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Why a lot of "satire" annoys me

EDIT: I seem to have expressed this really badly. I'm not against ALL satire involving stuff like racism. I'm not even against all satire which offends (some) people from marginalised groups. I'm against a very particular brand of "satire", as described below. See the comments for further clarification.

A lot of the time I'll find something angry-makingly Xist etc and when I complain people say "But it's satire". And I'll admit, sometimes I really am being obtuse, but a lot of the time I think this is crap, because it hurts the people it's supposedly helping and is amusing to those it's supposedly challenging. I've been trying to articulate this for ages, there's probably holes in my argument.

I'm going to talk about racism since this seems to be where it comes up the most and I want to cut down on my "etc"s, but it comes up with disability, sexuality etc all the time too.

So. An action is racist or not based on it's effect, not your intention.

If your satire:
-makes POC feel attacked
-makes very racist white people think you agree with them
-makes less racist white people laugh at the more racist white people and thus feel good about themselves

How is it in any way anti-racist? Or even racism neutral? (since not all art needs to have a positive social effect) How is it less racist in effect than a deliberately racist action intended to make POC feel attacked and agree with very racist white people?

Real satire makes the people you are satirising uncomfortable. A real anti-racist satire doesn't make racists laugh, it makes them uncomfortable and angry. If you're too intellectually lazy to make the people with power angry with your satire, and would rather take potshots at those with less power since it's safer and easier, then stop playing with the grownup toys and go make fart jokes where you're not hurting anyone.

Of course it's not always as clear cut as that: sometimes it makes POC and racists uncomfortable, in which case it's more ambiguous and the "art needs to be free to make people uncomfortable" argument may (or may not) come into effect.

Some related links:

Humour is an 'act of aggression' Humour is an act of agression and telling jokes is a method of reinforcing a social hierarchy, according to a German study.
Mommy's All Right, Daddy's All Right: Or, Why "Hipster Racism" Was Invented By Your Drunk Grandpa At a certain point, the privilege and prejudice of the middle class got projected onto the working class, because it was an undesirable characteristic and we love attributing those to poor people.
Jonathan Swift is not amused Instead of asking not to take a problem seriously by hiding it from sight and pretending it’s not really there, it bombards us with self-consciously irreverent mockery of it, with the underlying message being that, yeah, it happens, but it doesn’t really matter and we’ve all gotten over it. Or, rather, all the cool people have gotten over it, and anybody who does seem genuinely concerned is unreasonable and overreacting.
stuff white people do: act like a racist in order to demonstrate that you're not a racistWhite hipster humor about race is often meant to point out racism, but not in order to fight against it; the goal instead is ultimately narcissistic.
'Hipster' racism, and some linkage Has some interesting discussion in the comments

Also More thoughts about Art and responsibility and Politeness gone mad! Basic human decency taken too far! go into why "But you're putting restrictions on their True Artistic Vision" doesn't cut it as an excuse.

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I think this is an important point, but I don't have (*drum roll*) The Right Answer. I will say that as a person of Jewish heritage, I felt extremely uncomfortable when I read a supposedly funny satire on the blood libel, even though it was written by Jews for a Jewish audience. Maybe it's because I know people exist who would actually take it seriously.

*nods*

One of the many posts incubating in my brain, waiting for me to have the time/spoons to get to it, is about how people say "it's just a joke" as if being (intended to be) funny cancelled out the *ism/*phobia, when in fact how funny something is (to at least some of its audience) has no bearing at all on how *ist/*phobic it is - different axes, if you will. I'll link to this post when I write mine.

Sunflower

YES. I have that post in my head too.

(Icon not referring to this comment, I jest felt it was appropriate :))

The icon is sufficiently appropriate to the topic at hand, that I automatically interpreted it as being generally topical, and chuckled.

I didn't have the time, before, to examine the links you provided; I have now, and they're frackin' amazing - very useful to that incubating post.

