected and what is provided: i.e., the prime and dialectic. The oppositional phase of irony is created in the text by the substitution of the content that one would expect in a British newspaper with that of a (fake) Indian newspaper, forcing the reader to re-evaluate the initial expectation they would have had upon seeing what looked like the front page of a typical British newspaper (Simpson, 103). Upon realising that this is not a real news item in a real newspaper, the audience is confronted with the question of how news of a similarly catastrophic accident in India would be reported in the West, and this question is

30 25 the ultimate point of the piece: the crux of [the satirical target is this piece] is a perceived iniquity in the way patterns of news selection have stabilised across time and across different cultures (Simpson, 107). Simpson identifies the echoic and oppositional frames of irony, respectively, with the prime and dialectic of his model, with both ironic frames required for the creation of the satire in the text. The echoic frame established the piece of satire as representative albeit an insincerely of a type of text by incorporating enough of the standards of that genre for the piece of satire to fit in, at least in a straight reading, and at least sufficiently to suggest the context in which the piece is offered. The oppositional frame of irony is established in the clash of the content of the piece of satire compared to the genre that it echoes. To summarise and synthesise, according to both Simpson and Griffin, irony is the method by which the satirist disguises their message. There are varying degrees of irony and methods for constructing it, but fundamentally it is based on a contradiction between the intended message and the text taken at face value, as well as between the prime and dialectic (or format and content). The audience is expected to pick up on the latter of the two layers of irony to start reading the text as ironic, and then notice the intended message and receive the payoff of this contradiction. Satire, in turn, is a type of discourse where the satirist comments on the satired by constructing a layered piece of satire that the satiree must unravel through detection of the irony, leading them to discover the intended message Satirical Frames of Reference Discussing Pavelnnyi Syrok (Processed Cheese), a satirical radio show hosted by Viktor Shenderovich on the Ekho Moskvy channel, Ryazanova-Clarke points out how

31 26 Shenderovich cleverly uses the ability of language to create different discursive domains that relate to different knowledge frames. His two-part satirical formulas include the prime and the oppositional modes in which the frames are both blended and contrasted in order to produce new, alternative meanings. (Ryazanova-Clarke, 99) Ryazanova-Clarke describes the way Shenderovich uses echoic and referential frames as a basis for satire about Russian President Vladimir Putin. An echoic frame, in this context, is an event or other item with which the audience can be expected to be so well acquainted that no contextualisation is necessary. Therefore, this kind of frame of reference can be used in a different context so that the audience will detect an incongruity between the context they would normally associate with that frame, and the one that the satirist has chosen instead. Putin s terse comment on the Kursk disaster during an interview with Larry King it sank is one such item that the satirist can repeat in a different context to create an echoic allusion, according to Ryazanova-Clarke (100). A referential frame is one that relies on a stable and frequently occurring frame, such as a metaphor that is used repeatedly and consistently. As an example of such a referential construction, Ryazanova-Clarke analyses a series of metaphorical references to various prominent Soviet or Russian figures (Putin, Stalin, and Pushkin) as the sun, evoking notions of the threat of being burned by approaching its power, of permanence and prominence, and, in a sense, obsolescence or archaism, through the sun-ruler metaphor s connection to France s Sun king, Louis XIV (Ryazanova-Clarke, ). In Rhetorical Analysis of a Political Satire Podcast, Naneun Ggomsuda, Kyoo Sang Jo analyses, in a similar fashion, some of the rhetorical devices and metaphors used in the Korean satirical podcast, Naneun Ggomsuda ( I Am a Weasel ). In the podcast, the