Your own "art and responsibility" post I've read before (it might be how I first ran across you, if it was included in a link roundup, though I really don't recall), but I got more nuances from it this time, thinking of how it applies to humor (and, quite likely, because of what I've learned since). Definitely that's an aspect of the issue - that one can't avoid or evade responsibility for what one says/does. (Or as it's often put in polyamory circles, "Own your own shit.")

Sunflower

Glad they were useful. I have more about humour at my humour.meta tag: http://delicious.com/sqbr/humour.meta
I've been collecting them for ages since I kept not quite being able to articulate what I wanted to say.

Definitely that's an aspect of the issue - that one can't avoid or evade responsibility for what one says/does

*nods*

I'd like to respond to your post that uses racism as an example with an example based on homophobia, sorry if this annoys anyone but I can only draw on a homophobia example from my own experience.

Whether or not I find homophobic jokes funny depends on my own mood, on what else has been happening to me recently, and a whole lot of stuff that is far more to do with me than with the joke itself. (Of course the joke itself needs to be a good one in the normal way, or no-one will laugh, never mind me.) If I am in the mood, I will laugh, if I am not in the mood it will add to my feeling of being excluded and may make me angry. The comedian obviously has no control over my mood, only I have that - and, incidentally, in itself finding that control is very powerful.

So on those occasions when I am in the mood, why do I laugh? Well, partly for the same reasons everyone does - because funny things have been said. More to the point perhaps, why don't I always feel hurt and excluded? That is a tough question to answer, especially cos at the moment I happen to be depressed and so am working myself up into a state where I am very sensitive about things so it is hard to tap back into how I feel in happier times. Maybe it is to do with how one can't spend too much time taking things seriously. Treating a 'lack of privilege' as always a serious, worrying, upsetting matter is far too tiresome. Sometimes I need to relax and have the pomposity pricked. To relax and feel normal by laughing at a joke not despite the fact it supposedly pokes fun at people like me but precisely because it pokes fun at people like me. Again I am struggling to think of a specific example that might illustrate this better but I know they exist because I know I have done it.

OK, this probably doesn't work well as an explanation, but perhaps it has some value for displaying my own experiences slightly. I can and do laugh at jokes designed to pick on people like me, from this I conclude that a satirist can say something which is superficially non-pc and it will benefit not hurt me.

Talking about homophobia since it's your personal experience is absolutely a valid response to this post, as I said it's not really about racism specifically. I tried writing it in abstracts and it ended up looking like a mathematical equation :) And thus, my argument applied to homophobia:

First off: are you talking about satire that is unambiguously aimed at the LGBT community? If so that's not the topic of my post, I'm talking about satire aimed at homophobia.

Anyway: absolutely, humour can be homophobic but still funny, and a positive experience, for an individual LGBT person. But again it comes down to effects: the fact that you got something positive out of it doesn't mean it doesn't have an overall negative homophobic effect, and a different LGBT person who found it actively hurtful would be within their rights to complain. Though then you get into the continuum between "Most LGBT people find it hurtful" and "Most LGBT people find it funny and positive", and my post is more about humour that is only really funny to those NOT in the marginalised group.

And this is separate to whether or not it has any effect fighting the homophobia of homophobic straight people. Not all humour involving sexuality has to do this, but if the excuse for hurting some/all LGBT people with "edgy" satire about sexuality is "But it speaks to straight people who might otherwise be homophobic" then it should. And a lot of the time, I think the only message people get is either "Lol, gay people are funny" or "Lol, people who are more homophobic than me are funny", neither of which seems all that effective in fighting homophobia to me.

Talking about homophobia since it's your personal experience is absolutely a valid response to this post, as I said it's not really about racism specifically.
I'm glad you're ok with it. I know that some folk get very upset when they see a post which they consider to be about one issue and then it gets hijacked by a different group, so I wished to pre-empt any offence.

I think this discussion would benefit hugely from some concrete examples, but I am going through a very bad patch of fog at the mo and really cannot think of any.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that when someone is in a 'sensitive' mood, almost any mention of 'gay' that isn't 100% kind and bland is liable to hurt. The trouble is that if you then say that all non kind and bland statements should be avoided around the sensitive, since somebody somewhere is always going to be having a sensitive period - some people feel permanently sensitised - that pretty much eliminates all public humour. That is political correctness and its one of the several reasons a lot of people find PC very problematical and decide than on balance it is the greater of the two evils. Because humour is a vital and brilliant thing and to deny one bunch of people humour because it might hurt another bunch is a doubtful judgement to make at the best of times.

Especially since political correctness tends to box people in. The gay folk who are not feeling sensitive about that joke and actually enjoyed it somehow become invisible compared to the gay folk who are feeling sensitive and got hurt, the definition of gay becomes wound up with 'hurt', 'disadvantaged' and (inevitably) 'complaining about it' and a whole bunch of other negative connotations and I find those negative connotations and the polarisation of views far more damaging than the original humour that generally at worst merely provoked a slight feeling of difference which I know I wouldn't have minded on a non-sensitive day.

Naturally these are all a matter of degrees and shades of grey, of picking ones way through a minefield of very different people reacting in very different ways to the same thing. The extremes of the curve are always easy to call, but where one should draw the boundary lines in-between is always going to be a matter of personal choice and instinct rather than obvious rules.

I think this comes down to one of those fundamental underlying beliefs that we so often find at the root of these discussions. Should one favour the disadvantaged over the general mass of populace even if the mass of the populace suffer as a result, or favour the mass of the populace and hope to pull the disadvantaged up to their level on the back of their prosperity? I see political correctness as attempting the former and my instinct is always towards the latter.

I hope that made some sense. As I say, I am very foggy just now. A lot of it is probably more about PC than humour or satire per se because I saw the link to your post on PC and it reminded me of some thoughts that sparked off which I lacked spoons for at the time.

Mm, the difference between a derail and a useful expansion of the topic isn't always clear. But while talking about sexuality is on topic, this digression into the general nature of PC is a bit of a derail, so I'll try and be brief (ha)

I hope you don't mind but now I'm going to shift the frame of reference, to gender this time (with the understanding that I'm mainly doing this to avoid saying gender/race/sexuality etc), since I don't feel comfortable, as a straight person, talking about when TBLG people are being oversensitive.

The extremes of the curve are always easy to call, but where one should draw the boundary lines in-between is always going to be a matter of personal choice and instinct rather than obvious rules.

Yes.

I see where you're coming from, and tentatively agree that it is possible to over-do the desire not to hurt ANYONE'S feelings. And it is difficult to make humour about something touchy like gender that both has something interesting to say and manages not to hit anyone's raw nerves.

But I think this is a false dichotomy:
Should one favour the disadvantaged over the general mass of populace even if the mass of the populace suffer as a result, or favour the mass of the populace and hope to pull the disadvantaged up to their level on the back of their prosperity?

I mean there are situations where that comes up, but
(a)I think sexist ideas (in humour or otherwise) may be more hurtful to women but they are overall hurtful to everyone.
(b)Most sexist humour could be made less sexist without becoming less funny

I'm not sure if the line here is so clear-cut.

There are 2 problems here that complicate things; the extremely subjective nature of art (and humour in particular); and the amount of stupid people in the world.

I saw comedian Greg Fleet the other night saying, "You know what I really can't stand? Racists. Oh, and Jews as well."

In the context of his routine, it was funny, and the audience understood the ironic intent. Thing is, there are people out there who don't understand irony, and who would hear that and think "WTF? He hates Jews?" or alternatively "Hehe, yeah that's right, f***in' Jews."

As a blogger myself I know that no matter how clear a statement might seem, there is always someone who will not be clever or hip enough to see what you are getting at. Lots of people aren't able to grasp a wider context in which a satirical statement is made. Particularly as racists tend not to be the brightest of people.

So to an extent, humourists cannot be expected to cater for the ignorant lowest common denominator all the time. I don't think Greg Fleet should have appended his joke with "Just in case you were wondering, I don't actually hate Jews."

I've written some stuff about the appropriateness of racial humour if you're interested; http://eurasian-sensation.blogspot.com/2009/10/racial-humour-is-it-ever-okay.html

Absolutely. I read your post at the time and agree with it.

I obviously didn't make my point very well: I'm not saying "But it's satire" is never an appropriate response to someone complaining that a piece of humour appears on the surface to be supporting racism etc. But it's overused as if it were a bulletproof shield from criticism and it's not.

It does get very murky, and my post doesn't really acknowledge that. Sometimes people really are just offended because they don't get the joke. But sometimes a piece of "satire" involving race (for example) really does hurt/anger/offend pretty much every POC/non-white person who sees it, and has no noticeable affect challenging the views of racist people, and in those cases I think it's reasonable to criticise it for being racist in effect regardless of it's intent.

Yep, it is murky indeed. It's interesting when you think about it; so many of us, upon seeing something potentially funny, unconsciously analyze how politically or ideologically correct the joke is, before deciding whether or not to laugh. Similarly, sometimes things make us instinctively laugh, then we feel bad or embarrassed afterwards for laughing at it.

I grew up in a family with a heavy leftist/socialist leaning, and thus have always remembered Alexi Sayle saying something like "Any joke told to communists gets a minute's silence while everyone decides if it's ok to laugh" (only it was funnier when he said it :))

Personally I try not to stress about what I find funny. You can think something is funny and still think it's bad. I've never liked the "That's not funny" approach to sexist/racist etc humour, though of course a lot of the time if you think of women/POC etc as people it does stop being funny at least to some extent.

EDIT: As it happens the link I had open next to this was loving things that are broken which make s a similar point well.

Edited 2009-12-09 10:07 (UTC)

You might want to find a book called Laughter in Hell: The Use of Humor during the Holocaust by Steve Lipman (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1991).

Or for an idea of its view on humour, there is this: http://www.holocaust-trc.org/holocaust_humor.htm

- Too lazy to do the OpenID thing because it's going to be screened anyway

We seem to be at cross purposes here since afaict (having I'll admit only skimmed that essay, I'm about to go on holiday) that's the sort of satire I am totally A-OK with. I'm definitely not against ALL satire about racism etc. I've done it myself!

Bit of a complex area.

"An action is racist or not based on it's effect, not your intention."

Argh bad apostrophe. Sorry, just my privilege talking*.

That's a deep philosophical divide. Personally, I think that given that the effects of your actions are a function of the actors, targets and circumstance etc. it's too much to require people to perfectly manage those effects on top of having the right intentions.

What I'd like to see is society as a field of communication and action where ill effects are neutral with respect to preexisting privilege. It would be understood that not all spaces are "safe" (although some might be) and that in general, those carrying systematic advantage need to exercise restraint in terms of bullying / abuse of power.

(The reason why the privileged can better afford to make brutish remarks and enjoy satire and crass, loose cannon humour is because they are rarely the butt of the joke, or better placed to laugh it off.)

The Tiger Beatdown post was interestingly typical of the kind of theorising about "white middle class hipsters" that tends to push my buttons, because I'm a rough but not exact fit for the category. It featured a good, solid and somewhat true argument (as I'd describe it) about how the white UMC embeds prejudicial attitudes. So I felt a little under attack, while still identifying large chunks of the argument that arguably didn't apply to me.

I do sometimes wonder if there's a bit of a fixation on discussing those "white middle class hipsters" because of the proportion of the blogosphere that overlaps the category - tends to keep the discussion interesting. There is a distance between the privilege that condones or fails to fight systematic disadvantage and the privilege that actively entrenches it, I'm not sure all hipsters/targets of that Tiger Beatdown post have the former specification.

* No, really

Personally, I think that given that the effects of your actions are a function of the actors, targets and circumstance etc. it's too much to require people to perfectly manage those effects on top of having the right intentions.

I was going to disagree with this, but to a certain extent I agree with you. So, instead: if one of your goals is to criticise racism, but the overall effect of your satire is to support racism for the reasons I gave, and you know this will happen in advance and do it anyway then I can't see how that can not be considered a racist action.

And if you don't know in advance, well, clearly you need someone like me to explain it to you, then you'll know better for next time :D

What I'd like to see is society as a field of communication and action where ill effects are neutral with respect to preexisting privilege. It would be understood that not all spaces are "safe" (although some might be) and that in general, those carrying systematic advantage need to exercise restraint in terms of bullying / abuse of power.

I'm hot and tired and this went over my head. I may look at it again later, but just to let you know I'm not ignoring it.

I do sometimes wonder if there's a bit of a fixation on discussing those "white middle class hipsters" because of the proportion of the blogosphere that overlaps the category

Well, I can't speak for Sady of Tiger Beatdown but I know I tend to blog about what is on my mind (eg what cheeses me off), and that tends to be what I encounter a lot of rather than what's objectively important. So yes.

There is a distance between the privilege that condones or fails to fight systematic disadvantage and the privilege that actively entrenches it, I'm not sure all hipsters/targets of that Tiger Beatdown post have the former specification.

Lost me again. Sorry, I'm feeling stupid but motivated today and ran out of housework I felt like doing, so you're doomed to wordy but low quality comment replies :)

First point is very much well taken.

What I'm saying in the second bit is that I don't want social interaction to attempt to be "harm-free". That's partly because I think "harm" is a concept that shifts as one approaches it, and partly because I think there's just too much value and beauty and importance in relatively free interplay between us all.

In the end I believe you get diminishing returns from the careful policing of harmful actions at their point of effect. (Which is not to say there isn't a point to work towards.)

In the case of the last point I'm not really making an argument, just pointing out that even if the submerged / twisted racism of the "white hipster" demographic is an insidious thing, it's not as bad as the outspoken, actively aggressive "fuck off we're full" variety that works in the open to absolutely circumscribe the opportunities available to POC.

In the end I believe you get diminishing returns from the careful policing of harmful actions at their point of effect. (Which is not to say there isn't a point to work towards.)

In theory I agree, but I think we place that point at different, um...points.

even if the submerged / twisted racism of the "white hipster" demographic is an insidious thing, it's not as bad as the outspoken, actively aggressive "fuck off we're full" variety that works in the open to absolutely circumscribe the opportunities available to POC.

Well, yes. Most racism I encounter is nowhere near as bad as, say, the Nazis, but if I made posts saying "Nazism is bad" everyone would just say "I agree!" which isn't very productive (apart from all of us getting a warm glow at how much better we are than the Nazis). Afaict noone reading his journal is super-duper racist in that aggressive way, and neither are most of the people I encounter, so I generally see no point in going into why that sort of attitude is wrong. And if someone with such attitudes DID encounter this post I can't see why they couldn't get something out of it regardless (I mean they'd probably dismiss it out of hand, but they're likely to to do that whatever I say. Except maybe "Nazis are bad", and again that would just make them feel good about themselves).

I have a post about an example of a satire around transphobia that really worked for me on my livejournal. I don't know if I can give you access to my locked posts on lj through OpenID (have ticked the grant access box, but don't know if that'll do the trick)?

Hmm. It's still invisible to me (OpenID access confuses me utterly!), it's probably easier to just friend my livejournal (you would be under no obligation to read it :)).

Done. We did meet at Swancon the other year, so I would be happy to be lj friends, if you are. :)

Absolutely!

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Why a lot of "satire" annoys me

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